The months came and went.

The drama and tragedy of the future were yet to come upon the stage, and in the meantime we pounded nuts and lived.
It--vas a good year, I remember, for nuts.

We used to fill gourds with nuts and carry them to the pounding-places.

We placed them in depressions in the rock, and, with a piece of rock in our hands, we cracked them and ate them as we cracked.
It was the fall of the year when Lop-Ear and I returned from our long adventure-journey, and the winter that followed was mild.

I made frequent trips to the neighborhood of my old home-tree, and frequently I searched the whole territory that lay between the blueberry swamp and the mouth of the slough where Lop-Ear and I had learned navigation, but no clew could I get of the Swift One.