Chapter 7

are no longer under the bushes.'

It was quite true. The earth bore signs of having been moved, and neither soldiers nor ship were to be seen.

'Then it is quite true,' murmured Willie, awe-struck, 'and the army has gone to the Japanese. But I really can't remember about the battle. Ella, how do you think the Russian soldiers came here?'

'That's why I'm so cross,' confessed Ella. 'Of course, there must have been another genius at school, who likes the Russians, and who wanted them to win. So he, too, buried a box of soldiers, and when they became alive, they met ours. Anyhow, ours won. Isn't it funny that there's no sign of the battle?'

'Shall we try again with your doll?' asked Willie.

'No,' replied Ella, decidedly. 'If some one else has had the same idea I don't care to have anything more to do with it.'

Some days later, while the children were at breakfast, their father read of a great Japanese victory. The two young ones looked up proudly, then triumphantly told their strange story to their father. He listened with a quiet smile, and gently remarked, 'Did you give any of your soldiers to Tim Jones, or a ship like the one you buried?'

'No, never,' they replied, surprised at the question.

'Well,' continued he, 'I saw him playing with some very like them, to-day; and I have been told he was seen on the garden wall the very night Ella dreamt of the battle.'

Poor Willie! Poor Ella! They were quite astonished to hear such an explanation of the mystery, and rather sad. But their father, talking to them kindly and wisely, comforted them, and explained that nothing made by the hands of man can grow in the earth, but only things produced by Providence in the earth itself, from living seeds fallen from living plants. He led them into the garden and showed them the plants and the roots, and explained how from the living seeds spring up the living plants. He showed them, too, the dead trunks and dry branches, and explained how from them nothing could ever spring any more.

'Well, I'm glad I didn't kill the Russian,' confessed Willie. 'And it did seem all too easy as we had thought of it. I suppose the battle and all that was only a dream.'

'But I believed we were geniuses,' owned Ella, with a little blush; and then Father laughed. Oh, how he laughed!

THE GIANT OF THE TREASURE CAVES.

(_Continued from page 115._)