It was sometime later that Marjorie awoke. She felt strangely wide-awake as she lay there staring about her in the gloom of her tent; it seemed as if she had not been asleep at all. The moon had risen; she could see that by the bar of pale light slanting across the ground from where the flaps of the tent were loosely joined. She could hear the stamping of the horses, hobbled over beyond the tents of the men. She wanted to get up, but she knew that she would surely waken her tent-mates if she moved about; so she resolutely forced herself to lie there, while her thoughts wandered from one thing to another--scouting, John Hadley, the strange disappearance of Daisy’s sister--until she finally dozed off. Suddenly she came wide-awake again, and found herself sitting upright on her bedsack. Then she knew that something had wakened her. Could it be overwrought nerves, she wondered? She was as bad as Doris, who now slumbered peacefully a few feet away from her. Surely, it could not be nerves, since she felt no fear. The night air had become chilly, almost cold; and she pulled her blankets about her shoulders and prepared to listen and to wait for something to happen. But as she sat straining her ears for the slightest sound, she could hear nothing but the regular breathing of her companions. The silence was becoming almost unbearable, and she was about to give up and lie down again, when she heard, just outside her tent, a strange sniffing noise such as her dog at home often made when he had something up his nose. Bears! It was her first thought. For an instant she felt too terrified to move, even to breathe. But no; it could not be a bear; the thought flashed across her brain that the horses would smell it and be alarmed. What was it then? She waited for a repetition of the sound. When it came again it was accompanied by a scuffling noise that seemed to approach to the very canvas wall which separated her from the outside world. Now she was sure it was a bear--it was just the sort of noise a bear would make. Perhaps those horses had run away. The girl was now terrified indeed, and pressed both hands tightly against her mouth to prevent herself from crying out, expecting every moment to have the thing outside break through the wall of her tent and tramp over her. But whatever it was, it had paused, and all was quiet again; except once or twice she heard a slight swishing sound against the canvas, as if a branch containing dead leaves had been brushed against it. Marjorie was determined not to utter a sound, though she was so frightened she could feel first hot and then cold chills passing over her body. There came a muffled tramp of steps receding to a short distance away.