all times and in all places.

"Well, laddie, it is a good thing for you that you were born with your
share of common sense, for you seem to have gone the right way to work
to keep from being frozen," said Mr. Bent, as he rolled the sacking into
a bundle and tossed it into a corner; then, slipping his arm round
Rumple, lifted the boy to a standing posture.

But he would have promptly fallen again if they had not supported him on
either side, for his feet were thoroughly chilled, and he was so tired
that he seemed to have no strength at all.

"I was a long time finding the electric light, but when I did come upon
it, and pressed the button, I felt ever so much better," said Rumple, as
his rescuers helped him to climb the stairs. "And I knew that I must not
stand still; but there was so little room to walk about that I had to
lift cases from the shelves and put them back again. I found that great
piece of sacking, and when I had wrapped it round my shoulders I felt a
little warmer; but it was more than a little nippy, I can tell you, and
it made me think of the January mornings at Beechleigh, when the old
pump used to freeze up and we undertook to thaw it out for Mrs. Puffin
before breakfast," said Rumple wearily.

At this moment the others, headed by Sylvia, came rushing down upon
them, and Rumple was at once overwhelmed with enquiries and
congratulations. But Nealie was so concerned at his desperate weariness
that she insisted on his going to bed at once.

"You must have some hot soup, too, and then you will get warm quickly
and go to sleep," she said in the careful, elder-sisterly manner which
always came uppermost when any of them were in any sort of difficulty.

"I don't want any soup or mucks of that kind, but I should be glad if I
could have a piece of dry bread or some hard biscuits, for I do not mind
admitting that I ate half a pound of butter to keep out the cold, and I
feel rather greasy inside," said Rumple, puckering his face into a
grimace as Rupert hustled him off to their cabin to put him to bed.

"What made you do that?" demanded Rupert sternly, for this partook of
the nature of thieving, and the juniors had to be reproved for any lapse
from strict morality.

"The Esquimaux eat blubber to keep out the cold, and as I had no
blubber, and did not like to break open one of the lard pails, I just
took the butter. Do you expect that Mr. Bent will mind?" asked Rumple
anxiously. "I have got enough money to