ourse, I'll do whatever you say, but I feel that the Bureau of
Fisheries is where I'm bound to land in the end."

"No going back?"

"No going back, Father!"

Major Dare reached out his hand, and the boy grasped it warmly.

"Very well, my boy, that's a compact. I'm not sure just what will need
to be done to enter you in the Bureau, but whatever is necessary, we'll
do. I think you have decided on a life that will be hard and sometimes
thankless, but at least it is a man's job, and will have its own
compensations. You couldn't possibly do anything more useful. We'll go
home by way of Washington, visit the Fisheries Bureau together, and see
what arrangements we can make."

"That's bully, Father," said Colin earnestly; "thank you ever so much."

"Make good, my boy," his father answered, "that's all you have to do.
You'll only have yourself to thank, for it will be all your own fight."

It was fortunate for Colin that this was not decided until the day
before they left Santa Catalina, for he became so impatient that the
intervening hours before they started for the East seemed like weeks to
the boy. His enthusiasm was so genuine that, although his mother was
already very tired of the interminable 'angling' conversation in Santa
Catalina, she succeeded nobly in evincing an intense interest in the
whole fish tribe.

When they arrived in Washington, which chanced to be in the afternoon,
Colin wanted to start off for the Bureau of Fisheries immediately, even
before he went to the hotel, and he seemed to feel quite aggrieved when
the visit was put off. Major Dare had some important business to look
after and he purposed to leave the question of the boy's arrangements
open for a couple of days, but he saw there would be no peace for any
one until Colin's fate was settled, and at the boy's importunity he
'phoned to the Bureau and made an appointment with the Commissioner for
the following day.

Next morning, accordingly, the two started off together for the
Fisheries Building, an antiquated structure standing in the magnificent
park behind the National Museum and but a short distance from the
Smithsonian Institution. They entered on the ground-floor, seeing to the
left a number of hatching troughs, to the right models of nets and
fishing-vessels, at the far end a small aquarium, while in the center
was a tank in which were the two fur seals that the boy had heard about
in the Pribilof Islands.

He pulled his father's arm