He hesitated a moment, then seized it eagerly.

“I know you,” spoke up Jeremy, at this juncture. “You went up the Neck with us this morning. I saw you.”

“Then you are the boy who got first into Boston this morning, are you, sir?”

“I believe I did, sir.”

“Go on.”

The oxen went on.

“Now, Jeremy, down with you and wait here for me. You haven’t had small-pox,” said Aunt Hannah.

“But the oxen won’t mind you,” said Jeremy.

Aunt Hannah was troubled. She never had driven oxen.

At the moment who should appear but Mr. Wooster. He gladly offered to take the basket and deliver it at Mrs. Jagger’s door.

“Don’t go in, mind! Mother’s had small-pox,” called Jeremy, as he started.

“I’m tired,” gasped Aunt Hannah, who had done baking enough for a small army that day, as she sat down to rest on the broad seat of the cart, and the two started for home. The soldier at the gate scarcely heeded them as they went out, for roasted chicken “tasted so good.”

“I’m so glad the British are out of Boston,” said Aunt Hannah, as she touched home soil again and went wearily up the walk to the little dark house.

A hundred years ago the winds of March were blowing.

To-day the same winds rush by the stone memorials and sweep across the low mounds that securely cover the men and the women that then were alive to chill blast and stirring event. Even the lads who gathered at sound of drum and fife on village green, wishing, as they saw the troopers march, that they were men, and the little girls who hung about father’s neck because he was going off to war, who watched the post-riders on their course, wishing that they knew the news he carried, are no longer with us.

Then it was that friends began to gather across the rivers that wound their waters around Boston. Presently an army grew up and stationed itself with leaders and banners and forts.

Summer came. The army waited through all the long warm days. The summer went; the leaves fell; the chill winds and the cold sea-fogs wound into and out of the poor little tents and struck the brave men who, having no tents, tried to be strong and endure.

Every child knows, or ought to know, the story of that winter; how day by day, all over New England, men were striving to gather firearms and powder wherewith to take back from the foe poor Boston. But, alas, there was not powder enough in all the land to do it.

The long, wearying winter had done its worst for the prisoned inhabitants within the town; and, truly, it had tried and pinched the waiting friends who stood at the gates.

At last, in March, in the night, the brave helpers climbed the hills, built on them smaller hills, and by the light of the morning were able to look over into the town—at which the patriots were glad and the British commander frightened.

“Go with all possible speed to Governor Trumbull,” said Washington, delivering despatches to a well-known and trusted messenger, who instantly mounted one of the ponies in waiting—Sweeping Wind by name—and rode away, with many a sharp and inquiring glance back at city and river and camp.

It was four of the clock in the afternoon, and the messenger had not paused since he set forth, longer than to give Sweeping Wind water to drink, when, on the highway in the distance, he saw a red cloak fluttering and flying before him.

It was Pussy Dean who wore the cloak. She was fifteen, fair and lovely, brave and patriotic as any soldier in the land.

At first she was angry at the law by which she was denied a new cloak that winter, made of English fabric, but when wrapped in the coveted broadcloth of scarlet belonging to her mother she was more than reconciled.

On this Sunday Pussy had been at the meeting-house on the hill, two miles from home, at both morning and afternoon service, and afterward had lingered a little to gather up bits of news from camp and town to take home to her mother, and so it had happened that she was quite alone on the highway.

“Now,” she thought, “if I could only stop him! I wonder if I can’t. I’ll try, and then,” swinging her silken bag, “I shall have news to carry home, the very latest, too.”

As she swung the bag she suddenly remembered that she had something within it to offer the rider.

“Of course I can,” she went on saying to herself. “Post-riders are always hungry, and it’s lucky for him that I didn’t have to eat my dinner myself, to-day. Now, if I only had a basketful of clover heads or roses for that pony, I’d find out all about Boston while it was eating.”

The only roses within sight were blooming on Pussy Dean’s two cheeks as Sweeping Wind came clattering his shoes against the frozen ground. He would have gone straight on had a scarlet cloak not been planted, like a fluttering standard, full in his pathway.

The rider gave the pony the slightest possible check, since he felt sure that no red-coated soldier lurked behind the red cloak.

“Take something to eat, won’t you?” accosted Pussy, rather glowing in feature and agitated in voice by her own daring.

He answered with a smile and a “Thank you,” took the bag, and rewarded her by saying, “The British are getting out of Boston, bag and baggage.”

“And where are you going?” demanded Pussy, determined not to go home with but half the story if she could help it.

“To Governor Trumbull with the good news and a demand for two thousand men to save New York,” he cried back, having gone on. His words were entangled with a mouthful of gingerbread or mince-pie to such an extent that it was a full minute before Pussy understood their import, and then she could only say over and over to herself, as she hastened on, “Father will be here, father will come home, and we’ll have the good old times back again.”

But notwithstanding her hope and a country’s wish, the good old times were not at hand.

“Mother,” said Pussy, a few minutes later, “let Benny come with me to tell Mr. Gale about it; may he?”

Pussy laid aside her Sunday bonnet, tied a straw hat over her ears with a silk kerchief to keep out the wind, and in three minutes got Benny into the highway.

“See here, Ben, I’m going to light a fire on Baldhead to tell all the folks together about it, and I want you to help me; quick, before it gets dark.”

“You can’t gather fagots,” responded Ben.

Yes, she could, and would, and did, while Benny went to the house nearest to Baldhead to ask for some fire in a kettle.

The two worked with such vigor and will that the first gathering of darkness saw the light of the beacon-flame burst forth, and the great March wind blew it into fiercest glow. Every eye that saw the fire there knew that it had been kindled with a purpose, and many feet from house and hamlet set forth to learn the cause.

While Pussy and Ben were yet adding fagots to the fire, they heard a voice crying out: “The young rascals shall be punished soundly for this,” and ere Pussy had time to explain or expostulate, a strong man had Ben in his grasp.

By the light of it, the man saw Pussy and she saw him; and then both began to laugh, while Ben rubbed his ears and wondered whether they were both on his head.

“It means,” spoke the girl, waving the still flaming brand toward the east, “that the British left Boston this morning, and that General”—(just here a dozen men were at the fire. Pussy raised her voice and continued)—“Washington wants you all, every one of you, to march straight to Governor Trumbull, and he’ll tell you what to do next.”

“If that’s the case,” said the responsible man of the constantly-increasing group after questioning Pussy, “we’d better summon the militia by the ringing of the bell,” and off they went in the direction of the village, while Pussy and Ben went home.

The next day saw fifty men, well armed, and provisioned for three days, on the road to Lebanon. They marched into town and into the now famous war-office of Governor Trumbull, to his pleased surprise.

“Who sent you?” asked the governor, for it was not yet six hours since the demand on the nearest town had been made.

A laugh ran around the sides of the old war-office. The messenger who had ridden from Cambridge sat upon the counter pressing his spurs into the wood and heard it all.

“And who commissioned the girl as a recruiting officer?” questioned the governor.

“I’m afraid,” said the messenger, “I am the guilty party. I met a young patriot in scarlet cloak who asked my news, and, I told her.”

“Where is the girl’s father?” demanded Governor Trumbull.

“He is with the army, at Cambridge,” was the response.

“And his name?”

“Reuben Dean.”

A scratch or two of the quill pen was heard on the open paper. It was folded, sealed, and handed to the ready horseman, with the words: “Reuben Dean; he is mentioned for promotion.”

The words, as they were spoken by Governor Trumbull, were caught up and gathered into a mighty cheer, for every man of their number knew that Reuben Dean was worthy of promotion, even had his daughter not gained it for him by her services as recruiting officer.

“David!” cried a voice stern and commanding, from a house-door one morning, as the young man who owned the name was taking a short cut “across lots” in the direction of Pautapoug.

“Sir!” cried the youth in response to the call, and pausing as nearly as he could, and at the same time keep his feet from sinking into the marshy soil.

“Where are you going?” was the response.

“To Pautapoug, to see Uriah Hayden, sir.”

“You’d better hire out at ship-building with him. Your college learning’s of no earthly use in these days,” said the father of David Bushnell, returning from the door, and sinking slowly down into his high-backed chair.

Then spoke up a sweet-voiced woman from the kitchen fire-side, where she had that moment been hanging an iron pot on the crane:

“True enough; but where can you find an idle man in all Saybrook town? and you know as well as I do that it makes men despise college-learning to see folks idle. I’d rather, for my part, David did go to work on the ship Uriah Hayden is building. I wish I knew what he’s gone over there for to-day.”

A funny smile crept into the curves of Mrs. Bushnell’s lips, but her husband did not notice it.

Mr. Bushnell moved uneasily in his chair, as he sat leaning forward, both hands clasped about a hickory stick, and his chin resting on the knob at its top. Presently he said:

“Anna, I fear David is getting into bad habits. He used to talk a good deal. Now he sits with his eyes on the floor, and his forehead in wrinkles, and I’m sure I’ve heard him moving about more than one night lately, after all honest folks were in bed.”

“Father, you must remember that you’ve been very sick, and fever gives one queer notions sometimes. I shouldn’t wonder one bit if you dreamed you heard something, when ’twas only the rats behind the wainscot.”

“Rats don’t step like a grown man in his stocking-feet, nor make the rafters creak, either.”

Since Mr. Bushnell’s illness began, no one had ascended to the chamber except herself and her son.

On two shelves hanging against the wall were the books that he had brought home with him from Yale College, just four weeks ago.

A table was drawn near to the one window in the room. On it were bits of wood, with iron scraps, fragments of glass and copper. In fact, the same thing to-day would suggest boat-building to the mother of any lad finding them among her boy’s playthings. To this mother they suggested nothing beyond the fact that David was engaged in something which he wished to keep a profound secret.

He had not told her so. It had not been necessary. She had divined it and kept silence, having all a mother’s confidence in, and hope of, her son’s success in life.

As she surveyed the place, she thought:

“There is nothing here, even if he (meaning her husband) should take it into his head to come up and look about.”

Meanwhile young David had crossed the Pochaug River, and was half the way to Pautapoug.

All this happened more than a thousand moons ago, when all the land was aroused and astir, and David Bushnell was not in the least surprised to meet, at the ship-yard of Uriah Hayden, Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut.

This man was everywhere, seeing to everything, in that year. Whatever his country needed, or Commander-in-chief Washington ordered from the camp at Cambridge, was forthcoming.

A ship had been demanded of Connecticut, and so Governor Trumbull had come down from Lebanon to look with his own eyes at the huge ribs of oak, thereafter to sail the seas as “The Oliver Cromwell.”

The self-same oaken ribs had intense interest for young David Bushnell. Uriah Hayden had promised to sell to him all the pieces of ship-timber that should be left, and while the governor and the builder planned, he went about gathering together fragments.

“Better take enough to build a boat that will carry a seine. ’T won’t cost you a mite more, and might serve you a good turn to have a sizable craft in a heavy sea some day,” said Mr. Hayden.

Now David Bushnell had been wishing that he had some good and sufficient reason to give Mr. Hayden for wanting the stuff at all, and here he had given it to him.

“That’s true,” spoke up David, “but how am I to get all this over to Pochaug?”

“Don’t get it over at all, until it’s ready to row down the Connecticut, and around the Sound. You’re welcome to build your boat at the yard, and, now and then, there will be odd minutes that the men can help you on with it.”

David thanked Mr. Hayden, grew cheerful of heart over the prospect of owning a boat of his own, and went merrily back to the village of Pochaug.

Two weeks later David’s boat was ready for sea. It was launched into the Connecticut from the ways on which the “Oliver Cromwell” grew, was named Lady Fenwick, and, when water-tight, was rowed down the river, past Saybrook and Tomb Hill, and so into the Long Island Sound.

When its owner and navigator went by Tomb Hill, he removed his hat, and bowed reverently. He thought with respect and admiration of the occupant of the sandstone tomb on its height, the Lady Fenwick who had slept there one hundred and thirty years.

With blistered palms and burning fingers David Bushnell pushed his boat with pride up the Pochaug River, and tied it to a stake at the bridge just beyond the sycamore tree, near his father’s door.

“I’ll fetch father and mother out to see it,” he thought, “when the moon gets up a little higher.”

With boyish pride he looked down at the work of his hands from the river-bank, and went in to get his supper.

“David!” called Mr. Bushnell, having heard his steps in the entry-way.

“Here I am, father,” returned the young man, appearing within the room, and speaking in a cheerful tone.

“Don’t you think you have wasted about time enough?”

The voice was high-wrought and nervous in the extreme. He, poor man, had been that afternoon thinking the matter over in a convalescent’s weak manner of looking upon the act of another man.

David Bushnell, smiling still, and taking out a large silver watch from his waistcoat pocket, and looking at it, replied:

“I haven’t wasted one moment, father. The tide was against me, but I’ve rowed around from Pautapoug ship-yard to the sycamore tree out here since two o’clock.”

“You row a boat!” cried Mr. Bushnell, with lofty disdain.

“Why, father, you have not a very good opinion of your son, have you?” questioned the son. “Come, though, and see what he has been doing. Come, mother,” as Mrs. Bushnell entered, bearing David’s supper in her hands.

“Why, you tremble as though you had the palsy,” said the father.

“It’s nothing. I’m not used to pulling so long at the oar,” said the son.

When they came to the bank, the full moon shone athwart the little boat rocking on the stream.

“What’s that?” exclaimed both parents.

“That is the Lady Fenwick. I’ve been building the boat myself. You advised me, father, to go to ship-building one morning—do you remember? I took your advice, and began at the bottom of the ladder.”

“You built that boat with your own hands, you say?”

“With my own hands, sir.”

“In two weeks’ time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And rowed it all the way down the river, and up the Pochaug?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy! You may go in and have your supper,” said Mr. Bushnell, patting him on the back, just as he had done when he returned from college with his first award.

As for Madam Bushnell, she smiled down upon Lady Fenwick and did her great reverence in her heart, while she said to the boat-builder:

That night Mr. Bushnell did not lie awake to listen for the stealthy stepping in the upper room. He slept all the sounder, because he had at last seen one stroke of honest work, as he called it, as the result of his endeavors to help David on in life.

As for David himself, he went to sleep, saying in his heart: “It is a good stepping-stone at least;” which conclusion grew into form in sleep, and shaped itself into a mighty monster, that bored itself under mountains, and, after taking a nap, roused and shook itself so mightily that the mountain flew into fragments high in air.

If you go, to-day, into the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, you will see on its left bank the old town of Saybrook, on its right the slightly younger town of Lyme, and you will have passed by, without having been very much interested in it, an island lying just within the shelter of either bank.

In the summer of 1774 a band of fishermen put up a reel upon the island, on which to wind their seine. Over the reel they built a roof to protect it from the rains. With the exception of the reel, there was no building upon the island. A large portion of the land was submerged at the highest tides, and in the spring freshets, and was covered with a generous growth of salt grass, in which a small army might readily find concealment.

The little fishing band was now sadly broken and lessened by one of the Washingtonian demands upon Brother Jonathan. For reasons that he did not choose to give, David Bushnell joined this band of fishermen in the summer of 1775. Gradually he made himself, by purchase, the owner of the larger part of the reel and seine. In a few weeks’ time he had induced his brother Ezra to become as much of a fisherman as he himself was.

As the days went by, the brothers fairly haunted this island. They gave it a name for their own use, and, early in the day-dawn of many a morning, they pulled the Lady Fenwick wearily up the Pochaug, to snatch a few winks of sleep at home, before the sun should fairly rise and call them to their daily tasks, for David assumed to help Ezra on the farm, even as Ezra helped him on the island.

The two brothers owned the reel and the seine before the end of the month of August in 1775. As soon as they became the sole owners, they procured lumber and enclosed the reel, and very seldom took down the seine from its great round perch; they used it just often enough to allay any suspicion as to their real object in becoming owners of the fishing implements.

One evening in late September, the two brothers started forth as usual, nominally to “go fishing.” As they stepped down the bank, Mr. Bushnell followed them.

“Boys,” said he, “it’s an uncommon fine night on the water. I believe I’ll take a seat in your boat, with your permission. I used to like fishing myself when I was young and spry.”

“And leave mother alone!” objected David.

“She’s been out with me many a night on the Sound. She’s brave, and won’t mind a good south-west wind, such as I dare say breaks in on the shore this minute. Go and call her.”

And so the family started forth to go fishing.

This was a night the two brothers had been looking forward to during weeks of earnest labor, and now—well, it could not be helped, and there was not a moment in which to hold counsel.

Mr. Bushnell had planned this surprise early in the day, but had not told his wife until evening. Then he announced his determination to “learn what all these midnight and all-night absences did mean.”

As the Lady Fenwick came out from the Pochaug River into the Sound, the south-west wind brought crested waves to shore. The wind was increasing, and, to the great relief of David and Ezra, Mr. Bushnell gave the order to turn back into the river.

The next day David Bushnell asked his mother whether or not she knew the reason his father had proposed to go out with them the night before.

“Yes, David,” was the reply, “I do.”

“Will you tell me?”

“He does not believe that you and Ezra go fishing at all.”

“What do you believe about it, mother?”

“I believe in you, David, and that when you have anything to tell to me, I shall be glad to listen.”

“And father does not trust me yet; I am sorry,” said David, turning away. And then, as by a sudden impulse, he returned and said:

“If you can trust me so entirely, mother, we can trust you. To-day, two gentlemen will be here. You will please be ready to go out in the boat with us whenever they come.”

“Where to?”

“To my fishing ground, mother.”

The strangers arrived, and were presented to Mrs. Bushnell as Dr. Gale and his friend, Mr. Franklin.

“I saw my family starting on an unknown voyage,” he remarked, as the boat approached the shore as nearly as it could, while he waded out to meet it.

“Ah, Friend Gale, is that you?” he said, as with dripping feet he stepped in. “And whither bound?” he added, dropping into a seat.

“For the far and distant land of the unknown, Mr. Bushnell. Permit me to introduce you to my friend, Mr. Franklin.”

“Franklin! Franklin!” exclaimed Mr. Bushnell, eyeing the stranger a little rudely. “Doctor Benjamin Franklin, if you please, Benjamin Gale!” he corrected, to the utter amazement of the party.

The oars missed the stroke, caught it again, and, for a minute, poor Dr. Franklin was confused by the sudden announcement that he existed at all, and, in particular, in that small boat on the sea.

“Yes, sir, even so,” responded Dr. Gale, cheerfully adding, “and we’re going down to see the new fishing tackle your son is going to catch the enemy’s ships with.”

During this time the brothers were pulling with a will for the island.

Arrived there, the boat was drawn up on the sand, the seine-house unlocked, and, when the light of day had been let into it, fishing-reel and seine had disappeared, and, in the language of Doctor Benjamin Gale, this is what they found therein:

Thus wrote Dr. Benjamin Gale to Silas Deane, member of Congress at Philadelphia. His letter bears the date November 9, 1775, and, after describing the wonderful machine, he adds:

“I well know the man. Lately he has conducted matters with the greatest secrecy, both for the personal safety of the navigator, and to produce the greater astonishment to those against whom it is designed; and, you may call me a visionary, an enthusiast, or what you please, I do insist upon it that I believe the inspiration of the Almighty has given him understanding for this very purpose and design.”

“Father,” whispered Mrs. Bushnell, “it’s the fish David has been all summer catching.”

“Fish!” ejaculated Mr. Bushnell, “it’s more like a turtle.”

“That’s good!” spoke up Dr. Gale, from within. “Turtle it shall be.”

“It is the first submarine boat ever made—a grand idea, wrought into substance,” slowly pronounced Dr. Franklin; “let us have it forth into the river.”

“And run the risk of discovery?” suggested David, pleased that his work approved itself to the man of science.

“We meant to try it last night, but failed,” said Ezra Bushnell.

“There, now, father, don’t you wish we had staid at home?” whispered Mrs. Bushnell.

“No!” growled the father. “They would have killed themselves getting it down alone.”

He stepped within and laid his hand on the machine, saying:

“Anna, you keep watch, and, if any boat heaves in sight, let us know. Does the Turtle snap, David?” he questioned, putting forth his hand and laying it cautiously upon the animal.

“Never, until the word is given,” replied the son, and then ten strong hands applied the strength within them to lift the curious piece of mechanism and carry it without.

The seine-house was close to the river-bank, and in a half-hour’s time the American Turtle was in its native element.

Madam Anna Bushnell kept strict watch over the shores and the river, but not a sail slid into sight, not an oar troubled the waters of the tide, as it tossed back the tumble of the down-flowing river.

It was a hard duty for the mother to perform; for, at a glance toward the bank, she saw David step into the machine, and the brass cover close down over his head. She felt suffocating fears for him, as, at last, the thing began to move into the stream. She saw it go out, she saw it slowly sinking, going down out of sight, until even the brass head was submerged.

Then she forsook her post, and hastened to the bank to keep watch with the rest.

One, two, three minutes went by. The men looked at the surface of the waters, at each other, grew thoughtful, pale; the mother gasped and dropped on the salt grass, fainting; the brother gave to Lady Fenwick a running push, bounded on board, and clutched the oars to row swiftly to the spot where David went down.

Mr. Bushnell filled his hat with water, and sprinkled the pale face in the sedge.

“There! there!” cried Dr. Franklin, with distended eyes and eager outlook.

“Where? where?” ejaculated Dr. Gale, striving to take into vision the whole surface of the river, at a glance.

“It’s all right! He’s coming up plump!” shouted Ezra, from his boat, as he rowed with speed for the spot where a brass tube was rising, sun-burnished, from the Connecticut.

Presently the brass head, with its very small windows, emerged, even the oaken sides were rising,—and Mr. Bushnell was greeting the returning consciousness of his wife with the words:

“It’s all right, mother. David is safe.”

“Don’t let him know,” were the first words she spoke, “that his own mother was so faithless as to doubt!”

And now, paddle, paddle, toward the river-bank came the Turtle, David Bushnell’s head rising out of its shell, proud confidence shining forth from his eyes, as feet and hands busied themselves in navigating the boat that had lived for months in his brain, and now was living, in very substance, under his control.

As he neared the bank a shout of acclamation greeted him.

He reached the island, was fairly dragged forth from his seat, and carried up to the spot where his mother sat, trying to overcome every trace of past doubt and fear.

With bared heads and devout hearts the thanksgiving went upward, and thereafter a perfect shower of questions pelted David Bushnell concerning his device to blow up ships: how he came to think of it at all—where he got this idea and that as to its construction—to all of which he simply said:

“You’ll find your answer in the prayer you’ve just offered!”

“But,” said practical Mr. Bushnell, “the Lord did not send you money to buy oak and iron and brass, did he?”

“Yes,” returned David, “by the hand of my good friend, Dr. Gale. To him belongs half the victory.”

“Pshaw! pshaw!” impatiently uttered the doctor. “I tell you it is no such thing! I only advanced My Lady here,” turning to Madam Bushnell, “a little money, on her promise to pay me at some future time. I’m mightily ashamed now that I took the promise at all. Madam Bushnell, I’ll never take a penny of it back again, never, as long as I live. I will have a little of the credit of this achievement, and no one shall hinder me.”

“How is that, mother?” questioned Mr. Bushnell. “You borrow money and not tell me!” and David and Ezra looked at her.

Before he had a chance to get an answer in, David Bushnell stepped forward, and, taking the little figure of his mother in his arms, kissed her sharply, and walked away, to give some imaginary attention to the Turtle at the bank.

“It is a fair land to work for!” spoke up Doctor Franklin, looking about upon river and earth and sea; “worthy it is of our highest efforts; of our lives, even, if need be. God give us strength as our need shall be.”

With many a tug and pull and hearty heave-ho, the Turtle was hoisted up the bank and safely drawn into the seine-house. The door was locked, and Lady Fenwick’s tomb gave forth no sound that night.

Doctor Franklin went his way to Boston. Doctor Gale returned to Killingworth and his waiting patients, and the Bushnells, father, mother and sons, having put the two gentlemen on the Saybrook shore, went down the river into the Sound, along its edge, and up the small Pochaug to their own home by the sycamore tree.

Mr. Bushnell and Ezra did the rowing that night. David’s white hands had, somehow, a new radiance in them for his father’s eyes, and did not seem exactly fitted for rowing just a common boat and every-day oars.

If you go to-day and stand upon the site of the old fort, built at the mouth of the Connecticut River, in the year 1635, by Lion Gardiner, once engineer in the service of the Prince of Orange, and search the waters up and down for the island on which David Bushnell built the American Turtle in 1775, you will not find it.

If you seek the oldest inhabitant of Saybrook, and ask him to point out its locality, he will say, with boyhood’s fondness for olden play-grounds in his tone:

“Ah, yes! It is Poverty Island that you mean. It used to be there, but spring freshets and beating storms have washed it away.”

The unexpected visit of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, to see the machine David Bushnell was building, gave new force to that young gentleman’s confidence in his own powers of invention.

He worked with increased energy and hope to perfect boat and magazine, that he might do good service with them before winter should fall on the waters of the Massachusetts Bay, where the hostile ships were lying.

At last came the day wherein the final trial-trip should be made. The pumps built by Mr. Doolittle, but not according to order, had failed once, but new ones had been supplied, and everything seemed propitious. David and Ezra, with their mother in the boat, rowed once more to Poverty Island. “On the morrow the great venture should begin,” they said.

The time was mid-October. The forests had wrapped the cooling coast in warmth of coloring that was soft and many-hued as the shawls of Cashmere, while the sun-made fringe of goldenrod fell along the shores of river and island and sea.

Mrs. Bushnell’s heart beat proudly above the fond affection that could not suppress a shiver, as the Turtle was pushed into the stream. She could not help seeing that David made a line fast from the seine-house to his boat ere he went down. They watched many minutes to see him rise to the surface, but he did not.

“Mother,” said Ezra, “the pump for forcing water out when he wants to rise don’t work, and we must pull him in. He feared it.”

As he spoke the words he laid hold on the line, and began gently to draw on it.

“Hold, mother!” cried Ezra; “pull gently, or the line may part on some barnacled rock if it gets caught.”

Nevertheless, Mrs. Bushnell pulled in as fast as she could.

The tide was sweeping up the river, and a shark, in hard chase after a school of menhaden, swam steadily up, with fin out of water.

Just as the shark reached the place, he made a dive, and the rope parted!

Mrs. Bushnell screamed a word or two of the terror that had seized her. Ezra looked up, amazed to find the rope coming in so readily, hand over hand. He cast it down, sprang to the boat, and pushed off to the possible rescue, only to find that the Turtle was making for the river-bank instead of the island.

He rowed to the spot. His brother, for the first time in his life, was overcome with disappointment and disinclined to talk.

“I—I,” said David, wiping his forehead. “I grew tired, and made for shore. The tide was taking me up fast.”

“Did you let go the line?” questioned Ezra.

“Yes.”

“The pump works all right, then?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve frightened mother terribly.”