He started even at the whisperings of the trees, as he threw down his blankets beside the little fire.

He could not sleep.

A face looked at him out of the dark, eyes gazed down at him, instead of stars, out of the heavens.
The night, and the stars, and the pines, and the desert wind reproached him for his faithlessness to themselves as comforters; but abjectly he admitted he could make no plea, save that he had heard once more of a Face that was the Fairest.
He heard the sound of slow footsteps after a time.

It was Tom Osby, who came and sat down by the fire, poking tobacco into his pipe with a crooked finger, and smoking on with no glance at the recumbent figure on the camper's bed.

Yet the outdoor sense of Tom Osby told him that his companion was not asleep.
"I was just thinking" said Tom Osby, at length, scarce turning his head as he accosted Dan Anderson, "that since watermelons don't grow very much up here in the mountings, we might take a load of passengers back home with us." "Passengers ?" A voice came from the blankets.
"Yes.