Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/226

 very sleepily; “what is that sound at the door? Look, Nicholas hears it too.”

The dog had raised his head and was sniffing anxiously, but without moving, as though he, too,  were too weary to stir. Hugh listened and heard a sound outside like a soft shuffling in the  snow.

“I don’t care what it is,” he announced. “There is nothing on earth that can make me get up now that I am warm and sleepy at last. Here, Nicholas, spare me a bit more blanket. I am going to sleep for a hundred years and dream of  a million ham sandwiches.”

He dropped off almost while he was still speaking and Dick, apparently no more energetic than he, closed his eyes also. Nicholas lay with cocked ears listening until the soft sounds gradually  ceased, then he, too, dropped into the unheeding  slumber that held them all until daylight.

When Hugh awoke his first thought was that it was a pleasant dream he had had of the storm’s  being over and the stars visible. Yet when he sat up and saw bright sunlight pouring through