him and he decided always to protect it. "I will always be your shepherd and take care of you," he said. XIX ROBINSON BUILDS A HOME FOR HIS GOAT But the goat was a new care. Wild animals could come and kill and carry Robinson's goat away while he slept, and if the goat got frightened while he was hunting it would run away. "I will have to make me a little yard in front of my cave," he said, "for my goat to live in." But from whence must come the tools? He had neither hatchet nor saw. Where then were the stakes to come from? He went in search of something. After hunting for a long time he came upon a kind of thistle about two feet higher than himself, having at its top a red torch-like blossom. There were a great many of them. "Good!" thought Robinson. "If I could only dig up enough of them and plant them thick around the door of my cave, I would have just the thing. No one could get at me, nor at the goat, either, The thorns would keep anything from creeping through, peeping in or getting over." So he took his mussel-shell spade and went to work. It was pretty hard, but at length he succeeded in laying bare the roots of quite a number. But he could not drag them to his cave on account of the thorns sticking in him. He thought a long time. Finally, he sought out two strong poles or branches which were turned up a little at one end and like a sled runner. To these he tied twelve cross-pieces with bark. To the foremost he tied a strong rope made from cocoa fiber. He then had something that looked much like a sled on which to draw his thistle-like brush to his cave. But for one day he had done enough. The transplanting of the thistles was hard work. His spade broke and he had to make a new one. In the afternoon he broke his spade again. And as he made his third one, he made up his mind that it was no use trying to dig with such a weak tool in the hard ground. It would only break again. "If I only had a pick." But he had none. He found a thick, hard, sharp stone. With it he picked up the hard earth, but had to bend almost double in using it. "At home," he thought, "they have handles to picks." The handle was put through a hole in the iron. He turned the matter over and over in his mind, how he might put a hole through the stone. But he found no means. He searched out a branch with a crotch at one end. He tied the stone to this with strong cocoa fiber and