ow what's coming, but they
do."

"Instinct," said Paul.

"We know that a hound kin follow by smell the track of a man who has
passed hours before," said Shif'less Sol, "when no man in the world kin
smell anything at all o' that track. So it ain't any more strange that
birds an' beasts kin feel in their bones what's comin' when we can't."

"Ef you'll imitate them squirrels an' rabbits an' birds an' things," said
Jim Hart, "an' lay up lots uv things good to eat fur the winter, it'll
give me pleasure to cook it ez it's needed."

"I've noticed something besides the forethought of the animals," added
Henry. "The moss on the north side of the trees seems to me to be thicker
than usual. I suppose that nature, too, is getting ready for a long, hard
winter."

"When nature and the animals concur," said Paul, "it is not left to man to
doubt; so we'd better be providing the things Jim promises to cook so
well."

They had learned the border habit of acting promptly, and Henry Ross and
Sol were to depart the very next morning for the mainland on a hunt for
deer, while Long Jim was to keep house. Paul otherwise would have been
anxious to go with the hunters, but he had an idea of his own, and when
Henry suggested that he accompany them, he replied that he expected to
make a contribution of a different kind.

All these plans were made in the evening, and then every member of the
five, wrapping himself in his buffalo robe, fell asleep. The fire in Jim
Hart's furnace had been permitted to die down to a bed of coals, and the
glow from them barely disclosed the five figures lying, dark and silent,
on the floor. They slept, clean in conscience and without fear.

Henry, Shif'less Sol, and Ross were off at dawn, and Paul, using a rude
wooden needle that he had shaped with his own pocketknife, and the tendon
of a deer as thread, made a large bag of buckskin. Then he threw it
triumphantly over his shoulder.

"Now what under the sun, Paul, are you goin' to do with that?" asked Jim
Hart.

"I'm going to add variety to our winter store. Just you wait, Jim Hart,
and see."

Bearing the bag, he left the house and took his way to the north end of
the island. He had not been above learning more than one thing from the
squirrels, and he had recalled a grove of great hickory trees growing
almost to the water's edge. Now the ground was thickly covered with the
nuts which had fallen when the severe frosts and the snow and ice came.
There were