them to get up and go
for fresh leaves and roots for the rabbits, as they did every day. They
rose at once, and the sun was just peering above the eastern horizon as
they came out of the stable door. They went to the rabbit-hutch, and
the rabbits, seeing them, stood up on their hind legs and wiggled their
noses hungrily.

"Rabbits do have awful appetites," said Pierre, a little ruefully, as
he looked down at the empty food-box. "Just think what a pile of things
we brought them yesterday."

"There's nothing to do but get them more, I suppose," answered
Pierrette.

"I know where there's just bushels and bushels of water-cress," said
Pierre, "but it's quite a long distance off. You know the brook that
flows through the meadow between here and camp? It's just stuffed with
it, and rabbits like it better than almost anything."

"Let's go and get some now," said Pierrette. "We can take the
clothes-basket and bring back enough to last all day."

Pierre went for the basket, and the two children started down the road
which ran beside the meadow toward the camp. It was so early that not
another soul in the village was up. Even the rooster had gone to sleep
again after his misguided crowing. One pale little star still winked in
the morning sky, but the birds were already winging and singing, as the
children, carrying the basket between them, set forth upon their quest.

When they reached the brook, they set down the basket, took off their
wooden shoes, and, wading into the stream, began gathering great
bunches of the cress. They were so busy filling their basket that they
did not notice the sun had gone out of sight behind a cloud-bank, and
that the air was still with that strange breathless stillness that
precedes a storm. It was not until a loud clap of thunder, accompanied
by a flash of lightning, suddenly broke the silence, that they knew the
storm was upon them. When they looked up, the meadow grasses were bend
ing low before a sudden wind, and the trees were swaying to and fro as
if in terror, against the background of an angry sky.

"Wow!" said Pierre. "I guess we're in for it! We can't possibly get
home before it breaks."

"Oh," gasped Pierrette, as another peal of thunder shook the air, "I
don't want to stay out in it. What shall we do?"

Pierre looked about him. A little distance beyond the brook, toward the
camp, there was a straw-stack with a rough straw-thatched shed beside
it, half hidden under a group of