r,
while their rival growths kept on. These rivals were the brambles and
the wild clematis, which grew and grew in friendly emulation, and ended,
in spite of many rebuffs from trampling feet, by shaking hands across
the road; the clematis, not content with that, going farther and
embracing and tangling themselves up till rudely broken apart by the
passers-by--notably by old Joe Daygo, when he went that way home to his
solitary cot, instead of walking, out of sheer awkwardness, across
somebody's field or patch.

"I wish father would buy old Joe's cottage," said Vince, as the two lads
trudged down the lane that afternoon. "We could make it such a lovely
place."

"Yours is right enough," said Mike, pausing in whistling an old French
air a good deal affected by the people.

"Oh yes, and I shouldn't like to leave it; but I always like this bit
down here; the lane is so jolly. Look."

"What at?"

"Two swallow-tail butterflies. Let's have them."

"Shan't. I'm not going to make myself red-hot running after them if
we're going out in the boat. Besides, we haven't got any of your
father's pill boxes to put 'em in. I say, how the things do grow down
here! Look at that fern and the bracken."

"Yes, and the old foxgloves. They are a height!"

"It's so warm and sheltered. What's that?"

They stopped, for there was a quick, rushing sound amongst the herbage.

"Snake," said Vince, after a pause; "and we've no sticks to hunt him
out."

"Down his hole by this time. Come along. What a fellow you are! You
always want to be off after something. Why can't you keep to one
purpose at a time, as Mr Deane says, so as to master it?"

"Hark at old Ladle beginning to lay down the law," cried Vince merrily.
"You're just as bad. I say, shall we stop about here this afternoon?
Look at that gull--how it seems to watch us."

Vince threw back his head to gaze up at the beautiful, white-breasted
bird, which was keeping them company, and sailing about here and there
some twenty feet overhead, watching them all the time.

"Bother the gull!" said Mike. "Let's go on and speak to old Joe about
the boat."

"Oh, very well," said Vince; "but what's the hurry? I hate racing along
when there's so much to see. Here, Ladle: look--look! My! what a
chance for a seine!"

They had just reached a turn in the lane where they could look down at
an embayed portion of the deep blue sea, in which a wide patch was
sparkling and flashing