keep hims. Vat is ze mattaire vis ze young shipwrecked open
boatman?"

"Nothing--nothing at all," said Bob Chowne hastily; but he had certainly
uttered a groan.

"As for you, Uggleston," cried the doctor, "I sha'n't offer you a
present, for you'll want me some day to mend your head, or cut off a leg
or a wing. Only, recollect I'm in your debt."

"As for me, Mr Uggleston," said my father.

"There--there, that will do," cried old Jonas surlily. "We ar'n't such
very bad friends, are we?"

"I hope not," said my father, and we took our leave, being embraced by
the French skipper, who said that we should meet again, shaking hands
with old Jonas, and giving Binnacle Bill a crown piece, which my father
slipped into my hand for him, making the old red-faced fellow's eyes
twinkle as he exclaimed:

"Ba-c-co!"

Then we started homeward in the lowest of spirits, we two boys expecting
the most severe of lectures; but to our intense surprise and delight we
were allowed to drop behind, for our elders were deep in conversation
about the mine.

Then it was that, after hanging more and more behind, Bob Chowne
relieved his feelings.

"It was a shame--it was too bad!" he kept on grumbling.

"What was too bad--what was a shame?" I cried.

"Why, for father to give old Parley Vous that knife!"

"Why?" I said wonderingly.

"Why? Because it was such a good un. I've tried to coax him out of it
lots o' times. It was as sharp as sharp, and he used to use it to cut
off fingers and toes, and that sort of thing. He never would give it to
me, because he said it was good for operating, and now that old Frenchee
Frenchee will use it for toasting frogs over his nasty little stove."

"Here, you boys, come up here," said the doctor just then.

We crept up very unwillingly, for the lecture was evidently going to
begin.

"I thought we'd tell you," said the doctor in his grimmest fashion,
"we're going to find out a school where there are no holidays, and send
you there."

But they did not, for in due time we went back to Barnstaple, and I had
the last of my education there.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

"HOW YOU HAVE GROWED, LADS; HOW YOU HAVE GROWED!"

It seems a long time to look forward to, but when it has gone how
everyone finds out what a scrap of our lives three years appear to be.

I am going to jump over three years now, and come to an exciting time
when we lads were leaving school at midsummer for good.

Those were