the weeds, finishing this task
before five o'clock. Ellen had found time to make a brief call on Kate
Edwards; and at supper, she informed us that Tom had invited us all to
come to his "fort," that evening. "He is going to have a fire there and
roast some of his early Pine Knot corn," continued Ellen. "He says he
has got a whole basketful of ears, all nice in the milk and ready to
roast."

"Where is his 'fort?'" I inquired, for this was the first that I had
heard of such a fortification, although the others appeared to know
something about it.

"Oh, Tom thinks he has got a great fort over there!" said Halse. "It's
no more a fort, like some I've seen, than our sheep pen!"

"Oh, but it is," replied Ellen. "It is a terribly rocky place. Nobody
can get into it, if Tom hasn't a mind to let them."

"Pooh!" exclaimed Halse. "One little six pound cannon would knock it all
down over his head."

"I don't think so," persisted Ellen.

"What do you know about cannon?" cried Halse.

"Well, I don't know much about them," replied Ellen. "But I do not
believe that a small cannon would knock down rocks as big as this
house."

This argument increased my curiosity, and Addison now told me something
about the so-called fortress. "It is a queer sort of place," said he; "a
kind of knoll, with four or five prodigious great rocks around it. I
guess we never have been over there since you came, though we passed in
sight of it the day we went to dig out the foxes. It is on the line
between Mr. Edwards' south field on one side, and the woods of our
pasture where those big yellow birches and rock maples are, on the
other. Those great rocks lie close together there, on that little knoll,
just as if they had been dropped down there like so many big kernels of
corn in a hill.

"From what I have read about geology," continued Addison, reflectively,
"I think it is likely that some mighty glacier, in long past ages, piled
them there. One could imagine that a giant had placed them there, or had
dropped them, accidentally out of his big leather apron, as he strode
across the continent, in early times."

"Oh, hear him!" cried Halse. "Ad will be out giving lectures on geology
next!"

"No," said Addison, laughing, "I don't want to give lectures. I don't
know how the rocks got there, but they got there somehow, for there they
are. Two of them, as Nell says, are almost as large as a house; and they
all stand around, irregularly, enclosing a sort