Perhaps, too, some of their rosy impressions might have been a little modified if they could have been at the breakfast-table of the Hart homestead the morning after Annie Foster's sudden departure.

The table, truly, was there, as usual, with the breakfast-things on it, and there were husband and wife at either end; but the two side seats were vacant.

"Where are Joe and Foster, Maria?" asked Mr. Hart.

"I'm sure they're up, father. I heard them come down stairs an hour ago."

"I can't wait for them"—

"You came home late last night, and they haven't seen you since Annie went away." There had been a suppressed sound of whispers in the entry, and the door had been held open about half an inch by some hand on the other side. It is possible, therefore, that Mr. Hart's reply was heard outside.

"Oh, I see! it's about Annie. Look here, Maria: they may have gone a little too far, but if Annie can't take a joke"—

"So I tried to say to her," began his wife; but at that instant the whispers in the entry swelled suddenly to loud voices, and two boys came noisily in, and filled the side chairs at the table.

"Sit down, my dears," said Mrs. Hart, with an admiring glance from one to the other. "I have told your father about the sad trick you played upon your cousin."

"Yes, you young rogues," added Mr. Hart, with affected sternness: "you have driven her out of the house."

"Joe," said the boy on the left, to his brother across the table, "ain't you glad she's gone?"

"You bet I am. She's too stiff and steep for me. Spoiled all the fun we had."

"And so you spoiled her cuffs and collars for her. It was too bad altogether. I'm afraid there won't be much comfort for anybody in this house till you two get back to Grantley."

"Fuz," said Joe, "do you hear that? They're going to give us another term at Grantley."

"I don't care how soon we go, so we haven't got to board at old mother Myers's."

"I can't say about that," said Mr. Hart. "I half made her a promise"—

"That we'd board there?" exclaimed Fuz rebelliously.

"Now, boys," said their mother, in a gentle voice, that sounded a little like good Mrs. Foster's; but Joe sustained his brother with,—

"Prison-fare, and not half enough of it. I just won't stand it another winter!"

"I'm not so sure it will be necessary, after all," said their father, who seemed to have dismissed Annie's grievance from his mind for the present. "Your cousin Ford is sure to go; and I'm almost certain of another boy, besides the missionary's son. If she gets a few others herself, her house'll be full enough, and you can board somewhere else."

"Hurrah for that!" shouted Fuz. "And, if the new house doesn't feed us well, we'll tear it down."

"If you don't tear ours down before you go, I'll be satisfied. Maria, you must write to your sister, and smooth the matter over. Boys will be boys, and I wouldn't like to have any coolness spring up. Mr. Foster'll understand it."

That was very nearly all that was said about it, and the two boys evidently had had no need for any hesitation in coming in to breakfast.

They were not so bad-looking a pair, as boys go; although it may be few other people would have seen so much to admire in them as their mother did.

Joe, the elder, was a loud, hoarse-voiced, black-eyed boy, of seventeen or thereabouts, with a perpetual grin on his face, as if he had discovered in this world nothing but a long procession of things to be laughed at. Foster, so named after his lawyer relative, was a year and a half younger, but nearly as tall as Joe. He was paler, but with hair and eyes as dark, and he wore a sort of habitual side-look, as if his mind were all the while inquiring if anybody within sight happened to have any thing he wanted.

They both bore a strong likeness to their father, only they missed something bluff and hearty in his accustomed manner; and they each had also a little suggestion of their mother, that did not, however go so far as to put anybody in mind of their aunt Foster.

Nobody need have failed to see, at all events, after watching one or two of their glances at each other, that they were the very boys to play the meanest kind of practical jokes when they could do it safely. There is really no accounting for boys; and Joe and Fuz, therefore, might fairly be set down among the "unaccountables."

There was no sort of wonder that their easy-going mother and their joke-admiring father should be quite willing to have them spend three-quarters of the year at boarding-school, and as much as possible of the remainder somewhere else than "at home."

After Mr. Hart went out to his business that morning, and Mrs. Hart set herself about her usual duties, Joe and Fuz took with them into the street the whole Grantley question.

"We'll have to go, Fuz."

"Of course. But we must have more to eat, and more fun, than we had last time."

"Ford's coming, is he? The little prig! We'll roast him."

"So we will that young missionary."

"Look out about him, Joe, while he's at our house. He's coming right here, you know."

"Don't you be afraid. His folks are old friends of mother's. We'll let up on him till we get him safe to Grantley."

"Then we'll fix him."

They had plots and plans enough to talk about; but neither they, nor any of the boys they named, nor any of the other boys they did not name, had the least idea of what the future really had in store for them. Dab Kinzer and Ford Foster, in particular, had no idea that the world contained such a place as Grantley, or such a landlady as Mrs. Myers.

They had as little suspicion of them as they had had of finding Annie Foster in the sitting-room that day, when they walked in with their famous strings of fish.

Ford kissed his sister, but that operation hardly checked him for an instant in his voluble narrative of the stirring events of his first morning on the bay. There was really little for anybody else to do but to listen, and it was worth hearing.

There was no sort of interruption on the part of the audience; but the moment Ford paused for breath his mother said,—

"Are you sure the black boy was not hurt, Ford?"

"Hurt, mother? Why, he seems to be a kind of black-fish. The rest all know him, and they went right past my hook to his, all the while."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Foster: "I forgot. Annie, this is Ford's friend Dabney Kinzer, our neighbor."

"Won't you shake hands with me, Mr. Kinzer?" said Annie, with a malicious twinkle of fun in her merry blue eyes.

Poor Dabney! He had been in quite a "state of mind" for at least three minutes; but he would hardly have been his own mother's son if he had let himself be entirely "posed." Up rose his long right arm, with the heavy string of fish at the end of it; and Annie's fun broke out into a musical laugh, just as her brother exclaimed,—

"There now, I'd like to see the other boy of your size can do that. Look here, Dab, where'd you get your training?"

"I mustn't drop the fish, you see," began Dab; but Ford interrupted him with,—

'No, indeed! You've given me half I've got, as it is. Annie, have you looked at the crabs? You ought to have seen Dick Lee, with a lot of 'em gripping in his hair."

"In his hair?"

"When he was down through the bottom of his boat. They'd have eaten him up if they'd had a chance. You see, he's no shell on him."

"Exactly," said Annie, as Dab lowered his fish. "Well, Dabney, I wish you would thank your mother for me, for sending my trunk over. Your sisters too. I've no doubt we shall be very neighborly."

It was wonderfully pleasant to be called by his first name by so very pretty a young lady, and yet it seemed to bring up something curious into Dabney Kinzer's throat.

"She considers me a mere boy, and she means I'd better take my fish right home," was the next thought that came to him; and he was right, to a fraction. So the great lump in his throat took a very wayward and boyish form, and came out as a reply, accompanied by a low bow,—

"I will, thank you. Good-afternoon, Mrs. Foster. I'll see you to-night, Ford, about Monday and the yacht. Good-afternoon, Annie."

And then he marched out with his fish.

"Mother, did you hear him call me 'Annie'?"

"Yes; and I heard you call him 'Dabney.'"

"But he's only a boy "—

"I don't care," exclaimed Ford. "He's an odd fellow, but he's a good one. Did you see how wonderfully strong he is in his arms? I couldn't lift these fish at arm's-length, to save my life."

He knew, for he had been trying his best with his own.

It was quite likely that Dab Kinzer's rowing, and all that sort of thing, had developed in him greater strength of muscle than even he himself was aware of; but for all that he went home with his very ears tingling.

"Could she have thought me ill-bred or impertinent?" he muttered to himself.

Thought? About him?

Poor Dab Kinzer! Annie Foster had so much else to think of just then; for she was compelled to go over, for Ford's benefit, the whole story of her tribulations at her uncle's, and the many rudenesses of Joe Hart and his brother Fuz.

"They ought to be drowned," said Ford indignantly.

"In ink," added Annie. "Just as they drowned my poor cuffs and collars."



CHAPTER X

A CRUISE IN "THE SWALLOW."

"Look at Dabney Kinzer," said Jenny Walters to her mother, in church, the next morning. "Did you ever see anybody's hair as smooth as that?"

Smooth it was, certainly; and he looked, all over, as if he had given all the care in the world to his personal appearance. How was Annie Foster to guess that he had gotten himself up so unusually on her account? She did not guess it; but when she met him at the church-door, after service, she was careful to address him as "Mr. Kinzer," and that made poor Dabney blush to his very eyes.

"There!" he exclaimed: "I know it."

"Know what?" asked Annie.

"Know what you're thinking."

"Do you, indeed?"

"Yes: you think I'm like the crabs."

"What do you mean?"

"You think I was green enough till you spoke to me, and now I'm boiled red in the face."

Annie could not help laughing,—a little, quiet, Sunday-morning sort of a laugh; but she was beginning to think her brother's friend was not a bad specimen of a Long Island "country boy."

She briskly turned away the small remains of that conversation from crabs and their color; but she told her mother, on their way home, she was sure Dabney would be a capital associate for Ford.

That young gentleman was tremendously of the same opinion. He had come home, the previous evening, from a long conference with Dab, brimful of the proposed yachting cruise; and his father had freely given his consent, much against the inclinations of Mrs. Foster.

"My dear," said the lawyer, "I feel sure a woman of Mrs. Kinzer's unusual good sense would not permit her son to go out in that way if she did not feel safe about him. He has been brought up to it, you know; and so has the colored boy who is to go with them."

"Yes, mother," argued Ford: "there isn't half the danger there is in driving around New York in a carriage."

"There might be a storm," she timidly suggested.

"The horses might run away."

"Or you might get upset."

"So might a carriage."

The end of it all was, however, that Ford was to go, and Annie was more than half sorry she could not go with them. In fact, she said so to Dabney himself, as soon as her little laugh was ended, that Sunday morning.

"Some time or other I'd be glad to have you," replied Dab very politely, "but not this trip."

"Why not?"

"We mean to go right across the bay, and try some fishing."

"Couldn't I fish?"

"Well, no, I don't think you could."

"Why couldn't I?"

"Because,—well, because, most likely, you'd be too sea-sick by the time we got there."

Just then a low, clear voice, behind Dabney, quietly remarked, "How smooth his hair is!"

Dab's face turned red again.

Annie Foster had heard it as distinctly as he had; and she walked right away with her mother, for fear she should laugh again.

"It's my own hair, Jenny Walters," said Dab almost savagely, as he turned around.

"I should hope it was."

"I should like to know what you go to church for, anyhow."

"To hear people talk about sailing and fishing. How much do you s'pose a young lady like Miss Foster cares about small boys?"

"Or little girls, either? Not much; but Annie and I mean to have a good sail before long."

"Annie and I!"

Jenny's pert little nose seemed to turn up more than ever, as she walked away, for she had not beaten her old playfellow quite as badly as usual. There were several sharp things on the very tip or her tongue, but she was too much put out and vexed to try to say them just then.

Dab made the rest of his way home without any further haps or mishaps. A sail on the bay was nothing so new or wonderful for him to look forward to, and so that Sunday went by a good deal like all his other Sundays.

As for Ford Foster, on the contrary, his mind was in a stew and turmoil all day. In fact, just after tea that evening, his father asked him,—

"What book is that you are reading, Ford?"

"Captain Cook's Voyages."

"And the other, in your lap?"

"Robinson Crusoe."

"Well, you might have worse books than they are, that's a fact, even for Sunday, though you ought to have better; but which of them do you and Dabney Kinzer mean to imitate to-morrow?"

"Crusoe!" promptly responded Ford.

"I see. And so you've got Dick Lee to go along as your man Friday."

"He's Dab's man, not mine."

"Oh! and you mean to be Crusoe number two? Well, don't get cast away on any desolate island, that's all."

Ford slipped into the library, and put the books away. It had been Samantha Kinzer's room, and had plenty of book-shelves, in addition to the elegant "cases" Mr. Foster had brought from the city with him; for Samantha was inclined to be of a literary turn of mind. All the cases and shelves were full too; but not on any one of them was Ford Foster able to discover a volume he cared to take out with him in place of "Cook" or "Crusoe."

The next morning, within half an hour after breakfast, every member of the two families was down at the landing, to see their young sailors make their start; and they were all compelled to admit that Dab and Dick seemed to know precisely what they were about.

As for Ford, that young gentleman was wise enough, with all those eyes watching him, not to try any thing that he was not sure of; though he carefully explained to Annie, "Dab is captain, you know. I'm under his orders to-day."

Dick Lee was hardly the wisest fellow in the world, for he added encouragingly,—

"And you's doin' tip-top, for a green hand, you is."

The wind was blowing right off shore, and did not seem to promise any thing more than a smart breeze. It was easy enough to handle the little craft in the inlet; and in a marvellously short time she was dancing out upon the blue waves of the spreading "bay." It was a good deal more like a land-locked "sound" than any sort of a bay, with that long, low, narrow sand-island cutting it off from the ocean.

"I don't wonder Ham Morris called her the 'Swallow,'" said Ford. "How she skims! Can you get in under the deck, there, forward? That's the cabin."

"Yes, that's the cabin," replied Dab. "But Ham had the door put in with a slide, water-tight. It's fitted with rubber. We can put our things in there, but it's too small for any thing else."

"What's it made so tight for?"

"Oh! Ham says he's made his yacht a life-boat. Those places at the sides and under the seats are all water-tight. She might capsize, but she'd never sink. Don't you see?"

"I see. How it blows!"

"It's a little fresh, now we are getting away from under the land. How'd you like to be wrecked?"

"Good fun," said Ford. "I got wrecked on the cars the first time I came over here."

"On the cars?"

"Why, yes. I forgot to tell you about that."

Then followed a very vivid and graphic account of the sad fate of the pig and the locomotive. The wonder was, how Ford should have failed to give Dab that story before. No such failure would have been possible if his head and tongue had not been so wonderfully busy about so many other things, ever since his arrival.

"I'm glad it was I instead of Annie," he said at length.

"Of course. Didn't you tell me she came through all alone?"

"Yes; and she didn't like it much, either. Travelled all night. She ran away from those cousins of mine. Oh, but won't I pay them off when I get to Grantley!"

"Where's that? What did they do?"

"The Swallow" was flying along nicely now, with Dab at the tiller, and Dick Lee tending sail; and Dab could listen with all his ears to Ford's account of his sister's tribulations, and the merciless "practical jokes" of the Hart boys.

"Ain't they older and bigger than you?" asked Dabney, as Ford closed his recital. "What can you do with two of them?"

"They can't box worth a cent, and I can. Anyhow, I mean to teach them better manners."

"You can box?"

"Had a splendid teacher. Put me up to all sorts of things."

"Will you show me how, when we get back?"

"We can practise all we choose. I've two pair of gloves."

"Hurrah for that! Ease her, Dick. It's blowing pretty fresh. We'll have a tough time tacking home against such a breeze as this. Maybe it'll change before night."

"Capt'in Dab," calmly remarked Dick, "we's on'y a mile to run."

"Well, what of it?"

"Is you goin' fo' de inlet?"

"Of course. What else can we do? That's what we started for."

"Looks kind o' dirty, dat's all."

So far as Ford could see, both the sky and the water looked clean enough; but Dick was entirely right about the weather. In fact, if Captain Dabney Kinzer had been a more experienced and prudent seaman, he would have kept "The Swallow" inside the bar that day, at any risk of Ford Foster's good opinion. As it was, even Dick Lee's keen eyes hardly comprehended how threatening was the foggy haze that was lying low on the water, miles and miles away to seaward.

It was magnificently exciting fun, at all events; and "The Swallow" fully merited all that had been said in her favor. The "mile to run" was a very short one, and it seemed to Ford Foster that the end of it would bring them up high and dry on the sandy beach of the island.

The narrow "strait" of the inlet between the bay and the ocean was hardly visible at any considerable distance. It opened to view, however, as they drew near; and Dab Kinzer rose higher than ever in his friend's good opinion, as the swift little vessel he was steering shot unerringly into the contracted channel.

"Ain't we pretty near where you said we were to try for some fish?" he asked.

"Just outside there. Get the grapnel ready, Dick. Sharp, now!"

Sharp it was, and Ford himself lent a hand; and, in another moment, the white sails went down, jib and main; "The Swallow" was drifting along under bare poles, and Dick Lee and Ford were waiting the captain's orders to let go the neat little anchor.

"Heave!"

Over went the iron, the hawser followed briskly.

"That'll do, Dick: hold her!"

Dick gave the rope a skilful turn around its "pin," and Dab shouted,—

"Now for some weak-fish! It's about three fathoms, and the tide's near the turn."

Alas for the uncertainty of human calculations! The grapnel caught on the bottom, surely and firmly; but, the moment there came any strain on the seemingly stout hawser that held it, the latter parted like a thread, and "The Swallow" was all adrift!

"Somebody's done gone cut dat rope!" shouted Dick, as he frantically pulled in the treacherous bit of hemp.

There was an anxious look on Dab Kinzer's face for a moment. Then he shouted,—

"Sharp, now, boys, or we'll be rolling in the surf in three minutes! Haul away, Dick! Haul with him, Ford! Up with her! There, that'll give us headway."

Ford Foster looked out to seaward, even while he was hauling his best upon the sail halyards. All along the line of the coast, at distances varying from a hundred yards or so to nearly a mile, there was an irregular line of foaming breakers—an awful thing for a boat like "The Swallow" to run into!

Perhaps; but ten times worse for a larger craft, for the latter would be shattered on the shoals, where the bit of a yacht would find plenty of water under her; that is, if she did not, at the same time, find too much water over her.

"Can't we go back through the inlet in the bar?" asked Ford.

"Not with this wind in our teeth, and it's getting worse every minute. No more will it do to try to keep inside the surf."

"What can we do, then?"

"Take the smoothest places we can find, and run 'em. The sea isn't very rough outside. It's our only chance."

Poor Ford Foster's heart sank within him, as he listened, and as he gazed ahead upon the long white line of foaming surf and tossing breakers. He saw, however, a look of heroic resolution rising in "Captain Kinzer's" face, and it gave him courage to turn his eyes again towards the surf.

"The Swallow" was now once more moving in a way to justify her name; and, although Ford was no sailor, he could see that her only chance to penetrate that perilous barrier of broken water was to "take it nose on," as Dick Lee expressed it.

That was clearly the thing Dab Kinzer intended to do. There were places of comparative smoothness, here and there, in the tossing and plunging line; but they were bad enough, at the best, and they would have been a good deal worse but for that stiff breeze blowing off shore.

"Now for it!" shouted Dab, as "The Swallow" bounded on.

"Dar dey come!" said Dick.

Ford thought of his mother, and sister, and father; but he had not a word to say, and hardly felt like breathing.

Bows foremost, full sail, rising like a cork on the long, strong billows, which would have rolled her over and over if she had not been handled so skilfully as she really was; once or twice pitching dangerously in short, chopping seas, and shipping water enough to wet her brave young mariners to the skin, and call for vigorous baling afterwards,—"The Swallow" battled gallantly with her danger for a few moments; and then Dab Kinzer swung his hat, and shouted,—

"Hurrah, boys! We're out at sea!"

"Dat's so," said Dick.

"So it is," remarked Ford, a little gloomily; "but how on earth will we ever get ashore again? We can't go back through that surf."

"Well," replied Dab, "if it doesn't come on to blow too hard, we'll run right on down the coast. If the wind lulled, or whopped around a little, we'd find our way in, easy enough, long before night. We might have a tough time beating home across the bay, even if we were inside the bar, now. Anyhow, we're safe enough out here."

Ford could hardly feel that very strongly, but he was determined not to let Dab see it; and he made an effort at the calmness of a Mohawk, as he said, "How about fishing?"

"Guess we won't bother 'em much, but you might go for a bluefish. Sometimes they have great luck with them, right along here."



CHAPTER XI.

SPLENDID FISHING, AND A BIG FOG.

There is no telling how many anxious people there may have been in that region that night, a little after supper; but there was no doubt of the state of mind in at least three family circles.

Good Mrs. Foster could not endure to stay at home and talk about the matter; and her husband and Annie were very willing to go over to the Kinzers' with her, and listen to the encouraging views of Dabney's stout-hearted and sensible mother.

They were welcomed heartily; and the conversation began, so to speak, right in the middle.

"Oh, Mrs. Kinzer! do you think they are in any danger?"

"I hope not. I don't see why there need be, unless they try to return across the bay against this wind."

"But don't you think they'll try? Do you mean they won't be home to-night?" exclaimed Mr. Foster himself.

"I sincerely hope not," said the widow calmly. "I should hardly feel like trusting Dabney out in the boat again, if he should do so foolish a thing."

"But where can he stay?"

"At anchor somewhere, or on the island; almost anywhere but tacking all night on the bay. He'd be really safer out at sea than trying to get home."

"Out at sea!"

There was something really dreadful in the very idea of it; and Annie Foster turned pale enough when she thought of the gay little yacht, and her brother out on the broad Atlantic in it, with no better crew than Dab Kinzer and Dick Lee. Samantha and her sisters were hardly as steady about it as their mother; but they were careful to conceal their misgivings from their neighbors, which was very kindly indeed in the circumstances.

There was little use in trying to think or talk of any thing else beside the boys, however, with the sound of the "high wind" in the trees out by the roadside; and a very anxious circle was that, up to the late hour at which the members of it separated for the night.

But there were other troubled hearts in that vicinity. Old Bill Lee himself had been out fishing all day, with very poor luck; but he forgot all about that, when he learned, on reaching the shore, that Dick and his white friends had not returned. He even pulled back to the mouth of the inlet, to see if the gathering darkness would give him any signs of his boy. He did not know it; but while he was gone Dick's mother, after discussing her anxieties with some of her dark-skinned neighbors, half weepingly unlocked her one "clothes-press," and took out the suit which had been the pride of her absent son. She had never admired them half so much before, but they seemed now to need a red necktie to set them off; and so the gorgeous result of Dick's fishing and trading came out of its hiding-place, and was arranged on the white coverlet of her own bed, with the rest of his best garments.

"Jus' de t'ing for a handsome young feller like Dick," she muttered to herself.

"Wot for'd an ole woman like me want to put on any sech fool finery? He's de bestest boy in de worl', he is. Dat is, onless dar ain't not'in' happened to 'im."

Her husband brought her home no news when he came, and Dick's good qualities were likely to be seen in a strong light for a while longer.

But if the folk on shore were uneasy about "The Swallow" and her crew, how was it with the latter themselves, as the darkness closed around them, out there upon the tossing water?

Very cool and self-possessed indeed had been Captain Dab Kinzer; and he had encouraged the others to go on with their blue-fishing, even when it was pretty tough work to keep "The Swallow" from "scudding" at once before the wind. He was anxious, also, not to get too far from shore; for there was no telling what sort of weather might be coming. It was curious, moreover, what very remarkable luck they had; or rather, Ford and Dick, for Dab would not leave the tiller for a moment. Splendid fellows were those blue-fish, and hard work it was to pull in the heaviest of them. That was just the sort of weather they bite best in; but it is not often that such young fishermen venture to take advantage of it. No, nor the old ones either; for only the stanchest old "salts" of Montauk or New London would have felt altogether at home in "The Swallow" that afternoon.

"I guess I wouldn't fish any more," said Dab at last. "You've caught ten times as many now as we ever thought of catching. Some of them are whoppers too."

"Biggest fishing ever I did," said Ford, as if that meant a great deal.

"Or mos' anybody else, out dis yer way," added Dick. "I isn't 'shamed to show dem fish anywhar."

"No more I ain't," said Dab; "but you're getting too tired, and so am I. We must have a good hearty lunch, and put 'The Swallow' before the wind for a while. I daren't risk any more of these cross seas. We might get pitched over any minute. They're rising."

"Dat's so," said Dick. "And I's awful hungry, I is."

"The Swallow" was well enough provisioned for a short cruise, not to mention the bluefish, and there was water enough on board for several days if they should happen to need it; but there was little danger of that, unless the wind should continue to be altogether against them.

It was blowing hard when the boys finished their dinner, but no harder than it had already blown several times that day; and "The Swallow" seemed to be putting forth her very best qualities as a "sea-boat."

There was no immediate danger apparently; but there was one "symptom" which Dab discerned, as he glanced around the horizon, which gave him more anxiety than either the stiff breeze or the rough sea.

The coming darkness?

No; for stars and lighthouses can be seen at night, and steering by them is easy enough.

Nights are pretty dark things, sometimes, as most people know; but the darkest thing to be met with at sea, whether by night or by day, is a fog, and Dabney saw signs of one coming. Rain, too, might come with it, but that would be of small account.

"Boys," he said, "do you know we're out of sight of land?"

"Oh, no, we're not!" replied Ford confidently. "Look yonder."

"That isn't land, Ford. That's only a fog-bank, and we shall be all in the dark in ten minutes. The wind is changing, too, and I hardly know where we are."

"Look at your compass."

"That tells me the wind is changing a little, and it's going down; but I wouldn't dare to run towards the shore in a fog, and at night."

"Why not?"

"Why? Don't you remember those breakers? Would you like to be blown through them, and not see where you were going?"

"Well, no," said Ford: "I rather guess I wouldn't."

"Jes' you let Capt'in Kinzer handle dis yer boat," almost crustily interposed Dick Lee. "He's de on'y feller on board dat un'erstands nagivation."

"Shouldn't wonder if you're right," said Ford good-humoredly. "At all events, I sha'n't interfere. But, Dab, what do you mean to do about it?"

"Swing a lantern at the mast-head, and sail right along. You and Dick get a nap, by and by, if you can. I won't try to sleep till daylight."

"Sleep? Catch me sleeping!"

"You must; and so must Dick, when the time comes. It won't do for us to all get worn out together. If we did, who'd handle the boat?"

Ford's respect for Dabney Kinzer was growing hourly. Here was this overgrown gawk of a green country boy, just out of his roundabouts, who had never spent more than a day at a time in the great city, and never lived in any kind of a boarding-house; in fact, here was a fellow who had had no advantages whatever,—coming out as a sort of hero.

Ford looked at him hard, as he stood there with the tiller in his hand, but he could not quite understand it, Dab was so quiet and matter-of-course about it all; and, as for that youngster himself, he had no idea that he was behaving any better than any other boy could, should, and would have behaved in those very peculiar circumstances.

However that might be, the gay and buoyant little "Swallow," with her signal lantern swinging at her mast-head, was soon dancing away through the deepening darkness and the fog; and her steady-nerved young commander was congratulating himself that there seemed to be a good deal less of wind and sea, even if there was more of mist.

"I couldn't expect to have every thing to suit me," he said to himself. "And now I hope we sha'n't run down anybody. Hullo! Isn't that a red light, through the fog, yonder?"



CHAPTER XII.

HOW THE GAME OF "FOLLOW MY LEADER" CAN BE PLAYED AT SEA.

There was yet another gathering of human beings on the wind-swept surface of the Atlantic that evening, to whose minds the minutes and hours were going by with no small burden of anxiety to carry.

Not an anxiety, perhaps, as great as that of the three families over there on the shore of the bay, or even of the three boys tossing along through the fog in their bubble of a yacht; but the officers, and not a few of the passengers and crew, of the great iron-builded ocean-steamer were any thing but easy about the way their affairs were looking. It would have been so much more agreeable if they could have looked at them at all.

Had they no pilot on board?

To be sure they had, for he had come on board in the usual way, as they drew near their intended port; but they had somehow seemed to bring that fog along with them, and the captain had a half-defined suspicion that neither the pilot nor he himself knew exactly where they now were. That is a bad condition for a great ship to be in at any time, and especially when it was drawing so near a coast which calls for good seamanship and skilful pilotage in the best of weather.

The captain would not for any thing have confessed his doubt to the pilot, nor the pilot his to the captain; and that was where the real danger lay, after all. If they could only have choked down their pride, and permitted themselves to talk of their possible peril, it would very likely have disappeared. That is, they could at least have decided to stop the vessel till they were rid of their doubt.

The steamer was French, and her captain a French naval officer; and it is possible he and the pilot did not understand each other any too well.

It was a matter of course that the speed of the ship should be somewhat lessened, under such circumstances; but it would have been a good deal wiser not to have gone on at all. Not to speak of the shore they were nearing, they might be sure they were not the only craft steaming or sailing over those busy waters; and vessels have sometimes been known to run against one another in a fog as thick as that. Something could be done by way of precaution in that direction, and lanterns with bright colors were freely swung out; but the fog was likely to diminish their usefulness somewhat. They took away a little of the gloom; but none of the passengers were in a mood to go to bed, with the end of their voyage so near, and they all seemed disposed to discuss the fog, if not the general question of mists and their discomforts. All of them but one, and he a boy.

A boy of about Dab Kinzer's age, slender and delicate-looking, with curly light-brown hair, blue eyes, and a complexion which would have been fair, but for the traces it bore of a hotter climate than that of either France or America. He seemed to be all alone, and to be feeling very lonely that night; and he was leaning over the rail, peering out into the mist, humming to himself a sweet, wild air in a strange but exceedingly musical tongue.

Very strange. Very musical.

Perhaps no such words had ever before gone out over that part of the Atlantic; for Frank Harley was a missionary's son, "going home to be educated;" and the sweet, low-voiced song was a Hindustanee hymn which his mother had taught him in far-away India.

Suddenly the hymn was cut short by the hoarse voice of the "lookout," as it announced,—

"A white light, close aboard, on the windward bow."

That was rapidly followed by even hoarser hails, replied to by a voice which was clear and strong enough, but not hoarse at all. The next moment something, which was either a white sail or a ghost, came slipping along through the fog, and then the conversation did not require to be shouted any longer. Frank could even hear one person say to another out there in the mist, "Ain't it a big thing, Ford, that you know French? I mean to study it when we get home."

"It's as easy as eating. Dab, shall I tell 'em we've got some fish?"

"Of course. We'll sell 'em the whole cargo."

"Sell them? Why not make them a present?"

"We may need the money to get home with. They're a splendid lot. Enough for the whole cabin-full."

"Dat's a fack. Cap'in Dab Kinzer's de sort ob capt'in fo' me, he is!"

"How much, then?"

"Twenty-five dollars for the lot. They're worth it,—specially if we lose Ham's boat."

Dab's philosophy was a little out of gear; but a perfect rattle of questions and answers followed in French, and, somewhat to Frank Harley's astonishment, the bargain was promptly concluded. Fresh fish, just out of the water, were a particularly pleasant arrival to people who had been ten days out at sea.

How were they to get them on board? Nothing easier, since the little "Swallow" could run along so nicely under the stern of the great steamer, after a line was thrown her; and a large basket was swung out at the end of a long, slender spar, with a pulley to lower and raise it.

There was fun in the loading of that basket: but even the boys from Long Island were astonished at the number and size of the fine, freshly-caught blue-fish, to which they were treating the hungry passengers of the "Prudhomme;" and the basket had to go and come again and again.

The steamer's steward, on his part, avowed that he had never before met so honest a lot of Yankee fishermen. Perhaps not; for high prices and short weight are apt to go together, where "luxuries" are selling. The pay itself was handed out in the same basket which went for the fish, and then "The Swallow" was again cast loose.

The wind was not nearly so high as it had been, and the sea had for some time been going down.

Twenty minutes later Frank Harley heard,—for he understood French very well,—

"Hullo, the boat! What are you following us for?"

"Oh! we won't run you down. Don't be alarmed. We've lost our way out here, and we're going to follow you in. Hope you know where you are."

There was a cackle of surprise and laughter among the steamer's officers, in which Frank and some of the passengers joined; and the saucy little "fishing-boat" came steadily on in the wake of her gigantic tide.

"This is grand for us," remarked Dab Kinzer to Ford, as he kept his eyes on the after-lantern of the "Prudhomme." "They pay all our pilot-fees."

"But they're going to New York."

"So are we, if to-morrow doesn't come out clear, and with a good wind to go home by."

"It's better than crossing the Atlantic in the dark, anyhow. But what a steep price we got for those fish!"

"They're always ready to pay well for such things at the end of a voyage," said Dab. "I expected, though, they'd try and beat us down a peg. They generally do. We didn't get much more than the fair market price, after all, only we got rid of our whole catch at one sale."

That was a good deal better than fishermen are apt to do.

Hour followed hour; and "The Swallow" followed the steamer, and the fog followed them both so closely, that sometimes even Dick Lee's keen eyes could with difficulty make out the "Prudhomme's" light. And now Ford Foster ventured to take a bit of a nap, so sure did he feel that all the danger was over, and that Captain Kinzer was equal to what Dick Lee called the "nagivation" of that yacht How long he had slept, he could not have guessed but he was awakened by a great cry from out the mist beyond them, and by the loud exclamation of Captain Kinzer, still at the tiller,—

"I believe she's run ashore!"

It was a loud cry, indeed, and there was good reason for it. Well was it for all on board the great steamer, that she was running no faster at the time and that there was no hurricane of a gale to make things worse for her. Pilot and captain had both together missed their reckoning,—neither of them could ever afterward tell how,—and there they were, stuck fast in the sand, with the noise of breakers ahead of them, and the dense fog all around.

Frank Harley peered anxiously over the rail again but he could not have complained that he was "wrecked in sight of shore," for the steamer was any thing but a wreck as yet, and there was no shore in sight.

"It's an hour to sunrise," said Dab to Ford, after the latter had managed to comprehend the situation. "We may as well run farther in, and see what we can see."

It must have been aggravating to the people on board the steamer, to see that little cockle-shell of a yacht dancing safely along over the shoal on which their "leviathan" had struck, and to hear Ford Foster sing out, "If we'd known you meant to run in here, we'd have followed some other pilot."

"They're in no danger at all," said Dab, "If their own boats don't take 'em all ashore, the coast-wreckers will."

"The government life-savers, I s'pose you mean."

"Yes: they're all alongshore, here, everywhere. Hark! there goes the distress-gun. Bang away! It sounds a good deal more mad than scared."

So it did; and so they were,—captain, pilot, passengers, and all.

"Captain Kinzer" found that he could safely run in for a couple of hundred yards or so; but there were signs of surf beyond, and he had no anchor to hold on by. His only course was to tack back and forth as carefully as possible, and wait for daylight,—as the French sailors were doing, with what patience they could command.

In less than half an hour, however, a pair of long, graceful, buoyant-looking life-boats, manned each with an officer and eight rowers, came shooting through the mist, in response to the repeated summons of the steamer's cannon.

"It's all right, now," said Dab. "I knew they wouldn't be long in coming. Let's find out where we are."

That was easy enough. The steamer had gone ashore on a sand-bar, a quarter of a mile from the beach, and a short distance from Seabright on the New Jersey coast; and there was no probability of any worse harm coming to her than the delay in her voyage, and the cost of pulling her out from the sandy bed into which she had so blindly thrust herself. The passengers would, most likely, be taken ashore with their baggage, and sent on to the city overland.

"In fact," said Ford Foster, "a sand-bar isn't as bad for a steamer as a pig is for a locomotive."

"The train you were wrecked in," said Dab, "was running fast. Perhaps the pig was. Now, the sandbar was standing still, and the steamer was going slow. My! What a crash there'd have been if she'd been running ten or twelve knots an hour, with a heavy sea on!"

By daylight there were plenty of other craft around, including yachts and sail-boats from Long Branch, and "all along shore;" and the Long Island boys treated the occupants of these as if they had sent for them, and were glad to see them.

"Seems to me you're inclined to be a little inquisitive, Dab," said Ford, as his friend peered sharply into and around one craft after another; but just then Dabney sang out,—

"Hullo, Jersey, what are you doing with two grapnels? Is that boat of yours balky?"

"Mind yer eye, youngster. They're both mine, I reckon."

"You might sell me one cheap," continued Dab, "considering how you got 'em. Give you ten cents for the big one."

Ford thought he understood the matter now, and he said nothing; but the "Jersey wrecker" had "picked up" both of those anchors, one time and another, and had no sort of objection to "talking trade."

"Ten cents! Let you have it for fifty dollars."

"Is it gold, or only silver gilt?"

"Pure gold, my boy; but, seem' it's you, I'll let you have it for ten dollars."

"Take your pay in clams?"

"Oh, hush! I hain't no time to gabble. Mebbe I'll git a job here, 'round this yer wreck. If you reelly want that there grapn'I, wot'll you gimme?"

"Five dollars, gold, take it or leave it," said Dab, pulling out a coin from the money he had received for his bluefish.

In three minutes more "The Swallow" was furnished with a much larger and better anchor than the one she had lost the day before; and Dick Lee exclaimed, "It jes' takes Cap'n Kinzer!"

For some minutes before this, as the light grew clearer and the fog lifted a little, Frank Harley had been watching them from the rail of the "Prudhomme," and wondering if all the fisher-boys in America dressed as well as these two.

"Hullo, you!" was the greeting which now came to his ears. "Go ashore in my boat?"

"Not till I've eaten some of your fish for breakfast," said Frank. "What's your name?"

"Captain Dabney Kinzer, of 'most anywhere on Long Island. What's yours?"

"Frank Harley of Rangoon."

"I declare," almost shouted Ford Foster, "if you're not the chap my sister Annie told me of! You're going to Albany, to my uncle Joe Hart's, ain't you?"

"Yes, to Mr. Hart's, and then to Grantley to school."

"That's it. Well, then, you can just come along with us. Get your kit out of your state-room. We can send over to the city after the rest of your baggage, after it gets in."

"Along with you! Where?"

"To my father's house, instead of ashore among those hotel people, and other wreckers. The captain'll tell you it's all right."

Frank had further questions to ask before he was satisfied as to whose hands he was about to fall into; and the whole arrangement was, no doubt, a little irregular. So was the present position of the "Prudhomme" herself, however; and all landing rules were a trifle out of joint by reason of that circumstance. So the steamer authorities listened to Frank's request when he made it, and gruffly granted it.

"The Swallow" lay quietly at her new anchor while her passenger to be was completing his preparations to board her. Part of them consisted of a hearty breakfast,—fresh bluefish, broiled; and while he was eating it the crew of the yacht made a deep hole in what remained of their own supplies. Nobody who had seen them eat would have suspected that their long night at sea had interfered with their appetites. In fact, each of them remarked to the others that it had not, so far as he was concerned.

"We'll make a good run," said Dab. "It'll be great!"

"What?" said Ford, in some astonishment; "ain't you going to New York at all?"

"What for?"

"I thought that was what you meant to do. Shall you sail right straight home?"

"Why not? If we could do that distance at night, and in a storm, I guess we can in a day of such splendid weather as this, with the wind just right too."



CHAPTER XIII

"HOME AGAIN! HERE WE ARE!"

The wind was indeed "just right;" but even Dab forgot, for the moment, that "The Swallow" would go faster and farther before a gale than she was likely to with the comparatively mild southerly breeze now blowing. He was by no means likely to get home by dinner-time. As for danger, there would be absolutely none, unless the weather should again become stormy; and there was no probability of any such thing at that season. And so, after he had eaten his breakfast, and, with a genuine boy's confidence in boys, Frank Harley came on board "The Swallow" as a passenger, the anchor was lifted, and the gay little craft spread her white sails, and slipped lightly away from the neighborhood of the forlorn-looking, stranded steamer.

"They'll have her out of that in less'n a week," said Ford to Frank. "My father'll know just what to do about your baggage, and so forth."

There were endless questions to be asked and answered on both sides; but at last Dab yawned a very sleepy yawn, and said, "Ford, you've had your nap. Wake up Dick, there, and let him take his turn at the tiller. The sea's as smooth as a lake, and I believe I'll go to sleep for an hour or so. You and Frank can keep watch while Dick steers: he's a good steerer."

Whatever Dab said was "orders" now on board "The Swallow;" and Ford's only reply was,—

"If you haven't earned a good nap, then nobody has."

Dick, too, responded promptly and cheerfully; and in five minutes more the patient and skilful young "captain" was sleeping like a top.

"Look at him," said Ford Foster to Frank Harley. "I don't know what he's made of. He's been at that tiller for twenty-three hours by the watch, in all sorts of weather, and never budged."

"They don't make that kind of boy in India," replied Frank.

"He's de bes' feller you ebber seen," added Dick Lee. "I's jes' proud ob him, I is!"

Smoothly and swiftly and safely "The Swallow" was bearing her precious cargo across the summer sea; but the morning had brought no comfort to the two homes at the head of the inlet, or the humble cabin in the village. Old Bill Lee was out in the best boat he could borrow, by early daylight; and more than one of his sympathizing neighbors followed him a little later. There was no doubt at all that a thorough search would be made of the bay and the island, and so Mr. Foster wisely remained at home to comfort his wife and daughter.

"That sort of boy," mourned Annie, "is always getting into some kind of mischief."

"Annie!" exclaimed her mother indignantly, "Ford is a good boy, and he does not run into mischief."

"I didn't mean Ford: I meant that Dabney Kinzer. I wish we'd never seen him, or his sailboat either."

"Annie," remarked her father a little reprovingly, "if we live by the water, Ford will go out on it, and he had better do so in good company. Wait a while."

Annie was silenced, but it was only too clear that she was not entirely convinced. Her brother's absence and all their anxiety were positively due to Dab Kinzer, and his wicked, dangerous little yacht; and he must be to blame somehow.

She could not help "waiting a while," as her father bade her; but her eyes already told that she had been doing more than wait.

Summer days are long; but some of them are a good deal longer than others, and that was one of the longest any of those people had ever known.

For once, even dinner was more than half neglected in the Kinzer family circle. At the Fosters' it was forgotten almost altogether. Long as the day was, and so dreary, in spite of all the bright, warm sunshine, there was no help for it: the hours would not hurry, and the wanderers would not return. Tea-time came at last; and with it the Fosters all came over to Mrs. Kinzer's again, to take tea, and tell her of several fishermen who had returned from the bay without having discovered a sign of "The Swallow" or its crew.

Stout-hearted Mrs. Kinzer talked bravely and encouragingly, nevertheless, and did not seem to abate an ounce of her confidence in her son. It seemed as if, in leaving off his roundabouts, particularly considering the way in which he had left them off, Dabney must have suddenly grown a great many "sizes" in his mother's estimation. Perhaps, too, that was because he had not left them off any too soon.

There they sat around the tea-table, the two mothers and all the rest of them, looking gloomy enough; while over there in her bit of a brown house, in the village, sat Mrs. Lee in very much the same frame of mind, trying to relieve her feelings by smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of her boy's best clothes, and planning for him any number of bright red neckties, if he would only come back to wear them.

The neighbors were becoming more than a little interested, and even excited about the matter; but what was there to be done?

Telegrams had been sent to other points on the coast, and all the fishermen notified. It was really one of those puzzling cases, where even the most neighborly can do no better than "wait a while."

Still, there were more than a dozen people, of all sorts, including Bill Lee, lingering around the "landing" as late as eight o'clock that evening.

Suddenly one of them exclaimed,—

"There's a light coming in!"

Others followed with,—

"There's a boat under it!"

"Ham's boat carried a light."

"I'll bet it's her!"

"No, it isn't"—

"Hold on and see."

There was not long to "hold on;" for in three minutes more "The Swallow" swept gracefully in with the tide, and the voice of Dab Kinzer shouted merrily,—

"Home again! Here we are!"

Such a ringing volley of cheers answered him!

It was heard and understood away there in the parlor of the Morris house, and brought every soul of that anxious circle right up standing.

"Must be it's Dab!" exclaimed Mrs. Kinzer.

"O mother!" said Annie, "is Ford safe?"

"They wouldn't cheer like that, my dear, if any thing had happened," remarked Mr. Foster; but, in spite of his coolness, the city lawyer forgot to put his hat on, as he dashed out of the front gate and down the road towards the landing.

Then came one of those times that it takes a whole orchestra and a gallery of paintings to tell any thing about: for Mrs. Lee as well as her husband was on the beach; and within a minute after "Captain Kinzer" and his crew had landed, poor Dick was being hugged and scolded within an inch of his life, and the two other boys found themselves in the midst of a perfect tumult of embraces and cheers.

Frank Harley's turn came soon, moreover; for Ford Foster found his balance, and introduced the "passenger from India" to his father.

"Frank Harley!" exclaimed Mr. Foster. "I've heard of you, certainly; but how did you—boys, I don't understand"—

"Oh! father, it's all right. We took Frank off the French steamer, after she ran ashore."

"Ran ashore?"

"Yes. Down the Jersey coast. We got in company with her in the fog, after the storm. That was yesterday evening."

"Down the Jersey coast? Do you mean you've been out at sea?"

"Yes, father; and I'd go again, with Dab Kinzer for captain. Do you know, father, he never left the rudder of 'The Swallow' from the moment we started until seven o'clock this morning."

"You owe him your lives!" almost shouted Mr. Foster; and Ford added emphatically, "Indeed we do!"

It was Dab's own mother's arms that had been around him from the instant he had stepped ashore, and Samantha and Keziah and Pamela had had to content themselves with a kiss or so apiece; but dear, good Mrs. Foster stopped smoothing Ford's hair and forehead just then, and came and gave Dab a right motherly hug, as if she could not express her feelings in any other way.

As for Annie Foster, her face was suspiciously red at the moment; but she walked right up to Dab after her mother released him, and said,—

"Captain Kinzer, I've been saying dreadful things about you, but I beg pardon."

"I'll be entirely satisfied, Miss Foster," said Dabney, "if you'll only ask somebody to get us something to eat."

"Eat!" exclaimed Mrs. Kinzer. "Why, the poor fellows! Of course they're hungry."

"Cap'n Kinzer allers does know jes' de right t'ing to do," mumbled Dick in a half-smothered voice; and his mother let go of him, with—

"Law, suz! So dey be!"

Hungry enough they all were, indeed; and the supper-table, moreover, was the best place in the world for the further particulars of their wonderful cruise to be told and heard.

Dick Lee was led home in triumph to a capital supper of his own; and as soon as that was over he was rigged out in his Sunday clothes,—red silk necktie and all,—and invited to tell the story of his adventures to a roomful of admiring neighbors. He told it well, modestly ascribing every thing to Dab Kinzer; but there was no good reason, in any thing he said, for one of his father's friends to inquire next morning,—

"Bill Lee, does you mean for to say as dem boys run down de French steamah in dat ar' boat?"

"Not dat. Not zackly."

"'Cause, ef you does, I jes' want to say I's been down a-lookin' at her, and she ain't even snubbed her bowsprit."



CHAPTER XIV.

A GREAT MANY THINGS GETTING READY TO COME!

The newspapers from the city brought full accounts of the stranding of the "Prudhomme," and of the safety of her passengers and cargo.

The several editors seemed to differ widely in their opinions relating to the whole affair; but there must have been some twist in the mind of the one who excused everybody on the ground that "no pilot, however skilful, could work his compass correctly in so dense a fog as that."

None of them had any thing whatever to say of the performances of "The Swallow." The yacht had been every bit as well handled as the great steamship; but then, she had reached her port in safety, and she was such a little thing, after all.

Whatever excitement there had been in the village died out as soon as it was known that the boys were safe; and a good many people began to wonder why they had been so much upset about it, anyhow.

Mrs. Lee herself, the very next morning, so far recovered her peace of mind as to "wonder wot Dab Kinzer's goin' to do wid all de money he got for dem bluefish."

"I isn't goin' to ask him," said Dick. "He's capt'in."

As for Dab himself, he did an immense amount of useful sleeping, that first night; but when he awoke in the morning he shortly made a discovery, and the other boys soon made another. Dab's was, that all the long hours of daylight and darkness, while he held the tiller of "The Swallow," he had been thinking as well as steering. He had therefore been growing very fast, and would be sure to show it, sooner or later.

Ford and Frank found that Dab had forgotten nothing he had said about learning how to box, and how to talk French; but he did not say a word to them about another important thing. He talked enough, to be sure; but a great, original idea was beginning to take form in his mind, and he was not quite ready yet to mention it to any one.

"I guess," he muttered more than once, "I'd better wait till Ham comes home, and talk to him about it."

As for Frank Harley, Mr. Foster had readily volunteered to visit the steamship-office in the city, with him, that next day, and see that every thing necessary was done with reference to the safe delivery of his baggage. At the same time, of course, Mrs. Foster wrote to her sister Mrs. Hart, giving a full account of all that had happened, but saying that she meant to keep Frank as her own guest for a while, if Mrs. Hart did not seriously object.

That letter made something of a sensation in the Hart family. Neither Mrs. Hart nor her husband thought of making any objection; for, to tell the truth, it came to them as a welcome relief.

"It's just the best arrangement that could have been made, Maria, all around," said he. "Write at once, and tell her she may keep him as long as she pleases."

That was very well for them, but the boys hardly felt the same way about it. They had been planning to have "all sorts of fun with that young missionary," in their own house. He was, as Fuz expressed it, to be "put through a regular course of sprouts, and take the Hindu all out of him."

"Never mind, though," said Joe, after the letter came, and the decision of their parents was declared: "we'll serve him out after we get to Grantley. There won't be anybody to interfere with the fun."

"Well, yes," replied Fuz, "and I'd just as lief not see too much of him before that. He won't have any special claim on us, neither, if he doesn't go there from our house."

That was a queer sort of calculation, but it was only a beginning. They had other talks on the same subject, and the tone of them all had in it a promise of lively times at Grantley for the friendless young stranger from India.

Others, however, were thinking of the future, as well as themselves; and Joe and Fuz furnished the subject for more than one animated discussion among the boys down there by the Long Island shore. Ford Foster gave his two friends the full benefit of all he knew concerning his cousins.

"It's a good thing for you," he said to Frank, "that the steamer didn't go ashore anywhere near their house. They're a pair of born young wreckers. Just think of the tricks they played on my sister Annie!"

They were all related in Ford's most graphic style, with comments to suit from his audience. After that conversation, however, it was remarkable what good attention Dab Kinzer and Frank Harley paid to their sparring-lessons. It even exceeded the pluck and perseverance with which Dab worked at his French; and Ford was compelled to admit, to him in particular, "You ought to have a grown-up teacher,—somebody you won't kill if you make out to get in a hit on him. You're too long in the reach for me, and your arms are too hard."

What between the boxing-gloves and the boat, there could be no question but what Frank Harley had landed at the right place to get strong in.

There was plenty of fishing, bathing, riding, boating, boxing: if they had worked day and night, they could not have used it all up. Three boys together can find so much more to do than one can, all alone; and they made it four as often as they could, for Dick Lee had proved himself the best kind of company. Frank Harley's East-Indian experience had made him indifferent to the mere question of color, and Ford Foster was too much of a "man" to forget that long night of gale and fog and danger on board "The Swallow."

It was only a day or two after that perilous "cruise," that Dab Kinzer met his old playmate, Jenny Walters, just in the edge of the village.

"How well you look, Dabney!" remarked the sharp-tongued little lady. "Drowning must agree with you."

"Yes," said Dab, "I like it."

"Do you know what a fuss they made over you, when you were gone? I s'pose they'd nothing else to do."

"Jenny," said Dab suddenly, holding out his hand, "you mustn't quarrel with me any more. Bill Lee told me about your coming down to the landing. You may say any thing to me you want to."

Jenny colored, and bit her lip; and she would have given her bonnet to know if Bill Lee had told Dab how very red her eyes were, as she looked down the inlet for some sign of "The Swallow." Something had to be said, however; and she said it almost spitefully.

"I don't care, Dabney Kinzer: it did seem dreadful to think of you three boys being drowned, and you, too, with your new clothes on. Good-morning, Dab."

"She's a right good-hearted girl, if she'd only show it," muttered Dab, as Jenny tripped away; "but she isn't a bit like Annie Foster."

His thoughts must have been on something else than his young-lady acquaintances, nevertheless; for his next words were, "How I do wish Ham Morris would come home!"

There was time enough for that, and Ham was hardly likely to be in a hurry. The days were well employed in his absence; and, as they went by, the Morris homestead went steadily on looking less and less like its old self, and more and more like a house made for people to live and be happy in. Mrs. Kinzer and her daughters had now settled down in their new quarters as completely as if they had never known any others; and it seemed to Dab, now and then, as if they had taken almost too complete possession. His mother had her room, of course; and a big one it was. There could be no objection to that. Then another big one, of the very best, had to be set apart and fitted up for Ham and Miranda on their return home; and Dab had taken great delight in doing all in his power to make that room all it could be made. But then Samantha had insisted upon having a separate domain, and Keziah and Pamela had imitated their elder sister to a fraction.

The "guest-chamber" had to be provided as well, or what would become of the good old Long Island notions of hospitality?

Dab said nothing while the partition was under discussion, nor for a while afterwards; but one day at dinner, just after the coming of a letter from Miranda, announcing the speedy arrival of herself and her husband, he quietly remarked,—

"Now I can't sleep in Ham's room any longer, I suppose I'll have to go out on the roof. I won't sleep in the garret or in the cellar."

"That will be a good deal as Mrs. Morris says, when she comes," calmly responded his mother.

"As Miranda says!" said Dab, with a long breath.

"Miranda?" gasped Samantha and her sisters in chorus.

"Yes, my dears, certainly," said their mother. "This is Mrs. Morris's house,—or her husband's,—not mine. All the arrangements I have made are only temporary. She and Ham both have ideas and wills of their own. I've only done the best I could for the time being."

The girls looked at one another in blank amazement, over the idea of Mrs. Kinzer being any thing less than the mistress of any house she might happen to be in; but Dabney laid down his knife and fork, with—

"It's all right, then. If Ham and Miranda are to settle it, I think I'll take the room Sam has now. You needn't take away your books, Sam: I may want to read some of them, or lend them to Annie. You and Kezi and Mele had better take that upper room back. The smell of the paint's all gone now, and there's three kinds of carpet on the floor."

"Dabney!" exclaimed Samantha, reproachfully, and with an appealing look at her mother, who, however, said nothing on either side, and was a woman of too much good sense to take any other view of the matter than that she had announced.

Things were again all running on smoothly and pleasantly, before dinner was over; but Dab's ideas of how the house should be divided were likely to result in some changes,—perhaps not precisely the ones he indicated, but such as would give him something better than a choice between the garret, the cellar, and the roof. At all events, only three days would now intervene before the arrival of the two travellers, and any thing in the way of further discussion of the room question was manifestly out of order.

Every thing required for the coming reception was pushed forward by Mrs. Kinzer with all the energy she could bring to bear; and Dab felt called upon to remark to Pamela,—

"Isn't it wonderful, Mele, how many things she finds to do after every thing's done?"

The widow had promised her son-in-law that his house should be "ready" for him, and it was likely to be a good deal more ready than either he or his wife had expected.



CHAPTER XV.

DABNEY KINZER TO THE RESCUE.

One of the most troublesome of the annoyances which come nowadays to dwellers in the country, within easy reach of any great city, is the bad kind of strolling beggar known as "the tramp." He is of all sorts and sizes; and he goes everywhere, asking for any thing he wants, very much as if it belonged to him and he had come for his own—so long as he can do his asking of a woman or a sickly-looking man. There had been very few of these gentry seen in that vicinity, that summer, for a wonder; and those who had made their appearance had been reasonably well behaved. Probably because there had been so many healthy-looking men around, as a general thing. But it come to pass, on the very day in which Ham and Miranda were expected to arrive by the last of the evening trains, just as Dab Kinzer was turning away from the landing, where he had been for a look at "The Swallow" and to make sure she was all right for her owner's eyes, that a very disreputable specimen of a worthless man stopped at Mrs. Kinzer's to beg something to eat, and then sauntered away down the road. It was a little past the middle of the afternoon; and even so mean-looking, dirty a tramp as that had a perfect right to be walking along then and there. The sunshine, and the fresh salt air from the bay, were as much his as anybody's, and so was the water in the bay; and no one in all that region of country stood more in need of plenty of water than he.

The vagabond took his right to the road, as he had taken his other right to beg his dinner, until, half-way down to the landing, he was met by an opportunity to do a little more begging.

"Give a poor feller suthin'?" he impudently drawled, as he stared straight into the sweet fresh face of Annie Foster.

Annie had been out for only a short walk; but she happened to have her pocket-book with her, and she thoughtlessly drew it out, meaning to give the scamp a trifle, if only to get rid of him.

"Only a dime, miss?" whined the tramp, as he shut his dirty hand over Annie's gift. "Come, now, make it a dollar, my beauty. I'll call it all square for a dollar."

The whine grew louder as he spoke; and the wheedling grin on his disgusting face changed into an expression so menacing that Annie drew back with a shudder, and was about returning her little portemonnaie to her pocket.

"No, you don't, honey!"

The words were uttered in a hoarse and husky voice, and were accompanied by a sudden grip of poor Annie's arm with one hand, while with the other he snatched greedily at the morocco case.

Did she scream?

How could she help it? Or what else could she have done, under the circumstances?

She screamed vigorously, whether she would or no, and at the same moment dropped her pocket-book in the grass beside the path, so that it momentarily escaped the vagabond's clutches.

"Shut up, will you!"

Other angry and evil words, accompanied by more than one vicious threat, followed thick and fast, as Annie struggled to free herself, while her assailant peered hungrily around after the missing prize.

It is not at all likely he would have attempted any thing so bold as that, in broad daylight, if he had not been drinking too freely; and the very evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rash rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences.

These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower joint of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing, at a tremendous rate, for nearly half a minute.

A boy of fifteen assailing a full-grown ruffian?

Why not? Age hardly counts in such a matter; and then it is not every boy of even his growth that could have brought muscles like those of Dab Kinzer to the swing he gave that four-foot length of seasoned ironwood.

Annie saw him coming; but her assailant did not until it was too late for him to do any thing but turn, and receive that first hit in front instead of behind. It would have knocked over almost anybody; and the tramp measured his length on the ground, while Dabney plied the rod on him with all the energy he was master of.

"Oh, don't, Dabney, don't!" pleaded Annie: "you'll kill him!"

"I wouldn't want to do that," said Dab, as he suspended his pounding; but he added, to the tramp,—

"Now you'd better get up and run for it If you're caught around here again, it'll be the worse for you."

The vagabond staggered to his feet, and he looked savagely enough at Dab; but the latter looked so very ready to put in another hit with that terrible cudgel, and the whole situation was so unpleasantly suggestive of further difficulty, that the youngster's advice was taken without a word. That is, if a shambling kind of double limp can be described as a "run for it."

"Here it is: I've found my pocket-book," said Annie, as her enemy made the best of his way off.

"He did not hurt you?"

"No: he only scared me, except that I suppose my arm will be black-and-blue where he caught hold of it. Thank you ever so much, Dabney: you're a brave boy. Why, he's almost twice your size."

"Yes; but the butt of my rod is twice as hard as his head," said Dabney. "I was almost afraid to strike him with it. I might have broken his skull."

"You didn't even break your rod."

"No; and now I must run back for the other pieces and the tip. I dropped them in the road."

"Please, Dabney, see me home first," said Annie. "I know it's foolish, and there isn't a bit of danger; but I must confess to being a good deal frightened."

Dab Kinzer was a little the proudest boy on Long Island, as he walked along at Annie's side, in compliance with her request. He went no farther than the gate, to be sure, and then he returned for the rest of his rod: but before he got back with it, Keziah Kinzer hurried home from a call on Mrs. Foster, bringing a tremendous account of Dab's heroism; and then his own pride over what he had done was only a mere drop in the bucket, compared to that of his mother.

"Dabney is growing wonderfully," she remarked to Samantha, "He'll be a man before any of us know it."

If Dab had been a man, however, or if Ham Morris or Mr. Foster had been at home, the matter would not have been permitted to drop there. That tramp ought to have been followed, arrested, and shut up where his vicious propensities would have been under wholesome restraint for a while. As it was, after hurrying on for a short distance, and making sure he was not pursued, he clambered over the fence, and sneaked into the nearest clump of bushes. From this safe covert he watched Dab Kinzer's return after the lighter pieces of his rod; and then he even dared to crouch along the fence, and see which house his young conqueror went into.

"That's where he lives, is it?" he muttered, with a scowl of the most ferocious vengeance. "Well, they'll have some fun there before they git to bed to-night, or I'll know the reason why."

It could not have occurred to such a man that he had been given his dinner at the door of that very house. What had the collection of his rights as a "tramp" to do with questions of gratitude and revenge?

The bushes were a good enough hiding-place for the time, and he crawled back to them with the air and manner of a man whose mind was made up to something.

Ford and Frank were absent in the city that day with Mr. Foster, who was kindly attending to some affairs of Frank's; but when the three came home, and learned what had happened, it was hard to tell which of them failed most completely in trying to express his boiling indignation. They were all on the point of running over to the Morris house to thank Dab, but Mrs. Foster interposed.

"I don't think I would. To-morrow will do as well, and you know they're expecting Mr. and Mrs. Morris this evening."

It was harder for the boys to give it up than for Mr. Foster, and the waiting till to-morrow looked a little dreary. They were lingering near the north fence two hours later, with a faint idea of catching Dab, even though they knew that the whole Kinzer family were down at the railway-station, waiting for Ham and Miranda.

There was a good deal of patience to be exercised by them also; for that railway-train was provokingly behind time, and there was "waiting" to be done accordingly.

The darkness of a moonless and somewhat cloudy night had settled over the village and its surrounding farms, long before the belated engine puffed its way in front of the station-platform.

Just at that moment, back there by the north fence, Ford Foster exclaimed,—

"What's that smell?"

"It's like burning hay, more than any thing else," replied Frank.

"Where can it come from, I'd like to know? We haven't had a light out at our barn."

"Light?" exclaimed Frank. "Just look yonder!"

"Why, it's that old barn, 'way beyond the Morris and Kinzer house. Somebody must have set it on fire. Hullo! I thought I saw a man running. Come on, Frank!"

There was indeed a man running just then; but they did not see him, for he was already very nearly across the field, and hidden by the darkness. He had known how to light a fire that would smoulder long enough for him to get away.

He was not running as well, nevertheless, as he might have done before he came under the operation of Dab Kinzer's "lower joint."

Mrs. Kinzer did her best to prevent any thing like a "scene" at the railway-station when Ham and Miranda came out upon the platform; but there was an immense amount of "welcome" expressed in words and hugs and kisses, in the shortest possible space of time. There was no lingering on the platform, however; for Ham and his wife were as anxious to get at the "surprise" they were told was waiting for them, as their friends were to have them come to it.

Before they were half way home, the growing light ahead of them attracted their attention; and then they began to hear the vigorous shouts of "Fire!" from the throats of the two boys, re-enforced now by Mr. Foster himself, and the lawyer's voice was an uncommonly good one. Dabney was driving the ponies, and they had to go pretty fast for the rest of that short run.

"Surprise?" exclaimed Ham. "I should say it was! Did you light it before you started, Dabney?"

"Don't joke, Hamilton," remarked Mrs. Kinzer. "It may be a very serious affair for all of us. But I can't understand how in all the world that barn should have caught fire."

"Guess it was set a-going," said Dab.



CHAPTER XVI.

DAB KINZER AND HAM MORRIS TURN INTO A FIRE-DEPARTMENT.

The Morris farm, as has been said, was a pretty large one; and the same tendency on the part of its owners which led them to put up so extensive and barn-like a house, had stimulated them from time to time to make the most liberal provisions for the storage of their crops. Barns were a family weakness with them, as furniture had been with the Kinzers. The first barn they had put up, now the oldest and the farthest from the house, had been a large one. It was now in a somewhat dilapidated condition, to be sure, and was bowed a little northerly by the weight of years that rested on it; but it had still some hope of future usefulness if it had not been for that tramp and his box of matches.

"There isn't a bit of use in trying to save it!" exclaimed Ham, as they were whirled in through the wide-open gate. "It's gone!"

"But, Ham," said Mrs. Kinzer, "we can save the other barns perhaps. Look at the cinders falling on the long stable. If we could keep them off somehow!"

"We can do it, Ham," exclaimed Dab, very earnestly. "Mother, will you send me out a broom and a rope, while Ham and I set up the ladder?"

"You're the boy for me," said Ham. "I guess I know what you're up to."

The ladder was one the house-painters had been using, and was a pretty heavy one; but it was quickly set up against the largest and most valuable of the barns, and the one, too, which was nearest and most exposed to the burning building and its flying cinders. The rope was on hand, and the broom, by the time the ladder was in position.

"Ford," said Dab, "you and Frank help the girls bring water, till the men from the village get here. There's plenty of pails, but every one of our hands is away.—Now, Ham, I'm ready."

Up they went, and were quickly astride of the ridge of the roof. It would have been perilous work for any man to have ventured farther unassisted; but Dab tied one end of the rope firmly around his waist, Ham tied himself to the other, and then Dab could slip down the steep roof, in any direction, without danger of slipping off to the ground below.

But the broom?

It was as useful as a small fire-engine. The flying cinders of burning hay or wood, as they alighted upon the sun-dried shingles of the roof, needed to be swept off as fast as they fell, before they had time to fulfil their errand of mischief. Here and there they had been at work for some minutes, and the fresh little blazes they had kindled had so good a start, that the broom alone would have been insufficient; and there the rapidly-arriving pails of water came into capital play.

Ford Foster had never shone out to so good an advantage in all his life before, as he did when he took his station on the upper rounds of that ladder, and risked his neck to hand water-pails to Ham. It was hard work, all around, but hardest of all for the two "firemen" on the roof. Now and then the strength and agility of Ham Morris were put to pretty severe tests, as Dab danced around under the scorching heat, or slipped flat upon the sloping roof. It was well for Ham that he was a man of weight and substance.

There were scores and scores of people streaming up from the village now, arriving in panting squads, every moment; and Mrs. Kinzer had all she could do to keep them from "rescuing" every atom of her furniture out of the house, and piling it up in the road.

"Wait, please," she said to them very calmly.

"If Ham and Dab save the long barn, the fire won't spread any farther. The old barn won't be any loss to speak of, anyhow."

Fiercely as the dry old barn burned, it used itself up all the quicker on that account; and it was less than thirty minutes from the time Ham and Dabney got at work before roof and rafters fell in, and the worst of the danger was over. The men and boys from the village were eager enough to do any thing that now remained to be done; but a large share of this was confined to standing around and watching the "bonfire" burn down to a harmless heap of badly smelling ashes. As soon, however, as they were no more wanted on the roof, the two "volunteer firemen" came down; and Ham Morris's first word on reaching the ground was,—

"Dab, my boy, how you've grown!"

Not a tenth of an inch in mere stature, and yet Ham was entirely correct about it.

He stared at Dabney for a moment; and then he turned, and stared at every thing else. There was plenty of light just then, moon or no moon; and Ham's eyes were very busy for a full minute. He noted rapidly the improvements in the fences, sheds, barns, the blinds on the house, the paint, a host of small things that had changed for the better; and then he simply said, "Come on, Dab," and led the way into the house. Her mother and sisters had already given Miranda a hurried look at what they had done, but Ham was not the man to do any thing in haste. Deliberately and silently he walked from room to room, and from cellar to garret, hardly seeming to hear the frequent comments of his enthusiastic young wife. That he did hear all that had been said around him as he went, however, was at last made manifest, for he said,—

"Dab, I've seen all the other rooms. Where's yours?"

"I'm going to let you and Miranda have my room," said Dab. "I don't think I shall board here long."

"I don't think you will either," said Ham emphatically. "You're going away to boarding-school. Miranda, is there any reason why Dab can't have the south-west room, up stairs, with the bay-window?"

That room had been Samantha's choice, and she looked at Dab reproachfully; but Miranda replied,—

"No, indeed. Not if you wish him to have it."

"Now, Ham," said Dabney, "I'm not big enough to fit that room. Give me one nearer my size. That's a little loose for even Sam, and she can't take any tucks in it."

Samantha's look changed to one of gratitude, and she did not notice the detested nickname.

"Well, then," said Ham, "we'll see about it. You can sleep in the spare chamber to-night.—Mother Kinzer, I couldn't say enough about this house business if I talked all night. It must have cost you a deal of money. I couldn't have dared to ask it. I guess you must kiss me again."

A curious thing it was that came next,—one that nobody could have reckoned on. Mrs. Kinzer—good soul—had set her heart on having Ham and Miranda's house "ready for them" on their return; and now Ham seemed to be so pleased about it, she actually began to cry. She said, too,—

"I'm so sorry about the barn!"

Ham only laughed, in his quiet way, as he kissed his portly mother-in-law, and said,—

"Come, come, mother Kinzer, you didn't set it afire. Can't Miranda and I have some supper? Dab must be hungry, too, after all that roof-sweeping."

There had been a sharp strain on the nerves of all of them that day and evening; and they were glad enough to gather around the tea-table, while all that was now left of the old barn smouldered peaceably away with half the boys in the village on guard.

Once or twice Ham or Dab went out to see that all was dying out rightly; but it was plain that all the danger was over, unless a high wind should come to scatter the cinders.

By this time the whole village had heard of Dab's adventure with the tramp, and had at once connected the latter with the fire. There were those, indeed, who expressed a savage wish to connect him with it bodily; and it was well for him that he had done his running away promptly, and had hidden himself with care, for men were out after him in all directions, on foot and on horseback. Who would have dreamed of so dirty a vagabond "taking to the water"?

"He's a splendid fellow, anyway!"

Odd, was it not? but Annie Foster and Jenny Walters were half a mile apart when they both said that very thing, just before the clock in the village church hammered out the news that it was ten, and bedtime. They were not either of them speaking of the tramp.

It was long after that, however, before the lights were out in all the rooms of the Morris mansion.



CHAPTER XVII.

DAB HAS A WAKING DREAM, AND HAM GETS A SNIFF OF SEA-AIR.

Sleep? One of the most excellent things in all the world, and very few people get too much of it nowadays.

As for Dabney Kinzer, he had done his sleeping as regularly and faithfully as even his eating, up to the very night after Ham Morris came home to find the old barn afire. There had been a few, a very few, exceptions. There were the nights when he was expecting to go duck-shooting before daylight, and waked up at midnight with a strong conviction that he was late about starting. There were, perhaps, a dozen of "eeling" expeditions, that had kept him out late enough for a full basket and a proper scolding. There, too, was the night when he had stood so steadily by the tiller of "The Swallow," while she danced, through the dark, across the rough billows of the Atlantic.

But, on the whole, Dab Kinzer had been a good sleeper all his life till then. Once in bed, and there had been for him an end of all wakefulness.

On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come, late as was the hour when the family circle broke up.

It could not have been the excitement of Ham and Miranda's return. He would have gotten over that by this time. No more could it have been the fire, though the smell of smouldering hay came in pretty strongly at times through the wide-open windows. If any one patch of that great roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab would surely have found the spot; for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his restlessness. Some fields on a farm will "grow" wheat better than others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep. At last Dab got wearily up, and took a chair by the window.

The night was dark, but the stars were shining; and every now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself, and toss up the hot ashes the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of burnt hay.

"If you're going to burn hay," soliloquized Dabney, "it won't do to take a barn for a stove. Not that kind of a barn. But what did Ham Morris mean by saying that I was to go to boarding-school? That's what I'd like to know"

The secret was out.

He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not asked a question; but, if his brains were ever to work over his books as they had over Ham's remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all gone. It had come upon him so suddenly, the very thing he thought about that night in "The Swallow," and wished for and dreamed about during all those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and Frank Harley, ever since they came in from that memorable cruise.

It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother would take to it when it should be brought seriously before her. Little he guessed the truth. Ham's remark had gone deep into other ears as well as Dabney's; and there were reasons, therefore, why good Mrs. Kinzer was sitting by the window of her own room, at that very moment, as little inclined to sleep as was the boy she was thinking of. So proud of him too, she was, and so full of bright, motherly thoughts of the man he would make, "one of these days, when he gets his growth."

There must have been a good deal of sympathy between Dab and his mother; for by and by, just as she began to feel drowsy, and muttered, "Well, well, we'll have a talk about it to-morrow," Dab found himself nodding against the window-frame, and slowly rose from his chair, remarking,—

"Guess I might as well finish that dream in bed. If I'd tumbled out o' the window I'd have lit among Miranda's rose-bushes. They've got their thorns all out at this time o' night."

It was necessary for them both to sleep hard, after that; for more than half the night was gone, and they were to be up early. So indeed they were; but what surprised Mrs. Kinzer when she went into the kitchen was to find Miranda there before her.

"You here, my dear? That's right. I'll take a look at the milk-room. Where's Ham?"

"Out among the stock. Dab's just gone to him."

Curious things people will do at times. Miranda had put down the coffee-pot on the range. There was not a single one of the farm "help" around, male or female; and there stood the blooming young bride, with her back toward her mother, and staring out through the open door. And then Mrs. Kinzer slipped forward, and put her arms around her daughter's neck.

Well, it was very early in the morning for those two women to stand there and cry; but it seemed to do them good, and Miranda remarked at last, as she kissed her mother,—

"O mother, it is all so good and beautiful, and I'm so happy!"

And then they both laughed, in a subdued and quiet way; and Miranda picked up the coffee-pot while Mrs. Kinzer walked away into the milk-room. Such cream as there seemed to be on all the pans that morning!

As for Ham Morris, his first visit on leaving the house had been to the relics of the old barn, as a matter of course.

"Not much of a loss," he said to himself; "but it might have been, but for Dab. There's the making of a man in him. Wonder if he'd get enough to eat, if we sent him up yonder? On the whole, I think he would. If he didn't, I don't believe it would be his fault. He's got to go; and his mother'll agree to it, I know. Talk about mothers-in-law! If one of 'em's worth as much as she is, I'd like to have a dozen. Don't know 'bout that, though. I'm afraid the rest would have to take back seats as long as Mrs. Kinzer was in the house."

Very likely Ham was right; but just then he heard the voice of Dab, behind him,—

"I say, Ham, when you've looked at the other things, I want to show you 'The Swallow.' I haven't hurt her a bit, and her new grapnel's worth three of the old one."

"All right, Dab. I think I'd like a sniff of the water. Come on. There's nothing else I know of like that smell of the shore with the tide half out."

No more there is; and there have been sea-shore men, many of them, who had wandered away into the interior of the country, hundreds and hundreds of long miles, and settled there, and even got rich and old there, and yet who have come all the way back again, just to get another smell of the salt marshes and the sea-air and the out-going tide.

Ham actually took a little boat, and went on board "The Swallow," when they reached the landing, and Dab kept close to him.

"She's all right, Ham. But what are you casting loose for?"

"Dab, they won't all be ready for breakfast in two hours. The stock and things can go: the men'll tend to 'em. Just haul on that sheet a bit. Now the jib. Look out for the boom. There! The wind's a little ahead, but it isn't bad. Ah!"

The last word came out in a great sigh of relief, and was followed by a chuckle which seemed to gurgle all the way up from Ham's boots.

"This is better than railroading," he said to Dabney, as they tacked into the long stretch where the inlet widened toward the bay. "No pounding or jarring here. Talk of your fashionable watering-places! Why, Dab, there ain't any thing else in the world prettier than that reach of water and the sand-island, with the ocean beyond it. There's some ducks and some gulls. Why, Dab, do you see that? There's a porpoise, inside the bar!"

It was as clear as daylight that Ham Morris felt himself "at home" again, and that his brief experience of the outside world had by no means lessened his affection for the place he was born in. If the entire truth could have been known, it would have been found that he felt his heart warm toward the whole coast and all its inhabitants, including the clams. And yet it was remarkable how many of the latter were mere empty shells when Ham finished his breakfast that morning. He preferred them roasted, and his mother-in-law had not forgotten that trait in his character.

Once or twice in the course of the sail, Dabney found himself on the point of saying something about boarding-schools; but each time his friend broke away to the discussion of other topics, such as blue-fish, porpoises, crabs, or the sailing qualities of "The Swallow," and Dab dimly felt that it would be better to wait until another time. So he waited.

It was a grand good time, however, to be had before breakfast; and as they again sailed up the inlet, very happy and very hungry, Dab suddenly exclaimed,—

"Ham, do you see that? How could they have guessed where we'd gone? There's the whole Kinzer tribe, and the boys are with them, and Annie."

"What boys and Annie?"

"Oh! Ford Foster and Frank Harley. Annie is Ford's sister. They live in our old house, you know."

"What's become of Jenny?"

"You mean my boat? There she is, hitched a little out, just beyond the landing."

There was nothing on Dab's face to lead any one to suppose that he guessed the meaning of the quizzical grin on Ham's.

It is barely possible, however, that there would have been fewer people at the landing, if Ham and Dab had not been keeping a whole house-full of hungry mortals, including a bride, waiting breakfast for them.



CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW DAB WORKED OUT ANOTHER OF HIS GREAT PLANS.

There was a sort of council at the breakfast-table of the Foster family that morning; and Ford and Annie found their side of it "voted down."

That was not at all because they did not debate vigorously, and even "protest;" but the odds were too much against them.

"Annie, my dear," said Mrs. Foster at last, in a gentle but decided way, "I'm sure your aunt Maria, if not your uncle, must feel hurt at your coming away so suddenly. If we invite Joe and Foster to visit us, it will make it all right."

"Yes," sharply exclaimed Mr. Foster: "we must have them come. They'll behave themselves here. I'll write to their father: you write to Maria."

"They're her own boys, you know," added Mrs. Foster soothingly.

"Well, mother," said Annie, "if it must be. But I'm sure they'll make us all very uncomfortable if they come."

"I can stand 'em for a week or so," said Ford, with the air of a man who can do or bear more than most people. "I'll get Dab Kinzer to help me entertain them."

"Excellent," said Mr. Foster; "and I hope they will be civil to him."

"To Dabney?" asked Annie.

"Fuz and Joe civil to Dab Kinzer?" exclaimed Ford.

"Certainly: I hope so."

"Father," said Ford, "may I say just what I was thinking?"

"Speak it right out."

"Well, I was thinking what a good time Fuz and Joe would be likely to have, trying to get ahead of Dab Kinzer."

Annie looked at her brother, and nodded; and there was a bit of a twinkle in the eyes of the lawyer himself, but he only remarked,—

"Well, you must be neighborly. I don't believe the Hart boys know much about the seashore."

"Dab and Frank and I will try and educate them."

Annie thought of the ink, and her box of spoiled cuffs and collars, while her brother was speaking. Could it be that Ford meant a good deal more than he was saying? At all events, she fully agreed with him on the Dab Kinzer question.

That was one "council;" and it was one of peace or war, probably a good deal as the Hart boys themselves might thereafter determine.

At the same hour, however, matters of even greater importance were coming to a decision around the well-filled breakfast-table in the Morris mansion. Ham had given a pretty full account of his visit to Grantley, including his dinner at Mrs. Myers's, and all he had learned relating to the academy.

"It seems like spending a great deal of money," began Mrs. Kinzer, when Ham at last paused for breath; but lid caught her up at once, with—

"I know you've been paying out a good deal, mother Kinzer, but Dab must go, if I pay"—

"You pay, indeed? For my boy? I'd like to see myself! Now I've found out what he is, I mean he shall have every advantage. If this Grantley's the right place"—

"Mother," exclaimed Samantha, "it's the very place Mr. Foster is going to send Ford to, and Frank Harley."

"Exactly," said Ham; "Mr. Hart spoke of a Mr. Foster,—his brother-in-law,—a lawyer."

"Why," said Keziah, "he's living in our old house now. Ford Foster is Dab's greatest crony. They're the very people you met at the landing."

"Yes, I've heard all that," said Ham, "but somehow I hadn't put the two things together. Now, mother Kinzer, do you really mean Dab is to go?"

"Of course I do," said she.

"Well, if that isn't doing it easy! Do you know, it's about the nicest thing I've heard since I got here?"

"Except the barn," said Dabney, unable to hold in any longer. "Mother, may I stand on my head a while?"

"You'll need all the head you've got," said Ham. "You won't have much time to get ready."

"He'll have books enough after he gets there," said Mrs. Kinzer decidedly. "I'll risk Dabney."

"And they'll make him give up all his slang," added Samantha.

"Yes, Sam; when I come back I'll talk nothing but Greek and Latin. I'm getting French now from Ford, and Hindu from Frank Harley. Then I know English, and slang, and Long-Islandish. Think of one man with seven first-rate languages!"

But Dabney soon found himself unable to sit still, even at the breakfast-table. Not that he got up hungry, for he had done his duty by Miranda's cookery; but the house itself, big as it was, seemed too small to hold him, with all his new prospects swelling within him. Perhaps, moreover, the rest of the family felt that they would be better able to discuss the important subject before them, after Dab had taken himself out into the open air; for none of them tried to stay his going.

"This beats dreaming, all hollow," he said to himself, as he stood, with his hands in his pockets, half way down to the gate between the two gardens. "Now I'll see what can be done about that other matter."

Two plans in one head, and so young a head as that?

Yes; and it spoke well for Dab's heart, as well as his brains, that his plan number two was not a selfish one. The substance of it came out in the first five minutes of the talk he had, a trifle later, with Ford and Frank, on the other side of the gate.

"Ford, you know there's twenty dollars left of the money the Frenchman paid us for the bluefish."

"Well, what of it? Isn't it yours?"

"One share of it's mine. The rest is yours and Dick's."

"He needs it more'n I do."

"Ford, did you know Dick Lee was real bright?"

"'Cute little chap as ever I saw. Why?"

"Well, he ought to go to school."

"Why don't he go?"