ng a party of cannibals,
as hideous as fancy could represent them, dancing around their fire.
Johnny diverted his mind and gratified his malice by doing his best so
to alter the foremost figure as to make him appear with a wooden leg,
while he drew on his head a straw hat, unmistakably like that of the old
sailor, and touched up the features so as to give a dim resemblance to
his face. To prevent a doubt as to the meaning of the sketch, Johnny
scribbled on the side of the picture,--

"In search of fierce savages no one need roam;
The fiercest and ugliest, you'll find him at home!"

He secretly showed the picture to Alie.

"O Johnny! how naughty! What would uncle say if he saw it?"

"We might look out for squalls indeed! but uncle never by any chance
looks at a book of that sort."

"I think that you had better rub out the pencilling as fast as you can,"
said Alie.

"Catch me rubbing it out!" cried Johnny; "it's the best sketch that ever
I drew, and as like the old savage as it can stare!"

Late in the evening their mother returned from Brampton, where she had
been nursing a sick lady. Right glad were Johnny and Alie to see her
sooner than they had ventured to expect. She brought them a few oranges,
to show her remembrance of them. Nor was the old sailor forgotten;
carefully she drew from her bag and presented to him a new pipe.

The children glanced at each other. Jonas took the pipe with a curious
expression on his face, which his sister was at a loss to understand.

"Thank'ee kindly," he said; "I see it'll be a case of--

"'If ye try and don't succeed,
Try, try, try again.'"

What he meant was a riddle to every one else present, although not to
the reader.

The "try" was very successful on that evening and the following day.
Never had Johnny and Alie found their uncle so agreeable. His manner
almost approached to gentleness,--it was a calm after a storm.

"Uncle is so very good and kind," said Alie to her brother, as they
walked home from afternoon service, "that I wonder how you can bear to
have that naughty picture still in your book. He is not in the least
like a cannibal, and it seems quite wrong to laugh at him so."

"I'll rub it all out one of these days," replied Johnny; "but I must
show it first to Peter Crane. He says that I never hit on a likeness: if
he sees that, he'll never say so again!"

The next morning Jonas occupied himself with gathering wild flowers and
herbs in th