softly. But he did not stop working.

“I thought that was why there were only three yesterday—I thought there’d have been fifty to-day,” ran on Judith. The new daylight lighted her ashamed face redly, like a blush.

“There wouldn’t ’a’ been but five—” said Jemmy Three, then caught himself up in confusion. The blush was on his face now.

Judith’s cry rang out above the sea-talk. “Then you put some in!” she cried, “instead of helping yourself. You put some in my traps, Jemmy Three—that’s what you did! You put in twelve!”

“Guess there’s somethin’ the matter with your traps, Jude,” muttered the boy. “Guess they better be overhauled—guess a fellow’s gotter right to go shares, ain’t he?”

“Jemmy Three, I’m going to hug you!”

“Oh, oh—say, look out; I’m all scales!”

“I had scales on my eyes, but they’ve fallen off now,” laughed the girl tremulously. “It’s worse to have scales on your eyes than all over the rest o’ you. I can see things as plain as day now, and—and—you look perfectly beautiful!”

“Hold on—I’m dressin’ fish! The steamer’s due at seven—”

“I don’t care if she’s due this minute, I’ve got to talk! If she was in plain sight—if I could see her smokestack—I should have to talk. I tell you I can see now, and you look splendid—splendid, and I look like a little black—blot. To think of my being up home asleep, and you working down here, dressing my fish—and me thinking those mean thoughts of you! It makes me so ashamed I cant’t hold my kn-knife.”

Judith was crying now in good earnest. She had sunk down on the sand, and her crouching figure with the red glow from the east upon it looked oddly childish and small. Jemmy Three saw it over his shoulder.

“Look a-here, Judy,” he said gently, dropping his own knife and going over to the rocking, sobbing figure. “You look a-here, I tell you! What you cryin’ for, with eight barrels o’ fish ’most packed an’ a good fifty dollars ’most in your pocket? You better laugh! Come on, get up, and let’s give a rouser! Three cheers for the only girl in the land o’ the free an’ the home o’ the brave that darst tackle a school o’ mack’rel alone! Hip, hip—”

“Jemmy, Jemmy, don’t!”

“Hooray! Now let’s dress fish. You’re all right—don’t you worry about bein’ a blot, when I tell you you’re a reg’lar brick! I’m proud o’ you!”

It was the longest speech Jemmy Three had ever made, and the peroration surprised himself as much as it did Judith. He put up his hand and cleared something away from his eyes—it couldn’t have been scales, for he left the scales there.

At five mother came hurrying down to find Judith. The scale-strewn beach and the scale-strewn children, the barrels in orderly rows waiting to be rolled to the little landing-place of the steamer, the heap of clumsy wet netting—all told her the whole astonishing story. And what they did not tell, Judith supplemented eagerly.

“I declare! I declare!” gasped mother in mingled pride and pity, “you two poor things, putting in like this! You’ll be tired to death—you’ll be sick abed!”

“Guess we’ll weather it,” nodded Jemmy Three, working steadily. “But if you think we ain’t hungry enough to eat a pine shing—”

“I’ll go right home and boil some coffee and eggs and bring ’em down, and then I’ll go to work, too,” cried mother energetically. “You poor starved things!”

After a salt toilet in the surf, they ate a hurried breakfast with keen relish. Judith had forgotten her aching joints and lame muscles, and Jemmy Three had forgotten his sleepless night. Victory lay just ahead of them, and who cared for muscles or sleep!

“This is the best bread ’n’ butter I ever ate,” said Judith between bites.

There proved to be the “good eight” barrels, when they were done, and they were done by six o’clock, or a very little after. By half-past six, the barrels had been rolled down the slope of the beach to the little wharf not far away. Then the tired two rested, and remembered muscles and sleep.

They dropped in the soft, moist sand and rubbed their aching arms.

“I’m proud o’ you, Jemmy!” Judith said shyly, and looked away over the water. Her repentance had come back and lay heavily on her heart. She longed unutterably to recall those evil thoughts—to have another chance out there beyond to summon Jemmy Three with the little shrill old signal. How she would send it shrilling forth now!

“Jemmy,” she said slowly, as they waited, “you know our signal, don’t you? The one we used to practice so much.”

For answer Jemmy Three pursed his lips and sent out a clear “carrying” cry.

“Well, I wish—don’t you know what I wish?”

“’Twas Christmas,” Jemmy said flippantly, but he knew. He dug his bare toes in the sand—a sign of embarrassment.

“I wish I’d called you out there at the school!” lamented Judith, “even if you couldn’t have heard. I wish—I wish—I wish I’d called! If I ever strike another school—Jemmy, I’d give you half o’ this one if I dared to. But I’m afraid to have Blossom wait—I don’t dare to!”

“O’ course not,” agreed Jem Three vaguely. He did not at all know what Judith meant. Girls had queer ways of beginnin’ things in the middle like that. No knowin’ what a girl was drivin’ at, half the time!

“Jemmy—say—”

“What say? Ain’t that smoke out there?”

“No, it’s a cloud. Jemmy Three, I’m going to tell you something. I want to. I’m going to tell you what that money’s going to do—you’re listening, aren’t you?”

“With both ears—go ahead.”

“Well—oh, it’s going to be something so beautiful, Jemmy! I never knew till day before yesterday that you could do anything so beautiful—I mean that anybody could. I never dreamed it! But you can—somebody can! There’s a man can, Jemmy! All you need is money to take you across to him and—there’s the money!” waving her hand toward the rows of barrels. Her eyes were shining like twin stars. She had forgotten aches and lameness again.

“I told Uncle Jem,” she went on rapidly, while Jem Three gazed at her in puzzled wonder and thought more things about girls. “He told me to go down to the hotel and ask that other little girl’s mother, and I meant to go last night! But I went to sleep last night! So I’m going to-day—I’m going to ask her to tell me just exactly how to do it.”