man on duty quietly quit his post. Many left the yard. Others, eager to see what the officials might do, remained. Stopped at the outskirts of the city, no trains came in. Only the evening mail crept out, its own crew manning the successive switches.

It was now 8.45, and barely dark. The western sky was still faintly illumined. Old Wallace could no longer read, and bent down to take a hand in the talk between his boys. Silence still reigned in the deserted yards. Men hovered in muttering groups, and watched the few officials who flitted about with lanterns in their hands. A rumor was going around that the management had determined to send out all the night passenger trains as usual, and the first of these should be along by ten o'clock. As Mr. Wallace bent over Jim's broad shoulder his wife and daughters ceased their low chatter. Evidently something was on the old man's mind.

"There's no danger of its spreading to your people, is there, Jim? Would you go out if they did?"

"Father," said the young man, slowly, "you know the ties by which we are bound. Suppose now that Fred's regiment were ordered out, would you ask him would he go?"

Old Wallace looked graver still. "I consider that a very different proposition," said he. "I was hoping—" he faltered, when a young fellow in soiled blue flannel garb slipped quietly in through the rear gate, and coming up to the freight conductor, said the two words,

"Wanted, Jim."

Jim's bronzed cheek turned a shade lighter.

"What hour?"

"At once."

And before the others could ask explanation of this scene a bicycle came flashing up to the same gate, and the tall rider dismounted and strode quickly toward the party. Young Fred's eyes glistened at sight of him.

"Orders, Sergeant?" he eagerly inquired.

"Yes. Notify your squad to make arrangements with their employers, and be ready to report at the armory at a moment's notice."

The two brothers stood facing each other a little later, then silently clasped hands. One at the beck of a secret protective organization, the other at the call of duty to State and nation, parted at their father's gate to go their separate ways.

[to be continued.]

A BOY'S AQUARIUM.

Boys who live in the city do not, perhaps, get quite the freedom of action and fun generally that a country boy can, but they do manage to have a pretty good time, even if they have to work a little harder for it. It is hard to keep pets in the city. Dogs need a lot of exercising, birds are apt to be a nuisance to the neighbors, if not to the boy's family, and yet pets are a necessity to every well-brought-up boy's happiness.

An aquarium is always dear to every boy's heart. And aquariums are not impossible in a city house. Fortunately they can be just as well taken care of in the city as in the country. A medium-sized aquarium which will hold quite a lot of stuff can be bought for $1.50 or $1.75. This must be filled with gravel or sand to the depth of four inches. In the sand must be, securely fastened, some water-grasses, which are for sale at any of the stores where fish are to be bought. The boys who succeed best with their aquariums are those who study the matter pretty thoroughly before they begin, and read up the scientific books of natural history. The simpler works of this sort contain any amount of practical information which any boy can apply to his own use.

A porous stone seems to be necessary in the middle of the aquarium. As for the placing of the water plants, they must be left to the boy's own taste and judgment. Indeed, the arrangement of the whole aquarium must be left to the boy who owns it. In this place I must stop and say that it is foolish for any boy to consult many of his playmates as to how the thing should be arranged, for when he has asked and received much advice, he will find that most of it is directly opposed to what he already knew, and besides is so varied as to be nearly useless. A glass tube for removing the manure from the sand must be kept beside the aquarium, if the scavengers, such as pollywogs and snails, fail to do their duty in cleaning up.

An extremely pretty aquarium has lately been fitted up by a boy about eleven years old. It is not a very large one, and stands on a small table near the window of his room—too near, it may be said, for the sun these summer days having unusual power has caused the untimely death of two many-tailed Japanese gold-fish and four extremely graceful little silver-fish. With the exception of this mortality, the death rate has been quite low. The original occupants of the aquarium before these recent deaths consisted of two pair of Japanese gold-fish, two pair of silver-fish, two pollywogs—one small one, who worked busily all day trying to do his share of the work in keeping the place clean, and one big fat pollywog, who sadly neglected his duty and spent his time trying to turn into a frog as quickly as he possibly could. Six snails, who were put in the aquarium to keep the glass clean, worked hard and satisfactorily in accomplishing their mission (in the beginning one snail was at first relegated to this work, but the task was beyond his power, and, after making a superhuman effort to go the whole round, he yielded up his life).

The water in the aquarium is changed twice a month, and when that is done the fish are lifted out very tenderly and carefully with a little scoop net, and put in a basin near by overnight, until every impurity of the sand shall have settled and the water is absolutely transparent. This performance is always one of deep anxiety, and requires unremitting attention to be sure that everything is replaced exactly as it was before, so that the fishes will know their home when they get back to it. There was a lizard put in this aquarium, to begin with, but he proved of a very quarrelsome disposition, and tried to bite the tails of the fish, so that he had to be removed to a basin, where he lives a life of solitude. The pleasure given by this little aquarium has far exceeded the outlay of money, and many a useful lesson in neatness and care has been learned in looking out for the needs of the fish.

Anne Helme.

Mother. "Jack, why is it you have so many holes in your pockets?"

Jack. "I guess it's my money which burns through."

PERILS OF THE NEWFOUNDLAND BANKS.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.

It was blowing half a gale from the southward and eastward, and the Captain said it would be worse before it was better. The Mohawk was plunging head first over the ragged seas, with a great roaring of thunderous foam under her hawseholes as she fell into the wide hollows, and a sickening upward swirl of her lean stem as she rose again to meet the reeling cliffs of water that swept down upon her out of the windward gloom. The streamer of brown smoke that rushed from her tall black funnel went wreathing and shuddering away to leeward, where it seemed to add a blacker tinge to the gray wall of the hard clouds. The sea was not yet torn to spoon-drift by the wind; but there was a huge under-running sweep of swell that made one think that bad weather lay behind the windward horizon.

Ever and anon the propeller would leap out of the water, and as it revolved in the air, set the ship full of rumbling quivers. Most of the passengers—and they were not many, for it was not one of the big "liners"—lay below decks in the unspeakable agony of early seasickness, for the ship was not long out, and had just reached the edge of the Newfoundland banks. A few of the ocean travellers, however, mostly men who had seen salt spray before, sat huddled in their rugs under the lee of the deck-house,