ign to the subject.
"Mr. Bates," said she, pushing the hair out of her blue eyes, "what's a
coracle?"

"A which?" asked Mr. Bates.

"A coracle. C-o-r-a-c-l-e," said she, spelling it slowly. "I want to
know."

The bewildered Bates shook his head. "Never heard of one, missy," said
he, bending over the book. "What does it say?"

"'The Ancient Britons,'" said Sylvia, reading gravely, "'were little
better than Barbarians. They painted their bodies with Woad'--that's
blue stuff, you know, Mr. Bates--'and, seated in their light coracles
of skin stretched upon slender wooden frames, must have presented a wild
and savage appearance.'"

"Hah," said Mr. Bates, when this remarkable passage was read to him,
"that's very mysterious, that is. A corricle, a cory "--a bright light
burst upon him. "A curricle you mean, missy! It's a carriage! I've seen
'em in Hy' Park, with young bloods a-drivin' of 'em."

"What are young bloods?" asked Sylvia, rushing at this "new opening".

"Oh, nobs! Swell coves, don't you know," returned poor Bates, thus
again attacked. "Young men o' fortune that is, that's given to doing it
grand."

"I see," said Sylvia, waving her little hand graciously. "Noblemen and
Princes and that sort of people. Quite so. But what about coracle?"

"Well," said the humbled Bates, "I think it's a carriage, missy. A sort
of Pheayton, as they call it."

Sylvia, hardly satisfied, returned to the book. It was a little
mean-looking volume--a "Child's History of England"--and after perusing
it awhile with knitted brows, she burst into a childish laugh.

"Why, my dear Mr. Bates!" she cried, waving the History above her head
in triumph, "what a pair of geese we are! A carriage! Oh you silly man!
It's a boat!"

"Is it?" said Mr. Bates, in admiration of the intelligence of his
companion. "Who'd ha' thought that now? Why couldn't they call it a boat
at once, then, and ha' done with it?" and he was about to laugh also,
when, raising his eyes, he saw in the open doorway the figure of James
Barker, with a musket in his hand.

"Hallo! What's this? What do you do here, sir?"

"Sorry to disturb yer," says the convict, with a grin, "but you must
come along o' me, Mr. Bates."

Bates, at once comprehending that some terrible misfortune had occurred,
did not lose his presence of mind. One of the cushions of the couch was
under his right hand, and snatching it up he flung it across the little
cabin full in the face of the escaped