“Come, mother Kinzer, you didn’t set it afire.  Can’t Miranda and I have some supper?  Dab must be hungry, after all that roof-sweeping.”

There had been a sharp strain on the nerves of all of them that day and evening, and they were glad enough to gather around the tea-table, while what was left of the old barn smoldered away, with the village boys on guard.  Once or twice Ham or Dab went out to make sure all was right, but there was no danger, unless a high wind should come.

By this time the whole village was aware of Dabney’s adventure with the tramp, and it was well for that individual that he had walked fast and far before suspicion settled on him, for men went out to seek for him on foot and on horseback.

“He’s a splendid fellow, anyway.”

Odd, was it not, but Annie Foster and Jenny Walters were half a mile apart when they both said that very thing, just before the clock in the village church hammered out the news that it was ten and bed-time.  They were not speaking of the tramp.

It was long after that, however, before the lights were out in all the rooms of the Morris mansion.

CHAPTER XVII.

Sleep?

One of the most excellent things in all the world, and very few people get too much of it nowadays.

As for Dabney Kinzer, he had done his sleeping as regularly and faithfully as even his eating, up to that very night after Ham Morris came home to find the big barn afire.  There had been a few, a very few exceptions.  There were the nights when he was expecting to go duck-shooting before daylight, and waked up at midnight with a strong conviction that he was already too late about starting.  There were perhaps a dozen or so of “eeling” expeditions which had kept him out late enough for a full basket and a proper scolding.  There, too, was the night when he had stood so steadily by the tiller of the “Swallow,” while she danced through the dark across the rough waves of the Atlantic.

But on the whole, Dab Kinzer had been a good sleeper all his life till then.  Once in bed, and there had been an end of all wakefulness.

On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come, late as was the hour when the family circle broke up.  It could not have been the excitement of Ham’s and Miranda’s return.  He’d have gotten over that by this time.  No more could it have been the fire, though the smell of the smoldering hay came in pretty strongly, at times, through the wide-open windows.  If any one patch of that great roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab would surely have found the spot, for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his restlessness.  Some fields on a farm will “grow” better wheat than others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep.  At last Dab got wearily up and took a chair by the window.  The night was dark, but the stars were shining, and every now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself and toss up the hot ashes the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of burnt hay.