AT THE BLACK ROCKS

"'Shove hard, but sing easy.'" Page 33

AT THE BLACK ROCKS.

I.

WAS HE WORTH SAVING?

"I might try," squeaked a diminutive boy, whose dark eyes had an unfortunate twist.

"Ye-s-s, Bartie," said his grandmother doubtfully, looking out of the window upon the water wrinkled by the rising wind.

"Wouldn't be much wuss," observed Bartholomew's grandfather, leaning forward in his old red arm-chair and steadily eying a failing fire as if arguing this matter with the embers. Then he added, "You could take the small boat."

"Yes," said Bart eagerly. "I could scull, you know; and if the doctor wasn't there when I got there, I could tell 'em you didn't feel well, and he might come when he could."

"That will do, if he don't put it off too long," observed the old man, shaking his head at the fire as if the two had now settled the matter between them. "Yes, you might try."

Bartie now went out to try. Very soon he wished he had not made the trial. Granny Trafton saw him step into the small boat moored by the shore, and then his wiry little arms began to work an oar in the stern of the boat. "Gran'sir Trafton," as he was called, came also to the window, and looked out upon the diminutive figure wriggling in the little boat.

"He will get back in an hour," observed Gran'sir Trafton.

"Ought to be," said Granny Trafton.

It is a wonder that Bartie ever came back at all. He was the very boy to meet with some kind of an accident. Somehow mishaps came to him readily. If any boy had a tumble, it was likely to be Bartie Trafton. If measles slyly stole into town to be caught by somebody, Bartie Trafton was sure to be one catcher. In a home that was cramped by poverty--his father at sea the greater fraction of the time, and the other fraction at home drunk--this under-sized, timid, shrinking boy seemed as continually destined for trouble as the Hudson for the sea.

"I don't