At this juncture little Maggie ran up, her pretty brown eyes wide and her red lips quivering.  “Oh!  Miss Vernor, Olly shan’t do it, shall he?  Do say he shan’t!”

“Do what?” asked Gerald, pausing in the act of searching for another pebble.

“Put it in the water to swim like a duck.  It isn’t a duck, it’s a little, little young bird he’s found in a nest, and it can’t swim, it can’t hardly fly.  Oh, don’t let him!”

“Let him!” echoed Gerald sharply.  She sprang toward the children with a bound, almost lifting Olly off his feet as she drew him back from the water’s edge.  “You cruel boy!” she cried.  “Give it to me directly.”

“I won’t!” answered Olly, trying to shake himself free from her grasp.  “It’s mine, I found it.”

But the small hands held him in a grip as strong as a man’s, and in another moment Gerald had taken the poor little half-feathered creature from him, and bidden Maggie restore it carefully to its nest.

“It’s mine!  It’s mine!  I’ll have it back!” shouted Olly, angrily, after the little girl.

Gerald took hold of him by the shoulders and turned him round toward her.  There was a great deal of hatred for the sin, and not overmuch love for the sinner, in her face, as she looked down at him.  “If you dare touch that bird again, Olly, I’ll find a punishment for you that you will not soon forget, do you hear?”

A hidden thought of revenge for the spoiled sport came into Olly’s mind.  He twisted himself away from his sister with a little grunt, and stood peevishly playing a moment with a couple of marbles; then suddenly darting aside, seized the boat in which Miss Delano was established, still struggling, but more feebly, with the mysterious trouble that held her in thrall; and with a strength with which one would hardly have credited his slight form, he pushed it off into the water.  There was, of course, not a particle of real danger for Miss Delano, even though this chanced to be the only boat at that point, and she was no oarswoman; but the poor little old lady, thus suddenly roused from the strange hallucinations (as she called them) which were the most marked feature of her complaint, and finding herself afloat upon the unstable deep, instantly supposed that her last hour was come.  She sprang up, too terrified to scream, with a look of deadly horror in her face, and then sank again all in a heap in the bottom of the boat.  Olly gave a fiendish laugh, but before any one else could move to the rescue, Gerald, with one fierce, unutterable look at her brother, and no thought but how soonest to end Miss Delano’s speechless agony, quick as a flash, caught hold of an overhanging bough and swung herself on to a rock quite far out in the water, and thence, with a light, bold spring, landed safely in the middle of the boat as it drifted past.

“All right, Miss Delano,” she said, briskly, seating herself and laying hold of the oars with accustomed hands; “I’m a born sailor, and we’ll have a little row first before we go back.”