Boughs heaped a foot thick with the blankets on top, neatly stretched out,
and the tarpaulin over all, made a couch as soft as down and fragrant with
the pure scent of evergreens.
Joan tried the surface with a foot that sank to her ankle, then with her
hands, and finally sat down to think. The first fear was almost gone; she
understood that Bart was keeping her here until Dan came home, and fear
does not go hand in hand with understanding. She only wondered, now, at the
reason that kept Daddy Dan living in this cave so far from the warm comfort
of the cabin, and so far away from her mother; but thinking makes small
heads drowsy, and in five minutes Joan lay with her head pillowed on her
arm, sound asleep.
When she awoke, the evening-gray of the cave had given place to utter
blackness, alarming and thick. Joan sat up with a start; she would have
cried out, bewildered, but now she heard a noise on the gravel, and turned
to see Daddy Dan entering the cave with Satan behind him, quite distinctly
outlined by the sunset outside. Black Bart walked first, looking back over
his shoulder as though he led the way.
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