my little laddie, why did I let you go from me into the darkness and
storm, my little boy, my little boy?"

"Hooray! Hooray!" Wild shouts broke in upon the broken-hearted prayer, as
Jim and Dud and Dan burst round the bend of the rocks. "Brother Bart,
Brother Bart! Look what's coming, Brother Bart!"

And, turning his dim eyes where the boys pointed, Brother Bart saw a
little motor boat making its swift way over the still swelling waves. On
it came, dancing in the sunlight arched by the rainbow, tossing and
swaying to the pulse of the sea; and in the stern, enthusiastically waving
the little signal flag that Ford had put into his hand to remember the
life-savers, sat--

"Laddie!" burst from Brother Bart's lips, and he fell upon his knees in
thanksgiving. "O God be praised and blessed for the sight! My laddie,--my
own little laddie safe, safe,--my laddie coming back to me again!"

XXIII.--DAN'S MEDAL.

It was the day after the big storm that had made havoc even in the
sheltered harbor of Beach Cliff, and so damaged "The Polly" in her safe
moorings that six men were busy putting her into shipshape again. And
dad's other Polly was in an equally doleful mood.

It was to have been a day of jollification with Marraine. They were to
have gone voyaging together over the summer seas, that were smiling as
joyously to-day as if they had never known a storm. They were to have
stopped at the college camp in Shelter Cove, where Marraine had some girl
friends; they were to have kept on their sunlit way to Killykinick, for so
dad had agreed; they were to have looked in on the Life-Saving Station,
which Marraine had never seen; in fact, they were to have done more
pleasant things than Polly could count,--and now the storm had fallen on
her namesake and spoiled all.

"Never mind, Pollykins!" comforted Marraine, who could find stars in the
darkest sky. "We'll each take a dollar and go shopping."

"Only a dollar, Marraine? That won't buy much," said Polly, who had walked
in ways where dollars seem very small indeed.

"Oh, yes, it will! There's no telling what it can buy in Jonah's junk
shop," laughed Marraine. "I got a rusted tea tray that polished into
silver plate, a blackened vase that rubbed into burnished copper. I should
not wonder if he had an Aladdin's lamp hidden somewhere in his dusty
shelves."

"Let us go look for it," said Polly, roused into gleeful interest. "Oh,
I'd love to have Aladdin's lamp! Wouldn't yo