the crab, which was transferred, all spluttering and scrambling, to a pool close at hand. "Now he can swim there," said Robert, returning to Nelly, "till I go home; let's see who can save most snails, pick 'em up-so—”

"So," meaning merely to pick up the snail shells between the finger and thumb of the right hand, Nelly was successful in shortening the miseries of many snails in a few minutes. The two would have remained all the morning almost motionless. watching the rescued creatures slowly putting forth their horns, if the ominous cry of "Robert, come here," had not at last sounded from the cliff.

The boy was bounding away with his usual alacrity, when the sudden recollection of his crab made him pause. "My crab!" he cried, "Oh, Nelly!" and rushed to the second pool; but alas, as any one but a child could have guessed, the crab was gone, for what sea-creature would have risked a second journey in a little boy's pocket, when it was so easy to hide beneath a stone?

Poor Robert looked at Nelly, buried his face in his hands for one moment, and then clasping those hands above his head with a mute gesture of despair, he ran up to his father.

Aunt 'Edie, who caught sight of the child's face as he passed her, cried involuntarily, "Darling,

what is it?" but he did not answer; and Nelly exclaimed as she watched him silently climbing the cliff, "Oh, auntie! can't you comfort him?”

What was the matter?" Aunt Edie said, without noticing Nelly's appeal. "I never saw a child. look so miserable."

"He lost his little crab," explained Nelly, flinging herself down by her aunt, and nearly upsetting the sketching materials; adding with a heavy sigh, "Auntie, I believe his father is cruel to him. He saw his trouble, and said not a word, he did not even hold out his hand. Poor little Robert! Look, you can see him trudging behind his father up there on the path, looking like a little fly with red legs."

"Poor child indeed!" said Aunt Edie, with a sigh; "we must be very kind to him; it is worse to have a hard father than to be away from a good one, eh, Nelly?"

"But

"Oh yes, auntie," was the ready answer. couldn't you speak to Mr. Rennoldson to tell him. to be kinder to Robert?"

Perhaps it was as well for Mrs. Gordon's credit as an all-powerful friend of the oppressed, that Connie and Eustace here appeared upon the scene, full of adventures of their own to relate, and in such high spirits as to be disposed to make fun of

the loss of the crab. But even Nelly, though at first a little resentful on Robert's behalf, fully forgave her cousins when they declared their intention. of “trotting the little fellow about" with them, if, as Eustace added, they could touch the heart of the crabbed old father.

CHAPTER XI.

A COLD BATH.

So ended the first morning at Lynmouth, a morning succeeded by an afternoon and evening scarcely less delightful, during which Nelly improved her acquaintance with Robert, whose father was only too glad to have "the child off his hands," as he expressed it when Eustace asked his permission for his son to come into Mrs. Gordon's sittingroom. Poor little Robert amused the whole party with his quaint, unchildlike ways; and by degrees it leaked out that his mother had died when he was a baby of a few months old, and that he had never had any brothers or sisters. When asked when he first began to go about with his father, he replied, "Always since he could remember; and always I shall," he added, with a half-unconscious sigh, " and I don't like stones any more."

"What do you like?" asked Eustace kindly, drawing the child towards him, and laying down the lens with which he had been comparing several different varieties of head-flax, whilst listening with one ear to the children's prattle.

"Oh, things that live and run," was the answer, and Robert flung his hands above his head with the gesture of one throwing aside a temptation : "when papa is chipping, I long to be grubbing. I had a beetle once, quite tame; and then there was my crab; but they all go!"

"You funny boy!" exclaimed Eustace, noticing, to his surprise, that the big brown eyes were full of tears; "forget your crab now, and look through this glass, and tell me what these flowers are like; if they are not as pretty as any beetle could be."

Robert looked, and the sad expression faded away for one of eager wonder. He held his breath and clasped his hands together; then turning suddenly to Nelly, he cried, "Nelly, see! they are like nice dragons, with little spurs at their feet."

Nelly came and looked, but her untrained eyes, though they saw the beauty, failed to recognise the analogy to the dragon and the spurs which Robert had detected at once. Eustace, pleased at the little fellow's evidently keen powers of observation, now gave himself up to interesting him in the flowers collected in his morning's ramble, showing him in rapid succession specimens of eyebright, wild marjoram, thyme, madder, and many another beautiful growth of the woods and lanes of Devon.

The evening closed with a promise

L