around now, nor do
anything but row. Row for your lives, boys."

And the boys did row gallantly. Harry had a pair of sculls, and Jim had
a long oar, and between them they made the boat fly through the water.
As they neared the shore, it seemed to them that there was not more than
three feet of space between the steamboat and the land; and Tom had
almost made up his mind that the cruise was coming to a sudden end, when
the great steamboat swung her head around, and drew out toward the
middle of the river. She did not seem to be more than a rod from them as
she changed her course, though in reality she was probably much farther
off. At the same moment the _Whitewing_ reached what appeared to be the
shore, but what was really a long row of piles projecting about a foot
above the water. The boys had just ceased rowing, and Tom had given the
boat a sheer with the rudder, so as to bring her alongside of the piles,
when the steamboat's swell, which the boys, in their excitement over
their narrow escape, had totally forgotten, came rushing up, seized the
boat, and threw it over the piles into a shallow and muddy lagoon.

It was almost miraculous that the boat was not capsized; but she was
actually lifted up and thrown over the piles, without taking more than a
few quarts of spray into her. When they saw that they were absolutely
safe, the boys began to wonder how in the world they could get the boat
back into the river, and Jim proposed to light the lantern and see if
anything was missing out of the boat, and if she had been injured.

"Now I see why the steamboat did not notice us," exclaimed Tom.

"Why?" asked all the others together.

"Because," he replied, "we have been such everlasting idiots as to sail
at night without showing a light."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

HOW GIL PLAYED VENTRILOQUIST.

BY JAMES B. MARSHALL.

It was before Dora and Gil Norman came back to the city last fall with
their mamma from Farmer Jonathan's, where their papa joined them every
Saturday afternoon and staid until Monday morning. If you had asked Dora
or Gil what the farmer's full name was, the answer would probably have
been, "Why, Farmer Jonathan, of course." Every one called him Farmer
Jonathan, but his letters were usually directed, "Mr. Jonathan
Wainwright."

One morning he came to the house from his great barn, and told Dora and
Gil to go down there and see the largest load of hay that he had ever
had on his hay-wagon.

Goin