it was still very sad.

"You shouldn't talk like that, my boy," said he; "the Czar would have
come to you directly you landed, if he hadn't been ill. However, he's
well again now, and I shouldn't wonder if you were to see him here
to-day."

Just then the door opened again, and in tramped a dozen grand-looking
officers in splendid uniforms, the foremost of whom, making a low bow to
the shabby soldier, said, very respectfully, "All is ready, your
majesty."

At the word "majesty," all the emigrants started as if they had been
shot; for they now saw that this shabby-looking fellow, whom they had
taken for a common soldier, was no other than the Czar Peter the Great
himself. But little Osterman did not seem frightened in the least. He
slid his soft little hand into the Emperor's huge brown fist, and cried
joyfully:

"I'm so glad you're a good Czar after all, for the Czars that I've read
about were all very bad fellows indeed, and I know I shouldn't have
liked them."

"Well, well, my boy," said Peter, clapping him on the shoulder, with a
hearty laugh, "I hope you'll find me a little better than some of them,
even though I _am_ an Emperor. Come along with me, and I'll find you
something better to do than chalking an old wall."

The boy went with his new friend, and any history of Russia will tell
you how high Osterman rose, and what great things he accomplished. Peter
the Great made him his secretary; the Empress Catherine I. made him her
chamberlain; and the Czar Peter II. gave him a title of honor; and
before the Empress Anne had been many years on the throne, the little
student whom his comrades had laughed at in the old warehouse thirty
years before, had become Count Osterman, Prime Minister of Russia.

[Begun in HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE No. 37, July 13.]

THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN NAVY.

BY BENSON J. LOSSING.

CHAPTER V.

"We have a right to enter any of your vessels without your leave to seek
for suspected deserters from our navy, and to take them away when
found," said the British government to the Americans again after the war
with the Barbary States.

"By so doing you insult our flag. _Beware!_" replied the Americans.

There was no power in that "Beware!" for our little navy, which had
performed such valiant deeds, had, under the pretext of "public
economy," been transformed into a swarm of gun-boats--a "mosquito
fleet"--that was ridiculed at home and despised abroad. British cruisers
patrolled