tridges
were too precious to waste.

Another thing which these Crusoes had to be very careful to do was never
to let the fire go out. It was easily kept in by placing a kind of mossy
peat among the hot ashes and covering it quite over.

* * * * *

So they collected an immense quantity of nuts, and these were placed in
holes found in the rocks, and covered right up with the same sort of
cement as the squirrels used. The roots that served them instead of bread
every day, and which were cooked by placing them for a short time in the
hot ashes, they also collected and stored. So when the harvest was all
over, Tom told Frank and his sisters that they needn't be afraid to spend
their Christmas in this beautiful island.

"Oh, but, Tom," said Pansy, "we'll all be home long, long before
Christmas, won't we?"

Poor child! She was beginning to long for her mother's cosy cottage on
the cliff, and for the fires that in the long winter evenings always
burned so brightly in the parlour grate.

"Now, about light for the long Arctic winter night, which will soon be
here?"

This was the question that Tom put to Frank just after sunset one
beautiful evening as the snow on the tops of the highest mountains was
changed to a rose tint in the sun's parting rays.

"It is a very serious question, you know," he added.

"Very serious," said Pansy, who heard him, shaking her wise, wee head.

Sitting by the camp fire there, with its lights and shadows chasing each
other over her face and through her sunny hair, Pansy looked a very
beautiful child indeed.

For some time they had all been sitting round the fire, watching the
curling smoke and the dancing flames, everyone intent on his or her own
thoughts. Aralia had been wondering what they were all doing at home, and
if her father and mother were anxious about her and Pansy. It was such a
long, long time--hundreds of years it seemed--since they had sailed away;
so many strange things had happened since that day. Pansy was a little
maiden who took the world very easily, and enjoyed each day and hour as
it passed. Her thoughts were hardly worth a penny. Frank was not unlike
Pansy, and took things as they came, and if they were not nice, just let
them slide. The mastiff was asleep, so was Veevee, and both seemed to be
dreaming, and talking in their dreams. But Flossy's eyes were very wide
open now. She was really wondering if she could catch another fish
to-