"We will risk that. Ice-cream always pays. Ours does, at any rate."

"Snow is coming, I guess, for it looks like a change in the weather."

A change, indeed, was setting in. The river indicated it. It was as smooth and glassy as if Aunt Stanshy's flat iron had been over it and pressed every wrinkle and ripple down. The air was light. The smoke from the houses and the steam from the only tug that the commerce of the town could afford to support fell, and fluttered downward in thin veils. Overhead there was a mass of gray cloud halting directly above the town, and looking too lazy ever to stir again.

"Storm comin'!" declared Simes Badger to all his cronies at Silas Trefethen's store. "Wind is sou' already."

It did not stay "sou'," but swung around to the east, then worked into the north-east, and then all through the night the wind was sifting cotton-wool down on all the streets as if carpeting them, on all the roofs as if blanketing them, into all the cracks in the walls of houses and barns as if it would chink them up and make them tight for winter.

Chancing to look out of the window as soon as he was awake the morning after the storm, Charlie shouted,

"Ice-cream!"

"Yes, all you want," said Aunt Stanshy, who, leaving her coffee-pot, her pan of fried potatoes, and batch of biscuit on the kitchen stove, had mounted the stairs to wake the sleepy Charlie.

"Boys will soon be here to make it."

"I warrant you! They will make their ice-cream before shoveling the folks' paths at home."

It looked so, for half a dozen boys were out in the yard by eight o'clock, shouting "ice-cream" to Charlie, who had not finished his breakfast.

With the help of Aunt Stanshy's "essences" enough snow was flavored to meet the demands of customers, who, quickly notified, quickly appeared, bringing the contents of all the nail-boxes at their homes. Even Aunt Stanshy was prevailed upon to buy a dish, and she consistently paid cash for it.

Her boarder, Will Somers, was induced to promise more extensive patronage.

"Will, we all think you a first-rate feller," said the artful president; "and just to help us out at the fair, couldn't you take your meals at our restaurant? Our mothers say they will cook us things—steak, you know, and so on."

"Y—e—s, I will try it for—the present."

For some reason the "things" said to have been promised—"steak, you know, and so on," did not arrive. Will gave out soon after noon the first day.

"Aunt Stanshy, I shall starve if I stay there," said Will, appearing at her pantry door; "and if I didn't starve, they would kill me with their abominable 'cream' that they make me buy, though they say it is at a reduced price."

The restaurant was given up very soon. The president said that people had left the sea-side for the city, and they could hardly expect enough home trade to make it pay.

Pip thought he could make his table pay if he had some flowers to set it off. But that was not all; he was envious of others' success. The fair had been characterized by the usual amount of "human nature" displayed on such occasions, and Pip now exhibited his peculiarities. For ten cents he bought a few white flowers at a hot-house, and then thought he would get ahead of the boys and be at the barn at an early hour, making sure for himself any possible customers.

"To give all an equal chance," declared the president, "to make it the same for those who get up early and those who lie abed, the barn will be open at nine o'clock, except on holidays, when we will accommodate the public at an earlier hour."

Pip thought he would be on hand by eight one morning. He would then be sure to catch any "nail custom," as that was a class apt to be astir early, hunting up currency before other people had a chance at it. But the weather had stiffened since the storm. It was too cold to be agreeable, and even the nail-customers, usually so early at the barn, were now at home hugging the kitchen stove. Pip stood alone at the grand flower table. His blossoms lay unsought upon the table.

"Pip! Pip!"

It was the governor down in the yard.

"We are going to see them skate on the pond back of the mill. Come, go!"

Pip could hardly be coming and going at the same time, but he left his table and left his flowers. That day, the cold increased steadily.

"It is nippin' cold," said Aunt Stanshy to a neighbor, and what did Jack Frost do but take out his nippers and clap them on Pip's flowers! The next morning, Pip found a little heap of frozen petals on the "flower-table." He could no more make them into flowers than if they had been petals of snow!

That day, "owing to the weather," the "Fair" was closed. The boys divided the little heap of cash and the large heap of nails, and each knight took his share. The club now ceased to have an active existence. It became like any other stick that is laid aside and set up in the corner. It seemed as if the knights had forgotten that they belonged to a club whose expressive title suggested energetic movement.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE FIRE.

Will Somers belonged to the "Cataract," which was not a "steamer," but a hand-engine. To belong to the "Cataract" it was necessary to own a red flannel shirt, a good pair of lungs, and a nimble pair of legs. The shirt—did that mean fire? The lungs enabled one to do all the "hollering" that might be necessary. The legs were still more essential, that the engine might move with proper speed to a fire, and this was at a neck-breaking pace. As the engine company had many alarms to answer, some of them purposely raised to enable the company to "show off"—so Simes Badger said—the legs of a Cataract-boy were not the least valuable of his fire-apparatus. And then it did seem as if the company all took a fiendish delight in going "like mad" by the homes of old women and all single ladies like Miss Persnips, tossing their red helmets—I omitted this essential piece of property—directing at the windows defiant glances, and all the while their sharp, cracked engine-bell went up and down, over and over, as if it were an insane acrobat.

"Fire! Fire!" screamed a female voice, one afternoon. The screamer was Miss Persnips.

"Where, where?" shouted Simes Badger.

"O, there, there! I know it must be," was the answer.

That was all Simes wanted, and especially as Mr. Walton was holding a service at St. John's. If Simes could excite a neighborhood, and also create a sensation in church, he was happy. He now rushed into the church-vestibule, and then into the bell-tower, and seizing the rope pulled it as if the small-pox had broken out and attacked every other person in the community. Simes being the one to make the bell boom, "Danger!" he gave evidence that this one person certainly was not afflicted with the malady.

In just two minutes from the first rap on the bell, Will Somers, leaving behind him a caldron of boiling herbs, was at the door of the engine-house, and unlocking it, had seized the long rope attached to the engine. There were enough who joined him to rush out into the street the clumsy machine. There they received large re-enforcements.

"Where is the fire?" bawled the foreman.

Nobody knew.

"Where is the fire, Simes?" the bell-ringer was asked as the engine rattled toward the church-door.

"Miss Persnips!"

Simes meant not the place of the fire, but the source of the information.

"Miss Persnips's house is afire!" shouted the engine-men. It was enough. They rushed for that lady's place, and seeing a column of smoke above her roof, concluded that its source was directly below, and stopping at a pump this side of her house, ran their hose down into the well. They were working the brakes at a lively rate and preparing for a thorough bombardment of the building, when fortunately she appeared, screaming, "Fire is over there, beyond the woods!"

The smoke had now shifted its coarse, and rolling away from Miss Persnips's, hung in a dark, sullen cloud above the forest but a little way off.

Away went the engine and its allies, sweeping along men and boys, and also every able-bodied member of the Up-the-Ladder Club whose legs could carry him. Down past shops and houses and farms rushed the crowd, pulling along several fat men who had grasped the rope. By and by they came to a farmer in a red shirt who pointed his spectacles at them across the top-rail of the fence at the right of the road.

"Where's the' fire, squire?" excitedly asked the foreman.

"Fire? I don't know of fire," replied the farmer, coolly, "at leastways, any fire that is worth puttin' out. I have got a bonfire in back here, and it was purty big, and its smoke you may have seen in the village. If you want to stretch your muscle and soak your hose—and that is about all you engine-people do—you may come and play on my bonfire."

"Come and play on you" shouted an angry voice.

"Put out him" screamed another.

"Play away, One," bawled a third, giving the number of the engine as known at fires.

There was now a half-joking, half-angry comment on the "squire," and there were enough there desirous of wetting down, not his bonfire, but its builder. The foreman quieted the strife and the "Cataract" started for home. A willingness was expressed to moisten "Miss Persnips's place" because she had misled them, though it was unintentional on her part.

Some one sang out, "She can't tell about smoke. She has only one good eye, and t'other one is a glass eye."

This put them all in a good-natured mood, and the "Cataract" went home.

Soon there was a fire serious enough to satisfy the most ardent of the company. A milder style of weather had been prevailing after the late snow-storm. The sun had put extra coal on its fires and melted all the snow. Then came a wind that blew continuously two days, drying the grounds and the buildings.

"I notice, Somers," said Dr. Tilton, "that you did not have good luck in finding a fire that last alarm, but if one is sounded now, I guess it will amount to something. Fearful dry, it is getting to be."

The doctor was a true prophet. The next alarm did amount to something. One morning about half past seven, there echoed in the narrow streets of Seamont a cry that plain meant bad news. Will Somers heard, and might be said to have seen, that cry. He had taken down the shutters of his employer's store, and was hanging in the windows two very gaudily lettered placards, "A balm for all, Jenkins's Soporific," "The need of an aching world, Muggins's Liniment." Will heard that magic cry, "Fire—re—re!" He turned and saw a man coming down the street. He was not only coming, but running, his hat off, and his mouth open wide enough to take in a ten-cent loaf of brown bread, Will thought.

"Woolen mill on fire!"

"Woolen mill!" gasped Will, and his first thought was, "glory enough for one day."

The woolen mill was in a pretty little hollow, a nest whose walls were spreading elm-trees. The mill was a relic of the old industries of the place and represented a vain effort to make Seamont a "manufacturing center."

"Then the fire is down in the hollow," thought Will. He saw somebody approaching who he thought might be a customer, but he quickly decided the question whether he owed a greater duty to one person or to many—the public—by turning the key in the lock of the door. Then he hurried away. As he rushed to the house of the "Cataract," he stopped at the door of Dr. Tilton's home.

"There," he said to Biddy Flannigan, who answered, "tell the doctor there's a tremendous alarm in town, and I thought he might want me to go, as he is an owner, and here is the key."

"What?" said Biddy.

"Woolen mill's afire, tell him."

"Woolen Mill Sophia! Who is she?" wondered Biddy, and she went to report to the doctor.

"Faith, sir, yer clerk says there is a tremenjus 'larm in town and it's about Woolen Mill Sophia, and here is the key, sir."

"Woolen-mill what?" asked the doctor. "I am an owner up there."

"Indade! It must be that Sophia works up there."

"Sophia?" the doctor asked, and then stared at her and exclaimed, "It is 'woolen mill's afire!' My! Where are my boots? Quick! Bertha, bring down my boots, please."

This last request was shouted up stairs to his niece, Bertha Barry, who was making a brief visit at the doctor's. Bertha quickly appeared, boots in hand, her blue eyes looking bright and fresh as the spring violets just gathered from the fields.

"Bertha, it's the old mill that is afire. Will Somers has left the key of the store here and gone to the fire. I can forgive him this morning, though I did think his duties as a fireman began to interfere with his duties as an apothecary. Let me see! I'm all ready, I believe—guess I must go up to the fire. Tell your aunt I have gone to the fire and I'll be back—when I arrive."

Off went the doctor. Bertha delivered the message to her aunt and went down stairs. Then she looked out of the window and watched the people on their way to the fire.

"Guess I'll go to the fire, too," said Bertha, "if aunt is willing."

"Och," said Biddy, as she watched the departing Bertha, "we'll all be fur goin' up to see Sophia. The saints defind us!"

The fire had started in the waste room of the old mill. Somebody had once insisted on isolating this quarter as much as possible, and brick partitions had been put up that happily interfered with the spread of the fire and allowed all the operatives a chance to escape. The fire finally reached an elevator. It then darted with startling rapidity to the top of the building, shooting up like an arrow sent by a destructive hand below. The flames were now spreading every-where in the highest story. People gathered from the town, and the engines soon were working.

"Get every body out of the building!" said a commanding voice, owned by a man who had just arrived.

"Of course! That's what we have just been doing," said a second.

The cry now arose, "Two boys in the mill!"

Some one said that the boys had made their escape with the other operatives, but had gone back into one of the lower stories after their overcoats.

"Boys in the mill!" rang out the fearful cry.

The owner of the commanding voice rushed forward into the lower entry of the mill, swinging an ax. Will Somers found him at the door trying to cut round the latch.

"What's that for?" asked Will.

"Want to get 'em out, you fool!"

"Have you tried the door?"

"N—n—o."

Will seized it, pulled it, and open it came!

Will was brave, and, in such an emergency as the present, generally took his wits with him. The room was full of smoke. He stepped in and shouted, but there was no response. While at the door of the first room, he heard some one behind saying, "Boys in the next story, they say." Will turned and sprang up stairs. Just ahead was the person who had recently spoken. The proprietor of the commanding voice was now retreating, his ax over his shoulder, stepping proudly out in the consciousness that he had done a memorable thing. Up the stairs went Will and his companion, the smoke thickening about them. Reaching the second floor and pushing open the door of the adjoining room, they saw—was it a boy on the floor? He had evidently striven to gain the door, but when he had almost reached it, had succumbed to the suffocating smoke, falling with arms stretched out toward the goal he desired to secure. And who was it running toward them, boy or man, the smoke parting about him as he advanced, then closing up again? It was a boy rushing for the door, trying to make his way through the smoke which, light as it was, proved too heavy a burden for him, for down he dropped, felling flat upon his face. It was the work of a moment apparently to seize the boys and carry them out into the entry.

"Thank God for strong arms!" said Will Somers, lifting one boy and starting off with him.

"Yes, thank Him for every thing good," answered his companion, shouldering the other prize. They descended the stairs. How the smoke had increased! They had been absent longer than they thought, and in that time the fire was rapidly advancing toward them. They heard a loud noise without, a shout rising above the crackle and roar of the flames. Then voices were heard at the foot of the stairs: "Come this way! Quick! Hurry!" As Will passed through the lower entry, he chanced to glance into the room whose door had been left open by the knight of the ax. A draft had been created, and Will could see that the flames were springing toward the outer air.

"This way! Hurry!" people were shouting, and through the almost blinding, bewildering, suffocating smoke, Will and his companion bore the trophies they had snatched from the flames.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" went up heartily from the dense, black crowd below. The rescued boys were laid upon the grass at a safe distance from the burning mill. The people began to gather about them.

"Ah, poor Tim, poor Tim!" said a woman, bending over one of the boys.

"That's Ann there with Tim Tyler," said Charlie to Sid Waters, these two enterprising knights having made good use of their legs and quickly reached the spot.

"Who's Ann?"

"It is Tim's mother."

"I recognize the other boy. It's Bob Landers."

"Will Somers, this you?" asked Charlie.

"It will be when my face is washed. Dirty work at fires."

"Why, Mr. Walton, is this you? What a 'ero! Did you save one of them boys?" squeaked Miss Persnips to Will's companion.

The minister's face was not very clean after his fight with the sooty enemy, but as Will thought, "Love sees through all disguises."

"Yes, here I am, and if some of you good people will carry these boys home, the rest of us will soak down those tenement houses opposite the mill and see if we can't save them."

"The dear man! So disinterested, and before he had got his face washed," said Miss Persnips, pressing nearer to gain a better look at the object of her admiration.

"Miss Persnips, excuse me," said the foreman of the "Torrent," the great rival of the "Cataract," "but unless you withdraw, we shall be obliged to wash you out of the way with the hose. Play away, Three!" he roared.

"O, massy!" screamed the shop-keeper, retiring to a safe place.

Will Somers went back to his place at the brakes of the "Cataract." As he passed the door of the mill he looked into the entry, "What a blaze!" he said.

It was not surprising that the flames had swept forward with such rapidity. Up those old wooden stairs drying for years, greasy with the oil drippings of the mill, the fire leaped and flew even rather than leaped. The flames were reaching out like long, forked arms, vainly clutching after the two boys that had been snatched away. The building was now the plaything of the flames. Through it and over it, now climbing to the highest point of the old-fashioned roof, then searching down into the cellar, scorching, raging, roaring every-where, went the fire. In places unexpected the flames would show themselves, looking out like the faces of firefiends. Then they would retire a moment, only to come again and burst out with a fury that nothing could resist, a fury that raged and rioted till beams, rafters, flooring, and stair-ways were a black, ashy heap, sputtering and hissing toward the sky—a snake heap full of hot fangs.

"I wonder how that fire started," was a frequent exclamation. "Don't know," said every body save one poor, old tobacco-ridden man who confessed that he had been smoking in the waste room, the place where the fire started.

"When you see a man shoving a lighted pipe into sich a place." said Simes Badger to the gossippy circle at Silas Trefethen's store that night, "send in a bucket of water after him."

"What for? to put out the fire, or to wash him?" asked a hearer.

"Both," said Simes, "one to protect the place and the other to purify him."

The wise men all laughed, and there was some sense in the laugh that applauded the oracle.

Tim Tyler and Bob Landers had both been carried to their homes. Bob escaped serious injury, but it was found that Tim was badly burned.

"I felt it a good deal at the very first," he told Mr. Walton one day, "when, in going after my coat, I happened to open a door where the fire was, and it darted at me. You see the pain stopped, but now it has started up."

"Yes, I understand that while the first contact with the fire is painful, then what you might call a paralyzing of the nerves takes place, and feeling is benumbed. When the action of the fire ceases, and the attempt at healing sets in, the nerves try to do their duty and the pain starts up once more. I have thought that the old martyrs who were burned at the stake, while they smarted terribly at first, had an easier time after that. Bad enough to step upon the hot round of such a ladder to heaven, but it was easier climbing after that. You got confused, Tim, didn't you, in the mill, when trying to find your way back?"

"O yes; and as I said, I opened a door where the fire rushed at me. It was so smoky I wonder I ever got out at all. It seems I had some good friends."

"Yes, and God was your best friend, and he helped you, and if you are not a martyr, you can try to bear your pain as patiently as you can, and some people in bearing pain stand more than the martyrs even."

Tim looked up. "Could you—could you—say a small prayer for me? I don't want to knuckle under, but grin and bear it best I can."

When Mr. Walton came out into the kitchen where Ann was she said: "I heard Tim ask you to pray. That was a good deal for him to do. Afore, you did it without the asking, but I was glad to have him just speak up for himself. O, he has been a softenin' since the fire, a comin' round a good deal."

"Where is your brother?"

"Mine? Tim, you mean?"

"Yes."

She only shook her head, and looked sad.

As Mr. Walton was walking home he met Tony, one of his favorites.

"Well, Tony, how is the club? Have they all got the shields Miss Barry gave them?"

"I think so, and you were very kind to promise what you did; but we don't have any meetings now."

"Don't you?"

"No, sir."

"Won't you come in and see me?"

Tony followed his friend into the clergyman's study. Then Mr. Walton found his mother and brought her into the study.

"This little fellow is one of my Sunday-school boys, and his name is Tony."

"Why," said the old mother, looking into his face, "I have seen him before."

And Tony lifted his eyes—large, lustrous, black—to the old lady's face rimmed with silver hair, and said, ingenuously,

"I don't think you ever did. I have never been here."

"But I have seen you, and I want to see you again; and you will come when you can, won't you? Where do you live?"

"At Mr. Badger's, and I came from New York with a Mr. Blanco."

"Where is your father?"

"He is in Italy."

"And that is over the sea, over the sea!" she murmured, as she returned to her sitting-room. There she stood looking at the picture of a ship, and, glancing up at the church vane, which could be seen from her window, she wondered if the weather would be easterly and rainy that day.

When they were alone, Tony said to Mr. Walton, "Do you see Tim Tyler often?"

"Pretty often."

"And they are real poor?"

"O yes."

On his way home Tony met Charlie.

"Mr. Walton says they are real poor at Tim Tyler's, Charlie. I wish I had some money to give him."

Charlie thought a minute, and then he spoke up, eagerly, "I say, Tony, let's get up a fair for him."

"That's the very thing I wanted to ask you about. Now it's strange we should both think of it."

"That's so."

"Let's shake hands on it, Charlie."

Tony and Charlie, standing on the sidewalk, shook hands cordially. "What next? The shaking of hands would not bring a fair.

"Let's go and see Miss Barry," suggested Charlie. This was in accordance with the boys' custom to refer all their troubles to this sympathetic teacher.

"We want to get up a fair for Tim Tyler," said Charlie, enthusiastically.

"Yes, yes!" cried Tony. Miss Barry looked down into the boys' eager faces.

"Tim Tyler, that boy burned at the fire?"

"Yes," said Charlie.

"That would be splendid."

"But—but," said Tony, "we want you to help us. Could—could you?"

"Yes, I'll help."

The boys were in raptures.

"Have you asked the other boys?" asked the teacher.

"No," replied Charlie; "but there go Sid Waters and Rick Grimes down street now. We might ask them."

"You tell them, please, I want to see them."

When Sid and Rick arrived, their assent, at first, was readily given to the teacher's proposition for a fair by the boys in behalf of Tim Tyler.

"Only," said Rick, "won't it go to old Tim, his uncle, for rum? I don't believe in that."

"O, Tim's mother wouldn't allow that."

"But, you see, Tim had a fuss with Charlie Macomber, and imposed on him," exclaimed Sid.

"Charlie is willing, for he has said so," replied Miss Barry. "You are not going to hold on to an old grudge. Your name is 'Up-the-Ladder Club,' and not down the ladder. You go down when you hold on to a grudge, boys."

"We won't go down!" cried Charlie.

"No, no!" said the boys.

The different members of the club signified their willingness. Will Somers said he would assist.

One other person must be consulted, the older "honorary member" of the club, Aunt Stanshy. Knowing her very just and positive opposition to drinking habits, Miss Barry thought she might refer to old Tim's, and throw out a sharp opinion that the uncle ought to help the boy, as he lived in the family of the boy's mother. Charlie, too, thought his aunt might object, but she did not. She only put on that look of sadness Charlie had noticed when old Tim was in the neighborhood that rainy day, and to Will's remark that old Tim ought to do more, she said, with a sigh,

"I suppose the boy is not responsible for other people's failings, and they say his face is very white, and his hands are real thin, and he behaves better than he did. Yes, I'll—help."

It was easy to decide when to hold this fair, but "where" was a difficult problem.

"Take the barn chamber," said Sid.

"It's too cold," replied Will, "and this is to be quite a grand affair."

It was like Aunt Stanshy to offer her front room and sitting-room for Tim's benefit, provided Will could spare his quarters, and spare he did.

"We will scatter some posters," said Will. "I will see that they are printed."

"We can do it ourselves with pen and ink, and then people will think more of it, you know. Besides, as we scatter them, we may have a chance to solicit donations, as they call it," said Sid.

"Splendid!" replied Will.

"And we will call on the apothecary," shouted Charlie.

"Yes, but if it be candy, I must put an extra string round the package to make sure that it all gets to the right place and is not troubled on the way."

The members of the club who had met to "consult" were in excellent spirits, especially when Will said, in reply to the governor's proposition to ask friends to contribute refreshments, "I see you know how to do it. Your experience at your fair fitted you to go right along with this thing in splendid style."

Tony thought he could bring some pictures that had been forwarded from Italy, and Charlie said, "I guess I can get up a maginary."

"A maginary?" asked Will.

Charlie only chuckled over his proposition, and made no explanations.

"I propose," said Will, "I propose, Mr. President"—here he bowed to Sid, which caused that dignitary to stick his thumb into the lowest button hole of his jacket and swell out with pride—"I propose that we call our affair a 'Helping-Hand Sale.' You know there is a good deal in a name, and it sets people to thinking, and sets them to helping, too, and I think Miss Barry will like the name."

This was agreeable to the club, whose members now separated to their homes.

"Aunt Stanshy," said Charlie, that night, "do you know where my rabbit is?"

"I don't know. Now I told you, when Miss Persnips came down here, that thing in her arms, and she smilin' and blinkin', as if she had an armful of gold, that she was givin' you an elephant rather than a rabbit. Nobody knows where the critter is or what it is up to."

Charlie found the white pet, and asked Will what he thought the rabbit looked like.

"Looks more like a rabbit than any thing else, Charlie."

"Aunt Stanshy called it an elephant."

"Well, you might say elephant, the white elephant of Siam—sort of a distant cousin. Why, what do you ask the question for?"

Charlie grinned, but made no reply.

Every thing was made ready for the sale. Aunt Stanshy's two rooms were the scene of much bustle, and while the boys were at their tables, Miss Barry in a tastily-draped corner was ready for a reasonable sum to serve out refreshments to every applicant.

The Helping-Hand Sale had various attractions. Among them was Charlie's "maginary." It was a box covered with white cloth, a piece of workmanship at which Charlie had been secretly tinkering for two days. It was labeled "A Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam. Price to see, three cents, and don't tell when you've seen it."

This attracted great attention.

"Miss Persnips," said Charlie to the shopkeeper, who came to patronize the sale, "do you want to see my maginary? Only three cents, and don't tell."

"Your menagerie? Yes. What have you got there? Some dreadful animal! I'm afraid to."

Charlie lifted the cover of the box, and there, fat and sleepy, was—Miss Persnips told the rest.

"Did you ever! That darling, sweet pet I gave you. Quite an idea, really, and here's another cent."

The white elephant's relative was a conspicuous character—after the lifting of the cover—that evening.

The next morning Charlie appeared before Will, hanging out a long, dismal face, and speaking with difficulty.

"She's gone!"

"Who, Aunt Stanshy?"

"No, Bunny!"

"Your rabbit? How?"

"I don't know. I left her all right in the maginary, last night."

"Let me go out and look round. But where did you put your box?"

"Well, Aunt Stanshy thought it would do just as well if I put the box out into the wood-shed—and—"

"Was the door left open?"

"I saw it open this morning."

"I will look about."

Will went into the wood-shed, and there before the door he saw two cats licking their chops, and their guilty eyes seemed to him to say, "Rabbit stew for breakfast! Keep dark!"

"Charlie," said Will, entering the house again, "I think two cats out there took your rabbit, and we will catch them and box them and exhibit them."

"As my maginary?"

"Yes, and I'll tell you how to label them."

The cats were caught and boxed, and this was the label their cage bore on the second and last evening of the "Helping Hand Sale:" "Destroyers of the Distant Cousin of the White Elephant of Siam." This device took, and many pennies were put by the neighbors into Charlie's hands. When the boys summed up the profits of the sale, they had for Tim Tyler's benefit the sum of thirty dollars, which Mr. Walton promised should be judiciously expended.

"It all shows," remarked Miss Barry to the club, "what we can do when we work in earnest, and also how much small sums amount to."

Simes Badger's comment on the affair was that Aunt Stanshy had shown herself a Christian, "knowin' as I do," said Simes, "the story of the Tyler affair way back."

Mr. Walton and his old mother had something also to say about the sale, and it was in connection with one of Tony's Italian pictures that Mr. Walton bought.

"A house, mother, in Naples, not far from the water, you see."

The old lady was silent awhile. Then she murmured, "I have seen it, haven't you, somewhere?"

"Why, yes—no. What is it?"

But the old lady herself was confused about it. She looked at the fair home by the sea, and then looked again, but she could not seem to positively identify it.

"And still I have seen it before," she affirmed.

To identify the spot was like trying to get hold of the exact form of a ship that partially breaks through the fog and then recedes, ever coming yet ever vanishing.



CHAPTER XVII.

TWO MUD-TURTLES.

"There goes a man drunk, Aunt Stanshy."

Aunt Stanshy said nothing, but continued to thump away on her ironing-board.

"He is going down the lane, aunty."

Aunt Stanshy heard Charlie, but she said nothing, only ironing away steadily as ever. Charlie heard her sigh once, or thought he did.

"Did you speak, aunty?"

"Me, child? Why, no!"

Charlie continued to look out of the window that fronted the narrow lane. The drunken man was not a very attractive object. Then it was a dark, lowery, and rainy day in the latter part of November. The streets were muddy, fences damp and clammy to the touch. Over the river hung a gray, cheerless fog. To such a day a staggering drunkard could not be said to contribute a cheering feature, and it was no wonder that Aunt Stanshy cared little to see him. Soon after this, Charlie went out into the barn. It had a deserted look, especially up in the chamber.

"No White Shields here now," he said, mournfully.

That fastened window, too, the nail driven securely above the hook and staple, had a mournful look to Charlie's soul. He remembered the story that Simes Badger had told him about this window and the closed door below.

"I wonder if they will ever be open," thought Charlie.

He remembered the river view that was possible from the "cupelo" above, and he said, "Guess I'll climb up and see what the weather is." Charlie was not a very experienced weather-observer, but he thought he would like to obtain a wider outlook than the lane window had afforded him. He planted an eye between the slats of his watch-tower and then looked off. The view was neither extensive nor varied, mostly one of mud-flats. A thick fog had come from the sea and stretched like a curtain across the mouth of the dock in the rear of Aunt Stanshy's premises. The low tide had left in the dock a stretch of ugly flats, out of which stuck various family relics like pots and kettles, then pots and kettles again, and finally a dead cat. Charlie saw several tall chimneys in the neighborhood, but the buildings they decorated had been covered by the fog, and the chimneys looked like a vessel's masts from which the hull had drifted away, leaving them standing in depths of river-mud. Toward the sea it was only mist, mist that looked extensive enough to reach as far as London, whose fog-lovers would have welcomed it. Did the dock, the tall chimneys, the mist, notice that curious eye up in the "cupelo" looking through the slats and watching them?

"Guess I'll go down," said their owner.

The mist continued to wrap Seamont all that day and far into the night.

Will Somers was preparing to leave Dr. Tilton's store that evening. He had sent off medicine to quiet the last earache in town that had been heard from. He had also given powders to make poor Miss Persnips sleep quietly. She was sick with a nervous fever. Will now closed the store, turned the key in the lock, and went up the street, whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner." It was half after ten. One by one the house-lamps had been extinguished, and it was "dark as a pocket" in the lane. Still whistling, Will neared Aunt Stanshy's. He ceased his tune suddenly for he caught an outcry.

"Where does that come from!" asked Will. "Back of the barn, I guess. There it is again! It is from the dock, I know, sure as I'm born."

He sprang across Aunt Stanshy's garden and then leaped a fence which separated her estate from an open piece of ground bordering the dock and used for various purposes. Fishermen dried their fish here on long flakes. Around three sides of the dock went a stone wall, against which the tide washed and rippled, mildly grumbling because the wall was stubborn and would not budge an inch. On the stone wall bordering the upper end of the dock rested that side of Aunt Stanshy's barn in which were the fastened door below and the fastened window above.

Will, having leaped the fence, ran past the fish-flakes to the edge of the stone dock-wall. It was so dark that his running was neither rapid nor straight.

"Somebody is down in the dock," thought Will. "Don't worry!" he shouted, "I am here."

He now heard a series of noises, some of them distinct and quite human. Others were confused outcries.

"It's time for low tide," thought Will, and, without further reflection, down he dropped into the dark, dismal dock, landing in a bed of mud soft as ever a flounder slept on. He was conscious at once that this bed was a very yielding one, but he could not stop to calculate how far down he might sink, shouting at once, "Where are you? Sing out there!"

"M—m—moo—moo," replied the person, as if a cow in distress. "I'm hic—here—hic!"

"Drank as a fool," thought Will. "Where?"

"Hic—here—hic!"

"Hie—haec—hoc, more likely," said Will, recalling his Latin. "Stay right where you are."

"I'll stay—hic."

"Let me feel for you. O, here you are."

Will now felt of some one crouching against the stone-wall of the dock, "How did you come here?"

"Dunno—hic—but I spect I did."

"You must have walked off the wall, and the great question now is how to get back again."

"Yes—hic—that—is the question—hic—afore the house."

"Afore the dock, I should say. Whew, I believe I'm up to my thighs in mud, and if that isn't water I'm splashing in! The tide is coming in, certain. Come, friend, we must get out of this!"

"Yes, we must all—hic."

"Must all hic? We must all get out, you mean."

"Yes, all get-hic."

"Let me think. There are stairs out of this old bog somewhere, and where are they? I declare! down at the other end, and the water is three or four feet deep there when it is dry up here. Then put on top of it or under it two or three feet of mud and you have five to six feet in all, and that is an interesting state of things to wade through. We must stay at this end of the dock; and back of Aunt Stanshy's barn, I believe, are steps. I must work him up there, and do it myself somehow, for my shouting don't bring any one."

Will had called several times for help, but there was no response. He now addressed his boozy companion:

"I must get you up out of this somehow, and work you along where the steps are. The wall is too high to boost you up here. If this isn't interesting, nigh eleven o'clock, pitch dark, down in this old dock blundering with you, drank as a fool! I feel like laughing."

"Yes—hic—you're drunk—as a—fool—and I want—to—hic—laugh—he—he—he!"

Will did really laugh now. It seemed so funny there at that hour in that place.

"But it's no laughing matter, friend, I'll tell you. O whew! Here's the water half a foot deep all around us! Come now, lift up your feet and come with me. Make an effort now."

The man rallied his strength so effectively to make this effort that he lost his balance, and stumbling against Will, pitched him over.

"Look—look out—friend!" roared Will, as he floundered in mud and water. "Can't you do better than that?"

"Besht—hic—I can do for you. Might try it again—hic."

"O, thanks—thanks. Be contented with that trial. There is my boot, stuck fast in the mud, and let her go. Come, friend, make an effort to get along. Stick close to the wall and work your way on, and lean on me. There, you did splendidly then. Try again! There, there! Easy now. O scissors, there goes my other boot! The next thing will be that I shall get my legs in for good, and by to-morrow morning early the water will be over us all. Come, friend, you don't want to get drowned. Pull away! Steady there! Move on! We are making progress, you see. Again, there! On she goes! Hem—now, once more! All together! There we are!"

There came a series of such trials, and finally Will shouted, "Must be almost there—and—" bump they went against the stone wall at the upper end of the dock.

"Three cheers, friend!"

"Hip—hip—hip—"

"No matter about giving them. Now we will work along to some steps back of a barn. Careful!"

When the steps had been reached Will exclaimed, "So far, so good, friend."

"Yes—hic—I'm glad—I've—hic—got you—hic—so far safe—hic."

"Got me? You have my thanks. Well, now, you stay here by these steps until I come for you. I will fetch a light. Stay here, now."

"I will—hic."

Will felt his way along the base of the wall until he came to the lane. The stones in the wall were smooth with the slime accumulating there for years, and it was hard work to get his feet out of the mud, and very hard then to get them up and over the wall. He succeeded though, and grasping a rail-fence and mounting it, dropped down into the lane.

"Glad to touch solid ground," thought Will, "though I be in my stocking-feet."

He hurried to Aunt Stanshy's door, which had been left unlocked for his admittance, and opening it, stepped upon the entry oil-cloth.

"Tick—tick! Who comes here?" the old clock now seemed to say, loudly, solemnly ticking.

"How I shall muddy this sacred floor! Can't help it, though! Aunt Stanshy," he now began to call; at the same time he rapped on the baluster. "Aunt Stanshy!"

He looked up and saw the light from the lamp that she kept burning at night. Soon there was the sound of a stirring, and a tall figure in white bent over the railing. A second and smaller statue of snow was there in a moment, leaning over the railing by the side of Aunt Stanshy.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, but I've just come from the dock, and—"

"Why, you look like a mud-turtle," said Aunt Stanshy, bending over still farther and holding out the lamp, whose light fell on Will.

"Mud-turtle? I don't wonder you say so, and there's another and worse-looking one out in the dock."

"Two mud-turtles? What do you mean? Where have you been?"

"I mean this; I was coming home and heard some one calling for help, and ran to the dock and saw—no, I couldn't see a barley-corn before my nose—but I knew somebody was down there, and without thinking—"

"Just like you!" said Aunt Stanshy to herself.

"And in I went, and I succeeded in getting my man, who is drunk, round to the upper aide of the dock."

"You did splendidly," said Aunt Stanshy, aloud.

"But I had to work for it! And now I want a light, which you may wonder I didn't get before; but I was so anxious to help that fellow, I put and run as soon as I heard him cry, and when I was in the dock I thought I might as well stick to him and work him into a safe place. But haven't you a door in the dock-side of your barn?"

"Y—e—s," said Aunt Stanshy, reluctantly, remembering an old decision about the door. "I will be out, and you take the lantern that you will see in the back entry. Don't mind my floor. I will be out in two minutes."

"Let me go down and show Will about the lantern," said Charlie.

"Are you dressed?"

"O yes. I thought I might help, you know," was the complacent remark of Charlie, who had improved his time, and, while keeping his "ears out," had been putting his legs into his pants as rapidly as possible.

"You have been smarter than your aunt, but she will be there soon."

Charlie showed Will where the lantern hung in the back entry, and together they went into the barn.

"Here is the door," said Charlie, "that lets folks into the dock."

"But how do you get the thing open?" asked Will, flashing the light of his lantern upon the door.

"I will open it," said Aunt Stanshy, who now appeared, and already decided that the door might be consistently opened for a good deed's sake. She carried a hammer in her hand, which she energetically swung about the driven nails, soon removing them. Then she threw back the door, and out into the black night peered anxiously. How long it had been since the last time that she had looked out from that door! She could see nothing at first, but in a moment made out a man's form below. As the rays of Aunt Stanshy's lamp shone out, they made a bridge of light that stretched off into the mist, as if anxious to reach the river and bridge it for some poor, helpless soul in the water.

"Say, friend, you down there?" called out Will.

A voice below answered, "Yesh—hic—I'll help you—up—"

"You will? Better let me help you first."

"Shuit yourself—hic."

Will descended the steps, and found the man leaning against the dock-wall.

"Now, friend, we'll climb these stairs."

"I will—help you—hic—yes—up."

"You are very kind, but let me help you first. Now go it! Tough! You don't gain a peg."

"You'll have me—hic—over—friend."

"Have you over! It's the other way, man."

"Well—shay! It's all right, aint it?—hic."

"O yes! We wont quarrel about it. Look here, folks! haven't you got any thing up there we could steer him by—a rope, perhaps, to which he could cling? The water has risen and come up here, and it's not comfortable in one's stocking-feet. Wish my fire company was here! We would make short work of it."

"Shall I ring the church bell?" asked Charlie, excitedly.

"O don't, don't!"

"Here's a rope," said Aunt Stanshy.

"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Charlie, "and we will pull him in."

"We might do that, or at least help," said Aunt Stanshy, laughing.

"Yesh—hic—pull him in," said the man in the dock.

"We will fasten the rope about you, friend, and they'll draw on it, and perhaps you could hold on to it and draw yourself up, and I will shove you behind. Now, all, a good try!"

Will was now shoving, Aunt Stanshy and Charlie hauling, while the man tried to grasp the sides of the steps; and so, out of the slime and the mist and the night, up into the light, and then into Aunt Stanshy's barn, came the face of—old Tim Tyler!

"Horrors!" said Aunt Stanshy, startled by this unexpected sight of the second mud-turtle. Her face wore, indeed, a look of horror at first, and then the expression changed to one of pity.

Over the door-sill he crawled, and then looking up, he said, in a drunken, but abashed, humiliated way, "Stanshy, is it you? Real—hic—sorry to trouble—hic—you."

Aunt Stanshy made no audible reply, but stood looking away as if into distant years. She was recalling the words uttered by Tim long ago, when he vowed that he would see himself "a-drownin' in that dock first afore he'd ask a favor of her." "He has come up to his word," she said to herself, and then she bowed her troubled face.

"Well, now," said Will, looking round with a worried face, "what next?"

"Guesh I'll—hic—go home now. Thank you, sir," he said, bowing to Will. "Thank you, Stanshy," and he bowed still lower.

"Timothy," said Aunt Stanshy, calling him by the old name, "I wouldn't turn a dog into the street a night like this, and you had better stay here. I will get you some clothes, and, Will, perhaps you will see that he gets off these."

"And bring me one of my suits, too, please. And if Charlie will bring me a basin and some water, we will wash here. I will look after my man here. Bring my slippers, please."

"Where's—hic—your boots?"

"O, they concluded to stay in the dock."

"I'll—get—you another pair—hic."

"I may find them at low-water and by daylight."

Tim Tyler stayed at Aunt Stanshy's that night The next morning he was in his right mind, and, thanking Aunt Stanshy, said he must go. Then he lingered, twirling in his hands the old felt hat that was his daily companion, though a much abused one.

"He wants to say something," thought Charlie.

"Constantia, years ago you and I had a falling out. I think I was to blame in tempting that boy's father, and I have often thought so, but have been too proud to say it all these years. I did not like what you said; but no matter, I was to blame for what I did, and I did not answer you back in gentleman-fashion. I want to say I am sorry, and ask you to overlook it and shake hands."

He held out his hand to Aunt Stanshy.

"He has spoken like a man and what will she do?" thought Will.

Aunt Stanshy was ready to show that she was a woman. She held out her hand, also, and said, "I said more than I needed to, and I am sorry for that. Let it go, please."

"Well," he exclaimed, "it was mean in me to tempt a man, though I did not see then, as I do now, how low drink may bring a man. God knows I am low enough."

The tears were now making their way down old Tim Tyler's face. Charlie saw that Aunt Stanshy turned away from those present and looked in another direction, but the quick-eyed boy thought he noticed a redness to Aunt Stanshy's eyes when she faced the company again.

Will Somers had come from the store in season to hear Tim's words. A fisherman soon called who had hurt his hand with a fish-hook and wished to have a poultice applied by the "young doctor," as people sometimes called Will. This second party had closely followed Will and had heard what was last said. It was an interesting scene. There was the drunkard, confessing how low he had fallen, and there was the woman who once had loved and respected him. There was Charlie, the son of the man whom the drunkard tried to lead astray. There was Will, and the fisherman made an additional spectator.

Will stepped up to Tim.

"Mr. Tyler, excuse, me, but why do you stay so low? Why not come up again?"

"Will's tone was full of sympathy.

"God knows I would like to come up again."

"You can, and be back in your old place, owning your own boat, too."

"Yes," said Aunt Stanshy, eagerly, "and fishing from the barn, just the same as before."

"You are all kind, very kind. It does me good," and poor Tim actually smiled at the prospect. "What would my sister, who has clung to me, say? Wouldn't she be taken aback?"

The tears were again in the drunkard's eyes.

"Good deal of the man there yet," thought Will. "Your sister might be taken aback, but in that kind of way that would help you forward. Come," he said, aloud, "I will go into my room and write a pledge for you, and be back in a moment."

Tim looked intently at the pledge of total abstinence that Will brought.

"If—if—I had some one to sign with me, some one to stand with me," he murmured.

"I will," said the fisherman, stepping forward, and now recognized as a previous acquaintance.

"You, John Fisher, will you?"

"Yes, I have taken a drop now and then, but I'll sign and stand with you. I don't want to get into the—"

"Dock, where I was?" asked Tim.

"No, I am sure I don't."

"And that's the very place where drop-people may fetch up. I was a drop-taker once. I will sign, and God help me!"

"O he will," said Aunt Stanshy, encouragingly. Charlie now saw that her eyes were redder than ever.

After the name of Timothy Tyler came the name of John Fisher.

"Now you will make those at home happy," said Will.

But only those with whom Tim made his home really knew how happy it made them. How great was the change there! Young Tim speedily began to rally, sitting up that very day, while Ann went round the house singing.

Charlie came up the next day with a delicacy from Aunt Stanshy for the patient.

"Tell Aunt Stanshy to wipe out every thing, and we will start once more," was the message that Ann sent off by Charlie.

"It is all wiped out," was Aunt Stanshy's answer, and the two soon came together and joined hands.

The barn-door toward the dock was now open, and, in a humble way, the firm of "Tyler & Fisher" began business, drying their fish on the flakes adjoining Aunt Stanshy's barn, while in the barn itself they stored their possessions, as might be necessary.

A note from Mr. Walton arrived about that time. It was written in his frank, simple, hearty way, congratulating both the men on the stand they had taken. Referring to Tim's desire for fellowship in his new effort, of which Mr. Walton had heard, he added, "There is another who will stand by you, the Great Brother who came as a babe at Bethlehem, and Christmas will soon remind us of it. Feeling for us and loving us, he at last died for us. Ask him to stand with you. He came to help just such poor weak fellows as we all are."

That touched the "firm," and the next Sunday they both sat in a back seat near the stove by the church-door. As Tim Tyler sat there in old St. John's and heard the dreary wind roaring without, he thought of the fishing-boats that scud before such winds anxious to make port and reach home.

"That's me, I hope, trying to get home," he thought, "and find harbor in God's Church, will hold us all."



CHAPTER XVIII.

A NEW DEPARTURE.

Again the club was only a memory. It was like a walking-stick that, when the mountain-tramp is over, the vacationist puts on the wall as a memento.

"How is your club getting along, Charlie?" asked Miss Bertha Barry, one day, when she was calling at Aunt Stanshy's.

"We—we—don't meet," said Charlie, mournfully. Juggie was there, also, calling on a once brother knight, and he, too, looked sad.

"Now I have an idea," said the teacher. "You know I like a good time as well as any body, but I think if we have clubs, it is a good idea to make them as useful as possible. If you meet again, remember, your name is 'Up-the-Ladder Club,' always to be climbing up, always to be advancing. Now you can advance in this way; you can combine the literary element."

"Come-and-bine what?" asked Juggie.

"The literary element."

"De literal element?"

"Recitations and so on, I mean."

"We did have an entertainment," said Charlie, who was not disposed to forget or disparage the glory of "departed days."

"But this is something different, and let me explain. Let us suppose that we take the subject, 'Days of our Forefathers,' the times before or at the Revolutionary War. One of you could be dressed as a farmer in those days, and tell what farmers did; another as printer could tell what printers did, and so on. That would give you an idea of those days, and make something useful of your club."

The plan was popular with the boys of the club. When the subject was proposed to Aunt Stanshy, she made the comment:

"Some sense in the idea. The boys will learn something."

"And then," said Miss Barry, "when Christmas comes, you can give a Christmas entertainment, and ask an admission fee, and, won't you give the money to the missions of our Church? That will be putting another round in the ladder, and the 'Up-the-Ladder Club' will go higher still. I want you to help other people all you can. I'll tell you what to do, and be with you."

The boys agreed to their teacher's plan. Sid was specially enthusiastic. Will Somers said he would help. Aunt Stanshy had promised to open the rooms of her house, and one December night, when the sky was like the dark face of an Oriental beauty, hung all over with golden jewelry, the White Shields and their friends met at Aunt Stanshy's. How happy were the club boys to find there a banner sent by Mr. Walton. He wrote that Tim Tyler was coming to Sunday-school, and that they had previously secured four scholars, and Tim should be counted the fifth. Happy knights to earn that banner!

About eight Sid came into the front room dressed in a brown, broad-skirted coat, also wearing small clothes, silver knee-buckles, and buckled shoes. He took off his cocked hat, made a low bow, and holding out a diminutive newspaper, yellow with age, began:

"I am a printer. I had the honor of printing the 'New Hampshire Gazette,' which was started in Portsmouth in 1756, and is still published in that good old city. In those days newspapers were not so numerous as now. When the Revolutionary War closed there were forty-three papers in the country. We did not give such crowded or so large sheets as are now published. My paper, though, was so popular all the spare copies were taken, and I have none by me this moment; but here is a copy of the 'New England Chronicle,' that came out in Boston on the 4th of July, 1776. It has four pages, you will see, measures ten inches by fifteen, say, and each page has three columns. It was not easy work then to publish a paper. We had no steam-presses, but hand-power had to do the work, and my arms ache to this day. It was hard, too, at the time of the Revolutionary War, to get paper, and before the war, too. In 1769 there was only one paper-mill in New England, and that was at Milton, Mass. They had to advertise for rags, and what they called the bell-cart went through Boston picking them up. Then in towns like Salem, Charlestown, Portsmouth, they scraped all they could. Ten years after, my brother-publisher, of the 'Massachusetts Spy,' appealed to the 'fair Daughters of Liberty in this extensive country' to save their rags, and so 'serve their country,' advising them to hang up a bag in one corner of a room that the odds and ends might be saved. For a pound of 'clean white rags' the ladies could get ten shillings! If you had lived then, and had your mother's rags to-day, what heaps of money you could have made! It was hard, too, for us newspaper men to get news. I was looking yesterday at a copy of the 'Portsmouth Oracle,' published in 1805. That was in this wonderful century. What did it say on the 26th of January? 'News by telegraph?' and did it tell us what the Hottentots were doing yesterday? No; it said, 'By the mails,' and had one item from Boston two days old, two from New York nine days old, and one from Fredericksburg about a trouble with the colored people, and that news was twenty-three days old! Rags and news, those two things, how hard they were to get! And then, ladies and gentlemen, how hard it was to get our pay! A brother editor in New York, in 1777, told his customers he must charge them, for 'a quarter of news,' twelve pounds of beef, seven pounds of cheese, and so on, or he must have their worth in money, and he tells them to bring in the produce, or he will have to 'shut up shop.' I will now shut, also."

Making a low bow again, the wearer of small clothes retired. When Juggie's turn arrived, he appeared, whip in hand.

"I'm de stage-driber. In de days ob our ancestors dar were no railroads, but jest common roads. De fust canal was built in 1777. Dar was a big road dat went from Bosson to mouf of Kennebec, one up into New Hampshire, and den ta Canada, one to Providence, and one to New York, while New York had two roads, norf and one souf. I was a stage-driber." (Here Juggie cracked his whip and shouted, "Get up, Caesar!") "I ran de 'Flyin' Machine' dat went from New York to Philadelfy, and took only two days; and one spell I took a stage from New York to Bosson in six days. What do you say to dat? Don't it make yer eyes open? Who carried de mail, do you say? And haben't you eber heard? De stage. In 1775 de mail went from Philadelfy to New England ebery fortnight in winter, but dey improbed and went once a week, and letter-writers could get an answer in free weeks, when before it took six weeks. What progress! De worl' goes on, and—so do I."

Juggie left, and Governor Grimes appeared in the dress of a farmer, carrying a shovel in one hand and a hoe in the other.

"I am a farmer, and was one in the old days. It is true I did not have so many neighbors as people nowadays, and I went without things that farmers now have. I didn't have newfangled cultivators, reapers, or such things. But then what a stout house I lived in, a big, square house, and its frame wasn't made of pipe-stem sticks! They were big, solid sticks of oak that I had, and you could see them sticking out of the corners and down from the ceiling. What chimneys I had, and the bricks came all the way from England! I had none of your box stoves, but a big fire in the chimney which you could see. My wife, Polly, had no carpets on the floor, but she had rugs she made of rags. And my darter, Jerusha, what a cook she was! She made pies—cooked 'em, I mean—in a brick oven, and she stewed her chickens in pots hung on hooks from a swinging crane in the chimney. And then I gave Jerusha a turn-spit, too, which she put before the fire, and I gave her a tin kitchen. Polly had a spinning-wheel and Jerusha a hand-loom, and that is where our cloth came from. I raised corn and grass and potatoes, and we had plenty of apples, and what fun we had at huskin' parties and apple parings! I took care of my horses, oxen, cows, and sheep, pigs, too, and had to kill my own critters and cure the hams we used. In those days we had to do many things ourselves, such as dip our candles, and I made my eyes weak mending Jedidiah's shoes in the evening, a candle near me, and the tall old family clock ticking in the corner."

Miss Barry was charming in her antique dress, as every White Shield thought. It came down from her great-great-grandmother, Sally Tilton, who was a famous belle in her day. The dress was hooped and ruffled, "trailed," also, in the old style. Miss Barry's hair was powdered, and she wore white satin shoes. She represented the "Daughters of Liberty," and told about Emily Geiger, the South Carolina young lady who undertook to carry a written message from General Greene to General Sumter, and when the British took her, she ate up her letter! The enemy released her, not finding her message. She went on and she did her errand, though, giving the message from memory, as General Greene, fearful of a capture, had told her the contents of the letter. Then Miss Barry told about some girls in New York who gave a coat of molasses and flag-down to a young man disrespectful to Congress. She gave an account of the young ladies in Virginia, Massachusetts, and elsewhere.

Will Somers appeared in the dress of a revolutionary soldier, carrying on his shoulder a musket that was a fire-lock, and slung at his side was a powder-horn, while in his tinder-box were flint and steel. How many battles this old Continental had been in, what victories he had won, and what hardships he had endured! He was not slow to tell of them all.

The entertainment was voted a great success.

"There, Charles Pitt," declared Aunt Stanshy the next morning at the breakfast-table, "I like that style of a club ever so much. It tells you something."

"Yes," said Charlie, "I know a lot more than I did."

"I want you to have a good time in your club, but when it is all play and nothing else, it aint just the thing."

"Yes, aunty," said the now matured and venerable Charlie. "And we're going to have something else."

"What is it?"

He only winked and looked wise as an owl at midnight.

December was now hurrying away. The winter weeks followed one another rapidly, and at last Charlie heard Mr. Walton say in church something about a Christmas festival.

"Christmas is coming!" was Charlie's silent response.

What a Christmas it was! Two nights previous to it the club had an entertainment in behalf of missions, as Miss Barry had suggested. Dressed as that benevolent individual, Santa Claus, different members of the club stepped forward and gave an account of Christmas in Germany, Christmas in Russia, Christmas in Italy, and Christmas in Australia. The boys were curious to see how much money they had made.

"Twenty dollars!" declared Sid, who counted the funds.

"There," said Miss Barry, "the Up-the-Ladder Club will put rounds under the feet of boys in heathen lands, and help them climb up into the light of a Saviour's presence."



CHAPTER XIX.

THE WRECK.

Snow still kept away, but winter winds had come, and they swept over the bare ground, cutting like knives. About the first of the year the weather softened. The old gray heads, whose possessors occupied that village-throne of wisdom, the jackknife-carved bench by Silas Trefethen's stove, prophesied "a spell of weather."

"Storm brewin'! I feel it in my bones," declared Simes Badger, squinting at the vane on Aunt Stanshy's barn and then at the gray, scowling clouds above. The wind was from the "nor'-east." It had a damp, chilly touch, so that the people shrank from it, and were glad to get near their cozy fires. All day threatening clouds rolled in from the sea, as if the storm had planted batteries there and the smoke from the cannonade was thickening. At night Charlie, passing a window in his chamber, heard the rain drumming on the panes. He had gone to his warm nest and been there only two minutes, when he said to himself, as he gaped, "If it would only rain so hard that I wouldn't have to go to school to-mor—" Here the angel of sleep came along, and, putting his hand on the eyes of a tired boy, closed them and drowned in sweet oblivion all his school anxieties. It rained through the night. It rained all the next day. The tide, too, was unusually high. It rolled over the wharves, swept up the shipyards, and even ventured into the yard back of Silas Trefethen's store, floating away a hencoop with its squawking tenants.

"It beats all!" said Simes Badger. "The oldest person round here never saw such a tide."

The Up-the-Ladder Club did the tide the honor of making it a call in a body, and from the rear of Silas Trefethen's store watched the swollen current beyond the yard.

"Let's go down to the beach and see the waves to-morrow. It's Saturday, you know, and the waves pile up tremendous in a storm. Who's for it!" inquired Sid Waters. There was not a White Shield present who was unwilling to go. Some of them, however, went sooner than they expected.

Toward the morning of the next day, Will Somers was aroused by the ringing of a bell. He opened his ears, opened his eyes, and then he sprang out of bed.

"Fire!" he said. "Fire!"

He rushed to a window, threw it up, and put his head out into the black storm, through which echoed the notes of the bell of old St. John's. They made such an impression it seemed as if they must be living things out in the darkness walking. So strange, so unreal was this, it was a relief to hear the approaching footsteps of somebody who was actually "flesh and blood."

"Where's the fire?" asked Will.

"Fire!" said the man, walking leisurely along. "I should think any booby might know this is not the night for a fire, when things are so wet; but it is the night for a wreck, and the feller pullin' that bell tells me there is one off Gull's P'int."

"Is it? I am going, then, and I should think any one but a booby would be going in that direction," retorted Will, noticing that the man was not moving toward the quarter where the wreck was. The stranger muttered something about knowing his own business best, while Will pulled in his head and slammed down the window.

"Charlie!" he said, stepping into the boy's little chamber after lighting a lamp.

"What is it?" asked Charlie, winking his eyes at the blinding glare of the light.

"Do you want to go with me?"

"Go where?"

"To see a wreck."

"O yes! Just wait a minute and let me ask Aunt Stanshy."

He groped his way to his aunt's bedroom.

"Aunt Stanshy, may I go with Will?"

In his eagerness he forgot to mention the object of this midnight expedition. Aunt Stanshy was not thoroughly awake, for the angel of sleep visiting Charlie had touched her eyes also. If awake, she might not have granted the request. The idea went confusedly through her brain that Charlie wanted to sleep with Will.

"Y-e-s," she murmured, drowsily, and then the angel of sleep had her fully again under his control. Charlie stole down into Will's room, his clothes on his arm.

"Now, dress quick as you can. Have you an overcoat?"

"Yes, but it is up in Aunt Stanshy's closet."

"We don't want to disturb her again. Here, you put on the cape of my cloak and fold it about you."

Charlie was proud to be thus enveloped. Will then completed his dressing, and looked like a Cape Codder just arrived from a fishing-smack. He took his young companion by the hand and off they started.

"Who's that?" asked Will, as they turned from Water Street into Beach Street.

"That boy in the door where there's a light? Why, that is Tony! He's up. Tony, that you?" sang out Charlie.

"Yes! You going down to the beach?" said Tony, standing in the lighted door-way of a low-roofed house.

"Yes."

"I heard the bell and got up, and one of the neighbors came and told us it was a wreck, and Mr. Grimes said I might go if I could go with somebody."

"Come along," said Will. "Tell him I will take care of you."

Tony went eagerly back. He prepared for the trip, and then came out to join Will and Charlie.

"Now, boys, take hold of my hand and let's put," said Will.

They accordingly "put."

"Isn't this good fun, Tony."

"Yes, Charlie, splendid."

It was such good fun that Charlie thought he was willing to be a sailor on board that wreck even. He changed his mind, however, in a short time. Beach Street led down to a road that was called "Back Road." This took as many turns as it pleased, and after a quarter of a mile struck the low, level marshes. Traversing the marshes, the road led Will and his companions up to the yellow hammocks, at whose base the breakers were discharging their fury in a terrible bombardment of the land. The road wound through the hummocks, and then the party stood upon the beach. It was a cold, ugly atmosphere, pierced by the missiles of the storm, while the surf crashed on the sand in one long, fierce, unearthly roar. People from the town were now gathering on the beach, some of them carrying lanterns that twinkled like stars knocked out of their places by the storm, fallen now to the level of the beach.

But where was the wreck? No sign of it anywhere; only rain, surf, storm, blackness—a wild medley.

"This is a sell!" said a man.

"Wish I was in bed agin," exclaimed another.

"Let's catch the feller that rang that church bell," exclaimed a third, "and duck him in the surf."

A fourth made a sensible suggestion: "Let's go down to the life-saving station, and they can probably tell us there."

A quarter of a mile up the beach was a life-saving station, and a light could be seen winking from one of its windows. Several, including Will and the boys, walked up the beach, past the crashing waves, and reaching the station, pushed open its door on the land-side of the building, and entered. Charlie looked about him with eager curiosity, for it was the first time he had ever been in such a place. The building was of two stories. The larger part of the lower story was taken up by a "boat-room" for various kinds of apparatus for reaching wrecks. Charlie also saw the inside of a kitchen, and Will told him there was a room up stairs for the beds of the men at the station. Charlie and Tony warmed themselves at the brisk fire in the store. The man on duty there did not seem to know any thing about the disaster reported in town, but he talked with Will and Charlie about shipwrecks and storms and efforts at rescuing the wrecked. After a while, Charlie said to Will, "Let's go out and take a run along the beach, and see what's going on."

"Yes," added Tony, "let's do it."

"A run up and down the beach to see what is going on, this stormy night? You are enterprising boys. Well, we will go. Button up your coats snug, though. Fold my cape about you, Charlie. There, you look like a small monk off on a tare. You fixed, Tony? Come, boys," said Will.

Bang! How the wind slammed the door after them! And how the sea thundered and roared; then roared and thundered again! It seemed as if every throw of surf was heavier than that before, and yet none of this violence and wrath could be seen unless some one chanced to pass carrying a lantern. Then this thing that raged along the sands, this creature, this dragon from the deep, would show an angry whiteness, as if it were the opening of his jaws.

Will and the boys may have tramped a quarter of a mile along the beach, when Will exclaimed, "Hullo, there's a light!"

It was a lively twinkle upon the sands that came nearer and nearer, and then stopped before the party.

"Who's this?" asked a voice, pleasantly.

Charlie lifted up his face toward the shining of this friendly light.

"Bub, is this you down here at this time of night? Don't you know the man who goes fishin' from your Aunt Stanshy's barn?"

"O yes, I know you."

It was the junior member of the new firm, "Tyler & Fisher."

"Are you a patrolman, Mr. Fisher?" asked Will.

"I am at spells, when a man at the station may be sick. You see I can't go fishin' in this storm, and it comes handy to be employed as a substitute at the station. But what are you here for?"

"We came down to find a wreck. Up in town St. John's bell was rung and we were told there was a wreck at Gull Point. At the station, though, where we have been, a man said that he did not know of any."

"I guess I know how that story got up to town. A little fool was down here with a squeaky voice and sharp little eyes, and he wanted to know if there were any wrecks. The fact is we had been looking for sich all day and through the evening and night. There were one or two vessels off the mouth of the harbor as night came on, trying to get in, and, pizen! they could no more get in than my old tarpaulin, and they wouldn't stand a hundredth part of the chance she would. You see, a nor'easter rakes right across the mouth of our harbor and drives off any sail tryin' to get in, and one of two things will happen—either a ship will be swept out to sea or swept on to Gull P'int. Well, that feller said to Joe Danforth—Joe and me were together—'Has there been a wreck?' 'No,' said Joe, 'I think not,' meaning to answer him. But I had said to Joe at that time, or just before that feller asked his question, 'Hadn't we better go to the station and get a bite?' 'Yes,' said Joe, meaning to answer me, and that person—whoever it was, grabbed up the answer to me and thought it was for him, and went off accordingly. That is how that bell came to ring. It would be an awful night for a wreck, wouldn't it? Hullo!" exclaimed John Fisher, stopping in his explanation, "What's that? If that aint the crittur hisself!"

As the patrolman turned his face to the sea, the boys looked off in that direction, and they were quick enough to see a rocket exploding in the air, scattering down a shower of tinted stars. This bright constellation faded away into the night, when suddenly up, up into the darkness, shot two vivid lines of fire, parting as they swept higher and higher, exploding in stars till the whole seemed like immense forks of gold with spreading, jeweled prongs.

"They let go a couple then," said Will.

"O look, Tony!" cried Charlie.

While the boys were watching the rockets, John Fisher was eagerly handling his Coston light. The design of this is to signal to any wreck, or to warn vessels away from an unsafe shore. John now ignited his light and, holding it up, ran along the beach. His big, burly form wrapped in a coarse, heavy suit, threw an immense shadow on the sands, while the light of his torch so colored the beach that he seemed to be trampling on red snow. The foam of the waves, broken into patches, changed till it became clots of blood. Beyond all, was that wrathful, howling, restless ocean. Away ran John Fisher, swinging his light, flinging out his big boots till he looked like a sea-monster, with unwieldy limbs, plunging through an atmosphere blood-tinged. At the station they had evidently become aware of the real situation of things, for there was a moving of lamps at the windows, then the opening of a door letting out a bright light. As Will and the boys reached the station, they saw the big door in one end of the building swinging back, and out rushed two men pulling a cart. John Fisher here came running up.

"Wreck is down at Gull's P'int," he said, "so some one told me, and that agrees with the place where the signals were seen. I guess she is on the nub of the P'int, and our wreck-gun will reach her."

"What is a wreck-gun?" Charlie wanted to ask, but every body seemed too busy to answer questions.

"It will be morning soon," exclaimed Will. "I fancy I see a whitish streak now in the east."

Charlie was not looking at the sky, but, standing on his longest toe, was trying to get a peep into that mysterious cart dragged from the station. A man now stood on the axle and lighted a lamp on a pole. The lamp was inclosed so that the storm could not harm it. Charlie saw a stout reel in the cart, about which went many turns of a stout rope. Then there was the wreck-gun. There were also shovels and various apparatus.

"Now, boys," shouted Captain Peters, who had charge of the station, "all hands for the P'int!"

That slow-moving, clumsy man that Charlie had seen in the station when he called, was now changed to a very nimble-footed being, and his comrades were as active. Away they went, threatening to leave Charlie and Tony far behind, but the boys grabbed Will by the hand and rapidly as possible pushed on after the enterprising apothecary.

"Getting to be morning," shouted Will. While the shadows were still thick on the beach, over in the east was a grayish, uncertain light. There were occasional discharges of rockets from the vessel in distress.

"O dear!" said the breathless Charlie.

"I can't hold out much longer," thought Tony.

Will, though, pushed stoutly on, and it was manifest that a wreck excited him as much as a fire. The distance to Gull Point from the station was at least a mile and a half. The point itself was a rocky stretch into the sea measuring about six hundred feet in length. Day was creeping over the water; finally, a thin, sullen light, revealing a wild, ghostly tumult of waves. The surf that ordinarily broke near the shore seemed to whiten the water as far as the eye could reach. It was the angriest tumult of foam possible, as if the frothing of millions of enraged creatures of the sea.

"Ah, there she is!" shouted John Fisher, as the cart neared the shore-end of the point.

"We will get her!" screamed Charlie, as he reached the cart. The men laughed.

"It's a three-masted schooner," bawled Captain Peters, "and she's where the life-boat can't reach her, but our wreck-gun will. That craft has keeled over on Deep Rock, near the very P'int itself! Get out the gun!"

The men now took from the cart a small cannon, then a mass of rope, and then a rope of larger size.

"Take out that life-car, too!" shouted Captain Peters. Charlie watched every thing that was done with an intense curiosity. He sat down on the cannon to rest his short, fat legs.

"Sonny!" shouted John Fisher—the roar of the surf compelled every one to shout—"do you know what we are up to?"

Charlie shook his head.

"Well, that cannon is loaded, and—"

Up sprang Charlie. He did not want a seat like that.

"And the shot has a light but strong line hitched to it. A man will p'int the gun so that when the shot goes out it will fall over the vessel, and carry the line with it. Now watch him."

Charlie watched. "Bang!" went the gun. Away went the shot, the long rope wriggling after it.

"Good!" cried John.

"What is good?" bawled Charlie.

"A good shot! The man sent the shot so that the rope has fallen across the vessel, I think."

Others thought so, too, and a man quickly shouted, "They're pulling on it! Hurrah!"

Then they all cheered. The crew on board the wreck were steadily drawing the rope through the water. Charlie looked intently with both eyes, and he wished that his ears also could be eyes for a little while.

"Come here!" shouted John to Charlie, and he led the boy around to a coil of rope, one end of which was attached to the line going through the water.

"See there, Bub! There is a block, what they call a single pulley-block, and this stouter rope is doubled through it. It will soon go to the wreck."

Another explanation was then bawled at Charlie, who now wished his eyes were ears, so anxious was he to hear.

"Look at that block, and then there is what they call a tally-board, and it has some printed directions on it, telling the men on the wreck just what to do. Only watch!" he shouted.

The stouter rope had now started on its journey through the waters, and was taken on board the wreck.

"There," said John, "you noticed the rope was doubled through that block?"

Charlie nodded assent.

"That gives us what we call an endless line—line. O, those noisy waves! The line runs through the block, I told you, which must have got to the wreck by this time. Here, you see, one end is made fast. At the wreck the tally-board told them just where to hitch it. Now watch! They are hitching on to the line a bigger one yet, and that will be hauled out to the schooner, and fastened above the other line. A second tally-board tells them what to do."

Here John stopped to lay in a fresh stock of breath. Charlie saw that two of the men on shore had been rigging tackles to long supports planted firmly in the sand.

"Those tackles," resumed John, "help us straighten that second line till it is above the breakers, and—now watch 'em—here comes the life-car, a sort of box, you see, that we suspend from the upper rope, and at the same time it is hitched to the lower or endless line. Now all we have got to do is to pull on that endless line, and the life-car, sliding along the upper rope, will spin right out to the vessel, and—here she goes!"

The life-car was moving along the upper line bound for the wreck. One or two halts occurred on the way, but the venture was ultimately successful, and Charlie saw the life-car as the crew of the wreck eagerly seized it.

"She's coming back!" he cried.

Captain Peters shouted, "Here she comes, my hearties! Pull away on the whip!"

This was a title for the endless line.

"Suthin' in that life-car!" sang out one of the men.

"Not so very much, I guess," said another. "She runs sort of light."

How the breakers tried to reach the car! Several times the sea threw itself spitefully, violently upward. One breaker seemed to make a spring for the car, wetting it with a cloud of spray.

"A real vixen, aint it?" said John. "It can't harm any thing. But who is that in the car? A small cargo."

It was not a large one certainly. One man doubted if any thing were there.

Nearer and nearer came the car, riding safely over that white, yeasty sea. It was pulled across the surf, and the outermost man laid his hands on it and pushed it. At the same time a little door in the top slid back, and a boy's head rose higher and higher in the car, and as it stopped he was helped to get out. He seemed to be in a heap, and his movements were stiff, for his legs were cramped by the cold.

"There!" he screamed, "it's the last time I ever want to go on that pesky old sea."

"Wort Wentworth!" shouted Tony, springing forward to meet this returned knight.

"Hullo, Tony! Hullo, Charlie!"

"This you?" asked Charlie.

"Yes, it's me just about drowned. They let me come alone. The others were not quite ready."

"Haven't you been through a lot?" asked Tony.

"More than I want to see again."

"How many are on board the 'White Shield?'"

"I feared it was she when I laid my eyes on her," said Captain Peters.

"Five in the crew, my father, and one passenger."

"Dis a s'prise," said a new-comer, looking at Wort. It was Juggie.

"It is a surprise," was Wort's reply. "Catch me going again."

"You'd rather be de keeper ob de great seal."

"Yes, indeed!"

Among the arrivals by the life-car was the skipper of the "White Shield," and there was also a man wrapped in a cloak.

"He aint a sailor," said one of the station-hands, criticising the dress of the man in the cloak.

"It is the passenger," said Wort.

He was a man still young, and his clothes had an outlandish cut. He walked up the beach, the four young knights having preceded him. Then he halted, and gave a look at the boys. The boys halted, and gave a look at him. Suddenly Tony bounded away, and bounded into the man's arms.

What happened afterward, Charlie told Aunt Stanshy at the breakfast-table.

"Aunt Stanshy, guess what happened at the beach to Tony."

"I don't know, I am sure. I give it up."

"Well, the 'White Shield' had a passenger, and when he got on the beach, the first thing we knew, Tony Blanco went rushing at him, and the man put his arms round Tony, and then Tony came pulling him along to us, and said, 'It's my father, boys!' And he was real pleasant, and said he'd send as some oranges."

"Tony's father? How did he turn up? I thought he was in Italy."

"Well, you see, aunty, he was in a ship coming from Italy, and the ship, I b'lieve, had a storm and was sinking when the 'White Shield' and another vessel came along, and they two took the people from Tony's father's ship. But that other vessel, you know, was going right to Italy, and so all but Tony's father went back in her, because you know they were Italian sailors. Tony's father, though, was a passenger, and he wanted to come to America, and so he got aboard the 'White Shield' and came here, right where Tony was; and, wasn't that funny?"

"I should think it was."

"He and Tony were real glad to see one another. Juggie called it, aunty, 'a second s'prise.'"

The "s'prises," though, were not all over. Charlie had a nap after breakfast, and finishing it, went to a window to see how the outside world looked. He stayed there only a minute, and then rushed to the head of the stairs leading down cellar, calling:

"Aunt Stanshy! Aunt Stanshy, come quick, do! There goes Tony's father!"

Aunt Stanshy was down cellar fishing for pork in a capacious barrel. She dropped the piece for which she had successfully angled, and rushed to the stairs as if a whirlwind was after her. Breathless, she arrived at Charlie's window.

"There, aunty, that is he!"

"What, Mr. Walton?"

"No, Mr. Walton is coming down the lane; but don't you see that other man going up the lane?"

"O, yes, I see now."

"Well, that is him."

"But what are those two men doing? If they aint shaking hands! and now they've got their arms round one another, and there they go walking off together! It is the queerest proceeding! Why, they act as if they had known one another a long time!"

Aunt Stanshy had too much of the woman in her to let the matter drop there.

She said to herself, "If any one knows about this thing, it is Miss Persnips. I'll clap on my bonnet and go up there."

Miss Persnips generally had a bag full of news, and it was the only thing in the store for which she did not make a charge. Its mouth was hospitably open to all comers, and the distribution of its contents had an effect on her custom like the giving out of a chromo as a present. This morning, though, while the assortment in the bag was quite full and varied, it had nothing on the above subject. Aunt Stanshy went home disappointed. If she could have gone to Mr. Walton's she would have witnessed something of interest.

Mr. Walton was leading the stranger into his house, when he said, "Stop a moment in the parlor and I will go into the sitting-room and prepare her."

"All right."

"Mother," said Mr. Walton, stepping into the sitting-room, "would you like to see an old friend this morning? You feel comfortable?"

"O yes; bring him in."

"Shall I tell you who it is?"

"No, let me have the surprise."

Her son led the stranger in.

"Why, Fred!" exclaimed Mrs. Walton.

The man dropped on his knees, and put his head in her lap. And this was all that the mother did—she stroked his head with her hands, saying: "Why, Fred! Fred! my poor boy!"

That was the way the long-absent son came home.

Fred Walton had been a wayward young man, finally going to Italy in a sailing-vessel, engaging to do any work for the sake of his passage.

In Italy, he took the name of Blanco, purposing to build up a new character on the basis of a new name. The new character he needed, but his old name would have served him. He there married a young Italian lady who had met his older brother in his travels and was an object of deep interest to him, but he had relinquished her to the younger brother. Their married home was a pretty one, and a view of it Fred sent to his family in America. It was a picture of this home, taken at another season of the year, and from a different point of view, that his mother and brother had noticed, and yet failed to identify, when Tony's pictures were inspected. Fred's wife dying, leaving a little boy, Antonio, four years old, Fred wished to return to America, but concluded to remain in Italy, educating his boy in English as well as Italian. A year before this story opens, he wrote his mother that he was about to sail for a port in Algeria. It was a wild business enterprise, and he sent his little boy, Antonio, with friends—also named Blanco—to New York, expecting soon to follow them, and desiring in the meantime to make sure of a good home for Antonio. During his absence in Africa he wrote home, but his letters miscarried. Nothing had been heard since the day he sailed from Italy, and his old mother anxiously thought of him on stormy nights, fearing lest he had gone down into the wide grave of the sea. The Blanco family that cared for Tony in New York, obliged to leave the city by the failure of their work, came to Seamont to find it there awhile. When they returned to New York, as Tony was attached to Seamont, they left him with the Badger family for awhile. They were waiting to hear from Tony's father about his plans for the boy, when he appeared in an unexpected fashion to look directly after Tony, and visit also his relatives; but they and the club were sorry to know that, contrary to his wishes, he must go back to Italy, and take Tony with him.

"Ah, now I understand about that boy," said Mr. Walton, to his mother; "why he looked familiar, and if the people who brought him had had a different name, I might have looked into it, but I thought they must be relatives. Of course, not hearing from Fred, we had no thought that his child was here."

And the mother said, "I hope my boy will now take his true name, and come again soon, and bring Antonio Walton with him."

But would he and Tony ever come again? Tony came to bid good-bye to Charlie, and said, very soberly and touchingly, "We'd better kiss each other, for I feel that we shall never see each other again. Good-bye, for we shall never see each other any more."

It was a very pathetic speech, and Charlie said, mournfully, as he kissed him, "Well, good-bye, Tony."

Tony and his father went to Italy in a bark that left Seamont bound for the Mediterranean. Charlie watched the vessel from the barn window.

Like a gull that flying afar sinks lower and then disappears behind some rising billow, so the sails of the bark, receding farther and farther, vanished behind that blue rim of the horizon that rises up to check our sight and hide away the vessels that may hold our dearest hopes.



CHAPTER XX.

THE BOUND HIGHER UP.

Miss Barry was talking to her boys one Sunday; "Boys, you have had an Up-the-Ladder Club this past year, and I hope it has not been simply a play-ladder, but while playing you have also done something else. I think you have done a good work for temperance, and you have been kind to another in trouble. I think you have tried to keep your badge clean, and not stain it by bad words. You have tried to get hold of some useful knowledge through your club. All that is excellent as far as it goes. But I am thinking, while you are on this ladder, whether there may not be a round you haven't touched, and yet one you ought to put your foot on. Between this time and next Sunday, please think what that other round may be, the round higher up."

The boys looked sober, but no one made a reply.

"The round higher up," Charlie would sometimes say to himself during the week.

Sometimes in the midst of his play and his studies, that thought would visit him, "the round higher up." It came to him in his dreams. Looking up, he saw a silver ladder and it stretched above him, reaching at last a beautiful palace. Over the palace, flashed out, in letters of gold, the words, "God's Palace." But what was it Charlie saw not far from this ladder? Another, but O, so mean and little! Charlie knew it.

"My ladder!" he shouted. "Let me see how many rounds are there!"

"I think there is room for a round higher up," said a voice. "That, as it is, wont touch God's Palace."

Startled by the sound Charlie awoke.

The next Sunday Miss Barry said: "Boys, I don't think I need ask about the round higher up which your ladder needs. You understand me, and I want you to put it in. We never can climb very high, unless our life is pure and lovely and noble. It must be like Christ's life, and filled with the beautiful thoughts and purposes he had. That is the round higher up we need."

These words stirred Charlie still more deeply. He thought about that round higher up. If he could only put it into his ladder and get his feet on it! One night he went to his little bedroom, thinking still about the round higher up. He could lie in bed and look up to the white, silver stars that, like ladder-rounds, seemed to stretch across the sky in lines going higher and higher. If he only had rounds by which he could climb as high as they, his ladder would be tall enough. But how find and where get "the round higher up?" Once more he dreamed and he was looking again at a ladder that starting on the ground stretched up a little way and then suddenly stopped.

"My ladder!" exclaimed Charlie. Then it seemed to him as if above his ladder he saw a bright, beautiful, silver round, but it was up so high he could not reach it! Looking at it, longing to plant his feet upon it, some one seemed to approach Charlie whom he immediately knew, because he resembled pictures in the old family Bible at Aunt Stanshy's. He had a shepherd's crook in his hand, and there was a crown of thorns on his head.

THE END