“When nature and the animals concur,” said Paul, “it is not left to man to doubt; so we’d better be providing the things Jim promises to cook so well.”

They had learned the border habit of acting promptly, and Henry Ross and Sol were to depart the very next morning for the mainland on a hunt for deer, while Long Jim was to keep house.  Paul otherwise would have been anxious to go with the hunters, but he had an idea of his own, and when Henry suggested that he accompany them, he replied that he expected to make a contribution of a different kind.

All these plans were made in the evening, and then every member of the five, wrapping himself in his buffalo robe, fell asleep.  The fire in Jim Hart’s furnace had been permitted to die down to a bed of coals, and the glow from them barely disclosed the five figures lying, dark and silent, on the floor.  They slept, clean in conscience and without fear.

Henry, Shif’less Sol, and Ross were off at dawn, and Paul, using a rude wooden needle that he had shaped with his own pocketknife, and the tendon of a deer as thread, made a large bag of buckskin.  Then he threw it triumphantly over his shoulder.

“Now what under the sun, Paul, are you goin’ to do with that?” asked Jim Hart.

“I’m going to add variety to our winter store.  Just you wait, Jim Hart, and see.”

Bearing the bag, he left the house and took his way to the north end of the island.  He had not been above learning more than one thing from the squirrels, and he had recalled a grove of great hickory trees growing almost to the water’s edge.  Now the ground was thickly covered with the nuts which had fallen when the severe frosts and the snow and ice came.  There were several varieties, including large ones two inches long, and the fine little ones known to boys throughout the Mississippi Valley as the scaly bark.  Paul procured two stones, and, cracking several of them, found them delicious to the taste.  Already in his Kentucky home he had become familiar with them all.  The hogs of the settlers, running through the forest and fattening upon these nuts and acorns, known collectively as “mast,” acquired a delicious flavor.  Boys and grown people loved the nuts, too.

The nuts lay about in great quantities, and the thick, barky coverings, known to the boys as “hulls,” almost fell off at a touch.  Soon the ground was littered with these hulls, while the big buckskin bag was filled with the clean nuts.  Then, lifting it to his shoulder, Paul marched off proudly to the house.

“Now, why didn’t I think uv that?” said Jim Hart, as Paul threw down the bag before him and disclosed its contents.  “An’ all them hick’ry nuts jest layin’ thar on the ground an’ waitin’ fur me.”

“It’s because you had so much else to do, Jim,” said Paul; “and as I’m idle a good deal of the time, the thought occurred to me.”

“You shorely do have the gift uv sayin’ nice things, an’ makin’ a feller feel good, Paul,” said Jim admiringly.