ey found that their favorite uncle had
arrived from London, and was proposing an early dinner, and a trip to
Carisbrooke. In the pleasant excitement which this caused, everything
else was forgotten. Even when Jimmie's suit was changed, he never gave
one thought to the captive crab.

Their excursion to the old castle proved delightful. Jimmie, who had
only got as far as Richard II. in his history-book, and was not very
fond of learning, became quite eager to get on fast, and come to the
place where it told about King Charles and his imprisonment, and how he
tried to get out of the tiny window shown them by the guide. Somebody
remarked that "Liberty is sweet," and Jimmie remembered writing the very
same in his copy-book; but it did not occur to him to consider that it
is just as sweet in its way, to a little, sea-loving crablet as to a
king.

It must have been the unusual state of excitement in which Jimmie went
to bed that night that caused the events of the day to become oddly
mixed up in a horrible dream. He thought _he_ was a prisoner, not in a
castle, but in the sand grotto which he and Daisy had been making in the
morning, and that his jailor was a giant crab! A tiny hole in the side
of the grotto, about two inches square, was his only way of escape, and
unless he could manage to squeeze himself through that, he would be
crushed to death by a pair of great claws as thick as a man's body.
Nearer and nearer they came, harder and harder he struggled, and gurgled
and gasped. No wonder that at last his cries aroused his mother in the
next room, and that she came running to see what was the matter!

"Oh, that awful crab! Save me, save me! Oh--oh--oh!" yelled Jimmie, only
half awake. And then to his increased horror he found that his dream was
at least partly real, and that his own escaped prisoner was crawling
briskly over his pillow in the evident hope of finding the ocean
somewhere down on the other side. Having the creature come upon him like
that when he least expected it, and immediately after such a dream,
Jimmie fairly screamed with fright, and wouldn't lie down in bed again
until Daisy, who had been awakened by the commotion from a lovely dream
about the dear Carisbrooke donkey who works at the well, came and
fetched the wandering crustacean away, and put it among a lot of damp
seaweed in her tin pail, where it seemed very glad to stay.

First thing in the morning, before breakfast, Jimmie carried the poor
lit