the
protection of the Stars and Stripes. Will you deny me?" Her eyes were
sparkling eagerly. "Could the British have landed had it not been for
the American?"

"You really don't care?"

"This is our flag, Hugh," she said seriously. "It will make me unhappy
if you continue to take my jest as an earnest. We made it and I shall be
proud to have it wave over me."

A few hours later the Stars and Stripes floated high over a new island
of the sea, far from the land of its birth.

"How good and grand it looks," she cried as they saw it straighten to
the breeze. "After all, it may be waving over its own, Hugh. The United
States bought several thousands of islands in this section of the
world, I've heard," she added, with a touch of irony.

"It's the flag I love," he cried. "May God let me kiss once more the
soil she calls home. Dear America!"

From that day he never looked at the dancing, wriggling stripes without
a surge of emotion. Its every flaunt seemed to beckon brave worshippers
from far across the sea to the forlorn island on which it was
patiently waving.

An uneventful week passed. A Nedrite who had escaped from the Island of
Oolooz brought word to King Pootoo that the enemy was completing
preparation for a stupendous assault, but a close watch on the sea
failed to reveal signs of the approach. Ridgeway and his eager followers
were fully prepared for the assault. The prospect was now assuming the
appearance of a European war cloud--all talk and no fight. But as King
Pootoo insisted in vague earnestness that the informer was trustworthy,
precautionary measures were not relaxed at any time. Hugh was now the
possessor of a heavy sword made of the metallic-like wood. It had two
edges and resembled an old-fashioned broadsword.

"I feel like a Saumeri," he announced.

When he found that fairly sharp blades could be wrought from this
timber, he had knives and hatchets made for private use, his own trusty
pocket knife being glorified by promotion. He whetted the blade to the
keenest possible edge and used it as a razor. Tennys compelled him to
seek a secluded spot for his, weekly shave, decreeing that the morals of
the natives should not be ruined in their infancy by an opportunity to
acquire first-class, fully developed American profanity.

Many of their evenings, delightfully cool in contrast with the intense
heat of the day, were spent on the river. The largest canoe of the
village was fitted out with a broad,