far-stretching rows of peach, plum, and pear trees. Fruit, bushes, and vines there were of which the roll need not be called; and flowers grew everywhere. It was one of the fancies of the Mistress of the House—and she inherited it from her mother—to have flowers in great abundance, so that wherever she might walk through the garden she would always find them.

Often when she found them massed too thickly she would go in among them and thin them out with apparent recklessness, pulling them up by the roots and throwing them on the path, where John Gayther would come and find them and take them away. This heroic action on the part of the Mistress of the House pleased John very much. He respected the fearless spirit which did not hesitate to make sacrifices for the greater good, no matter how many beautiful blossoms she scattered on the garden path. John Gayther might have thinned out all this superfluous growth himself, but he knew the Mistress liked to do it, and he left for her gloved hands many tangled jungles of luxuriant bloom.

The garden was old, and rich, and aristocratic. It acted generously in the way of fruit, flowers, and vegetables, as if that were something it was expected to do, an action to which it was obliged by its nobility. It would be impossible for it to forget that it belonged to a fine old house and a fine old family.

John Gayther could not boast of lines of long descent, as could the garden and the family. He was comparatively a new-comer, and had not lived in that garden more than seven or eight years; but in that time he had so identified himself with the place, and all who dwelt upon it, that there were times when a stranger might have supposed him to be the common ancestor to the whole estate.

John understood well the mysterious problems of the tillable earth, and he knew, as well as anybody could know, what answers to expect when he consulted the oracles of nature. He was an elderly man, and the gentle exercises of the garden were suited to the disposition of his mind and body. In days gone by he had been a sailor, a soldier, a miner, a ranchman, and a good many other things besides. In those earlier days, according to his own account, John had had many surprising adventures and experiences; but in these later times his memory was by far the most active and vigorous of all his moving forces. This memory was like a hazel wand in the hands of a man who is searching for hidden springs of water. Whenever he wished it to turn and point in any particular place or direction, it so turned and pointed.

THIS STORY IS TOLD BY
JOHN GAYTHER
AND IS CALLED
WHAT I FOUND IN THE SEA

I
WHAT I FOUND IN THE SEA

It was on a morning in June that John Gayther was hoeing peas, drawing the fine earth up about their tender little stems as a mother would tuck the clothes about her little sleeping baby, when, happening to glance across several beds, and rows of box, he saw approaching the Daughter of the House. Probably she was looking for him, but he did not think she had yet seen him. He put down his hoe, feeling, as he did, that this June morning was getting very warm; and he gathered up an armful of pea-sticks which were lying near by. With these he made his way toward a little house almost in the middle of the garden, which was his fortress, his palace, his studio, or his workshop, as the case might be.

It was a low building with a far-outreaching roof, and under the shade of this roof, outside of the little building, John liked to do his rainy-day and very-hot-weather work. From the cool interior came a smell of dried plants and herbs and bulbs and potted earth.

When John reached this garden-house, the young lady was already there. She was not tall; her face was very white, but not pale; and her light hair fluffed itself all about her head, under her wide hat. She wore gold spectacles which greatly enhanced the effect of her large blue eyes. John thought she was the prettiest flower which had ever showed itself in that garden.

"Good morning, John," she said. "I came here to ask you about plants suitable for goldfishes in a vase. My fishes do not seem to be satisfied with the knowledge that the plants through which they swim were put there to purify the water; they are all the time trying to eat them. Now it strikes me that there ought to be some plants which would be purifiers and yet good for the poor things to eat."

John put down his bundle of pea-sticks by the side of a small stool. "Won't you sit down, miss?" pointing to a garden-bench near by, "and I will see what I can do for you." Then he seated himself upon the stool, took out his knife, and picked up a pea-stick.

"The best thing for me to do," he said, "is to look over a book I have which will tell me just the kind of water plants which your goldfish ought to have. I will do that this evening, and then I will see to it that you shall have those plants, whatever they may be. I do not pretend to be much of a water gardener myself, but it's easy for me to find out what other people know." John now began to trim some of the lower twigs from a pea-stick.

"Talking about water gardens, miss," he said, "I wish you could have seen some of the beautiful ones that I have come across!—more beautiful and lovely than anything on the top of the earth; you may be sure of that. I was reminded of them the moment you spoke to me about your goldfish and their plants."

"Where were those gardens?" asked the young lady; "and what were they like?"

"They were all on the bottom of the sea, in the tropics," said John Gayther, "where the water is so clear that with a little help you can see everything just as if it were out in the open air—bushes and vines and hedges; all sorts of tender waving plants, all made of seaweed and coral, growing in the white sand; and instead of birds flying about among their branches there were little fishes of every color: canary-colored fishes, fishes like robin-redbreasts, and others which you might have thought were blue jays if they had been up in the air instead of down in the water."

"Where did you say all this is to be seen?" asked the Daughter of the House, who loved all lovely things.

"Oh, in a good many places in warm climates," said John. "But, now I come to think of it, there was one place where I saw more beautiful sights, more grand and wonderful sights, under the water than I believe anybody ever saw before! Would you like me to tell you about it?"

"Indeed—I—would!" said she, taking off her hat.

John now began to sharpen the end of his pea-stick. "It was a good many years ago," said he, "more than twenty—and I was then a seafaring man. I was on board a brig, cruising in the West Indies, and we were off Porto Rico, about twenty miles northward, I should say, when we ran into something in the night,—we never could find out what it was,—and we stove a big hole in that brig which soon began to let in a good deal more water than we could pump out. The captain he was a man that knew all about that part of the world, and he told us all that we must work as hard as we could at the pumps, and if we could keep her afloat until he could run her ashore on a little sandy island he knew of not far from St. Thomas, we might be saved. There was a fresh breeze from the west, and he thought he could make the island before we sank.

"I was mighty glad to hear him say this, for I had always been nervous when I was cruising off Porto Rico. Do you know, miss, that those waters are the very deepest in the whole world?"

"No," said she; "I never heard that."