nd returned to the centre cave.

"Is the lad March safe too?" inquired Dick as he busied himself in
striking a light with flint and steel.

"All right," answered the youth for himself, "but horribly battered, an'
fit to yell with pain, not to mention surprise. Do look sharp and get
the fire up. Sich doins' as this I never did see nor hear of since I
left the frontier. I do declare it's worthy o' the Wild Man o' the West
himself. What d'ye find to laugh at, Dick? I'm sure if ye had my
miserable bones in yer body at this moment, ye'd laugh wi' your mouth
screwed the wrong way. Look alive, man!"

"Patience, lad, patience. That's one o' the vartues, I believe;
leastwise, so I'm told. Ah, it's caught at last. (Hand me that dry
stuff on the south shelf, Mary; ye can find it i' the dark, I doubt
not.) Yes, it's a vartue, but I can't boast o' having much o't myself.
I dun know much about it from 'xperience, d'ye see? There, now, we'll
git things put to rights," he added, applying the kindled spark to some
dry chips and producing a flame, with which he ignited a pine-knot, and
stuck it blazing in a cleft in the rock. "Just see what them reptiles
ha' done to me. If it wasn't that I'm a good-tempered feller, I b'lieve
I'd git angry. See, March, boy, there's a shelf in the corner that's
escaped the flood. Lie ye down there, while Mary and me puts the place
in order."

"I'd rather help you," said March dismally. "I don't b'lieve it can
make me worse, an' perhaps it'll make me better. I wonder what in the
world pain was made for."

"Ye'll only be in our way, lad. Lie down," said Dick, seizing a large
broom and beginning to sweep away the water and ashes and pieces of
charcoal with which the floor was plentifully covered, while Mary picked
up the scattered skins and furniture of the cave, and placed them on the
ledge of rock, about four feet from the ground, which Dick termed a
shelf.

This ledge ran all round the apartment, so March selected a corner, and,
throwing a dry skin upon it, stretched himself thereon, and soon found
his sufferings relieved to such an extent that he began to question his
host as to his sudden and unlooked-for return.

"How came ye to drop in upon us in the very nick o' time like that?" he
said, gazing languidly at Mary, who bustled about with the activity of a
kitten--or, to use an expression more in keeping with the surrounding
circumstances, a wild kitten.

Dick, without checkin