or the sum he had borrowed. Mat roughly and resolutely
refused to receive the document; but Zack tied it up along with the
bank-notes, and threw the beaver-skin roll back to its owner, as
requested.

"Do you want a bed to sleep in?" asked Mat next. "Say yes or no at once!
I won't have no more gibberish. I'm not a gentleman, and I can't shake
up along with them as are. It's no use trying it on with me, young 'un.
I'm not much better than a cross between a savage and a Christian. I'm
a battered, lonesome, scalped old vagabond--that's what I am! But I'm
brothers with you for all that. What's mine is yours; and if you tell me
it isn't again, me and you are likely to quarrel. Do you want a bed to
sleep in? Yes? or No?"

Yes; Zack certainly wanted a bed; but--

"There's one for you," remarked Mat, pointing through the folding-doors
into the back room. _"I_ don't want it. I haven't slep' in a bed these
twenty years and more, and I can't do it now. I take dog's snoozes in
this corner; and I shall take more dog's snoozes out of doors in the
day-time, when the sun begins to shine. I haven't been used to much
sleep, and I don't want much. Go in and try if the bed's long enough for
you."

Zack tried to expostulate again, but Mat interrupted him more gruffly
than ever.

"I suppose you don't care to sleep next door to such as me," he said.
"You wouldn't turn your back on a bit of my blanket, though, if we were
out in the lonesome places together. Never mind! You won't cotton to me
all at once, I dare say. I cotton to _you_ in spite of that. Damn the
bed! Take or leave it, which you like."

Zack the reckless, who was always ready at five minutes' notice to
make friends with any living being under the canopy of heaven--Zack
the gregarious, who in his days of roaming the country, before he was
fettered to an office stool, had "cottoned" to every species of rustic
vagabond, from a traveling tinker to a resident poacher--at once
declared that he would sleep in the offered bed that very night, by way
of showing himself worthy of his host's assistance and regard, if worthy
of nothing else. Greatly relieved by this plain declaration, Mat crossed
his legs luxuriously on the floor, shook his great shoulders with a
heartier chuckle than usual, and made his young friend free of the
premises in these hospitable words:--

"There! now the bother's over at last, I suppose," cried Mat. "Pull in
the buffalo hide, and bring your legs to an anc