“Oh, by the by,” said Tom one day to the professor, “I forgot to tell you that in the cave where poor Veevee got lost I picked up this curious stone!”

The professor put his spectacles on his nose and gazed at it for a moment.

“Why, my dear Tom, this is solid gold, in the centre of a coating of quartz!  You’re in luck, lad; and it is just as I said; that is the Island of Gold.  We shall return another year, and you will be one of the richest men in the kingdom.”

* * * * *

My story is finished, or almost.

’Fessor Pete and Tom, with Uncle Staysail, to say nothing of the mastiff Briton, are out there in the Frozen North this very summer, and I do hope they will have luck.

But Aralia and Pansy, with sometimes Frank and always Veevee, may be seen any day playing on the sands not far from their mother’s home, and Flossy too.

Flossy is wondrously tame, and spends an hour or two almost every day in the sea, or on the beach, to the great delight of all who see her.  But Aralia has a whistle, and no matter how far away in the water this strange pet may be, whenever the call is sounded she comes ploughing back to the beach, and after she has shaken her bonny coat in the sunshine, goes waddling home with her little friend Veevee and the Crusoes of the Frozen North.