t the time of this story all the
boys of Wynne, young and old, were crazy after maritime pursuits and
sports. They spent the bulk of their holiday time either in sailing
about the bay, or in fishing, bathing, or holding model yacht races in
the cove.

"Why don't I have a yacht in the place of a silly ball? Why don't I
have boys to play with instead of Lucy and Gyp? What do girls or dogs
know about a top or a cat hunt? I'm disgusted! I'll go for a sailor!
I'll run away; there!"

The girl took no notice of this discourse. It was no new thing for her
to hear grumbling from her brother, and she was accustomed to bear it
without murmur or dissent. Presently she ran away, along the river
bank, with her doll, to a shady place, where she knew the sun was not
strong, and where some rushes overhung the path. There she could put
her doll to sleep. It was no use asking Archie to join her. He was too
old and too much of a man to enter into any such stupidity.

Presently Archie sat down in the shade, on the balustrades of the
churchyard and watched the glee of the High-Schoolboys with a sulky
envy.

It was a glorious summer afternoon. The sky overhead was one vast,
inverted field of blue, without a single speck of cloud. The hot sun
was beating down almost perpendicularly, and the rays penetrated the
leaves, shedding a lattice-work pattern on the ground.

"I know Ben Huntly, the boat-builder, will tell me how to go to sea.
He has been a sailor himself, and I know he will tell me all about it.
Nobody cares; well, mother might, perhaps, a bit, but then, I don't
know."

Then he paused in his musings and thought of all the injustice done to
him by his mother. He thought, like all gloomy, wretched little boys,
of all that was ill. He didn't for one moment remember, how, that very
morning, the self-same, unjust mother, after packing up his little
lunch-basket, had put her arms round his neck, and a little
red-cheeked apple in his pocket, and told him to keep away from the
river. Oh, no, he seemed to have quite forgotten all that.

Then the sun went behind a cloud and Archie felt the cool wind, which
blew from the cove, on his cheek, so he jumped down from his musing
place and sped away as fast as his legs would carry him toward the
house of the boat-builder. He ran across the green, down the grassy
slopes and across a stretch of shingly beach, to the cottage of his
friend.

Ben Huntly, the boat-builder, was a good-hearted fellow