on't want there. And I see just the place that will do!"
With an excited cry she scrambled up to a hole in the tree a few feet
above the platform of sticks on which they sat. "Isn't this the very
place?" she shouted.

"The very place! The very place!" echoed John; and immediately the
three children began to empty out their pockets and decide what they
would leave in the Eagle's Nest storehouse. John's marbles and various
small articles belonging to the girls, such as pencils, both slate and
lead, a broken knife, and a doll's boot, were carefully stored away
packed in dock leaves.

"We can leave them there all right," said Madge. "Even if it rains
they can't get wet in this beautiful hole. It's a regular out-of-door
cupboard, and I shall keep lots of my things here now that we have
found it."

This plan was so incomparably more interesting than putting one's
possessions back tamely in the schoolroom or nursery, that the hole was
soon filled with oddly-shaped parcels tied up in leaves and twists of
grass.

"That's done!" exclaimed Madge at last with a sigh of satisfaction, as
she covered the opening to the hole with an enormous bunch of elder
flowers, which she fondly hoped looked so natural that no passing enemy
would suspect they concealed a treasure-house. "Now shall we go back
and sail our boats or--Oh, look!" her voice rose to a shriek. And well
it might.

Quite taken up with their present occupation, the children had entirely
forgotten the fact that they had left the ditch blocked, so that the
stream could not flow away as usual. The water had been rising for the
last hour or more, and all one end of the field was rapidly turning
into a swamp. Rivulets of water were finding their way in and out
among the rank tufts of long grass, and at this rate Eagle's Nest
itself would be surrounded by the evening.

It was a moment of most intense excitement. There were hurried
consultations among the children, and even a daring suggestion that the
flood should be allowed to rise until they were left upon an
impregnable island. But a certain longing for tea, combined with a
wholesome dread of Barton, prevented this alarmingly bold scheme from
being carried out.

"If we had only known what was going to happen and brought provisions
with us, what fun it would have been to stay here all night!" cried
Madge, who dearly loved an adventure. "I think if I had brought the
piece of bread that they put by the side of