Nor had the flowers ever seemed so richly colored and so sweetly scented.
Truly, the forest was a glorious place!
And nowhere—nowhere did they find the dreadful animals which they had lived to fear these many years.
But they found a cave, a very strange sort of cave. It had two windows and a door.
Inside were two beds and two chairs, and a table and a fireplace.
On the wall hung a home-made calendar.
Just outside the door was a high bench or table, and back of it stood a tree stump.
“This is the place where Father Thrift lived,” said the boys. “How well we remember it!” But Father Thrift was not there now. The place was vacant.
“The queer little old man must have gone to live in the beautiful, happy, sunny land of which he often talked,” said one of the men. And the others agreed with him.