34 Sandford and Merton.

Mr. Barlow.—* Then if you tell me what wood you want
I will cut down the trees for you.” .

Tom.— Thank you, thank you.”

Mr. Barlow then cut down poles as thick as a man’s
wrist, eight feet long, which the boys made sharp at the
end to force them in the ground.

Mr, Barlow.—* Where shall you place your house ?”
Tom.—< This will be the spot for it, just at the foot of
this hill, for here we shall be warm and snug.” ,

Hal took the stakes, and drove them in the earth, and
made the house ten feet long and eight feet wide. When
this was done, he and Tom took the small sticks of wood
which they had cut from the stakes, and wove them in
with the poles, so as to form a sort of fence.

To give them heart while they went on with this slow
work, and to show them that if we want to make sure that
a thing is done, we must work at it with our own hands,
Mr. Barlow told them the tale of a lark that had a nest of
young birds in a field of corn, and one day two men came
_ to look at the state of the crop. “ Well,” says one of them
to his son, “I think this wheat is ripe, So now go and ask
our friends to help us to reap it.”

When the old lark came back to her nest, the young
brood told her what they had heard. “So they look to
their friends for help,” said she. ‘Well, I think we have
no cause for fear.”

The next day the man came; and as he saw no friends
in the corn field, he bade his gon fetch his kith and kin to
help him.

This the young birds told to the old one when she came
home.

“Fear not,” quoth she; “I do not see that men go much