This was how they built the hut. They chose a young tree with a straight trunk. Around this they fixed the longest and straightest of their boughs upright in the ground. Then they cut smaller pieces of willow and birch and hazel, and laced them in and out of the uprights, until they had got a wattled wall all round, except between two of the uprights, where they left a space for the door-way. The roof they made by tying sticks across from the uprights to the centre tree, and lacing these with twigs and brushwood. Then they plastered the outside with clay and earth. They made a door, with two light poles for the sides and two shorter ones for the ends, tied cross-wise at the corners, and the whole interlaced, like the walls, with hazel shoots and willows. When the hut was finished, they brought Uncle John to see it. The boys could all get inside quite comfortably by squeezing a little; but there was not room for Uncle John. So, as it was a very hot afternoon, they all sat outside under an oak tree, and read the next chapter from the brown book. [Illustration] _Chapter the Fifth_ _THE STORY OF TIG: The Food Supplies_ TIG’S father, Garff, was one of the chief men of the village. He was very strong and a clever hunter, and the people used to look to him to take the lead in the big hunting expeditions. He was a rich man, too; but that does not mean that he had much money, because he had no money at all. Nobody had money in those times: they had cattle instead, and if a man had to pay a great deal to another man, he gave a cow or a bullock; but if he had to pay only a little, he gave a joint of meat, perhaps, or a skin or part of a skin, or a basket of nuts, or a jar of corn, or a piece of honeycomb. Garff had a herd of about twenty small shaggy cows like Welsh cattle. They used to be driven out to feed on the pasture grounds on the hills in the daytime with other people’s cows, and some of the old men and boys with the dogs used to look after them. But at sunset the cowherds drove the cattle inside the stockade of the village for the night, to keep them safe from wild beasts; and then the women used to come out to milk the cows.