er chance at
him to-morrow. I saw him go up the road about noon."

Behind the old man Ump held up two fingers and made a sweeping gesture.
The waggon-maker went back to the corner of his house for some bedding.
Ump leaned over. "Two flyin'," he said. "One went east, an' one went
west, an' one went over the cuckoo's nest. If I knowed where that
cuckoo's nest was, we'd have the last one spotted."

"What do you think they're up to?" said I.

Ump laughed. "Oh ho, I think they're out lookin' for the babes in the
woods!" And the fancy pleased him so well that he rubbed his hands and
chuckled in his crooked throat until old Simon returned.

It was late, and the waggon-maker began his preparations for the night.
He gave me a home-made mattress of corn husks and a hand-made quilt,
heavy and warm as a fur robe. From a high swinging shelf he got two
heifer hides, tanned with the hair on them, soft as cloth. In these Jud
and Ump rolled themselves and, putting the saddles under their heads,
were presently sleeping like the illustrious Seven. The old man fastened
his door with a wooden bar, took off his shoes, and sat down by the
fire.

I went to sleep with the picture fading into my dream,--the smoked
rafters, the red wampus of the old waggon-maker, and the burning
splinters crumbling into a heap of rosy ash. A moment later, as things
come and go in the land of Nod, Cynthia and Hawk Rufe were also sitting
by this fire. Cynthia held the old picture with the funny curls,--the
one that stands on the mantel shelf at home,--and she was trying to rub
out the curls with her thumb, moistening it in her red mouth. But
somehow they would not rub out, and she showed the picture to Woodford,
who began to count on his outspread fingers, "Eaney, meany, miny mo."
Only the words were names somehow, although they sounded like these
words.

Then the dream changed, and I was on El Mahdi in a press of fighting
cattle, driven round and round by black Malan and Parson Peppers
bellowing like the very devil.

When I awoke the fire was blazing and the grey light of the earliest
dawn was creeping in through the chinks of the log wall. Ump and Jud had
gone to the stable and the old waggon-maker was busy with the breakfast.
On the hearth a mighty cake of corn-meal was baking itself brown;
potatoes roasted in the ashes, and on a little griddle about as big as a
man's hat a great cut of half-dried beef was broiling.

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