After a long while Wayne opened his eyes again. He had been sleeping hours, he thought. He felt horribly uncomfortable and wondered what time it was. Then his gaze fell on June hunched up near the stove with Sam on his knees, and sighed. If June was still awake it couldn’t be late, after all. Presently he fell again into a restless, troubled sleep. In the corner June nodded, roused himself, looked at the recumbent form on the seat, reached across and tucked a corner of a gray blanket in and settled back in his corner. The firelight, finding its way through cracks and crevices in the stove, made streaks and splotches of light on the wall and ceiling, and one ray fell fairly on June’s face. Perhaps it was that ray of light that did the business, for presently his eyelids slowly closed---- Somewhere, afar off, a clock struck three. CHAPTER VIII WAYNE LOSES A JOB AND FINDS ONE Wayne had the grippe, although as neither he nor June had ever had any experience of that complaint neither of them named it that. For four days he was a pretty sick boy, with fever and aches and inflamed eyes, and June was far more worried than he allowed the other to see. June had a mortal fear of “pneumony,” and there was scarcely an hour when he was at home when Wayne wasn’t required to assure him that his chest wasn’t sore and that it didn’t hurt him to breathe. Two of the four nights June got almost no sleep, only dozing for a few minutes at a time as he sat huddled in the corner by the stove. The first day of the illness he stayed at home, after walking to the nearest telephone and explaining his absence from duty to the Union Hotel. After that he took himself off each morning only because Wayne insisted, and was far from happy until he had got back again. He invested in three different varieties of patent medicine and administered them alternately in heroic doses, and one of Wayne’s chief interests was the attempt to decide which of the three was the nastiest. It was a difficult question to decide, for the last one taken always seemed the worst. June also attempted the concoction of some “yarb tea” such as he had so often seen his mother make, but while it smelled the place up in a most satisfactory manner, June was never quite certain that it contained all it should have, and distrusted it accordingly. There was one day, the second of the attack, when Wayne was in such agony with an aching head and body that June was all for finding a doctor and haling him posthaste to “Carhurst.” Wayne, however, refused to listen to the plan, declaring that he would be all right tomorrow. “Besides,” he added weakly, “you couldn’t get a doctor to come away out here, anyhow.” “Say I couldn’? Reckon if I tell a doctor man I got to have him and show him the money right in my fist, he goin’ to come where I say!” declared June sturdily. “Jus’ you let me fetch one, please, sir, Mas’ Wayne.”