was the most exhilarating
and piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and little Mara
laughed in chorus at every lunge that he made.

What would have been the end of it all, it is difficult to say, had not
some mortal power interfered before they had sailed finally away into
the sunset. But it so happened, on this very afternoon, Rev. Mr. Sewell
was out in a boat, busy in the very apostolic employment of catching
fish, and looking up from one of the contemplative pauses which his
occupation induced, he rubbed his eyes at the apparition which presented
itself. A tiny little shell of a boat came drifting toward him, in which
was a black-eyed boy, with cheeks like a pomegranate and lustrous
tendrils of silky dark hair, and a little golden-haired girl, white as a
water-lily, and looking ethereal enough to have risen out of the
sea-foam. Both were in the very sparkle and effervescence of that
fanciful glee which bubbles up from the golden, untried fountains of
early childhood. Mr. Sewell, at a glance, comprehended the whole, and at
once overhauling the tiny craft, he broke the spell of fairy-land, and
constrained the little people to return to the confines, dull and
dreary, of real and actual life.

Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous trance of
forbidden pleasure which shadowed with so many fears the wiser and more
far-seeing heads and hearts of the grown people; nor was there enough
language yet in common between the two classes to make the little ones
comprehend the risk they had run. Perhaps so do our elder brothers, in
our Father's house, look anxiously out when we are sailing gayly over
life's sea,--over unknown depths,--amid threatening monsters,--but want
words to tell us why what seems so bright is so dangerous.

Duty herself could not have worn a more rigid aspect than Miss Roxy, as
she stood on the beach, press-board in hand; for she had forgotten to
lay it down in the eagerness of her anxiety. She essayed to lay hold of
the little hand of Moses to pull him from the boat, but he drew back,
and, looking at her with a world of defiance in his great eyes, jumped
magnanimously upon the beach. The spirit of Sir Francis Drake and of
Christopher Columbus was swelling in his little body, and was he to be
brought under by a dry-visaged woman with a press-board? In fact,
nothing is more ludicrous about the escapades of children than the utter
insensibility they feel to the dangers they hav