her—­a real house in which to practise the manners and deportment of a real lady, and she resolved to borrow or steal a hook after dinner and clear the nettles away.  Farmer Tossell had promised the children that on the morrow he would (as he put it) ride them over to Miss Sally’s house at Culvercoombe, to pay a call on that great gentlewoman; to-morrow being Sunday and his day of leisure.  But to-day he was busy with the sheep, and the children had a long morning and afternoon to fill up as best they might.

Arthur Miles did not share Tilda’s rapture over the ruined cottage, and for a very good reason.  He was battling with a cruel disappointment.  All the way down the coombe he had been on the look-out for his Island, at every new twist and bend hoping for sight of it; and behold, when they came here to the edge of the beach, a fog almost as dense as yesterday’s had drifted up Channel, and the Island was invisible.  Somewhere out yonder it surely lay, and faith is the evidence of things not seen; but it cost him all his fortitude to keep back his tears and play the man.

By and by, leaning over the edge of the fall, he made a discovery that almost cheered him.  Right below, and a little to the left of the rocky pool in which the tumbling stream threw up bubbles like champagne, lay a boat—­a boat without oars or mast or rudder, yet plainly serviceable, and even freshly painted.  She was stanch too, for some pints of water overflowed her bottom boards where her stern pointed down the beach—­ collected rain water, perhaps, or splashings from the pool.

The descent appeared easy to the right of the fall, and the boy clambered down to examine her.  She lay twenty feet or more—­or almost twice her length—­above the line of dried seaweed left by the high spring tides.  Arthur Miles knew nothing about tides; but he soon found that, tug as he might at the boat, he could not budge her an inch.  By and by he desisted and began to explore the beach.  A tangle of bramble bushes draped the low cliff to the right of the waterfall, and peering beneath these, he presently discovered a pair of paddles and a rudder, stored away for safety.  He dragged out one of the paddles and carried it to the boat, in the stern-sheets of which he made his next find—­five or six thole-pins afloat around a rusty baler.  He was now as well equipped as a boy could hope to be for an imaginary voyage, and was fixing the thole-pins for an essay in the art of rowing upon dry land, when Tilda, emerging from the cottage (where the nettles stung her legs) and missing him, came to the edge of the fall in a fright lest he had tumbled over and broken his neck.  Then, catching sight of him, she at once began to scold—­as folks will, after a scare.

“Come down and play at boats!” the boy invited her.

“Shan’t!” snapped Tilda.  “Leave that silly boat alone, an’ come an’ play at houses.”

“Boats aren’t silly,” he retorted; “not half so silly as a house without any roof.”