o the
water and gather them. But "enough" is as good as "a feast." He ran to
the pots with his miscellaneous bag, and was not received according to
his deserts. Miss Rolleston told him, a little severely, the water had
been boiling a long time. Then he produced his provender, by way of
excuse.

"Tortoises again!" said she, and shuddered visibly.

But the quinces and cocoanuts were graciously received. Welch, however,
cried out for cabbage.

"What am I to do?" said Hazel. "For every such cabbage a king must die."

"Goodness me!"

"A monarch of the grove."

"Oh, a King Log. Why, then down with them all, of course; sooner than
dear Mr. Welch shall go without his cabbage."

He cast a look of admiration on her, which she avoided, and very soon his
ax was heard ringing in the wood hard by. Then came a loud crash. Then
another. Hazel came running with the cabbage and a cocoa-pod. "There,"
said he, "and there are a hundred more about. While you cook that for
Welch I will store them." Accordingly he returned to the wood with his
net, and soon came back with five pods in it, each as big as a large
pumpkin.

He chucked these one at a time across the river, and then went for more.
It took him all the afternoon to get all the pods across the river. He
was obliged to sit down and rest.

But a suggestion of Helen's soon set him to work again.

"You were kind enough to say you would store these for me. Could you not
store them so as to wall out those terrible beasts with them?"

"What terrible beasts?"

"That roar so all night, and don't eat us, only because they have not
found out we are here yet. But they will."

"I deny their existence," said Hazel. "But I'll wall them out all the
same," said he.

"Pray do," said Helen. "Wall them out first, and disprove them afterward;
I shall be better able to believe they don't exist when they are well
walled out--much."

Hazel went to work, and with her assistance laid cocoa-pods two wide and
three deep, outside the northern and western sides of her leafy bower,
and he promised to complete the walls by the same means in two days more.

They all then supped together, and, to oblige him, she ate a little of
the terrapin, and, when they parted for the night, she thanked him, and
said, with a deep blush, "You have been a good friend to me--of late."

He colored high, and his eyes sparkled with delight; and she noticed, and
almost wished she had kept her gratitude to herself.