ly,
"but this time I will give you something of my own."

Then Billy struck a pensive attitude, and began again:

_"'Twas midnight; in his guarded tent,
Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
By thy cold, gray stones, oh, sea!
Once upon a midnight dreary,
A gentle knight was pricking on-----"_

"Worse and worse!" yelled Arthur. "Halleck, Poe, Tennyson, Spenser,
and I don't know who else in a regular literary hash! That will
do for you, my boy.' A little of that goes a long way."

"Didn't I tell you I was bubbling all over with poetry?"

"You're a bubble yourself," laughed Harry, "and you'll burst if you
get too full of that sort of stuff."

"You wait till I really put my mind on it," said Billy with a droll
look. "You'll be surprised, my boys."

"We don't doubt that in the least," said Harry. "Why, I never
heard such poetry," chuckled young Smith.

"It actually makes me cry," said Arthur.

"You will be surprised when I take the prize," answered Billy,
taking all this chaff good-naturedly.

"Yes, I think we will be," replied Seymour. "Surprised is no name
for it. We will be actually thunderstruck."

"Oh, you boys are jealous," grinned Billy. "Shall I give you
another sample?"

"Another piece of patchwork, you mean," grinned Harry. "No, please
don't. I have not recovered from the other yet."

"You fellows do not appreciate real genius, and here is the river
right at your feet to inspire you to noble thoughts. Come on, let's
take a spin."

"You have set our brains to spinning already," said Arthur.

"No, one good turn deserves another," quoted Jesse W., with a
broad grin. "Come on, boys, before Billy breaks out again."

"I may astonish you boys yet," laughed Billy, as he got into his
boat and set off down stream.

Jack worked industriously on his poem, and Percival became serious
and did some really good work on one that he had begun when he knew
that Jack was at work, a number of the boys getting to work at the
same time.

"I don't expect to do better than Jack," Percival said to Arthur,
"but if he knows I am going in for this he will do all the better,
and I want him to come out on top."

"He may anyhow, Dick," returned Arthur. "He has been doing something
of this sort for the News in Riverton. They have not been signed,
but I know that they were his from a line or two that I heard him
repeating to himself in the tent when he did not know that any one
was around. I recognized