worst enemy, I would send him to pick a gallon of winkles off the ooze when a nor'-easter was blowing full force up the creek. I once tried to pick a pint myself when out shooting, and I never repeated the job. Use is, however, second nature-or is said to be; and poor Joe's mother being a widow, and he her only child, he worked at it bravely; and that small trade was entirely in his own hands, for every one knew it would have been useless to start an opposition business in winkles-no one would have patronised any but Joe.

When well on to the flats, a watchful, half-frightened look was apt to come into the lad's face, as though he expected to hear or see something he did not altogether like.

One morning out of many let me describe. He reaches the hards, the tide being at low ebb, and begins his picking-dreary work at any time, but fearfully trying in the winter months. He picks close to the edge of the water—in fact, his feet are often in it. Judging from the length of time he stays in one spot, and his crouching position, he must have nearly filled his basket: the winkles are thickly spread on the hard just there.

Round a bend of the creek a shot is heard, and a man comes in sight with some sea-birds in his hand. He nears the ragged figure busy at his winkle - picking, gives a keen look down into the water where the winkler had been so busy, and then passes on over the hards, and is soon out of sight. The boy, after one long look downwards again, slings his basket over his shoulders and shuffles away.

Surely that was a line, just discernible, low down in the water. What might have been attached to that line is not for us to say; nor can we tell if in the dark later on that line was grappled for from some vessel or shore-shooter's skiff. What connection there was between the man who fired the shot and the woe-begone-looking winkler, it is not for us to relate. We only know that, two days later, there was plenty of ague medicine in the houses on the flats. They said "a fresh lot hed bin sent 'emmost wondrous strengthenin' stuff-just when they wus nearly run out of it."

None but those who have tried it know what dirty and dangerous work it is to get at a good musselscalp, or to go after shell-fish of any kind in the

old-fashioned days. The finest mussels were as a rule in the most dangerous part of the ooze. As to clams, they were worse to get at than mussels. You had to go into the gullies up to your waist in foul ooze and water, and to dig them out of the banks like potatoes.

This is all changed now, and shell-fish are cultivated on scientific principles.

CHAPTER XIV.

ON CRONES AND CORPSE-LIGHTS.

THE bird life on the flats and along the shore did not engross the whole of Den's spare time. For weeks together he was hardly seen there, and old Nance, "worritted to death," as she often said, by those "owdacious young varmints," would actually get anxious about the boy, and hope no harm had come to him.

But the lads had other hunting - grounds to run over. There were the sluices to inspect, the wharves to visit, and the tidal mills, besides the big quay with its shipping. Old Nance said it was a wonder the boys were not drowned twenty times in a week. Nance's tongue ran away with her at times. They certainly had some narrow escapes. Occasionally they might be seen on the top of the sluice-gates

with one of the miller's sons, fishing for flounders with hook and line, Scoot and Winder looking like animated scarecrows in their cruising rags, as they called their dilapidated clothing. The miller's son was of what might be technically termed a higher class socially than their own; but one virtue the wellto-do inhabitants of the marshlands possessed-they seldom forbade or prevented their boys from mixing in their games with the poorer children, so long as these were free from vicious habits.

Den's kinsman was inclined to be a little fastidious in this respect, but then he had held the office of Portreeve more than once; and that was a post of dignity, he who held it being, as we have stated before, appointed by what was called a court leet, which was instituted as long ago, according to the annals of the antiquated village of Marshton, as the time of the Saxon King Alfred the Great. The constables were appointed by the same august body.

The rods, lines, and bait were always provided by Scoot or Winder. They had ways and means inaccessible to Denzil, and sometimes such as did not suggest themselves to his more fastidious or scrupulous conscience.