leaves. It sounded for all the world as if it said, "I take back my
wood!"

"Whatever will I do?" groaned Silly Will as he shivered all naked in the
moonlight. Then his eye lighted on the kitchen stove. There it stood
with the stove pipe all safely connected with the chimney.

"I'll build a coal fire," he thought. There stood the iron coal scuttle.
But alas! It was empty! He heard a far-away murmur like a faint wind
stirring in giant ferns. And they said, "I take back my buried leaves!"

By this time Silly Will was shaking with cold. "I've heard that
newspapers are warm," he thought. But the pile behind the stove was
gone. Again came the murmur of trees--"I take back my pulp," and a queer
soft sound which he couldn't quite make out. Was it "I take back my
cotton?"

Silly Will was thoroughly terrified now.

"I'll go somewhere to think," he said to himself. So he crept down the
cement steps to the cellar and crawled into a sheltered corner. But he
couldn't think of anything pleasant. He could hear a confused noise all
around him. Sometimes it sounded like growls, like animal cries, like
animal calls. "The animal kingdom has left him," it seemed to say.

Again it sounded like the wind rustling a thousand leaves. "The
vegetable kingdom has left him," it seemed to say.

"I've nothing to wear," sobbed Silly Will. "And I'm afraid I've nothing
to eat." At the thought of food he jumped up and ran over to the cellar
pantry. He found just three things. They did not make a tempting meal!
They were a crock of salt, a tin of soda and a porcelain pitcher of
water.

"What shall I ever do? How shall I live? I'll never have another glass
of milk or cup of cocoa. I'll never have anything to wear. I'll freeze
and I'll starve. I might just as well die now!" And poor little Silly
Will broke down and cried and cried and cried.

"I can't live without other living things," he sobbed. "I can't eat only
minerals and I can't keep warm in minerals. Everybody has to depend on
animals and vegetables. And after all I'm only a little boy! I've got to
have living things to keep alive myself!"

Then a wonderful thing happened to Silly Will. I can't explain how or
why it happened. Suddenly he felt all warm and comfortable. "Perhaps I'm
freezing," he thought. "I've heard that people feel warm when they are
almost frozen to death."

Slowly he put out his hand. Surely that was a linen sheet! Surely that
was a woolen blanket. Surely he had on h