ed so much that he gave it up, and then
he remembered what he had been taught at his mother's knee, and Peter
prayed to the great God who could control the surging sea and protect a
boy who was doing his best. Peter was only a child, but if he ever
prayed with his whole heart, he prayed so that night in the darkness,
with his numbed finger thrust through that hole in the dyke, and when
his prayer was said he somehow felt braver, stronger and older than
before, and in his heart he said:

"I will not take it out till someone comes. I will stay till morning."

Longer and longer grew the hours, the minutes, the seconds, and yet he
never moved--there were strange noises in his head, his thoughts were
confused, pictures of his playmates, of events long ago forgotten
danced before his eyes. He was not sure he could draw his finger out of
the hole even if he wished to do so, it felt so strangely numb. What
did it mean that knives seemed to be cutting, and pins pricking him
from head to foot? What would happen if no one ever found him--no one
ever came to help?

At last the rose and silver of the dawn flushed the sky. Day had come
and along that lonesome road came the first traveller in all the hours
of Peter's vigil.

A clergyman whose night had been spent by the bedside of a sick
parishioner, hurrying homeward on the path beside the dyke, heard a
groan, a feeble sound of one in mortal agony. Turning, he glanced,
first here and there, and looking up, at last, he saw beside the dyke,
the figure of a child writhing in agony.

In a single bound, the clergyman stood beside him exclaiming:

"In the name of wonder, boy, what are you doing here?"

"I am keeping the water from running out," said Peter. "Oh, can't you
ask them to come _quick_."

And they did. The town of Haarlem, even Holland itself, had been saved,
through the courage of a little boy who did his duty, and from that day
to this there has never been a child in Holland who has not heard the
stirring story of Peter, whose pluck was worthy of a sluicer's son, and
whose name will never be forgotten, or effaced from the page of
historic legend.

DAVID:

The Shepherd Boy

A rare good fortune it is to have a friend so true and so faithful that
it is as safe to tell him a secret as to whisper it to yourself, one to
whom your interests are as important as his own, and who would do any
sort of unselfish act to show his devotion to you. It was just such a
com