“Will!  You are the most ridiculous person I ever did see!” said Miss Mattie, and she laughed till she cried in sheer light-heartedness.  “But there’s a chair you can trust—­come on now.”

“Well, if you’ll take your solemn oath that this one has no moustache to deceive me,” said Red doubtfully.  “It looks husky—­well, I’ll try it—­Hooray!  She didn’t give an inch.  This kind of reminds me of the time Jimmy Hendricks came back from town and walked off the edge of the bluff in the dark.  It just happened that Old Scotty Ferguson’s cabin was underneath him.  Jim took most of the roof off with him as he went in.  He sat awhile to figure out what was trumps, having come a hundred and fifty feet too fast to do much thinking.  Then, ‘Hello!’ he yells.  Old Scotty was a sleeper from ’way back, but this woke him up.

“‘Hello!’ says he.  ‘Was’er matter?’

“Jim saw he wasn’t more than half awake yet, so he says, ’Why, I was up on the bluff there, Scotty, and seeing it was such a short distance I thought I’d drop in!’

“‘Aw ri’,’ grunted Scotty.  ‘Make y’self t’ home,’ and with that he rolls over.

“Jim couldn’t wait for morning, and though his leg was pretty badly sprained, he made the trip all the way round the trail and woke us up to tell us how he’d gone through Ferguson’s roof and the old man asked him to make himself at home.  Next morning there was Scotty out in front of his cabin, his thumbs in his vest holes, looking up.

“‘What’s the matter, Scotty?’ says I.

“’Well, I wisht you’d tell me what in the name of God went through that roof!’ says he.

“I swallered a laugh cross-ways and put on a serious face.  ‘Must have been a rock,’ says I.

“‘Rock nothin’!’ says he.  ’If it had been a rock ’twould have stayed in the cabin, wouldn’t it!  Well, there ain’t the first blasted thing of any shape nor description in there but the hole—­you can go in and look for yourself.’

“It cost Scotty one case of rye to make us forget those circumstances.”

“I should have thought the man would be killed, striking on the roof that way,” said Miss Mattie.

“Oh, no!  Roof was made of quaking-asp saplings, just about strong enough to break his fall.  Scotty was the sleeper, though!  It wasn’t hardly natural the way that man could pound his ear through thick and thin.  He had quite a surprising time of it once.  He’d been prospecting ’round the Ruby refractory ore district and he came out at Hank Cutter’s saw-mill, just at sun-down.  Hank’s place was full of gold rushers, so Old Scotty thought he’d sleep out-doors in peace and quiet.  He discovered some big boxes, that Hank was making for ore bins for the new mill, and as the ground was kind of damp from a thunder-shower they had that day, he spreads his blanket inside the box and goes to sleep; ore bins have to be smooth and dust tight, so it wasn’t a bad shanty.