to lose any chance of having Sam to do the
thinking and planning. He was so anxious for his brother's return that
he spent the greater part of his time on the drift-pile where he had
built himself a little observatory, so arranged that he could see in
every direction without the possibility of being seen in his turn.

Sitting there in his look-out, watching for Sam, he had time to think of
many things. His thinking was not always wise, as a matter of course,
but for a boy of his age it did very well, certainly, and one day he hit
upon a really valuable idea.

The way it came about was this. He fell into a reverie, and remembered
the happy old days at home, and one day in particular, when he was busy
all day making a little wagon in which to give Judie a ride, and he
remembered how very short that day seemed, although it was in June. Just
then it popped into his head to think that there was a reason for
everything, and that that day had seemed so short only because he had
been very busy as its hours went by. If he had known what
"generalization" means, he would have generalized this truth as
follows:--

"Time passes rapidly with busy people." He did nothing of the kind,
however. He only thought.

"If poor little Judie had something to keep her busy all the time, she
wouldn't be so miserable."

And so he cudgelled his brains to invent some plan or other by which to
set Judie at work and keep her at it all the time.

When he returned to the fortress towards night, he said to the little
woman; "Judie, I reckon poor Sam's foot is troubling him again, and
that's the reason he hasn't got back yet. He'll work along slowly and
get here after a while, but I'm afraid he'll be dreadfully tired and
sick when he comes. We must have a good soft bed ready for him so that
he can get a good rest."

To this Judie assented, though in her heart she feared she should never
see Sam again, as indeed Tom did too, though neither would admit the
fact to the other.

"Now I've been thinking," said Tom, "that it wont do, if he comes back
half sick, to let him lie on green moss with all the outside on. Let me
show you."

And taking a strand of the long moss he scraped the greenish gray
outside off, leaving a black strand like a horse hair.

"There," he said, "Sam told me once that it's the soft outside part that
holds water, while the inside is dry almost always. Now why can't we
scrape the outside off of a great deal of moss and have t