button off from Klein's cap when we were coming through the dark passage, and I have it here safe in my hand."

Klein looked at Guld and trembled, but little Guld, who was going to be a king, smiled instead of frowning.

"You are my guests," he said, "I should not have kept you."

But Janet felt safer with the button in her possession.

Klein, "I hear other

"Hark!" exclaimed Klein, "I voices !"

They stood for a moment listening, and then Guld led the way up through a crevice in the wall, where they could climb by grasping the projections on each side, almost as if upon a ladder, until they reached a natural platform in the rocks, on which a small ray of light fell which was not of any candle, but the light of the dear bright sun in the heavens. Now they could certainly hear voices, and all four listened intently. The sound was not more than six feet away. It was the Wray children talking

together.

"What a beautiful grotto this is!" said Susie Wray. Janet and Prue recognized her voice at once, although they could not see her.

"I knew you would like it," said Ned.

"We

can bring moss to carpet it, and keep some of our things here.'

"I wish the Kanter girls could see it," said Susie. "We will bring a lunch to-morrow and invite them to come with us," replied Ned.

"We will come! We will come!" the Kanter girls called out eagerly.

"Where are you!" exclaimed Ned, looking up and down in every direction.

"In behind the rocks! Oh! Guld, do let us get out here! Can we?"

Little Guld hesitated.

He would have liked a

longer visit from these merry playmates, but he was to be a king, and after a moment he said,

"Come, Klein, and help me move the gate. It has not been stirred in a hundred years.'

With all their strength the little kobolds pushed on a block of granite before them, and it turned as if upon a pivot. In rushed the light and air, and the Kanter girls hastily made their way through the opening out into the rounded nook which the Wrays had discovered that morning and called a grotto. "Good-by!" said little Guld.

"Good-by!" said Klein, and the block of granite began slowly to turn back again.

"Oh! Janet, Klein's button!" cried Prue, and catching it from her sister's hand, she hastened to put it through the small opening that was still left, into a little brown hand.

"Good-by, dear kobolds!" she said, and then the rocks closed so tightly that, search as they might, neither the Wrays nor the Kanter girls could find a crack or seam.

But they had the grotto and the sunshine, the green trees, the blue sky, and their favorite friends, and these made them happy, although for a moment Janet did regret that Prue had been so particular about returning the button.

An Arctic Expedition

XXI

"Where the ermine hunters
On their far journeys go,
Where the reindeer sledges speed

Over the wastes of snow."

-Mary Howitt.

OW," said Prue, one day, "let us go and visit those dear little Fur-children again.'

"N°

Janet was very willing. Their mother consented, but told them they must wear their stout plaid aprons over their woollen dresses, and she herself buttoned up their fur coats, and put on their fur hoods and mittens. Then she kissed their rosy upturned faces, and let them run away to call their chariot.

They stood side by side on the doorstep and waited, while the great green birds came sweeping gracefully down, with the pretty golden chariot. Then they climbed in and gave the word of command.

"To the cold country where houses are built of ice and snow."

The chariot rose in the air and sped swiftly along.

"Now we are over the rough land where the stunted pines grow," said Prue, looking down.

"And oh! now the snow is beginning," cried Janet; "and just then I saw some seals."

A few moments later, the green birds swept down and alighted in the snow, in the midst of the little settlement. The Fur-children came running out with cries of joy to welcome their young playmates, who, they said, had come at the best possible time, for their fathers had just returned from a walrus hunt, and now they could all have lumps of fat as big as their heads.

"And my mother has dressed two dolls for you!" said little Brenda. "They are cut out of bone, like ours, and dressed in fur.”

"And I have brought something for Polo," said Janet, handing a box to the little black-eyed boy.

Polo opened it, screamed, and tumbled backward into the snow, looking like a round ball of fur. It was a Jack-in-the-box that Janet had given him, and it looked so much like a bear, it was no wonder that it scared him.