ed.

"Oh, they--look around for things. Sometimes they have just butternuts,
I guess," answered Kitty, while she slipped on her shoes.

"Well, then, let's have but'nuts--and lots of them," said hungry Ted.

So Kitty, who was a nice tidy girl about everything, looked around until
she found a clean flat rock for a table; and while they were gathering
their breakfast from the nearest butternut-trees, they came across a
tiny little spring that bubbled out from under a ledge, and slipped away
in a small stream down the mountain-side.

"Oh, isn't it cute?" said Kitty. "We'll build our cabin right here, and
we'll play this is our water-power, and build a mill too. I'll be Mr.
Brown, and you may be the Co.--Brown & Co., you know."

After a good drink of the clear, cold water from a cup made of a
basswood leaf, they washed faces and hands, and went to the flat rock
for breakfast. The butternuts were not quite ripe; they stained fingers,
and they were hard to crack--with just a stone for a hammer--but there
were "lots of them," as Ted had requested.

All the long bright forenoon they worked about their water-power,
putting up an extensive mill of stones and sticks, and having no trouble
at all, except when Ted got tired of being called "Co.," and insisted on
being Mr. Brown a part of the time at least, in spite of Kitty's
argument that the youngest ought always to be Co.

So, about one o'clock, when their father and uncle were galloping here
and there in search of them, they were sitting at their rock table
cracking more nuts, and listening proudly to the mimic roar of the water
going over the dam they had just completed.

Sometimes they heard faint echoes and queer hootings off in the
distance. "We'll play it's Indians, and we're hiding from them," said
Kitty, never dreaming that all the men in the neighborhood of her home
were hunting and hallooing through the forest for two very lost
children. Once, when the shouts came quite near, the echoes mixed up
things, so that Kitty was almost frightened, and drew her brother into
the shelter of some thick bushes. "It sounds like a crazy man," she
said.

After a while the noise slowly died away down the mountain-side, and the
woods seemed more comfortable to Kitty. But sunset drew near, and still
there came no cheerful father-voice. The supper of butternuts was not a
very jolly one. Ted tried to be brave, but finally he dropped his face
into his elbow and wailed forth, "I want