in the snow-laden gale. It had no terrors for them. They
were not concerned with the dour prospect that brought anxiety to the
hearts of their elders.

"It's fine to be a kid," said Percival, watching the antics of a crowd
of boys. "Why do we have to grow up?"

"So that we can appreciate what it was to be a kid," said Randolph
Fitts.

Ruth Clinton was one of the teachers. There were, all told, about thirty
children in the school, their ages ranging from five to fourteen. Most
of them were youngsters from the steerage, bright-eyed little Latins who
had picked up with lively avidity no small store of English. They were
being taught in English.

The council, spurred by the far-seeing Percival, recognized the perils
of a period of inactivity following the harvest and the flailing
days. The majority of the men and women would be comparatively idle.
Preparations for the building of a small ship occupied the time and
interest of a few engineers and ship-carpenters, but as some weeks were
bound to pass before the work could be begun in earnest, an interim of
impatience would have to be bridged. Work, and plenty of it, was the
only prescription for despair.

Already symptoms of increasing moodiness marked the mien of the less
resourceful among the castaways. While it was not generally known, two
men had attempted suicide, and one of the Brazilian ladies,--a beautiful
young married woman,--was in a pitiful state of collapse. She had
a husband and two small children in Rio Janeiro. The separation was
driving her mad. There were others,--both men and women,--whose minds
were never free from the thought of loved ones far across the waters
and whose hearts ached with a great pain that could not be subdued by
philosophy, but they were strong and they were cheerful. In their souls
burnt an unquenchable fire, the fire of hope; they stirred it night and
day with the song of the unvanquished.

Improvements in the hastily constructed cabins provided not only
occupation but interest for the able-bodied men and women. There was no
little rivalry in the matter of interior embellishments; those skilled
in the use of implements took great pride in hewing out and adding
more or less elaborate ornamentation to the facades of their
habitations,--such as casements, door-posts and capitals, awnings,
porches, and so forth. A shell road was in process of construction
from one end of the village to the other, while over in Dismal Forest
woodsm