owed many anxious days and nights. Limberleg went back to
hunting again. She took the Twins with her, and began to teach them to
hunt like men.

"If anything should happen to me, you could take care of yourselves if
you knew how to hunt and trap as well as fish," she said.

Beside getting food for their daily needs, they began to store it for
the winter. They gathered nuts by the bushel and piled them in heaps in
the corner of the cave. Whenever they were not sleeping or doing
anything else, they were always gathering wood for the fire.

In this way four long weeks went by. At last came a day when the wind
was sharp, and it seemed as if summer were nearly over.

Limberleg and the Twins had gone down to the cave behind their bluff to
get clams for supper. They had one of Limberleg's baskets with them,
and had nearly filled it with clams. They were out some distance from
the beach-line, for the tide was low.

Suddenly the water began to rise. The returning tide came in such a
flood that they had to run as fast as their legs could carry them to get
safely ashore. They had reached the bank and were just beginning to
climb slowly up the bluff, when they heard a shout behind them.
Limberleg was so startled that her knees gave way under her and she sat
right down in the basket of clams!

They looked across the cove, and there, coming in with the tide, was
their own boat, with brave Hawk-Eye in it waving his hand to them. They
could see three other heads beside Hawk-Eye's, but neither Limberleg nor
the Twins could tell whose heads they were. They left the basket of
clams on the side of the bluff and tore down to the water's edge.

As the boat came near the shore, they saw Grannie, looking scared to
death, sitting in the bottom of the boat, and holding on to each side
with all her might. Behind her were Blackbird and Squaretoes!

The moment the boat came near shore, the two boys tumbled out of the
back end of it, nearly upsetting Grannie, and splashed through the
shallow water to the shore. They butted Firetop in the stomach and
knocked him flat, and spun Firefly around in the sand to show how glad
they were to see them.

When at last the prow of the boat grated on the sand, and Grannie and
Hawk-Eye got out, the four children ran round them in circles like
puppies, screaming with joy. Even Limberleg danced. Grannie clapped
her hands over her ears.

When the noise had calmed down a little, she seized F