e knew that it
would be better for them both if they could keep themselves awake; those
who fell asleep in the night air of South Devil generally awoke the next
morning in another world.

"I climbed up a ladder of vines to gather some of the great red blossoms
swinging in the air; and, once up, I went along on the mat to see what I
could find. It's beautiful there--fairy-land. You can't see anything
down below, but above the long moss hangs in fine, silvery lines like
spray from ever so high up, and mixed with it air-plants, sheafs, and
bells of scarlet and cream-colored blossoms. I sat there a long time
looking, and I suppose I must have dozed; for I don't know when I fell."

"You did not hear me shout?"

"No. The first consciousness I had was the odor of brandy."

"The odor reached you, and the sound did not; that is one of the tricks
of such air as this! You must have climbed up, I suppose, at the place
where I lost the trail. What time did you come in?"

"I don't know," murmured Carl drowsily.

"Look here! you _must_ keep awake!"

"I can't," answered the other.

Deal shook him, but could not rouse him even to anger. He only opened
his blue eyes and looked reproachfully at his brother, but as though he
was a long distance off. Then Deal lifted him up, uncorked the flask,
and put it to his lips.

"Drink!" he said, loudly and sternly; and mechanically Carl obeyed. Once
or twice his head moved aside, as if refusing more; but Deal again said,
"Drink!" and without pity made the sleeper swallow every drop the flask
contained. Then he laid him down upon the coat again, and covered his
face and head with his own broad-brimmed palmetto hat, Carl's hat having
been lost. He had done all he could--changed the lethargy of the South
Devil into the sleep of drunkenness, the last named at least a human
slumber. He was now left to keep the watch alone.

During the first half hour a dozen red and green things, of the
centipede and scorpion kind, stupefied by the glare of the torches, fell
from the trees; and he dispatched them. Next, enormous grayish-white
spiders, in color exactly like the bark, moved slowly one furred leg
into view, and then another, on the trunks of the cypresses near by,
gradually coming wholly into the light--creatures covering a
circumference as large as that of a plate. At length the cypresses all
around the knoll were covered with them; and they all seemed to be
watching him. He was not watching th