their camp. One day,
while all were gone on a play-search for food, Joseph was left on guard
in a hollow tree with merely a peep-hole through which to watch. He heard
the cracking of a twig; to his surprise, something moved cautiously
through the bushes. It was a real Indian boy. He crept to the wigwam
door, peeped in, and then thrust in his arm. Joseph could not tell
whether it was to take or to leave something. As the lad turned, he
proved to be Assacon. Before Joseph could scramble from the tree, the
Indian was gone, frightened perhaps by the voices of the returning
children. Together they hurried to the wigwam, and there in the center
stood the little black kettle with the same picture that Tom had
scratched upon it. Assacon had found it in his own camp. In some way he
had secured it and, in appreciation of their goodness to him, had
traveled some ten miles to return it.

WINNICUNNET.

In the days when no lines were drawn between Massachusetts and New
Hampshire, the General Court of Massachusetts had an eye open for a
stretch of salt-marsh a few miles north of the Merrimac River, near the
sea. The forests were so thick that feeding places for the cattle were
difficult to find. Here on these marshes salt was added to the food,
which in those days was considered a most valuable possession. For that
reason it was agreed that three men from Newbury and Ipswich should build
a house on the edge of the marsh.

So on an October day in 1638 they went in a shallop up the winding
Winnicunnet River. Where Hampton now stands, they built of logs the Bound
House, to make good the claim of Massachusetts to the marsh.

Soon others followed, and the little settlement of Winnicunnet grew up in
the wilderness, miles from other neighbors, except the Indians who had
pitched their wigwams in the vicinity. Their trails along the river and
over the marshes to the sea were used by the white men in hunting and
fishing.

In this same wilderness Elizabeth dwelt in a cabin of logs, yet not
without playmates or playthings. Chewannick, an Indian boy who lived in a
wigwam, came often to play with her, and the little black lamb that was
born in the spring was given to Elizabeth for her very own. As soon as
she found it was hers, she called Chewannick within the palisade to see
the little black thing with legs like sticks.

"When it is old enough to be sheared," she explained, "I shall help to do
that myself. Then my mother will help m