It was near the end of July now, and the spears of corn which had thrust their tiny dark-green lances out of the mellow earth had first turned yellow, and then withered and died. A few plants here and there had escaped the ravages of the grubs, but the yield would be insignificant, and they were good enough farmers by this time to know that to plant more would be only a waste of the small store of food they had left. If the lives of the fowls had been spared, it might have been different. At the time the ground had been spaded the five sad roosters had done all that lay in their power to exterminate the grubs, but their capacity was not the capacity of the four hundred fowls of the season before. The potatoes had suffered, though in less degree, from the same hidden enemy; and unless something could be done to increase their food-supply the three soldiers would be reduced to the verge of starvation before another winter came around. They might yet be forced to abandon their vegetarian principles and to eat the bear and the six old roosters. Rather than do anything so inhuman, they declared they would find some way to open communication with the people in the valley. They might easily have planted a larger area in former years, and stored up corn against a failure in the crop, but of this they had never thought. The morning after they had discovered the scrap of paper on the mica shelf, they all went solemnly to the mill and watched Philip set the machinery in motion and grind the first of the nine small sacks of corn. The whir of the wheels and the hum of the stones in the midst of the splashing of the water outside made the sweetest of music in their ears, but the song of the mill was of brief duration. When the last kernels began to dance on the old cavalry boot-leg in the bottom of the hopper, the miller shut off the water, and in the silence that followed the three soldiers looked ruefully at the small heap of yellow meal on the floor of the dusty bin. It was not more than enough to keep themselves and the paralyzed old rooster alive for a week. If they relied upon the meal alone, in nine weeks they would be out of bread, and the golden mill would be a useless possession. Discovery was their only hope of further subsistence. They had made some remarkable finds in the past, but at the beginning of their eighth year on the mountain it would seem that no secrets of the plateau had escaped the prying eyes of these enterprising young men. Philip reminded his comrades of the bee-tree, which was undoubtedly stored with honey, beyond the southern cliff, but this they had always regarded as impassable. From the mica shelf they could see that it was a narrow ledge, and not a higher level; and although the small shelf extended a trifle beyond it, the soldiers had seen no way of scaling the rocks which rose from the brambles and mica, so as to reach the territory beyond the southern ledge.