ster.

"I'd just as soon stay as not," said Amos, "if I can find some rotten wood
like the Indians use to start a fire; but it isn't much use to look for it
until things begin to dry up."

Amos, followed closely by the little girls, went up the bank and toward a
place where grew a thicket of small pines. "We can break off a lot of
these branches and carry them down to the shore," he said, "and fix some
beds of them under one side of the dory. It will be better than sleeping
on the sand."

They made several trips back and forth to the boat with armfuls of pine
boughs until they each had quite a pile, long and wide enough for a bed,
and high enough to keep them well off the sand. But Amos was not
satisfied.

"This sand-bank makes a good back for a house," he said; "now if we could
only build up sides, and fix some kind of a roof, it would make a fine
house."

"Won't the dory do for one side?" asked Anne.

"No," said Amos, "but we can pile up heaps of sand here on each side of
our beds, right against this sand-bank, and that will make three sides of
a house, and then we'll think of something for the roof."

So they all went to work piling up the sand. It was hard work, and it took
a long time before the loose sand could be piled up high enough for Anne
and Amanda to crouch down behind.

"I'm dreadful hungry," said Amanda, after they had worked steadily for
some time; "let's rest and eat some mussels and beach-plums," and Amos and
Anne were both quite ready to stop work.

"It must be past noon now," said Amos, looking at the sun, "and there
hasn't a boat come in sight."

Anne had begun to look very serious. "My Aunt Martha may think that I have
run away," she said, as they sat leaning back against the piles of warm
sand.

"No, she won't," Amos assured her, "for they'll find out right off that
Amanda and I are gone, and father's dory, and it won't take father or
Captain Enos long to guess what's happened; only they'll think that we
have been carried out to sea."

The little girls were very silent after this, until Amos jumped up saying:
"I've just thought of a splendid plan. We'll pile up sand just as high as
we can on both sides. Then I'll take those fish-lines and cut them in
pieces long enough to reach across from one sand heap to the other, and
tie rocks on each end of the lines and put them across."

"I don't think fish-lines will make much of a roof," said Amanda.

"And after I get the lines across,"