not only
thoroughly grubby, but decorated with two good-sized smudges of tar.

"You mean it's dirty, Mr Nat," he said seriously. "All right; I'll go
and scrub it."

The next minute he was down on his knee at the water's edge scooping up
a handful of muddy sand and, as he termed it, scrubbing away as if he
would take off all the skin, and puffing and blowing the while like a
grampus, while the carpenter looked on as much amused as I. But he
turned serious directly, and with an earnest look in his eyes he said:

"Thank you for what you said, Mr Nat, sir. You shan't find me
ungrateful."

I nodded, and walked away to join my uncle, for I always hated to be
talked to like that.

Uncle Dick had his small case open, with its knife; cotton-wire, thread,
and bottle of preserving cream, and when I joined him where he was
seated he had already stripped the skin off one of the birds, and was
painting the inside cover with the softened paste; while a few minutes
later he had turned the skin back over a pad of cotton-wool, so deftly
that, as the feathers fell naturally into their places and he tied the
legs together, it was hard to believe that there was nothing but
plumage, the skin, and a few bones.

"Open the case," he said, and as I did so he laid his new specimen upon
a bed of cotton-wool, leaving room for the other bird, and went on
skinning in the quick clever way due to long practice.

"It doesn't take those two fellows long to settle down, Nat," he said,
as he went on.

"No, uncle," I replied, as I turned my eyes to where the boy had given
himself a final sluice and was now drying his face and head
pounce-powder fashion. That is to say, after the manner in which people
dried up freshly-written letters before the days of blotting-paper. For
the boy had moved to a heap of dry sand and with his eyes closely shut
was throwing that on his face and over his short hair.

"There's no question of right or wrong," said my uncle quietly. "If we
do not take these fellows with us it means leaving them to starve to
death in the forest, for they have neither gun, boat, nor fishing
tackle."

"But it would be wrong not to take them," I said.

"Yes," replied my uncle drily. Then he was silent for a few minutes
while he turned back the skin from the bird's wing joints, and all at
once made me look at him wonderingly, for he said "Bill!" with the
handle of the knife in his teeth.

"What about Bill?" I said.

"Bill--Cr