So you see that Elam and Cotton had very comfortable quarters to sleep in when they ran away to the noon-house on the Monday following the opening of my story. Each arrived about an hour before sunset, laden with all the food that he had been able to capture before leaving home. Cotton had a great piece of salt-pork and a dozen eggs, some of which had had a rather disastrous journey in his coat-pockets. Elam had a great crushed mass of dough-nuts and brown bread. This was not all of their provisions for their sojourn, for on each successive Sunday for five weeks previously both boys had crowded their great pockets with russet apples and their saddle-bags with cold corn-bread and brown bread, and they had starved themselves at each nooning in order to save their food and thus provide for the coming day of need; and they had concealed their treasures in an empty corn-bin at the horses’ end of the house. Cotton felt sure that they had food enough to last them for three weeks--rather dry and conglomerated, to be sure, but still good enough for boys of healthy appetites and simple Puritan tastes. Elam also had brought a flint and tinder-box with him, and with their aid and that of some light “candle-wood” he soon had a blazing fire upon the hearth, the coals of which he carefully covered up to save till morning, and then the two Robinson Crusoes climbed upon the hay and fell asleep. The story of the first day spent by the runaways in their retreat would be the story of all the days, which were not as pleasure-filled as they had hoped. They had no hut to build, no goats to tame, no savages to fight and dread. They rose early in the morning, for the habits of their daily life were strong, and they did not dare have a fire much after daybreak, lest the smoke from the chimney should be discovered by some rare passer-by. They ate their breakfast of brown bread and cheese and apples and drank a little of the hard cider. As the weather was fortunately warm, they lolled on the stones behind the noon-house while Elam told over and over again the story of Robinson Crusoe and tales of the Indians that he had heard from his grandfather. They fished, with some success, in a little brook which ran through the woods, and one day they caught a rabbit in a trap which Cotton had set, and which he had learned how to make from old Showacum, a “praying Indian” who lived in the village. These trophies of their skill they of course skinned and cleaned and cooked, and though they were hungry--for they were hungry all the time--the unsalted fish and game did not seem very appetizing to them. They found a treasure one day in the woods--a store of nuts which had been forgotten or neglected or reserved until spring by some kindly squirrels--and with a few cakes of toothsome maple-sugar they had some variety of diet.