be!"

Johnny took down his cap from its peg, and, in as ill humour as can well be imagined, went out to search for his ball. He took what revenge he could on his formidable uncle, while amusing himself that afternoon by looking over his "Robinson Crusoe." Johnny was fond of his pencil, though he had never learned to draw; and the margins of his books were often adorned with grim heads or odd figures by his hand. There was a picture in "Robinson Crusoe" representing a party of cannibals, as hideous as fancy could represent them, dancing around their fire. Johnny diverted his mind and gratified his malice by doing his best so to alter the foremost figure as to make him appear with a wooden leg, while he drew on his head a straw hat, unmistakably like that of the old sailor, and touched up the features so as to give a dim resemblance to his face. To prevent a doubt as to the meaning of the sketch, Johnny scribbled on the side of the picture,—

He secretly showed the picture to Alie.

"O Johnny! how naughty! What would uncle say if he saw it?"

"We might look out for squalls indeed! but uncle never by any chance looks at a book of that sort."

"I think that you had better rub out the pencilling as fast as you can," said Alie.

"Catch me rubbing it out!" cried Johnny; "it's the best sketch that ever I drew, and as like the old savage as it can stare!"

Late in the evening their mother returned from Brampton, where she had been nursing a sick lady. Right glad were Johnny and Alie to see her sooner than they had ventured to expect. She brought them a few oranges, to show her remembrance of them. Nor was the old sailor forgotten; carefully she drew from her bag and presented to him a new pipe.

The children glanced at each other. Jonas took the pipe with a curious expression on his face, which his sister was at a loss to understand.

"Thank'ee kindly," he said; "I see it'll be a case of—

What he meant was a riddle to every one else present, although not to the reader.

The "try" was very successful on that evening and the following day. Never had Johnny and Alie found their uncle so agreeable. His manner almost approached to gentleness,—it was a calm after a storm.

"Uncle is so very good and kind," said Alie to her brother, as they walked home from afternoon service, "that I wonder how you can bear to have that naughty picture still in your book. He is not in the least like a cannibal, and it seems quite wrong to laugh at him so."

"I'll rub it all out one of these days," replied Johnny; "but I must show it first to Peter Crane. He says that I never hit on a likeness: if he sees that, he'll never say so again!"

The next morning Jonas occupied himself with gathering wild flowers and herbs in the fields. He carried them into his little room, where Johnny heard him whistling "Old Tom Bowling," like one at peace with himself and all the world.

Presently Jonas called to the boy to bring him a knife from the kitchen; a request made in an unusually courteous tone of voice, and with which, of course, Johnny immediately complied.

He found Jonas busy drying his plants, by laying them neatly between the pages of a book, preparatory to pressing them down. What was the terror of Johnny when he perceived that the book whose pages Jonas was turning over for this purpose was no other than his "Robinson Crusoe"!

"Oh! if I could only get it out of his hands before he comes to that horrid picture! Oh! what shall I do? what shall I do?" thought the bewildered Johnny. "Uncle, I was reading that book," at last he mustered courage to say aloud.

"You may read it again to-morrow," was the quiet reply of