est trades, redolent of
the saturated spices of the woods and springing grasses, which perhaps
were slightly inconsistent with the hot stove around which we had
congregated. But the stove was only an excuse for our listless,
gregarious gathering; warmth and idleness went well together, and it was
currently accepted that we had caught from the particular reptile which
gave its name to our camp much of its pathetic, lifelong search for
warmth, and its habit of indolently basking in it.

A few of us still went through the affectation of attempting to dry our
damp clothes by the stove, and sizzling our wet boots against it; but
as the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive in upon them
through the open window without moving, and seemed to take infinite
delight in the amount of steam they generated, even that pretense
dropped. Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy ditch, and the sun
striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he basked his head on a warm
stone beside it, could not have typified us better.

Percy Briggs took his pipe from his mouth at last and said, with
reflective severity:

"Well, gentlemen, if we can't get the wagon road over here, and if
we're going to be left out by the stagecoach company, we can at least
straighten up the camp, and not have it look like a cross between a
tenement alley and a broken-down circus. I declare, I was just sick
when these two Baker girls started to make a short cut through the camp.
Darned if they didn't turn round and take to the woods and the rattlers
again afore they got halfway. And that benighted idiot, Tom Rollins,
standin' there in the ditch, spattered all over with slumgullion 'til he
looked like a spotted tarrypin, wavin' his fins and sashaying backwards
and forrards and sayin', 'This way, ladies; this way!'"

"I didn't," returned Tom Rollins, quite casually, without looking up
from his steaming boots; "I didn't start in night afore last to dance
'The Green Corn Dance' outer 'Hiawatha,' with feathers in my hair and
a red blanket on my shoulders, round that family's new potato patch,
in order that it might 'increase and multiply.' I didn't sing 'Sabbath
Morning Bells' with an anvil accompaniment until twelve o'clock at
night over at the Crossing, so that they might dream of their Happy
Childhood's Home. It seems to me that it wasn't me did it. I might be
mistaken--it was late--but I have the impression that it wasn't me."

From the silence that foll