there was a big blue water with no shore on the
other side. It was beautiful, and Thorn shouted as he saw the
foam-capped waves roll in and break on the white sand.

Pointing to a place along the shore, the children said, "There is our
home."

[Illustration: The sea]

CHAPTER XII

AT THE HOME OF THE SHELL MOUND PEOPLE

Dogs barked and ran up and down the shore among the people. The
children ran along to their home. They were not afraid of the dogs,
but petted them. And the dogs jumped about the children and played
with them and were glad to see them.

The people of the shell mounds did not look just like the cave people.
They were shorter and had rounder heads. But their eyebrows hung over
their eyes, as the cave people's did. And they dressed in skins.

Their houses were made of branches of trees and stones and dirt. They
were set high up on shore where the waves could not reach them.

Thorn walked about with the children and saw a great pile of shells.
It lay far along the shore, and was higher than a man, and very wide.

[Illustration: Clam and oyster shells]

"What are you going to do with all these shells?" he asked Periwinkle.

"Do with them?" laughed Periwinkle. "Why, nothing. We threw them
away. They show what good things we have had to eat, do they not,
Foam?"

Foam was a girl with white teeth.

"Yes," said Foam, laughing. "They are shells of oysters and clams and
periwinkles that we have eaten."

"Um-m! what lots of them you have eaten!" said Thorn, looking over the
big pile.

"Yes," said Periwinkle, with a laugh, "we live on them."

"But you see," Foam went on, "our people have lived here for a long
time--longer than my grandfather can remember. And the shell mounds
have been growing all that time. There are many other shell heaps all
along this shore, where more of our people live."

Thorn looked down to the water's edge and saw men pulling hollow logs
down to the shore.

[Illustration: Dug-out boat]

"They are going fishing in the dug-outs," said Periwinkle. "Come on,
we will go with them."

The boys ran down to the shore and jumped into a boat that the men had
pushed out into the water. Then the men also jumped in, and paddled
out with sticks.

"Why do you call these dug-outs?" asked Thorn, rubbing his hand along
the side of the boat.

"Because they are dug-outs," laughed Periwinkle. "You will see them
made some day."

"Well, why do they not turn over?