u would never
get through overland; for by no other way, it seems to me, could you
have come, except along those little trout ponds I saw marked on the
map."

Dick was not a little astonished when we told him the size of the canal
and its locks, and that a vessel very much larger than the Dolphin could
have got through with equal ease.

We had brought an abundance of fresh provisions for both yachts, and
were glad to find that Uncle Tom did not wish to go to Inverness; and we
accordingly shaped our course for Kinnaird's Head, not intending to
touch at any place on the Scotch coast until we reached Aberdeen.

CHAPTER TEN.

ANOTHER WRECK.

As we sailed down the Moray Firth with a northerly wind, which enabled
us to stand close in shore, the water being perfectly smooth, we passed
numerous headlands, the names of which we learned from the chart. After
the mountainous scenery amid which we had been sailing, the shore looked
flat and uninteresting.

I had thus plenty of time to attend to little Nat, who was fast becoming
very dear to all of us. We looked forward with regret to the time when
he might be sent away to join his friends, should they be found. He had
learned to walk the deck in true nautical style; and in his sailor's
suit, with his broad-brimmed straw hat, he looked every inch a young
seaman. He was generally in capital spirits, apparently forgetting his
loss; but if any allusion brought back to his remembrance his father,
mother, or Aunt Fanny, his brothers and sisters, the tears sprang to his
eyes, and he looked grave and sad.

Happily, however, a cheerful word brought him back to his usual mood,
and he became as merry as ever.

"Do you know, Harry," he said to me one day, "I intend to be a sailor.
I should like to have just such a vessel as this, and cruise about the
world that you tell me is round, though I cannot make it out; still, as
you say so, I am sure it is."

I pointed to the top-gallant sails of a vessel on which the sun was
shining brightly,--"Now, watch that sail, and in a short time you will
see her topsails, and then her courses, and then the hull. If the world
was not round, we should see them all at once, just as clearly as we now
see the top-gallant sails."

As I spoke I took up a large ball of spun yarn, and placing a splinter
on it, I advanced the piece of wood gradually until he saw the whole of
it. "Now, this splinter represents that ship," I said, pointing to it.
"