These he gnawed fine, and soon made a soft bed; he wove and twisted
the sticks, and roots, and mosses together, till the walls of his house
were quite thick, and he made a sort of thatch over the top with dry
leaves and long moss, with a round hole to creep in and out of.
Making this warm house took him many days' labour; but many strokes
will fell great oaks, so at last Nimble-foot's work came to an end,
and he had the comfort of a charming house to shelter him from the
cold season. He laid up a good store of nuts, acorns, and roots: some
he put in a hollow branch of the hemlock-tree close to his nest; some
he hid in a stump, and another store he laid under the roots of a mossy
cedar. When all this was done, he began to feel very lonely, and often
wished, no doubt, that he had had his sisters Silvy and Velvet-paw
with him, to share his nice warm house; but of Silvy he knew nothing,
and poor Velvet-paw was dead.
One fine moonlight night, as Nimble was frisking about on the bough of a
birch-tree, not very far from his house in the hemlock, he saw a canoe
land on the shore of the lake, and some Indians with an axe cut down some
bushes, and having cleared a small piece of ground, begin to sharpen the
ends of some long poles.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68