who were yet the fittest central objects imaginable for that prospect of golden sand, calm blue sea, marble-white pier and terraces of cliff lifting their summits of sloping green high into the sweet clear atmosphere which one has in mind when one thinks of the holiday coast of the old home.

The man named Thomas, having cooked the breakfast, had taken the helm, but the obligation of steering did not interfere with his eating. In fact, I observed that he steered with the small of his back, helping the helm now and again by a slight touch of the tiller with his elbow, while he fell to on the plate upon his knee. For my part, I was as hungry as a wolf, and fed heartily, as the old voyagers would have said. Helga, too, did very well; indeed, her grief had half-starved her; and mighty glad was I to see this fair and dainty little heart of oak making a meal, for it was a good assurance in its way that she was fighting with her sorrow and was beginning to look at the future without the bitter sadness that was in her gaze yesterday.

But while we sat eating and chatting, the wind continued to slowly freshen; the foresheet had tautened to the rigidity of iron, and now and again the lugger made a plunge that would send a bright mass of white water rolling away from either bow. The wind, however, was almost over the stern, and we bowled along before it on a level keel, save when some scend of sea, lifting her under the quarter, threw the little fabric along with a slanting mast and a sharper drum-like rolling out of the heart of the distended canvas as the lugger recovered herself with a saucy swing to starboard.

'Who says we ain't going to reach Australey?' exclaimed Abraham, pulling out a short pipe and filling it, with a slow, satisfied grin at the yeasty dazzle over the lee-rail, to which the eye, fastened upon it, was stooped at times so close that the brain seemed to dance to the wild and brilliant gyrations of the milky race.

'A strange fancy,' said I, 'for a man to buy a Deal lugger for Sydney Bay.'

'If it warn't for strange fancies,' said Thomas, with a sour glance, 'it 'ud be a poor look-out for the likes of such as me.'

'Tell ye what I'm agoing to miss in this here ramble,' exclaimed Jacob. 'That's beer, mates!'

'Beer 'll come the sweeter for the want of it,' said Abraham, with a sympathetic face. 'Still, I must say, when a man feels down there's nothin' like a point o' beer.'

'What's drunk in your country, mum?' said 

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