all right. I couldn' get long widout him."

Narcisse shrank back again, the better part of him ashamed to receive Tony's kindness. A moment later he crept past and went on deck. A few of the men still hovered around Bascom, who lay on the deck, very white, very sick, very washed-looking, but open-eyed and breathing. Most of them, however, were busy again, at the windlass, and were just hauling up the last gun. It had to be lifted before the treasure could be gotten out, but no time was given to it after it was landed on the deck. Only Bascom, who, in spite of his weakness, wanted to be where he could watch the raising of the treasure, was brought and pillowed on it, an old tarpaulin being folded over to keep him from feeling the shells.

The chest had been so deeply bedded under the gun that it was the hardest of all to raise; but at last it began to come, and Bascom struggled up from his gun to watch it swing, dripping, to the deck. It was wooden, oblong in shape, and very heavy; the edges were worn off and crumbling.

"If it hadn' been covered so deep it wouldn' have keep so well as it has," said Captain Lazaré, waving the other men back, but trying not to look eager or excited.

Captain Tony bent over it with him. "I doan' see the fastenin'," he said. "I guess we cut into him. It will be ver' easy at dis end." And he began chipping where the wood was most decayed.

It was the only thing to do, and yet, as the men stood with gaping mouths waiting for the lid to yield, Bascom felt a new ache at his heart to see the uncouth relic damaged. A great chunk of it gave way, and every one bent forward. Still there was nothing to be seen but wood. Lazaré caught the axe from Tony's hand and gave the thing a mighty blow that sent a dull rent through it. He pried it apart with the blade and laid it open. He had split in two a block of solid wood.

"It—it was one of the old gun-carriages!" cried Bascom, and sank back upon his austere pillow.

Captain Tony lifted his cap a little, and then pulled it down over his eyes again. Stooping, he measured the two sections of wood. Then, turning to Lazaré, he asked, "Is it a fair divide?"

Lazaré covered his feelings with a comical shrug, but Narcisse and both the crews looked whipped with disappointment, and eyed the innocent old block resentfully. Bascom motioned to have it brought alongside his gun.

"I don't see," he said, afterward, "what better an old party like that could have done, comin' from so far, than to bring his comforts with him instead of presents for folks he didn't know."

Bascom never told what Narcisse had done to him under water, and the gun that had had a share in it was used to keeping its own counsel. It and its comrades were left in his care, and when he saw that they would be awkward ballast on the Mystery, they were piled together on Tony's beach to wait a purchaser. The faith which Bascom had had in them staid with him, although public interest in them died out, and they were forgotten again. But Bascom was always working with them, and polishing them, and talking to them when he had the time.

"It's queer how you all staid there so quiet, and waited hundreds an' hundreds an' hundreds of years—just for me," he said to them. "I wisht I could only find out where you come from, and what you're calculatin' for me to do. You didn't come for nothin', I make sure of that."

But the guns with all their sleeping possibilities of voice lay still.

MISS APPOLINA'S CHOICE.

BY AGNES LITTLETON.

Part III.

he next morning at ten o'clock two frightened and trembling maidens presented themselves at the door of Miss Briggs's house on Madison Avenue. It was all out of order, to be sure, for them to be calling at such an hour, for it was the time appointed for their lessons, and yesterday had been a holiday also on account of the fair; but Miss Briggs's word was to a certain extent law in the family, and governesses and masters were asked to defer their coming.

The mothers of Millicent and Peggy had little idea as to why their cousin wished to see them, for neither girl dared to confess her atrocious deed. In fact, Millicent herself did not know of Peggy's poem. Peggy was putting off the evil moment as long as possible, when she should be forced to give an account of what she had done.

She was really very much ashamed of herself. She had lain awake half the night thinking of what a rude, unladylike, childish trick she had been guilty.

"From first to last it has been silly," she groaned. "It was perfectly hateful of me to make Milly send her poetry and turn her into a laughing-stock, even though no one knows it was she who wrote them, and it was ridiculous for me to put that one in about Cousin Appolina. And it isn't very funny, either. I might have made a better one while I was about it. Oh dear! oh dear! I wish I hadn't been born a joker! I'll never get to England now, not for years and years, for papa declares he won't take me himself until I have finished school. And when he hears about this, for, of course, Cousin Appolina will tell the whole family, what will he say! Oh, oh! Unfortunate wretch that I am!"

Thus Peggy. Millicent, in the mean time, across the street, was in a no less unhappy frame of mind.

"What can it be?" said she to herself. "Cousin Appolina could not have found out then about the slippers, for she seemed to be in a very pleasant mood when she came to the poetry-table. What in the world made her buy all the poems? She must have come upon one that she liked, or one that she didn't like, that made her buy them all. Probably that she didn't like, but which one, I wonder?"

But as I have said, they rang Miss Briggs's door-bell, punctual to the moment. James, the melancholy footman, seemed even more solemn than usual as he ushered them up the stairs to the door of Miss Briggs's library.

"Miss Reid and Miss Margaret Reid," he announced, in a sepulchral voice, and withdrew, leaving them to their fate.

Miss Briggs sat at her desk writing. She gave the girls a cold good-morning, and motioned them to be seated. She continued to write, and her quill pen travelled briskly across the page, scratching loudly. Millicent's heart sank. The slippers were placed in reproachful prominence upon the top of the desk. The poems were not to be seen.

After some minutes' silence, broken only by a deep-drawn sigh from Milly, a warning cough from Peggy, and the scratching of the quill, Miss Briggs turned in her chair and faced them. She removed the spectacles which she had worn when writing, and raised her lorgnette. The girls thought that no stern judge in the days of witchcraft could have appeared more formidable. She scrutinized them piercingly, coldly, judicially. Then she spoke.

"I have asked you to come to me, young ladies, that some small matters may be cleared up. Who wrote that poetry?" It was not the slippers entirely, then. It was "To a Pearl in an Oyster-shell"; and Peggy would go to England. Millicent's eyes were on the ground, the color came and went in her cheeks, her head drooped.

"I did," she faltered.

"Just as I thought. No one but you, you silly scrap of sentiment, would be guilty of writing such trash. It is now consigned to its proper destination;" and she pointed to a large scrap-basket which the girls had not before noticed, and which was filled to overflowing with the ill-fated booklets. "I have looked through them all, and find nothing but harmless trash, with one exception. As you may suppose, it is this one;" and from under some papers on her desk she drew another.

"I suppose it is the sonnet to 'A Pearl in an Oyster-shell,'" gasped Millicent.