id Phonny.

"Not now," said Stuyvesant,--"wait till it is finished."

Stuyvesant then proceeded to drive the nails home, and clinch them.
The clinching was done, by putting an axe under the part of the ladder
where a nail was coming through, and then driving. The point of the
nail when it reached the axe, was deflected and turned, and bending
round entered the wood again, on the back side, and so clinched the
nail firmly. Thus the other holes were bored, and the other nails put
in, and at length the ladder was completed.

Just as the boys were ready to carry it out, the door opened, and
Beechnut came in.

Beechnut looked round at all that the boys had been doing, with great
interest. He examined the ladder particularly, and said that it was
made in a very workmanlike manner. Phonny showed Beechnut his cage
too, though he said that he had pretty much concluded not to finish it
that afternoon.

"I don't see why you need finish it at all," said Beechnut. "You have
got a very good cage already for your squirrel."

"What cage?" asked Phonny.

"This shop. It is a great deal better cage for him than that box,--_I_
think, and I have no doubt that he thinks so too."

"He would gnaw out of this shop," said Phonny.

"Not any more easily than he would gnaw out of the box," said
Beechnut.

Phonny turned to his box and looked at the smooth surface of the pine
which formed the interior. He perceived that Frink could gnaw through
anywhere, easily, in an hour.

"I did not think of that," said Phonny "I must line it with tin."

He began to picture to his mind, the process of putting his arm into
the box and nailing tin there, where there was no room to work a
hammer, and sighed.

"Well," said he, "I'll let him have the whole shop, to-night, and now
we will go out and try the ladder."

The whole party accordingly went to the hen-house. Beechnut examined
the small door that Stuyvesant had made, and the button of the large
door, while Stuyvesant was planting the ladder. Phonny was eager to go
up first; Stuyvesant followed him.

Phonny mounted upon the floor of the loft, and immediately afterward
began to exclaim,

"Oo--oo--Stivy,--here is old Gipsy, on a nest, and I verily believe
that she is setting; I could not think what had become of old Gipsy."

Just at this time, Beechnut's head appeared coming up the ladder. He
called upon the boys to come back, away from the hen, while he went up
to see. She was upon a nest th