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-the anchor was dropped once more in Hareborough Roads, and all hands, without exception, fast asleep, though still on board.

At nine o'clock, or forty-eight hours after they departed from Eyemouth, they were seated at Mr. Spencer's breakfast-table, and Bob hastily imparting to the eager Tay what they had seen, and done, and enjoyed. After breakfast, the eggs were displayed; and Mrs. Spencer called for a full, true, and particular account of the rescue, which terminated with an inquiry from Tay—whose wet eyelashes, though, rather contradicted her seeming levity-whether Bob thought of taking a situation as nursemaid. "He might get such a high character from his last place."

HOME AGAIN.

CHAPTER XIX.

At Hareborough-A Walk on the Marshes-The Owlets-A Trawling Voyage-Shrimps-Wildfowl Shooting Afloat.

ALL the travellers were quite sufficiently wearied with the exertions and excitements of the time which had elapsed since they left Hareborough, to be well content to appropriate the remainder of the day of their return to resting themselves; or, at least, to such pursuit as required very little, if any effort, bodily or mental. Tay and the lads worked-if work it could be called-at the eggs for the former's collection, and at identifying, and, in one or two instances, by Hewitson's help, correcting the nomenclature of the eggs obtained from Jamie Grant. It was some pleasure too to them, to make out which of them, in all probability at least, had come from Norway, and which from Iceland, or the Orkneys. This occupation, which was carried on near a large window, opening down to the ground into a verandah, and looking over the fair garden in front and the beautiful calm sea

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beyond, was often suspended for a time by the deep interest both listener and narrator took in the account of some part of the recent adventures and experiences of the latter. Now it was the breathless anxiety with which the overhauling of the boat with the poor woman in it was accompanied in both the boys; how they were breathless with apprehension, lest some mischance or accident might occur in what seemed to them so ticklish a piece of business in that rough sea. How wonderfully those seamen, who, to look at them, didn't seem to promise such readiness and dexterity, had managed it all; and with such quickness, that everything seemed to be done at once, instead of in orderly succession. Then it was about the porpoises, and how their blowing was not so very, very different in tone from the sort of sigh which burst from Ned's relieved bosom, when he heard how the poor woman and her child were got safe on board the "Blue;" a comparison Mr. Ned might have acknowledged in a very unceremonious way, but that he was safely out of hearing distance, lying on a garden-seat, under the shadow of some noble evergreens, with a cigar in his mouth, and deep in the interest of Two Years Ago. Again, it was how they felt when rowing beneath St. Abb's Head; how, still more painfully-even in bodythey were at first affected by looking over the

REMINISCENCES.

precipices; what an awful sight the ocean presented the morning of the storm, with columns of spray dashed up over the Harkers a hundred feet high; the wonderful beauty of the Deans, and the most enjoyable trip to the Whitadder, with its picturesque banks and glorious streams for the fisherman.

At last the eggs were all properly cleaned, prepared, and secured on their cards, with labels affixed; and the girl's delight was intense on looking at the magnificent, unimagined addition made to her cabinet. Her mother and sister both came and participated in her pleasure. For really, the suite of willocks' and razor-bills' eggs alone were so beautiful in shape, colours, and markings, as to claim and receive as their right, a great deal of admiration. And besides these, there were many others of the additions singularly beautiful in their tints and proportions. It was almost dinnertime before the task of arrangement and labelling was accomplished. After dinner, a walk was proposed to the Little Hareborough Marshes; Ned to take either his rifle or Mr. Spencer's gun, and try for a few rabbits; while the young ladies, with one or both the lads, walked on along the seawall which skirted a part of Longsea-roads. The proposal was accepted by acclamation, and Ned, on hearing the rabbit-shooting would be at sitting

RABBIT-SHOOTING WITH THE RIFLE. 407

rabbits, and many of them, if he managed well, not thirty yards from him, decided to take his rifle.

Passing by the quaint old church of Little Hareborough, separated but by a field's length from the marshes, they soon reached a point from which the scene of Ned's exploits (to be) lay clearly displayed. Two irregular-shaped mounds, neither curvilinear nor straight-lined in outline, about five feet above the general level of the marshes, and from forty to fifty yards in diameter, showed-even at the distance the walkers still were from them-in their broken surfaces and banks, just such a locality as rabbits love to colonize. Ned proceeded to avail himself of the concealment afforded by a lane to make his approaches, and then, the remaining distance of 150 yards between himself and the rabbit-hills he set to work to get over on the deer-stalker's principles; the meandering depressions of what had been the channels of the sea-water before the marshes were reclaimed, assisting him very materially in his enterprise. While the rest of the party were passing at a distance of 300 or 400 yards above, they heard the first crack of his rifle, and, by his proceeding rapidly in the direction of the hill, they saw his shot had been successful. Reloading, and concealing himself in such a way as to allow him to