is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep in good earnest.  A last good-night.  There is an appalling silence.  It is interrupted in the most natural way in the world.  Somebody has got the start, and gone to sleep.  He proclaims the fact.  He seems to have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless ocean.  He is also like a war-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse.  How malignantly he snorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in another key!  One head is raised after another.

“Who is that?”

“Somebody punch him.”

“Turn him over.”

“Reason with him.”

The sleeper is turned over.  The turn was a mistake.  He was before, it appears, on his most agreeable side.  The camp rises in indignation.  The sleeper sits up in bewilderment.  Before he can go off again, two or three others have preceded him.  They are all alike.  You never can judge what a person is when he is awake.  There are here half a dozen disturbers of the peace who should be put in solitary confinement.  At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out to sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, with a chorus always coming in at the wrong time.  Those who are not asleep want to know why the smoker doesn’t go to bed.  He is requested to get some water, to throw on another log, to see what time it is, to note whether it looks like rain.  A buzz of conversation arises.  She is sure she heard something behind the shanty.  He says it is all nonsense.  “Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse.”

“Mercy!  Are there mice?”

“Plenty.”

“Then that’s what I heard nibbling by my head.  I shan’t sleep a wink!  Do they bite?”

“No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite out.”

“It’s horrid!”

Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides have let the fire go out; the blankets will slip down.  Anxiety begins to be expressed about the dawn.

“What time does the sun rise?”

“Awful early.  Did you sleep?

“Not a wink.  And you?”

“In spots.  I’m going to dig up this root as soon as it is light enough.”

“See that mist on the lake, and the light just coming on the Gothics!  I’d no idea it was so cold:  all the first part of the night I was roasted.”

“What were they talking about all night?”

When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, after it has washed its faces in the lake, it is disorganized, but cheerful.  Nobody admits much sleep; but everybody is refreshed, and declares it delightful.  It is the fresh air all night that invigorates; or maybe it is the tea, or the slap-jacks.  The guides have erected a table of spruce bark, with benches at the sides; so that breakfast is taken in form.  It is served on tin plates and oak chips.  After breakfast begins the day’s work.  It may be a mountain-climbing