had carried their smoked meat off.

Their tongues did certainly wag at a great rate for a spell. All sorts
of suggestions were made, some of them fairly good, and others bordering
on the ridiculous. Toby was for believing that it must have been a
tiger, or at the very least one of those terrible spotted leopards they
remembered seeing walking up and down in its cage, as though always
hoping to get out to its missing mate.

"And they s-s-say leopards have got the w-w-worst k-k-kind of tempers,"
he insisted, when some of the others threw doubt on this idea.

"Well, whatever it is," Max concluded, "it acted like it was mad at
Steve here for walking in his sleep."

"Don't blame the critter much, either," muttered Bandy-legs; "because
any feller that would be guilty of doing such monkey-shines ought to
have a whole ham flung at his head every time."

"Hold on there," said Steve, sharply; "that's always the way with you
fellows. Why, you ought to be voting me a bunch of thanks right now,
instead of hauling me over the coals like you're doing."

"Oh! is that so, Steve?" cried Bandy-legs, with considerable of satire
in his voice.

"Sure it is," the other went on to say, unblushingly. "Supposin' now I'd
just continued to hit the hay, and snored on like you two seemed to have
done, what's the answer?"

Bandy-legs and Toby exchanged puzzled looks.

"W-w-whatever do you m-m-mean, Steve?" asked the latter.

"How about that fine ham? When, you looked around everywhere for it
to-morrow morning and couldn't find the same high or low, you'd wish
Steve Dowdy might have had a little walking fit on, and saved your bacon
for you, eh?"

Max laughed at hearing that.

"I guess Steve's got it on you, boys, this time," he remarked. "It seems
that in some cases walking in your sleep may turn out to be the right
thing. We do owe him something, because it saved our ham this time. But
all the same he's got to stop the habit before it gets him into a peck
of trouble."

"I s-s-say we p-p-put a rope on him nights," Toby ventured, with
emphasis. "Then if he tries to s-s-slope he'll find himself p-p-pulled
up with a round turn."

"Hey, you just try it, that's all!" Steve told him. "What d'ye take me
for, a horse, to be staked out nights, or hobbled and all that? I give
you fair warning right now that whenever we're in danger of losing some
of our belongings, if I take a notion to step out and walk in my sleep
in order to save the same,