we
never know our mercies till we lose them?"

"Perhaps there is," said Otto, "and if there isn't, I don't care. I
don't like proverbs, they always tell you in an owlishly wise sort o'
way what you know only too well, at a time when you'd rather not know it
if possible. Now, if we only had an axe--ever so small--I would be able
to fell trees and cut 'em up into big logs, instead of spending hours
every day searching for dead branches and breaking them across my knee.
It's not a pleasant branch of our business, I can tell you."

"But you have the variety of hunting," said his sister, "and that, you
know, is an agreeable as well as useful branch."

"Humph! It's not so agreeable as I used to think it would be, when one
has to run after creatures that run faster than one's-self, and one is
obliged to use wooden spears, and slings, instead of guns. By the way,
what a surprising, I may say awful, effect a well-slung stone has on the
side of a little pig! I came upon a herd yesterday in the cane-brake,
and, before they could get away, I slung a big stone at them, which
caught the smallest of the squeakers fair in the side. The sudden
squeal that followed the slap was so intense, that I thought the life
had gone out of the creature in one agonising gush; but it hadn't, so I
slung another stone, which took it in the head and dropt it."

"Poor thing! I wonder how you can be so cruel."

"Cruel!" exclaimed Otto, "I don't do it for pleasure, do I? Pigs and
other things have got to be killed if we are to live."

"Well, I suppose so," returned Pauline, with a sigh; "at all events it
would never do to roast and eat them alive. But, about the axe. Is
there no iron-work in the wreck that might be fashioned into one?"

"Oh yes, sister dear," returned Otto, with a short laugh, "there's
plenty of iron-work. Some crowbars and ringbolts, and an anchor or two;
but do you suppose that I can slice off a bit of an anchor in the shape
of an axe as you slice a loaf?"

"Well no, not exactly, but I thought there might be some small flat
pieces that could be made to do."

"What is your difficulty," asked Dominick, returning from a hunting
expedition at that moment, and flinging down three brace of fowls on the
floor of the golden cave.

When the difficulty was stated, he remarked that he had often pondered
the matter while lying awake at night, and when wandering in the woods;
and he had come to the conclusion that they must ret