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The boys unslung their blanket rolls and threw themselves down on the ground with exclamations of relief. The disturbance of the night before, with the nervous strain and consequent loss of sleep, was a greater tax on their strength than they had realized at the time. All day they had been keyed up by the expectation of trouble, which they had been braced to meet and defeat. When the necessity for alertness, as they supposed, was removed, and the tension was relaxed, they settled down, feeling too languid to exert themselves further.

Raymond declared that he would rather loaf than eat, and he didn’t care if he never ate again if he only got well rested. That was the way they felt when they stopped, but a very little rest will suffice to make healthy boys conscious of gnawing hunger, especially when they have eaten very little through the day, as was the case with Sidney and Raymond.

Soon both of them began to feel a strong desire to explore the lunch-bags, but they remembered how dry that lunch was, and how difficult it would be to eat it without something to wash it down. Raymond proposed that they move down to the stream and eat their supper there where the water was handy, but Sidney told his brother to stay where he was and he would take a large cup with which they had provided themselves and bring water up.