But in an hour or two he awoke cold, and found that his drunken companion had got all the feather bed; so mighty is instinct.

They lay between two beds; the lower one hard and made of straw, the upper soft and filled with feathers light as down.

Gerard pulled at it, but the experienced drunkard held it fast mechanically.

Gerard tried to twitch it away by surprise, but instinct was too many for him.

On this he got out of bed, and kneeling down on his bedfellow's unguarded side, easily whipped the prize away and rolled with it under the bed, and there lay on one edge of it, and curled the rest round his shoulders.