et my
work done the nicht. We've eaten long ago."

It was difficult work, but Freckles smiled bravely. He made himself
neat, swallowed a few bites, then came so eagerly that Mrs. Duncan
yielded, although she said she very well knew all the time that his
supper would be spoiled.

Lifting the lid, they removed the packing and found in that box books
on birds, trees, flowers, moths, and butterflies. There was also one
containing Freckles' bullfrog, true to life. Besides these were a
butterfly-net, a naturalist's tin specimen-box, a bottle of cyanide,
a box of cotton, a paper of long, steel specimen-pins, and a letter
telling what all these things were and how to use them.

At the discovery of each new treasure, Freckles shouted: "Will you be
looking at this, now?"

Mrs. Duncan cried: "Weel, I be drawed on!"

The eldest boy turned a somersault for every extra, while the baby,
trying to follow his example, bunched over in a sidewise sprawl and cut
his foot on the axe with which his mother had prized up the box-lid.
That sobered them, they carried the books indoors. Mrs. Duncan had a top
shelf in her closet cleared for them, far above the reach of meddling
little fingers.

When Freckles started for the trail next morning, the shining new
specimen-box flashed on his back. The black "chicken," a mere speck in
the blue, caught the gleam of it. The folded net hung beside the boy's
hatchet, and the bird book was in the box. He walked the line and tested
each section scrupulously, watching every foot of the trail, for he was
determined not to slight his work; but if ever a boy "made haste slowly"
in a hurry, it was Freckles that morning. When at last he reached the
space he had cleared and planted around his case, his heart swelled with
the pride of possessing even so much that he could call his own, while
his quick eyes feasted on the beauty of it.

He had made a large room with the door of the case set even with one
side of it. On three sides, fine big bushes of wild rose climbed to the
lower branches of the trees. Part of his walls were mallow, part alder,
thorn, willow, and dogwood. Below there filled in a solid mass of pale
pink sheep-laurel, and yellow St. John's wort, while the amber threads
of the dodder interlaced everywhere. At one side the swamp came close,
here cattails grew in profusion. In front of them he had planted a row
of water-hyacinths without disturbing in the least the state of their
azure bloom, and