they had got some way down towards Sunch'ston, so as to have readier
access to their property when they wanted to remove it; but when they
came upon a path and other signs that inhabited dwellings could not be
far distant, they would begin to look out for a hiding-place. And they
would take pretty well the first that came. "Why, bless my heart," he
exclaimed, "this tree is hollow; I wonder whether--" and on looking up he
saw an innocent little strip of the very tough fibrous leaf commonly used
while green as string, or even rope, by the Erewhonians. The plant that
makes this leaf is so like the ubiquitous New Zealand _Phormium tenax_,
or flax, as it is there called, that I shall speak of it as flax in
future, as indeed I have already done without explanation on an earlier
page; for this plant grows on both sides of the great range. The piece
of flax, then, which my father caught sight of was fastened, at no great
height from the ground, round the branch of a strong sucker that had
grown from the roots of the chestnut tree, and going thence for a couple
of feet or so towards the place where the parent tree became hollow, it
disappeared into the cavity below. My father had little difficulty in
swarming the sucker till he reached the bough on to which the flax was
tied, and soon found himself hauling up something from the bottom of the
tree. In less time than it takes to tell the tale he saw his own
familiar red blanket begin to show above the broken edge of the hollow,
and in another second there was a clinkum-clankum as the bundle fell upon
the ground. This was caused by the billy and the pannikin, which were
wrapped inside the blanket. As for the blanket, it had been tied tightly
at both ends, as well as at several points between, and my father
inwardly complimented the Professors on the neatness with which they had
packed and hidden their purchase. "But," he said to himself with a
laugh, "I think one of them must have got on the other's back to reach
that bough."