Now, it was very wrong in Charlie to be so dumb when his parents wanted him, and to cause them so much concern by his unexplained absence; but he justified it to his own conscience on the ground that it was in keeping with his character as second Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe, in his estimation, was the greatest and most glorious man that ever lived. Charlie had taken him for his model in life; and it would derogate from the dignity of his position, while enacting the man Crusoe,--"monarch of all he surveyed,"--to obey as the child Charlie. He was willing, when in the house, to do what was expected of him, as a boy under subjection; but when he was in his Crusoe cave, _alias_ the hollow tree, he was altogether another person; and he reasoned, in order to have things in harmony, he must act accordingly. Charlie, by some means, had come into possession of a horse pistol, considerably out of order, it is true; but it served to fill the place of one of the two pistols Robinson Crusoe found on board the Spanish ship. He was in daily expectation of finding another; but needing ammunition to store up against a coming fray with the cannibals on the shore, he helped himself frequently to the contents of his father's powder-horn and bullet-pouch. "What under the canopy makes my powder go so fast?" his father often exclaimed, as he replenished the mysteriously-wasting stock. The lad also begged ammunition of the free-hearted settlers, and by these means he laid up a surprisingly large amount of warlike munitions, kept securely in an old skin bag. He had also dried venison stowed away, and a good store of nuts, with pop-corn for parching, and potatoes for roasting--all against some coming time of need. Now, it chanced that Charlie's tree-cave turned to good account, as it saved his curly scalp; for the afternoon of the Indian outbreak,--with one eye on the Crusoe history, and the other watching to see if any cannibals landed on the shore, taking an occasional sip from an old coffee-pot filled with spring water, which he called goat's milk,--the whole frightful scene of the massacre passed before him. He saw dear little Bub run to meet Yellow Bank, and he also saw what his mother did not in the panic, that, just as the treacherous savage fired, the little fellow tripped and fell, unharmed by the bullet. He saw, at that instant, his sister Sarah start from the store for the cabin, and that the fiendish savage did not notice Bub's escape, in his eagerness to intercept the girl; so that Bub, terrified by the report of the gun, and at seeing his sister struck down by Yellow Bank, dragged himself off in the direction of Charlie's tree, not seeming to know but that he was going towards the cabin.