Page:The Swiss Family Robinson, In Words of One Syllable.djvu/104

86 and found that flocks of birds, most of which were quails, had come there to feed. This gave us a fine day's sport with our guns, and the next year we did not fail to look for them, so that the fields were made to yield a stock of game as well as a crop of grain.

With but slight change in our mode of life, we spent ten long years in our strange home. Yet the time did not seem long to us. Each day brought with it quite as much work as we could do, so that weeks and months and years flew past, till at last we gave up all hope that we should leave the isle or see our old Swiss home, the thought of which was still dear to us.

But the lapse of ten years had wrought a great change in our sons. Frank, who was but a mere child when we first came, had grown up to be a strong youth; and Jack was a brave a lad as one could wish to see. Fritz, of course, was now a young man, and took a large share of the work off my hands. Ernest had just come of age, and his shrewd mode of thought and great tact was a great a help to us as was the strength and skill of the rest.

To crown all, it was a rare thing for them to be ill; and they were free from those sins which too oft tempt young men to stray from the right path. My wife and I did our best to train them, so that they might know right from