many cruel blows. But,
if you've made up your mind, Archie, and think you can go to bed
nights in a rolling, tossing sea, with the wind howling and the rain
pouring, and your mother thousands of miles away, looking at your
little empty bed, I should think very seriously about it." Archie
looked thoughtful, as the gloom deepened on his face, and silence fell
on the pair for a time.

[Illustration: ARCHIE THINKING OF BEN'S STORY.]

Suddenly Ben spied a French frigate looming against the darkening sky
and showed it to Archie through the telescope. He explained all the
parts of the ship and dwelt long in his answers to the lad's
questions. He told little Archie how, early one stormy morning, he had
been awakened from his bed in the cottage by the sound of guns away at
sea, how he had descended to the beach with a lot of the villagers, to
find the waves beating mercilessly over a great broken ship. He told
how they had all stood, in the leaden morning, stricken with dread at
the sight of the disaster they were all powerless to prevent; leaning
hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the
sleet and spray rushed at them from the great mountain of foaming sea
which kept breaking on the rocks in the cove. He told farther, how,
before all their eyes, the vessel had given one great heave backwards
and sank beneath the waves forever; how they could faintly hear the
heart-rending screams of women and children above the storm as the
great waste of waters covered the struggling vessel. He told Archie
that, on the following evening, while he was mending a boat down the
bay, he came across something lying amongst a mass of sea-weed, and on
turning it over had found it to be the dead body of a sailor--a fair,
curly-headed youth.

"He was clad," said Ben, "in a pair of linen trowsers and a sea shirt,
and the weeds and sand were all tangled in his hair. I raised him up
from the beach and a small bundle fell out of his bosom. I laid him in
my boat and went for Doctor Hart. It was the talk of the village for
days. Dr. Hart found the bundle to contain a packet of letters written
in a feeble hand and signed by the dead sailor's mother. They were
loving letters of expected joy at her boy's return."

Ben would have gone on with the story, but he was attracted by the
appearance of Archie. The little lad was sitting, with his pale face
turned up to Ben, and with two great tears, as large as horse beans,
in the corners