icture postcards and pencils, the Cubs
squat along the sea-wall and write to their mothers. That duty done, and
spades, pails, boats, and shrimping-nets bought, they lose no more time
in getting down on to the shore.

It is a happy and hungry crowd with wet and rumpled hair that turns up
again at camp, all ready for the splendid dinner Mother and Father have
cooked.

After dinner a rest, while Godmother reads aloud.

The day ends up with a wonderful shrimping-party. Besides shrimps, the
Cubs catch every kind of funny little sea-creature--star-fishes,
jelly-fishes, baby sea-anemones, tiny, tiny crabs, a devil-fish, baby
dabs, and everything else you can think of. The tide is right out, and
there are mysterious green pools under the pier, full of feathery red
sea-weed and little darting fishes. Of course, Sam falls into one in his
clothes, and comes out looking like a drowned rat. Akela wrings him out
and sends him home to get into dry clothes, for the sun is beginning to
sink.

Supper, night prayers, a race down the hill, a few minutes, to see the
little twinkling lights, and the happy family is getting undressed in
double quick time, for Akela has promised a good story to-night--a
"nexiting" one about a robber chief.

Soon everyone in the coach-house is settled on his palliasse, and has
invited a Stable Cub to share it with him. The candle has been lighted
and stuck with a dab of grease on the ledge.

"Fire ahead, miss," commands a Sixer. Silence reigns.

"The story I told you yesterday," said Akela, "was about a boy who
started good, and went on being good all his life. To-night I am going
to tell you about a boy who started good, but became bad, and was very
wicked until he grew up, when something happened which sent him on the
great adventure of serving God."

THE STORY OF ST. GUTHLAC.

Many hundreds of years ago, in the days when England was ruled over by
the Saxon Kings, there lived a boy called Guthlac. He was a very
intelligent boy, not dull, like some children; he was obedient to the
grown-ups, and, as the old book says, "blithe in countenance, pure and
clean and innocent in his ways; and in him was the lustre of Divine
brightness so shining that all men who saw him could perceive the
promise of what should hereafter happen to him."

But when he got to be about fifteen he forgot all the things he had been
taught as a child. When he felt a kind of restless longing for adventure
rising up inside him