It was three o’clock before a bright idea entered into my head. I remembered that the only request that his mother had made of me was to see that he did not fall out of bed. I remembered that in all his circulations and maneuverings, this was the one thing that he never did, like a runaway mule he knew how to take care of himself even in his sleep. I began to anticipate him. I determined to humor some of his little whims. I put a pitcher of ice water by the bed. I got a link of the garden hose that felt clammy and looked like a snake. I doubled up my pillow so I could strike hard with it. Then I sat up and waited. I would make him realize all he dreamed. I did not have long to wait. This time he was falling from a tree or down an endless precipice, for he sat on the edge of the bed, yelling: "Catch me—catch me—I’m falling!" I let him fall. In fact I helped him along. I put a lot of force into that pillow and it caught him squarely under the ear. He went out of the bed, hitting the floor in a heap. It wakened him. "Where am I, mamma? O, mamma?" he called. "Come to your mamma," I said softly; "dear little boy, you have fallen out of the bed. Be careful how you roll." He was asleep before he touched the pillow. But in the next half hour he did not roll any more, and so I learned that a boy may be taught things even in his sleep if only the proper implements are used. But he was not yet cured of swimming in his sleep, for, just as I began to doze off, thinking that he was properly broken, he began to splash around in the bed, lamming me on the head and stomach, and shouting: "Look out! There’s a snake—pull for the shore!" This gave me my cue. Seizing a water pitcher I turned it over on him, at the same time wrapping the clumsy hose around his leg. "Snakes," I cried in his ear, "dive for the shore!" He gave a wide-awake yell that time, and rolled backward out of bed. One jump and he had cleared the room, going up stairs yelling: "Snakes, mamma, s-n-a-k-e-s!" I let him go. Nay, I locked the door behind him and went to sleep. The breakfast bell rang twice, but I did not hear it. Little Sister had to come to awaken me. They were all at breakfast when I came down, Thesis, the baby, and the boy. "How soundly you must have slept!" she said, smiling. "I forgot to tell you that the dear little fellow sometimes walks in his sleep; and do you know, this morning I found him fast asleep on the first stair landing?" Little Sister, however, was wiser. She looked at me in her quaint way and said, funnily: "Uncle Jack, you look real tired; like you’d dropped your candy last night, sure enough." *CHAPTER IV* *MY FIRST AUTOMOBILE* It was one of those beautiful December mornings when the frost had hung his laces everywhere, and a hunting fever fairly burned within me. It comes over me at times, and then—well—I run away and obey it.