ss all his thoughts. If he had revealed
them fully he would have described a bright fireside in a small and
humble but very comfortable room, with a smiling face that rendered
sunshine unnecessary, and a pair of eyes that made gaslight a paltry
flame as well as an absolute extravagance. That the name of this cheap,
yet dear, luminary began with an _N_ and ended with an _a_, is a piece
of information with which we think it unnecessary to trouble the reader.

Stanley Hall's thoughts were somewhat on the same line of rail, if we
may be allowed the expression; the chief difference being that _his_
luminary beamed in a drawing-room, and sang and played and painted
beautifully--which accomplishments, however, Stanley thought, would have
been sorry trifles in themselves had they not been coupled with a taste
for housekeeping and domestic economy, and relieving as well as visiting
the poor, and Sabbath-school teaching; in short, every sort of "good
work," besides an unaccountable as well as admirable _penchant_ for
pitching into the Board of Trade, and for keeping sundry account-books
in such a neat and methodical way that there remains a lasting blot on
that Board in the fact of their not having been bound in cloth of gold!

Ever since his first visit to Yarmouth, Stanley had felt an increasing
admiration for Katie Durant's sprightly character and sterling
qualities, and also increasing pity for poor Bob Queeker, who, he
thought, without being guilty of very egregious vanity, had no chance
whatever of winning such a prize. The reader now knows that the pity
thus bestowed upon that pitiful fox-hunting turncoat was utterly thrown
away.

"I don't like these fogs in such dangerous neighbourhood," observed Jim
Welton, as a fresh squall burst upon the ship and laid it over so much
that many of the passengers thought she was going to capsize. "We
should be getting near the floating lights of the Goodwin sands by this
time."

"Don't these lights sometimes break adrift?" asked Stanley, "and thus
become the cause of ships going headlong to destruction?"

"Not often," replied Jim. "Considering the constancy of their exposure
to all sorts of weather, and the number of light-vessels afloat, it is
amazin' how few accidents take place. There has been nothing of the
kind as long as I can remember anything about the service, but my father
has told me of a case where one of the light-vessels that marked a
channel at the mouth of the