place back yonder?" asked Denzil, adding that he had known it many years ago.

"That I just ken," he said, shaking his head in a mournful way. "I lived in that there house 'leven year. I was head carter to him as owned it. Ye see that 'ere chimbley? Ain't it a big 'un? Many a time hev I been up thear. Ah! there's hidden places in that 'ere chimbley as no man could think on. 'Tis a powerful strong-built place; all the wood is oak; them big beams that runs across the ceilin' have got box places like in 'em, fur them as knows where to look fur 'em. We all had notice giv' us; fur they said the old gentleman was a-goin' to his son in furrin parts. But he never did, for he died queer"— the marsh term for a suicide. "Some of us—I was one on 'em-hed ter pint out the hidin'-places; they made us do it, they was so masterful-like, and I see a pair o' pistols stickin' out o' one o' their pockets. Well, we showed 'em, an' then they said as we could go."

"And where is the chapel he used to preach in?" "It was pulled down long ago. Seems like ye knowed a lot about the place, mister."

Yes, Den could have told about the whole crew and their hag-ridden hosses and long fishing-lines.

One morning after a storm a skiff was found on the beach, bottom upwards. Beside it was a sack full of rabbits that had been washed up by the tide. All about were traces of prowlers. That daring old skipper, Winder Bill, or, as he was more commonly called, Winder, said, "He reckoned it had been a rough trip, and an ill-payin' one fur all consarned in it." When it was safe to do so, the two that had formed the crew of that skiff told their tale to Winder, and a queer one it was.

No one knew whence Winder Bill had drifted to the north Kent shore. He was uncle to Den's friend Winder. The whole family had received that nickname because the head of it had been an adept in beaching a fishing-boat-in winding it up on the shore. He was a short thick - set man of great strength, broad-chested, and one of the best at handling a vessel along the coast. For swimming and diving there was not his equal. He knew where the to them; so his ser

fowl gathered and how to sail vices were in frequent request. His voice sounded like the growl of a Newfoundland dog, and he was noted for strong salt-water language, more pointed than refined. Strong likes and dislikes he showed,

and there were some whom he never would allow aboard his craft. "A fool aboard is a bad cargo," he would say. Most of his friends were such as could keep their tongues quiet and "themselves to themselves." Places to which most men gave a wide berth he liked to visit. The fowl had a knack of gathering in these lone spots, and he knew it; and he and the boy Denzil often went there together, in spite of prophetic warnings that they would be found dead in the marshes some day.

One lonely wave - washed place, difficult to get at from the main shore, and not easy to reach in a boat, was their favourite spot for watching the birds. They never carried a gun then, for both hands were needed in the boat. It was a bank, very nearly an island, flat and covered with sand, shingle, and the only coarse, wiry, stunted vegetation that can live there. On one side of it was the open sea, on the other creeks, gullies, and dykes; then, stretching away in the distance, the wild marshes. On that

spit of sand two long poles, old masts of fishingboats, were planted for sea-marks. On one a broken fishing-basket was lashed; to the top of the other a length of old fishing-net. There they stood, mourn