and lest it
break.

"Once! Right side up!" she cried, a rippling laugh following her
words.

"Twice! Wrong side up! Oh, Pa, which will it be next time?"

A moment she stood irresolute as if half fearing to test their luck
the third time. She turned the star fish over and over in her hand,
then, as if she thought waiting useless, she tossed it lightly up.

"Oo--oo! Look! Look Pa!" she cried, "It's right side up! Pa, I do
believe the vessel will come in safely. My! Wouldn't it have been
awful if the star fish had fallen the other side up?"

"My little Sprite is a great comfort," he said, "and the tossing of
the star fish is harmless fun, but I'd not like to think that you'd
believe all the superstitious yarns that the sailors tell."

"Oh, no," was the earnest reply. "I know that some of them could not
be true, but there's one funny one that a sailor down on the pier told
yesterday.

"He said you could go down stairs backwards after dark, and look into
a mirror you held in your hand, and see something, I don't know what,
but I'm going to try it. I'll try it just to know what I'd see, or to
find out what would happen. He said something was sure, just _sure_ to
happen."

"The something that would happen would be that you'd fall, and perhaps
break your pretty neck," Captain Seaford said, "but as to what you'd
see in the glass! Why, that is all nonsense. Here and there is a
sailor that's as full of such silly notions as a weather vane.

"That sort of sailor listens to all the yarns he hears, believes them
all, tells them all, and generally he isn't any too careful to tell
them just as he heard them.

"He's apt to add just a little of his own nonsense to the yarn he
heard to make it interesting."

CHAPTER VII

A WEDDING AT CLIFFMORE

The playmates who were at Cliffmore for the Summer were having a
delightful time, but in a quiet way, John Gifford, or "Gyp," as he was
still called, was very happy, and also very busy.

At the end of the school year in June, he had stood at the head of his
class, and now, employed by Captain Atherton, he knew that he was
respected, and that he had honestly earned that respect.

"I'm to be the hired 'man' on his place," he said, "so I'll be earning
something, while I study evenings, for I mean to get somewhere worth
while. I don't mind if anyone in Avondale who likes me, calls me
"Gyp." It sounds friendly, but I'll not always be known as Gyp, the
gypsy boy. When I get o