of it, thinking it would be a nice gift for his mother.

"Three dollars," said the man in charge. Lem had supposed it would be about fifty cents. He still had five dollars for his spending money; but not even for his mother could he spend three dollars for one picture.

"Roll it up for me, and when I come this way again, I will come in and take it." As he went out, Lem was scared at his own boldness; he was not sure whether he had done right or not; he had deceived the man, he thought. But, so long as he stayed in Boston, he never went through that street again. He felt that the picture-dealer might rush out at him and compel him to take the picture and pay the price of it. But he never did go that way again; and so the street was closed to him as long as he was in the city.

Four whole weeks, four weeks of blissful pleasure, were Lem's lot in the wonderful old city. Then, in his uncle's grand carriage, with his Aunt Esther and his Cousin Ruth, Lem was taken down to Long Wharf and put on board the schooner Wakulla, bound for Fairport. His uncle and his new friend, Arthur, were already on the wharf, and, loaded with many blessings, his valise and a little trunk, and another big firkin of good things to eat on the voyage, Lem sailed away, down the fine bay and out on the ocean, homeward bound. He had had a lovely time. No other boy had ever fared so

well. In his trunk were beautiful things which he was taking home for mother, father, brothers, and sisters and Alice Martin, some of them bought with his own money, and some sent from the noble old house in Summer Street; and before him loomed in the rosy eastern sky the dearest place of all the world to him-home, sweet home.

CHAPTER XVII

HIS EXIT FROM VILLAGE BOYHOOD

IF Lem's return, with all the freshness of a visit to the city on him, was likely to make him in the least bit proud, or "stuck-up," as the boys would have said, another arrival home soon took the wind out of his sails. The Canova came into port from Liverpool. It was a great event, especially to the Parker family; for Hal and Uncle Eben were both dearly beloved and dearly welcome. For days after his own arrival home, Lem was anxiously watching the lower bay with the family spy-glass. Perched in the window of the attic, the same window out of which he had been blown by Hafiz's Persian magic, Lem gazed until his eyes ached, looking for the first glimpse of the royals of the good ship rising over the horizon; many a time did the small sails of small craft fool him into the notion that he saw the lofty sails and spars of the Canova; and many a time did he say to himself that he was foolish not to be able to tell the tiny fore-and-aft sail of a schooner from the square royal of a ship.

But Lem was the first person in Fairport, after

all, to descry the upper sails of the ship looming up against the sky, far down below the cape, as the gallant Canova stood in toward her home port. How stately and how grand she looked! How unlike all the lesser craft she was, as she came fluking" up the bay! Only a look was enough for Lem, and he fled, shouting down the stairs, "She's in sight! She's in sight!" It was not needful that he should say who "she" was; everybody knew.

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The lower sails, or courses, of the ship were brailed up as she stood into the harbor; and one by one the square sheets of canvas were furled, and the graceful vessel, looking none the worse for her long voyage, was hauled into the wharf, where she was to discharge her cargo of salt. As she gradually drew near the wharf, several boys set up a cry of "Caw! caw! caw!" They had not forgotten Hal's pet crow. Indeed, the late death of that bird had brought him to their memory; and Hal, mortified and angry, kept out of sight as well as he could while his old-time playmates dismally croaked their welcome home.

Lem was at first tickled to hear this queer chorus, for soon every boy in town was on the wharf, and every boy was cawing as loudly as he could. But Master Parker, whom all the boys respected and even revered, came down toward the string-piece of the wharf. As if by general consent, every caw was hushed, except

when some small boy, safe on the top of a pile of hogsheads, muttered a subdued croak. Hal's shipmates, strangers to the port, were curious to know why the cawing of the boys was so general, and what it meant to Hal; they were amused when they heard the whole story.

But this disagreeable incident was forgotten when Hal, safely returned to the bosom of his family, and full of entertaining yarns about his adventures in foreign parts, was free to tell what he had seen, and heard, and suffered. His presents, too, were generous and handsome. Lem did not have a salamander; but his gift was a wonderful ball of rock crystal which Hal had bought of some wandering son of the sea, and which, when turned in the sun, gave back all the colors of the rainbow, and, according to Hal, held the means to tell people's fortunes, if one only knew how to use it. Almira had a present of some wonderfully fine embroidery, the work of Spanish nuns ; and his mother received a set of dishes that Hal must have known she wanted very much.

"Hal's presents are very liberal, considering the smallness of his wages," said the good mother, with a queer smile in the corners of her mouth. "I'm afraid Uncle Eben's purse was opened to help the boy out; for Hal's poor little eight dollars a month would not go far toward buying that handsome dinner-set, for one thing." Then Lem, for the first time, knew what wages Hal had received as