his ways too!" they would say, "but he's Louey's boy, an' he's one of us. Open door tu him, an' warm hearthstone, whenever he likes tu cum tu us."

One morning Den went outside after breakfast in rather a melancholy frame of mind; the shadows seemed to predominate over the sunshine in his life just then. He had been "quilted" the evening before, unjustly, for a scrape he had got into entirely through the fault of another. Generally he took his punishments stoically; if he had brought uncanny live things into the house with all their native ooze and mud about them, just when his hard-working mother had made everything clean and ship-shape, he knew it was aggravating to her, and that he was doing wrong; and the same if he tore his clothes, which she had made and mended so carefully, by reckless adventures in the neighbourhood of the mussel-scalps, and dyke-leaping, or the like. But if on a rare occasion he was punished when he had not deserved it, his naturally fiery temperament asserted itself, and the usually grave quiet child was suddenly transformed into a struggling and fighting wild creature, defiant of all his surroundings. On this last occasion an old crone, bent nearly double

with the weight of eighty-six years, who had been a witness to the scene, had wagged her head, and, holding up one of her shrivelled fingers, had

muttered

"Tell ye what, he's got their blood in him, an' no mistake; ye kin tell where he springs from."

On the whole his was a stern school. That the boy was taught to rely on himself was good, but the narrow puritanical teaching and training of most of those marshland families of religious profession was a mistake in many ways. Obedience to parents and compliance with their slightest wishes was most rigorously exacted, and to a degree that would in the present age be called simple cruelty.

On the morning after one of these scenes the boy stood by the stream under the poplars in front of his home, looking over the long dreary expanse of the marsh, bounded by the sea - wall, which dwindled away to a mere thread in the distance. The sea showed here and there in flashes, and occasionally the sails of ships or boats as they passed up and down the creek. The prospect was not a lively one, and it had a depressing influence on the boy in the state he was then in.

Suddenly Larry's voice sounded from a little distance down the marsh road, and the expression of Den's face changed as he ran to meet his cousin.

It was a whole holiday with Laurence, and he had permission, he said, from his father to go out with Denzil where they pleased, so long as they got into no mischief and kept on land.

"Get your cap, Den," he shouted; "I can show you something that will please you to-day, such as you've not seen before, I can tell you."

Without a word Den ran indoors, and, as he caught up his cap, cried, "Larry's come for me," which would, he knew, be enough to satisfy them at home.

"Come back and git on your other clothes," called his mother.

But Denzil was already out of earshot.

"He's clean an' tidy, anyway," she said, as she turned indoors again; "but I du wish as he'd got his new jacket on."

Through the town and out on to the sea-wall on the farther side of it they went, without many words being spoken by either. Then across a flat and on to the main highroad that runs from London to Dover,

D

which brought them to Standbeck, about a mile distant. After passing the school to which Larry went every day, they crossed over to the gateway of one of the principal inns of that busy road, over which her Majesty's mails and all passengers to and from London and Dover were carried by the splendidly horsed coaches of the day.

Den was still in ignorance of what he was going to see; for him it was enough that he was out with his cousin. But when Larry said, "What do you think of them now?" and he saw two magnificent birds, which he at once knew were none other than a living pair of the grand golden eagles he had so often admired in books, he was speechless with delight and admiration, the other boy watching him with a merry twinkle in his eye.

It was some time before Den found his tongue. Larry by that time was occupied in watching the ostlers, who stood awaiting the morning coach.

"I never thought as they could be as beautiful as that," said Den at last. "I must get close up to them, I'd like to watch them all the day long."

The birds were chained to stands on either side of the great iron gateway, just inside the courtyard of

the inn, where they were the objects of much curiosity to the daily passengers on the coaches.

"You can't do that, Den; they're not to be trusted. I've been over here watching them every day at dinner-time lately, and the ostlers have told me all about them. They used to have a longer run, but they've snatched up and eaten more than one cat that went too close to their stands after the bits of meat given 'em. So now they are chained up shorter, but 'tain't safe to go nigh them."

It was long before Larry could get Den to start back home again, and all the way the boy could talk of nothing but those grand birds.

Two days later he was missed after breakfast. He had run away to Standbeck to satisfy his curiosity more fully as to the grand birds at the gateway of the old inn. When Larry left school to come home late in the afternoon, he found the boy sitting in an out-of-the-way corner, near the entrance, watching the eagles with an all-absorbing interest.

"You don't mean to say you've been here again by yourself, Den?" he said; "did they give you leave to come? My, won't you catch it when you get back if they didn't!" He could hardly get