rs,
an' green, an' yellow, an' pink, an' white--all the colours in the
rainbow, and all of 'em more or less kivered wi' gold--w'y--I don't know
what their insides was worth, but sartin sure am I that they couldn't
come up to their outsides. Mints of money must 'ave bin spent in
kiverin' of 'em. An' there was ladders to git at 'em--a short un to git
at the books below, an' a long un to go aloft for 'em in the top rows.
What people finds to write about beats me to understand; but who ever
buys and reads it all beats me wuss."

While new and puzzling thoughts were thus chasing each other through the
fisher-boy's brain Ruth Dotropy entered.

"What! Billy Bright," she exclaimed in a tone of great satisfaction,
hurrying forward and holding out her hand. "I'm so glad they have sent
_you_. I would have asked them to send you, when I wrote, but thought
you were at sea."

"Yes, Miss, but I've got back again," said Billy, grasping the offered
hand timidly, fearing to soil it.

For the same reason he sat down carefully on the edge of a chair, when
Ruth said heartily, "Come, sit down and let's have a talk together,"
for, you see, he had become so accustomed to fishy clothes and tarred
hands that he had a tendency to forget that he was now "clean" and "in a
split-new rig."

Ruth's manner and reception put the poor boy at once at his ease. For
some time she plied him with questions about the fisher-folk of Yarmouth
and Gorleston, in whom she had taken great interest during a summer
spent at the former town,--at which time she had made the acquaintance
of little Billy. Then she began to talk of the sea and the fishery, and
the smacks with their crews. Of course the boy was in his element on
these subjects, and not only answered his fair questioner fully, but
volunteered a number of anecdotes, and a vast amount of interesting
information about fishing, which quite charmed Ruth, inducing her to
encourage him to go on.

"Oh! yes, Miss," he said, "it's quite true what you've bin told.
There's hundreds and hundreds of smacks a-fishin' out there on the North
Sea all the year round, summer an' winter. In course I can't say
whether there's a popilation, as you calls it, of over twelve thousand,
always afloat, never havin' counted 'em myself, but I know there must be
a-many thousand men an' boys there."

"Billy was right. There is really a population of over 12,000 men and
boys afloat all the year round on the North Sea, enga