ill?"

"Oh no! aunt likes the place to look nice," echoed Will.

"Don't you listen to them, my dear," said Aunt Ruth; "but I'm very glad
to see you, and you must excuse me now."

She slipped out of the room, and Uncle Abram gave his nephew another
look full of intelligence before proceeding to show his young guest his
collection in the best room while the tea was being prepared.

For the best room was quite a museum of trophies brought by Uncle
Abram's own hands from what he called "furren lands;" and Dick was
excitement itself over the inspection.

"This here's the grains," said the old gentleman, pointing to a
five-pronged spear, on a long slight pole, with a cord attached to the
shaft. "We uses this to take bonito and dolphin out in the hot seas.
Strikes 'em as they play under the bobstay, you know."

"And what's this?" said Dick eagerly.

"Backbone of a shark, twelve foot long, as we hooked and drew aboard o'
the _Princess_ off Barbadoes, Jennywury sixteen, eighteen hundred
forty-nine."

"You caught it with a hook?" cried Dick.

"Baited with a bit o' very bad salt pork," said the old man. Then,
pointing with the stem of his pipe: "His jaws."

Then from the lancet-toothed jaws to a sea-snake in a large bottle of
spirits--an unpleasant looking little serpent, said to be poisonous. In
a glass case was the complete shell of a lobster, out of which the
crustacean had crawled; and beside this were some South Sea bows and
arrows, pieces of coral from all parts of the world, a New Zealand
paddle on the wall, opposite to a couple of Australian spears. Hanks of
sea-weed hung from nails. There was a caulking hammer that had been
fished up from the bottom of some dock, all covered with acorn
barnacles, and an old bottle incrusted with oyster-shells, the glass
having begun to imitate the iridescent lining of the oyster. Under the
side-table was a giant oyster from off the coast of Java. Over the
chimney-glass the snout of a sword-fish. A cannon-ball--a thirty-two
pounder--rested in a wooden cup, a ball that had no history; and close
by it, in a glass case, was a very ill-shaped cannon-ball, about
one-fourth its size, which had a history, having been picked out of the
wall of Saint Anthony's Church on the cliff, into which it had been
fired by the Spaniards in the days of "good Queen Bess."

There were curiosities enough to have taken the young visitor hours more
to see, only while they were in the midst of t