ngs in a heap," he said. "Then they
are out of the way and will not cut our feet."

After working for days and days, the men got the tree for the dug-out
hacked down. Then they hacked off a log and dragged it down to the
shore. Here they began to make the dug-out.

They built a fire all along the top of the log. It burned down slowly.
The men watched the fire and kept putting on more sticks. If it burned
too near the edge, they put on water or clay or wet moss to stop it.

"You see, they burn out only the middle of the log and leave good
strong thick sides to the boat," said Periwinkle.

After the fire had burned down into the log a way, the men raked off
the hot coals. The wood beneath was burned to charcoal. The men
scraped it off with stone scrapers. Then they put on more fire and
again burned the log.

"The fire will burn down faster, now that the charcoal is scraped off,"
said Periwinkle.

The men worked for a long time, burning and scraping away, burning and
scraping, until they had dug a little hollow all along the middle of
the log.

Then one man said, "We have worked enough."

And the men dropped their scrapers and went off.

The next day Thorn walked along the beach and picked up pretty shells.

"These are for the folks at home," he said to Periwinkle. "They will
put them on the strings around their necks."

"Here is my bow," he went on, handing it to Periwinkle. "You may keep
it. I can make another. I am going back to my grandfather's now."

Periwinkle and Clam and some of the men went part way with Thorn. They
walked for a long time through fir forests and then came to the forests
of oak and beech and ash and chestnut. Here Thorn left his friends,
and waved his arm to them as he ran on to his grandfather's. The shell
people went back to their home by the sea.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FEAST OF MAMMOTH'S MEAT

One morning after Thorn had come back to his grandfather's cave, he
woke up with tears on his face.

"Last night when I was asleep," he said to himself, "my shadow self
went away to the home cave. And there it saw my mother and Pineknot
and the baby sitting about the fire, just as they used to sit. And
they were talking about me, saying that they wanted to see me. And I
want to go home to see them."

The homesick boy went into the woods for comfort; he loved to watch the
wild things going about. Not far off, he saw a herd of mammoths
feeding. He never tired of loo