“A good big dip right aout of the middle of that ants’ nest,” snickered Sile. “Them little black bugs can nip like sin, and they’ll have Sleuthy squirmin’ some in no time. Shake ’em daown to the bottom – that’s right. Naow spread it aout jest as he left it. Don’t give it away to him, but jest wait for the circus to commence after he pokes himself away into that thing.”

He began undressing, whistling at the same time, and soon Piper and Springer were heard returning from the point, engaged in an argument as to whether or not they had seen fish “breaking” in the water.

“Never mind,” said Grant, as they entered; “I reckon we’ll find out in the morning whether or not there are fish around here. Hustle up, everybody, and turn in. I’m all ready, and don’t fancy having you gents fussing and growling and keeping me awake.”

Ere Piper had undressed to his underclothes, which were of the athletic variety and in which he proposed to sleep, all save Crane had wrapped themselves in blankets and rolled on to the bed of balsam boughs, the fragrance of which pervaded the entire tent.

“Git in, Sleuth, so I can put aout the light,” urged Sile. “Got yeour old gun all ready, ain’t ye? Be sure to keep off cougars, and don’t let anything git into the tent to bite ye in the night.”

Piper somewhat laboriously and bungingly stowed himself into the bag feet first, Crane snickering in spite of himself as he watched the performance, while more than one of the blanket-wrapped bodies on the boughs quivered suspiciously.

“What are you laughing at?” demanded Sleuth resentfully, as he pulled the top of the bag up around his shoulders. “Perhaps you think this isn’t comfortable, but I want you to understand it is. I’ll get more real good solid satisfaction out of this bag tonight than you will on your old bough bed.”

“I was jest thinkin’,” returned Crane, “that it might be kind of hot inside that thing this time of year. When I git too hot in the night it sets me to scratchin’ something awful – makes me itch, like things was bitin’ me.”

“You’d better have your bed examined,” sneered Sleuth pointedly. “I’m never troubled that way.”

“Haow do you hitch this thing up raound yeour neck?” asked Sile, examining the top of the bag. “I should think yeou’d want it fastened, so yeour shoulders wouldn’t stick aout. I see haow it’s done, but it must be consarned awkward to fasten it from the inside. I’ll do it for ye.”

In spite of Sleuth’s protest that he did not want the top fastened too tightly, the joker slyly drew it close and made it secure. This done, he lost little time in folding his blanket round him, extinguishing the light and rolling on to the boughs, where, like the others, he eagerly awaited developments.

Save for the mournful peeping of a tree-toad in a near-by thicket and the occasional crackling of the fire, the light of which flickered on the tent and shone through the narrow opening in front, a profound silence settled for a time over the camp. It was not long, however, before the waiting boys heard Piper moving a bit restlessly in the bag, and in a short time the sound of these movements became more distinct, seeming to indicate that Sleuth was squirming about uneasily. Springer turned a snicker into a poor imitation of a snore, and Crane poked him sharply in the ribs. Almost immediately Piper was heard scratching himself vigorously.

“Drat it!” he whispered to himself; and Springer’s body shook convulsively.

Following this, the boy in the bag began jumping and twisting about, and several smothered slaps were heard.

“Hey, what’s the matter with yeou, Sleuthy?” mumbled Crane in a pretended tone of sleepiness. “Why don’t yeou keep still? Haow do yeou s’pose anybody is goin’ to sleep with yeou kickin’ up all that rumpus? Ain’t yeour old sleepin’ bag comfortable?”

“Sure, it is,” answered Piper; “only there was a hubble under me like a stone. Gee whiz! I didn’t know it was so hot tonight.”

“Dud-dud-dry up!” growled Springer. “If you keep talking you’ll gug-get me wide awake, and I’ll never go to sleep. Lie still, Sleuth.”

“I’m comfortable now,” assured Piper. “It’s all right.”

But barely had he uttered these words when he gave a tremendous jerk and resumed his scratching more vigorously than ever.

“Guess you were right, Sile,” he finally admitted; “these sleeping bags are hot things. Don’t know what makes me itch so. Oh, gee! feels like something was nipping me.”

“Will you never keep still, Sleuth?” exclaimed Grant.

“I’m sorry,” said Piper, struggling to sit up; “but something is stinging me like a lot of nettles. Oh, great smoke! it’s fierce. Say, Sile, won’t you unfasten this old bag? I can’t seem to get out of the thing.”

“No, I won’t unfasten it,” returned Crane in pretended exasperation; “but if yeou don’t lay daown and keep still I’ll hit yeou with a boot or something.”

“I can’t lie down,” protested Sleuth, rapidly becoming frantic. “I tell you something is chewing me up to beat the band. I can feel things crawling on me.”

“It must be all imagination,” put in Stone, who, although he enjoyed the joke, really pitied the victim. “Still, imagination is very painful sometimes. Why don’t you let him out of the bag, Sile?”

“Let him aout of the bag!” snapped Crane, rising on his elbow. “Well, I guess not! Didn’t he tell us haow comfortable them things was? He wouldn’t lift a hand to cut boughs for a bed.”

Piper groaned. “But I washed the dishes,” he almost wailed. “Say, unhook me, Sile, and let me out, or I’ll have a fit. I tell you there’s things crawling all over me, and they’re just chewing me up alive.”

“You don’t suppose they’re ‘gougers,’ do you?” snickered Springer.

“Oh, laugh – confound you, laugh!” snarled Sleuth furiously. “You think it’s a joke, don’t you?”

“Sort of sus-seems that way to me,” admitted Phil.

“Oh, say!” wailed the miserable fellow in the sleeping bag. “If I don’t get out of this thing I’ll go crazy. I tell you I’m being eaten up alive by something.”

“Did you ever read a certain essay on the ‘Power of Imagination,’ Piper?” asked Stone. “If you ever have, you should realize that a person may make himself very miserable by conceiving all sorts of foolish things.”

“No, I’ve never read your old essay,” howled Sleuth, thrashing around in the bag. “But I tell you this is no imagination; this is the real thing. Light the lantern, somebody, for the love of Mike! I’m burning up. I’m all afire.”

“But there ain’t no fire in the bag – there can’t be,” asserted Crane relentlessly. “Just the same, somebody ought to git a bucket of water and souse him. P’r’aps that would keep him still.”

Springer could hold himself in check no longer, and he burst into shrieks of laughter, during which Piper, kicking and floundering, rolled over and over until he was outside the tent.

At this point Stone sprang up and hastened out to bend over the writhing victim, and the others, eager to see all there was to be seen, also rose and peered forth.

It was with no small difficulty that Ben prevailed on Sleuth to keep quiet long enough for the mouth of the bag to be unfastened. When this was done, the boy inside scrambled forth, fiercely kicking the thing from him, and by the light of the fire he discovered a number of black ants running wildly about upon his person.

“There they are!” he cried. “There’s what bit me! I told you something was doing it. Oh, murder! let me get out of my underclothes.”

Frantically he stripped off every rag and stood stark naked in the firelight, still brushing and slapping and scratching.

“Well, I swan to man!” said Crane, who had also come out of the tent. “If them ain’t ants, I’m a woodchuck. Haow do you s’pose they got into the bag?”

“Must have been there a long tut-time,” said Springer. “Seems to me I’ve heard that one of the troubles with sleeping bags was that they made fuf-fine nests for ants and all sorts of insects. You’ll never gug-get me to sleep in one.”

“You never will me – again,” vowed Piper. “Being eaten alive by ants is worse than being burned to the stake by redskins.”

He was savagely shaking his underclothes as he spoke, having turned the garments inside out.

Stone carried the sleeping bag some distance from the camp and flung it over the low limb of a tree, and the boys urged Piper to make sure there were no ants remaining upon his person or his underclothes before he re-entered the tent.

“There are two extra blankets,” said Grant. “You can have them, Sleuth, and make yourself comfortable as possible. We’ll light the lantern and look around to make sure there are no ants left in here.”

Apparently none had escaped from the bag, and after a time Sleuth was permitted to return and settle down with the blankets beside the bed of boughs occupied by his companions. The lantern was again extinguished, and finally, one by one, the boys dropped off to sleep, although the occasional chuckling of Springer was heard even after some of the others were breathing regularly and heavily.

Gradually Piper’s wounds ceased to smart, and, with no suspicion of the fact that he had been the victim of a rather painful joke, he sought to compose himself for slumber. Nevertheless, the experience through which he had passed made it no easy matter for him to get to sleep, and he lay there, turning now and then as the minutes slipped away into hours and the hours lengthened. At times the odor of the balsam boughs mingled with the faint smell of smoke which a fitful breath of rising wind brought into the tent from the smoldering coals of the fire. The tree-toad continued its mournful peeping, and away in the woods a bird awoke and chirped. Once something fell from a tree, making a swishing sound as it cut through the leaves and struck the ground with a soft thud.

Although he no longer suffered much from the attack of the ants, Piper found his every sense painfully alert. Through the opening at the front of the tent he could see the faint, dull glow of the coals, which grew dimmer until it finally faded completely. At irregular intervals the night seemed to breathe with puffs of air which set the leaves rustling as if they were whispering to one another. Off in the woods something stirred, and there was the barely perceptible cracking of a twig, as if it had been broken beneath a soft and stealthy foot.

Imagination was vigorously at work with Piper, and he fancied all sorts of creatures to be prowling about in the vicinity. He was vexed because close at hand his four comrades slept peacefully, while he remained thus exasperatingly wide awake.

Suddenly, far away from the bosom of the lake, came a long, low moaning cry that thrilled the wakeful lad from his toes to the roots of his hair, for there was something weirdly doleful and terrible in that sound. Instantly he thought of the ghost of the dead hermit, which was said to haunt Spirit Island, and his teeth began to chatter a little. Never had he imagined that a night in the woods could be so fraught with awesome and terrible sounds. He was tempted to awaken the others, but knew they would be angered and scoff at him if he did so. Of a sudden he thought of the gun, and, thrusting out his hand, touched the cold barrel of the weapon, which he had placed near by. Grasping it, he seemed to feel his courage returning.

“If anything comes around here it’ll get hurt,” he whispered to himself. “There won’t be any fooling about it, either. I’ll shoot.”

As if applauding this courageous attitude on his part, he heard a sudden clapping sound, which seemed to come rushing toward the tent and cease abruptly.

“Now what was that?” he speculated, sitting up and holding the gun across his knees. “It was something. I’d just like to know.”

Getting out of the blankets, he rose to a crouching position and stepped toward the front of the tent, the gun gripped fast in his fingers. The darkness outside was not nearly as deep as he had thought it would be, and he could plainly perceive the outlines of tree trunks near at hand. Holding his breath, he crouched at the tent opening, gazing one way and another.

A fresh strong breath of air swept over the point, moving the tree tops and picking up a swirl of ashes from the fireplace, so that the last remaining coals were uncovered and fanned into a glow. And then, within ten feet of the fire, close to the trunk of a tree, he saw what appeared to be a black human-like body, above which rose a ghastly white face with two huge burning eyes. Those eyes of fire, seeming to glare upon him, sent cold chills darting along his spine. Immovable as a statue, he crouched, the gun in his hand forgotten for the moment.

Once more from the vague and distant bosom of the lake came that dreadful, doleful cry; and, as if in answer, a hoarse voice, half human yet demon-like, seemed to burst from the creature with the glowing eyes.

Gasping, Piper pushed the catch of the hammerless with his thumb, flung the butt of the gun to his shoulder, levelled the weapon at that black figure with the ghastly face and fiery eyes, and pulled both triggers.