un to laugh, "if you wished to make
matters unpleasant for us, why did you send us the box which contained
everything we wanted?"

"A box?" answered William W. Kolderup. "What box? I never sent you a
box! Perhaps by chance--"

And as he said so he looked towards Phina, who cast down her eyes and
turned away her head.

"Oh! indeed!--a box! but then Phina must have had an accomplice--"

And Uncle Will turned towards Captain Turcott, who laughingly
answered,--

"What could I do, Mr. Kolderup? I can sometimes resist you--but Miss
Phina--it was too difficult! And four months ago, when you sent me to
look round the island, I landed the box from my boat--"

"Dearest Phina!" said Godfrey, seizing the young lady's hand.

"Turcott, you promised to keep the secret!" said Phina with a blush.

And Uncle William W. Kolderup, shaking his big head, tried in vain to
hide that he was touched.

But if Godfrey could not restrain his smiles as he listened to the
explanations of Uncle Will, Professor Tartlet did not laugh in the
least! He was excessively mortified at what he heard! To have been the
object of such a mystification, he, a professor of dancing and
deportment! And so advancing with much dignity he observed,--

"Mr. William Kolderup will hardly assert, I imagine, that the enormous
crocodile, of which I was nearly the unhappy victim, was made of
pasteboard and wound up with a spring?"

"A crocodile?" replied the uncle.

"Yes, Mr. Kolderup," said Carefinotu, to whom we had better return his
proper name of Jup Brass. "Yes, a real live crocodile, which went for
Mr. Tartlet, and which I did not have in my collection!"

Godfrey then related what had happened, the sudden appearance of the
wild beasts in such numbers, real lions, real tigers, real panthers, and
then the invasion of the snakes, of which during four months they had
not seen a single specimen in the island!

William W. Kolderup at this was quite disconcerted. He knew nothing
about it. Spencer Island--it had been known for a long time--never had
any wild beasts, did not possess even a single noxious animal; it was so
stated in the deeds of sale.

Neither did he understand what Godfrey told him of the attempts he had
made to discover the origin of the smoke which had appeared at different
points on the island. And he seemed very much troubled to find that all
had not passed on the island according to his instructions, and that the
programme had been seriousl