and dropped it into the basket. "But, Dan, Mother said we were to bed them in seaweed!"

"I see none here," said Dan, leaning on his shovel and looking about him. "The tide hath swept everything as clean as a floor."

"I 'll seek for some while thou art busy with the digging," said Nancy, glad to escape the duty of picking up the clams, [page 15] and off she trotted without another word. The flats, seamed and grooved with channels where pools of water still lingered, sloped gently down to the lower level of the bay, and farther out a range of rocks lifted themselves above the sandy waste.

[page 16]

"I 'll surely find seaweed on the rocks," thought Nancy to herself as she sped along, and in a few moments she had reached them, had tossed up the basket, and was climbing their rugged sides.

"There 's a mort o' seaweed here," she said, nodding her head wisely as she picked up a long string of kelp; "I can fill my basket in no time at all." There was no need for haste, she thought, so she sat down beside a pool of water left in a hollow of the rocks, to explore its contents. The first thing she found was a group of tiny barnacles, and for a while she amused herself by washing salt water over them to see them open their tiny cups of shell. In the pool itself a beautiful lavender-colored jelly-fish was floating about, and just beyond lay a star-fish clinging to a bunch of seaweed. She found other treasures scattered about by the largess of the tide—tiny spiral shells, stones of all colors, and a horseshoe crab, besides seaweed with pretty little pods which popped delightfully when she squeezed them with her fingers. Then she heard the cries of gulls overhead and watched them as they wheeled and circled between her and the sky. When they flew out to sea she sat with her hands clasping her knees and gazed across the bay at the [page 18] three hills of Boston town. She could see quite plainly the tall beacon standing like a ship's mast on top of Beacon Hill, and farther north she strained her eyes to pick out Governor Winthrop's dwelling from the cluster of houses which straggled up the slope of Copp's Hill and which made all there was of the city of Boston in that early day.

[page 17]

For some time she sat there hugging her knees and thinking long, long thoughts, and it was not until the sound of little waves lapping against the rocks roused her that she woke from her day dream and realized with terror that the tide had turned. The channels and lower levels of the bay were already brimming over, and the water was deep about the rocks on which she perched. At almost the same moment Dan had been surprised by a cold wave which washed over his bare feet, and, turning about, was dismayed to find a sheet of blue water covering the bay and to see Nancy standing on the topmost rock shouting "Dan! Dan!" [page 19] at the top of her lungs. For one astonished instant he looked at her, then, throwing down his shovel, he plunged unhesitatingly into the icy bath. And now Nancy, realizing that there was not a moment to lose if she hoped to reach the shore in safety, let herself slowly down off the rocks, leaving the basket behind her, and started toward her brother.

The water was already so deep in the channels that their progress toward each other was slow, but they ploughed bravely on, feeling the bottom carefully at each step lest they sink in some sand-pocket or hollow washed out by the tide. Some distance away toward Charlestown a fishing schooner rocked on the deeper water of the bay, and a fisherman in a small boat, attracted by the shouting, looked up, and, seeing the two struggling figures, instantly bent to his oars and started toward them. Though he rowed rapidly, it was some minutes before he could reach the children, who were now floundering about in water nearly up to their necks.

[page 20]

"Hold fast to my shoulder, Nancy," he heard Dan cry. "I can float, and I can swim a little. Keep thy nose above water and let thy feet go where they will." Nancy, spluttering and gurgling, was trying hard to follow Dan's directions, when the boat shot alongside, and a cheery voice cried, "Ahoy, there! Come aboard, you young porpoises!"

To the children it was like a voice straight from heaven. Dan immediately helped Nancy to get into the boat, and then she balanced it while he climbed aboard.

When they were safely bestowed among the lobster-pots with which the boat was laden, the man leaned on his oars and eyed [page 21] them critically. "Short of sense, ain't ye?" he remarked genially. "Nigh about drownded that time or I 'm no skipper! If ye ain't bent on destruction ye 'd better get into dry clothes. Ye 're as wet as a mess of drownded kittens. Tell me where you live and I 'll take you home."

He flung a tarpaulin over the shivering figures and tucked it around them as he scolded. "'T is all my fault," sobbed poor Nancy. "Dan came in just to get me out."

"Very commendable of him, I 'm sure," said the stranger, nodding approvingly at Dan, "and just what he 'd ought to do, and doubtless you 're worth saving at that, though a hen-headeder young miss I never see in all my days!"

"She went to find seaweed to bed the clams," explained Dan, coming to his sister's defense, "and the tide caught her. Thou art kind indeed to pick us up, sir."

"Oh," groaned remorseful Nancy, her teeth chattering, "it 's all because I 'm such a sinner! I made a likeness of Gran'ther [page 22] Wattles in the sand and said dreadful things about the prophet Elijah, or mayhap 't was Elisha, and Dan said a bear might come to eat me up just like the forty and two children, and instead of a bear we both were almost swallowed by the tide!"

"Well, now," said the stranger, comfortingly, "ye see instead of sending bears the Lord sent me along to fish ye out, just the same as He sent the whale to swallow Jonah when he was acting contrary! Looks like He meant to let ye off with a scare this time. Come now, my lass, there 's salt water enough aboard and if ye cry into the boat, ye 'll have to bail her out. Besides," he added whimsically, looking up at the sky, "there 's another squall coming on, and two at a time is too many for any sailor. If I 'm to cast you up on the shore same as the whale, ye 'll have to tell me which way to go, and who ye are."

"Our father is Josiah Pepperell," answered Dan, "and our house is almost a mile back from shore near Cambridge."

[page 23]

"So you 're Josiah Pepperell's children! To be sure, to be sure! Might have known it. Ye do favor him some," said the fisherman. "Well! well! The ways of the Lord are surely past finding out! Why, I knew your father way back in England. He came over here for religion and I came for fish. Not that I ain't a God-fearing man," he added hastily, noticing a look of horror on Nancy's face, "but I ain't so pious as some. I 'm a seafaring man, Captain Sanders of the Lucy Ann, Marblehead. Ye can see her riding at anchor out there in the bay. I have n't set eyes on your father since he left Boston and settled in the back woods up yonder."

He sent the boat flying through the water with swift, sure strokes