and served together in the War of '12. This established a bond.
Grandma Padgett was gently excited, and told Bobaday and Corinne
after the Virginia woman's departure to her own wagons, that she
should feel safe on account of being an old neighbor in the camp.




CHAPTER X.

THE CRY OF A CHILD IN THE NIGHT.


But the camp was too exciting to let the children fall asleep early.
Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling in
a musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes which
sounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell with
a continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for it
scarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous,
drenching tempest, but a lullaby rain, bringing out the smell of
barks, of pennyroyal and May-apple and wild sweet-williams from the
deep woods.

Robert Day crept out of the carriage, having with him the oil-cloth
apron and a plan. Four long sticks were not hard to find, or to
sharpen with his pocket knife, and a few knocks drove them into the
soft earth, two on each side of a log near the fire. He then
stretched the oil-cloth over the sticks, tying the corners, and had a
canopied throne in the midst of this lively camp. A chunk served for
a footstool. Bobaday sat upon his log, hearing the rain slide down,