straightened, and heeling far over with the strong wind on her quarter the pinkie ran into the open with the tawny surf hissing at her gunwale. Reube held his course till they were a couple of hundred yards out, dreading some hungry shoals he knew of. Then he let out the sheet, eased up on the tiller, and put the pinkie’s head straight down the bay on the Dido’s track. Will loosened out the jib, belayed it, and lay down on the cuddy in its shadow. The Dido was out of sight beyond the rocks and high oak trees of Wood Point.

A stern chase, as has been said from of old, is a long chase; and while the red-and-white pinkie was scudding before the wind and shearing the yellow waves with her keen bow, Reube and Will had to curb their impatience. They did not even whistle for more wind, for they had all the wind the pinkie could well endure. When their ears had grown used to the slap and crumbling rush of the foam-wave past their gunwale they spoke of Mart Gandy.

Reube Dare’s father, whose farm adjoined that of the Gandys, had got himself embroiled with old Gandy over the location of the dividing line. While Reube was yet a very small boy old Gandy had pulled down the dilapidated line fence during one of Captain Dare’s absences, and had put up a new one which encroached seriously on the Dares’ best field. On Captain Dare’s return he expostulated with Gandy; and finding expostulation useless he quietly shifted back the fence. Then his ship sailed on a long voyage to the Guano Islands of the Pacific; and while he was scorching off the rainless coasts of northern Peru, Gandy again took possession of the coveted strip of field. From this voyage Captain Dare came back with broken health. He gave up his ship, settled down on the farm overlooking the marshes, and called in the arm of the law to curb old Gandy’s aggression. The fence had by this time been moved backward and forward several times, each time leaving behind a redder and more threatening line of wrath. When the case came into court the outcome was a surprise to both contestants. There were rummaging out of old titles and unearthing of old deeds, till Captain Dare’s lawyer made it clear not only that Gandy’s claim was unfounded, but also that before the dispute arose Gandy had been occupying some three acres of the old Dare property. The original grant, made a hundred years earlier to Captain Dare’s grandfather, required that the line should run down the middle of old Gandy’s sheep pasture—a worthless tract, but one which now acquired value in Gandy’s eye. Down the pasture forthwith was the new fence run, for Captain Dare, fired to obstinacy by his neighbor’s wanton aggression, would take no less than his rights. Then, the victory assured to him, the captain died, leaving to his widow and his boy a feud to trouble their peace. The farm was productive, but for some years old Gandy had vexed them with ceaseless and innumerable small annoyances. When the old man sank into imbecility, then his son Mart, a swarthy and furtive stripling, who betrayed the blood of a far-off Indian ancestor, took up the quarrel with new bitterness. In Mart Gandy’s dark and narrow soul, which was redeemed from utter worthlessness by his devotion to his family, hatred of the Dares stood as a sacred duty. It was his firm faith that his father had been tricked by a conspiracy between judge, jury, and lawyers. The persistency of his hate and the cunning of his strokes had been a steady check upon the prosperity of Reube and his mother.

In answer to a remark of Reube on this subject Will exclaimed, “But you’ve got him all right this time, old man. There can be no difficulty in identifying those footprints.”

Reube laughed somewhat sarcastically.

“Do you suppose,” he inquired, “that the tide is going to leave them as they are while we go after the Dido, fetch her back, and then go and get those holes in the mud examined by the authorities?”

“Well, perhaps my suggestion was hasty,” acknowledged Will.

After an hour’s run Wood Point was left behind, and there was the Dido not a mile ahead and well inshore. She had been delayed in the eddies of the cove below the Point. Reube gave a shout of joy and twisted his helm to starboard, while Will warned him to look out for the mud flats with which the cove was choked.

“O,” said Reube, confidently, “I know the place like a book.”

The red-and-white pinkie was now rapidly overhauling the vagrant craft when a stiff current caught the latter and she began to race along the curve of the farther shore. Reube was anxious to catch her before she should round the next headland, and get back into rough water. The headland was a low, humped promontory of mingled plaster rocks and yellowish sand, without a tree upon its grassy crest. Shifting his course to intercept the Dido, Reube steered the pinkie straight for the point. Just then the Dido was seen to give a lurch, stop short, and keel over to the gunwale.

“She’s run aground!” cried Will.

“But we’ve got her safe and will sail her back on next tide,” said Reube, heaving a sigh of relief as he saw that his beloved craft stood still, refusing to be rolled over by the push of the yellow tide upon her ribs.

The pinkie was sailing at a great pace.

“Better take in the jib, Will,” said Reube.

Will sprang up to obey. Just as he rose there was a staggering shock. The pinkie buried her nose in a hidden mudbank. The waves piled over her gunwales; the mast bent without breaking, like the brave, tough timber it was; and Will shot overboard headlong into the foam.

The Cave by the Tide.

ACTING instantly on the impulse of an old sailor, Reube had sprung forward almost with the shock, and started to haul down the mainsail in order to relieve the strain. The next moment, however, while the half-lowered sail was bulging and flapping, he leaped into the bow to help Will. The latter rose with a gasp and stood waist deep, clinging to the bowsprit. His head and arms were bedaubed grotesquely with the mud into which he had plunged with such violence. He gazed sternly at Reube, and exclaimed:

“Perhaps you’ll claim that you know these mud banks as well as I do! I earnestly hope you may, some day, gain the same intimate knowledge of them!”

Then he climbed aboard and finished the furling of the sails, while Reube rolled convulsively in the bottom of the boat, unable to control his laughter. He recovered himself only when Will trod upon him without apology, and threatened to put him overboard.

When the sails had been made snug, and the pinkie bailed out, and the mud cleaned with pains from Will’s face and hair and garments, there was nothing to do but watch the Dido in the distance and wait for the tide to fall. In another half hour, or a little more, only a waste of red flats and yellow pools separated the two stranded boats. Reube took off his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers up high, and stepped overboard. These precautions were for Will superfluous; so he went as he was, and congratulated himself on being able to defy all hidden clam shells. Before he went, however, he took the precaution to put out the pinkie’s anchor, for which Reube derided him.

“The pinkie’s no Western stern-wheeler, to navigate a field of wet grass!” said he. “I fancy she’ll wait here till next tide all