en, they observed that the waters were still sinking. They
stood now only half-way up the door-posts. Oliver declared that when he
was a little less tired, he would go through the lower rooms in a tub,
and see whether he could pick up anything useful. He feared, however,
that almost everything must have been swept off through the windows, in
the water-falls that Mildred had thought so pretty, the first day of the
flood.

"There is a chest!" exclaimed Oliver, pointing to a little creek in
which a stout chest had stuck. "Roger, I do believe it is the very
chest that ... that we began our quarrel about. Come, now, is not this
a sign that we ought to make it up?"

Roger would not appear to hear: so his companions made short work of it.
They pulled in for the shore of the Red-hill, and laid Roger on the
slimy bank:--for they saw no occasion to carry one so heavy and so sulky
up to the nice bed of grass which was spread at the top of the red
precipice that the waters had cut Oliver knew that there was a knife in
Roger's pocket. He took it out, cut the cord which tied his wrists, and
threw the knife to a little distance, where Roger could easily reach it
in order to free his legs; but not in time to overtake them before they
should have put off again.

Roger made one catch at Oliver's leg, but missing it, lay again as if
dead; and Ailwin believed he had not yet stirred when the raft rounded
the house again, with the great chest in tow.

Mildred was delighted to see them back, and especially without Roger.
She thought Oliver's face looked very shocking, but Oliver would not say
a word about this, or anything else, till he had found Roger's dog, and
gone over in the basket, to set him ashore with his master.

"There!" said he, as he stepped in at the window when this was
accomplished, "we have done their business. There they are, in their
desert island, as they were before. Now we need not think any more
about them, but attend to our own affairs."

"Your face, Oliver! Pray do--"

"Never mind my face, dear, if it does not frighten poor Geordie. How is
poor Geordie?"

"I do not think he is any better. I never saw him so fretful, and so
hot and ill. And he cries so dreadfully!"

CHAPTER EIGHT.

NEW QUARTERS.

Ailwin presently made George's supper, with milk, a little thickened
with meal. They were all about the child, watching how he would take
it, when a loud crack was heard.

"What is that?" cried