said, "I know a large
hollow tree with apertures. If I were to close them all but one, and keep
that for the door? No: trees have betrayed me; I'll never trust another
tree with you. Stay; I know, I know--a cavern." He uttered the verb
rather loudly, but the substantive with a sudden feebleness of intonation
that was amusing. His timidity was superfluous; if he had said he knew "a
bank whereon the wild thyme grows," the suggestion would have been well
received that morning.

"A cavern!" cried Helen. "It has always been the dream of my life to live
in a cavern."

Hazel brightened up. But the next moment he clouded again. "But I forgot.
It will not do; there is a spring running right through it; it comes down
nearly perpendicular through a channel it has bored, or enlarged; and
splashes on the floor."

"How convenient!" said Helen; "now I shall have a bath in my room,
instead of having to go miles for it. By the by, now you have invented
the shower-bath, please discover soap. Not that one really wants any in
this island; for there is no dust, and the very air seems purifying. But
who can shake off the prejudices of early education?"

Hazel said, "Now I'll laugh as much as you like, when once this care is
off my mind."

He ran off to the cavern, and found it spacious and safe; but the spring
was falling in great force, and the roof of the cave glistening with
moisture. It looked a hopeless case. But if necessity is the mother of
Invention, surely Love is the father. He mounted to the rock above, and
found the spot where the spring suddenly descended into the earth with
the loudest gurgle he had ever heard; a gurgle of defiance. Nothing was
to be done there. But he traced it upward a little way, and found a place
where it ran beside a deep decline. "Aha, my friend!" said he. He got his
spade, and with some hours' hard work dug it a fresh channel and carried
it away entirely from its course. He returned to the cavern. Water was
dripping very fast; but, on looking up, he could see the light of day
twinkling at the top of the spiral water course he had robbed of its
supply. Then he conceived a truly original idea. Why not turn his empty
watercourse into a chimney, and so give to one element what he had taken
from another? He had no time to execute this just then, for the tide was
coming in, and he could not afford to lose any one of those dead animals.
So he left the funnel to drip, that being a process he had no means o