Once in bed, and there had been for him an end of all wakefulness.
On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come, late as was the hour when the family circle broke up.
It could not have been the excitement of Ham and Miranda's return.

He would have gotten over that by this time.

No more could it have been the fire, though the smell of smouldering hay came in pretty strongly at times through the wide-open windows.

If any one patch of that great roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab would surely have found the spot; for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his restlessness.

Some fields on a farm will "grow" wheat better than others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep.