dry, while Morgan was removing mud from the
various objects within the house.

The main difficulty we had to encounter was how to find a dry
resting-place for the night. Sheets and blankets promised to be quite
fit for use by sundown, but the question was where to lay them. Every
one naturally objected to the trees, and the ridge of the roof was no
more inviting than on the first night. But a little ingenuity soon put
all right. Timber was so plentiful with us that poles and planks lay
piled up at the back of the house, and after a number of these had been
hunted up, from where they had floated among the trees, and laid in the
full sunshine, a platform was built up high above the muddy earth, and
then another upon which pine boughs were laid, and good, dry
resting-places contrived for our weary bones.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

It is needless to relate the shifts and plans adopted to restore the
place to its former state, but we were favoured by the weather, a long
spell of hot sunshine working wonders, and the rapid drying and the work
of many hands soon produced a change. In two days we could go about on
dry ground. In four, mud was scaling over everything in cakes, and
being cracked into dust it regularly powdered off the trees, and a
couple of tremendous tropical showers sufficed to clear off the
remainder from twig and leaf, so that what with the rapid vegetation,
and the clearing effects of rain and dew, a month had hardly passed
before the place began to look very much as it did before the
misfortune, Morgan informing me smilingly that the soft mud was as good
for the garden as a great dressing of manure.

Our furniture in the house was of the simplest, and though Sarah
declared that the place would never be the same again, I very soon began
to forget all about our trouble, and was only reminded of it by the
wisps of dry grass and muddy, woody twigs that clung here and there
among some of the trees.

On one occasion I found Pomp busy with a bucket of water and a brush
down at the bottom of the garden, where he was scrubbing away at
something black.

"Hallo!" I exclaimed. "What's that?"

"'Gator head, Mass' George. Pomp find um 'tuck in dah 'tween um two
trees."

He illustrated his meaning by showing me how the head had been washed
from its place, and swept between a couple of tree-stumps, where it had
remained covered with mud and rubbish, till it had caught his eye, such
a trophy being too valuabl