ood.

"No; you stop forward there, and trim the boat. Well, Sneeshing, can
you see anything?"

The dog was standing on the thwart forward, resting his paws on the
gunwale, and watching the flight of the gulls. At the sound of his
master's voice, he uttered a low bark.

"Whee-ugh, whee-ugh!" cried a bird.

"Look, Max, there he goes out of shot."

"What is it?"

"A whaup."

Max followed the flight of the bird eagerly as it flew off toward the
shore of a long, low green island on their left.

"Now then, catch hold."

"I'm afraid I don't know how to steer," said Max nervously.

"Oh, it's easy enough. Keep her head like that, and if she seems to be
going over, run her right up into the wind."

"But I don't know how."

"Never mind that. Half the way to know how is to try--eh, Scood?"

"Yes; if she nivver tries, she can't nivver do nothing at all so well as
she should," said Scood sententiously.

"Hear that, Max?" cried Kenneth, laughing. "Scood's our philosopher
now, you know."

"Na, she isna a flossipher," grumbled Scood. "Put look, Maister Ken--
seal!"

He sat perfectly still, gazing straight at some black rocks off a rocky
islet.

"Where?--where?" cried Max eagerly. "I want to see a seal."

There was a soft, gliding motion on the black rock, and, almost without
a splash, something round and soft and grey-looking plunged into the
sea.

"You scared it away," said Kenneth.

"Oh, I am sorry!"

"Don't suppose the seal is; but I couldn't have hit it to do any harm
with this gun."

The boat glided on, and all at once, from the water's edge about a
hundred yards away, up rose, heavily and clumsily, a great
flapping-winged bird.

"What's that?" cried Max, whose knowledge of birds save in books was
principally confined to sparrows, poultry, and pigeons.

"Heron. Can't you see his beak?"

"Yes, and long neck. What a long thin tail!"

Scood chuckled.

"What's he laughing at?"

"You mind what you're doing; you'll have the boat over. Keep the tiller
as I showed you."

Max hastily complied.

"That isn't his tail," continued Kenneth, watching the heron, which was
far out of shot. "Those are his long thin legs stretched out behind to
balance him as he flies."

Max said "Oh!" as he watched the bird, and came to the conclusion that
he was being laughed at, but his attention was taken up directly after
by a couple of birds rising from the golden-brown weedy shore they were
gliding by--b