mate.

The Frenchmen guessed what he meant. At last the ladder was up, resting on our deck, and its end scraping the Gascogne's side. There was great danger that at any moment the top end might catch on an iron plate as our rolling tug pushed it upward. Then the great weight of the tug would crush the ladder into matchwood. No matter; that was one of the nerve-tickling details of the newspaper steamship hunt. Up ran two reporters and an artist, one after the other, while men stood by to throw them life-buoys if the ladder should be smashed.

But they got aboard all right. Afterward came the interviewing, the hurried writing of copy, the telegraphing from a secret place in Staten Island out of the reach of news thieves; but all that is the mere recital of how we carried home our game.

THE YOUNG BEACH-COMBERS OF MONMOUTH.

BY AGNES CARR SAGE.

"I say he sha'n't come in!"

"And I tell you he shall!"

The boys' voices rose high and angry; their attitude was threatening; and at the sound of contention a bevy of other barefooted urchins came scampering over the damp sand, shouting, "Hi! a scrap, a scrap!" and eager to see fair play.

"What's it all about?" inquired Ned Eaton, a good-looking youth, rather better dressed than his companions.

"It's about little Jem Ferguson," spoke up the shorter and stockier of the belligerents. "Kit Bandy here says he oughtn't to be let into the beach-combing, and I hold it's mean as cramp-fish to bar him out just because he's weak and pindlin' and no account in a boat."

"So it is, so it is," chorused the listening youngsters.

But Kit put in quickly, "All right, let him in then; but if you do he'll hoodoo every mother's son of us. Who killed the luck bird last June?"

"Not Jem," cried Herbert Woolley.

"No; but his daddy did, and if he had been drinking too much hard cider at the time, that makes no difference, and the whole family has had a powerful sight of bad fortune ever since. Jest two weeks after their cow choked to death with a green apple; Jem's hip trouble grew worse; and Jake Smithers told me that the smack in which Dan Ferguson sails is sure to come back with a light haul. The men all look on him as a Jonah, for fish don't come to the nets of those who take the life of a hawk."

"Well, but ill-luck can't be inherited, like consumption or the shape of one's nose," protested Herbert, "and even if it could, Jem's having a bit of sand to sift couldn't affect the rest of us."

Still the boys glanced at each other doubtfully, and one muttered. "We'll each have more ground, and so more chance, if he isn't there," while Kit clinched his argument by declaring, "Oh, if Bert has his way we all may as well give up all hope of winning that," pointing, as he spoke, to a flaring yellow poster which adorned one of the bathing-houses.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!!!

was the heading, in conspicuous capitals two inches long, and below this amount was offered, in smaller type, as a reward for the return of a diamond earring lost by one of the summer visitors in Benton, the pretty New Jersey village where these lads lived, and which was a quasi-fashionable seaside resort for three months of the year. Now, however, the broad white beach was given into the hands of those young natives who in the early fall make a business of going carefully over it, rubbing the iridescent sand between their fingers, and seeking for any articles there lost and hidden during the gay warm season.

In grim silence, then, the boys re-read the advertisement which all knew by heart, and Ned Eaton suggested, "Let's take a vote. Those who want Limpy Jem to have a show drop a white shell in my hat, and those who are for freezing him out a purple one."

"Yes, yes, that is a good way; that will be fair." And the members of this hastily formed Beach-Comber's Union turned aside with relief to select their ballots from the deep-sea treasures cast up by the bobbing foam-capped waves.

Five minutes later, then, the polls were open, and Kit looked triumphant and Bert annoyed as both noted that the majority of the voters were endeavoring to conceal dark mussel-shells in their brown little fists. There was no doubt that Jem's fate was sealed, when suddenly a faint shout attracted their attention, and all started at sight of a slender auburn-haired lassie speeding toward them from the direction of the village. "Gee whizz, but it's Eileen Ferguson!" shrieked small Teddy Todd, "and her temper is as fiery as her curly mop."

Certainly there was a dangerous flash in her big gray eyes and a sharp ring in her young voice as, coming nearer, she cried: "So, Kit Bundy, you are playin' the snake in the grass again, are you? You never did like my brother, and now I hear you are tryin' to have him put out of the beach-combin'. Poor Jemmy, who is too sickly to go to the fishin'-banks, and has so looked forward to the fall in hopes of earnin' a few dollars for the mither! I should think ye'd be ashamed of yourself! Dickson, the bathin'-master tould me how you were talkin' to the others; but you won't mind him, will you, boys?" And there was that in the appealing, half tearful glance which the earnest little sister turned upon them that made most of her hearers look sheepish, and become deeply absorbed in stirring up the sand with their toes.

But Kit, was furious. "What?" he roared; "be dictated to by a girl? Not if I know our combers. Go on, fellows, and vote as you intended; while, Miss Impudence, the sooner you take yourself off the better."

Instinctively, however, Eileen turned to young Woolley. "Oh, Bert, Bert!" she wailed, "don't let them throw my Jemmy out. He has had such a dreadful summer, and this—this will break his heart. We need the money so much, and niver did he dream his old friends could treat him so." Then all at once her wrath dissolved in a girlish burst of tears.

"Pepper me if I can stand that, bad luck or not," growled Ned, hurriedly picking up a white shell and flinging it into the hat; and as boys, like older people, are very much akin to a flock of sheep, the majority followed suit, and Jem Ferguson was, as in former years, numbered with the beach-combers, the three purple shells cast by Kit and two of his chums not being sufficient to rule him out.

"A thousand thanks, boys! You are blissid darlints, ivery one of ye—barrin' that trio," exclaimed Eileen, who, though American born, in moments of excitement sometimes betrayed her ancestry by her speech.

When, then, on the morning of September 18th, the combers gathered to commence operations, one of the happiest faces there was that of little "Limpy," hopping briskly along on his crutches, and nodding gay greetings to his old comrades. They found the beach evenly measured off and divided by stakes. The plan of the lads of Benton was to draw lots for their respective portions, a strict though unwritten law being that no one should poach upon another's grounds.

"See, Kit, you and I are neighbors," said Jem, cordially, to young Bundy. "And such fine sections as we have! right in front of the great Naiad Hotel. We have a good chance for the diamond. Oh, but don't I wish I could find it!"

But Kit only growled something about "luck-bird-killers" under his breath, and strode away to his own preserve. Always rather a leader among his companions, he was chagrined by his defeat, and felt injured and annoyed by the cripple's presence.

As the day wore on, however, he found it difficult to keep up his antagonism to cheery Jem, who ignored all rebuffs, and chatted away in the most friendly as well as quaint manner—now about the sea, wondering why it changed its hue from blue to green and green to gray; and now about the fish-hawks circling overhead, and longing to be one of them, that he too might fly off to some warm Southern land before the cold,