a, kneeling on each side of him,
looked on with anxious eyes.

"There's a spark!" at last shouted Amanda.

The spark fell on the dry punk, in an instant the punk caught and there
were several sparks, then Amos held a wisp of dry grass in front of it and
blew vigorously, and the smouldering punk flamed up, the grass caught,
Amos thrust it under the dry brush, and in less than a minute the whole
mass was burning briskly. The children all jumped about it in delight.

"My, I wish we could have had a fire like that last night, when I was so
cold," said Amanda.

"We'll keep it burning now," said Amos. "I've always wanted to start a
fire this way. I think it's better than flint and tinder," for in those
days the wooden splint matches were not known in the settlement, and fires
were started by rubbing flint and steel together until a spark caught.

"We are going home this afternoon," said Amanda, so firmly that Amos
looked at her in surprise.

"What for?" he asked. "I think it's fine here. We've got a house and a
fire, and we'll have fish enough to last----"

"We are going home," interrupted Amanda; "it's horrid here, and everybody
will be afraid we are drowned."

A little smile crept over Amos's freckled face. "'twill indeed be a tale
to tell Jimmie Starkweather," he said, looking admiringly at the
brush-covered shelter, and then at the brisk fire. "'Tis a shipwreck such
as no boy in the settlement has had."

Amos asked no more questions, but sent the girls after more dry brush,
while he dug another hole in the sand. Then with a long stick he pushed
the hot wood and coals from the first hole into the second, and carefully
laid the big plaice fish on the hot sand, pushed a thick covering of hot
sand over it, and started a new fire on top of it.

"'twill be baked to a turn," he said to his sister and Anne; "'Tis the way
the Indians cook fish and mussels and clams. I have seen them."

"We'll go home as soon as we can eat it," said Amanda; "'twill be low tide
by that time, and if you have no better plan for us, Amos, Anne and I will
wade to Long Point."

"Wade!" repeated Amos scornfully; "you'd be drowned."

"Then tell us your plan," urged Amanda, while Anne looked at him
pleadingly. She had thought much about her father as she lay awake under
the roof of pine boughs, and wondered if some word from him might not have
reached the settlement. She thought, too, about the scarlet stockings, and
wished herself back in th