The setting sun drew itself a crimson path across the widening strait.  The smooth water grew all deliciously rosy with twilight.  The moon had just begun to put in a faint claim to be recognized as a luminary, when I pulled up to my father’s private jetty.

Everything looked singularly sweet and quiet.  June never, in all her dreams of perfection, could have devised a fairer evening.  I was a little disappointed to miss my father from his usual station on the wharf.  He loved to be there to welcome me returning from my little voyages, and to hail me gently:  “Now then, Harry, a strong pull, and let me see how far you can send her!  Bravo, my boy!  We’ll soon make a man of you.  You shall not be a weakling all your life as your father has been, mind and body, for want of good strong machinery to work with.”

He was absent that evening.  I hurried to bestow my boat neatly in the boat-house.  I locked the door, pocketed the key, and ran up the lawn, thinking how pleased my father would be to hear of my adventure with the sloop and its crew, and how he would make me sketch the sloop for him, which I could do very fairly, and how he would laugh at my vain attempts to convey to him the cheeks and the curls of Miss Betty.

A CHAPTER OF BUTTS.

[Illustration:  “I’ll Butt it,” Said the goat.

“What!  It Butts again.”

“I’ll give it A good one, this time.”

“Perhaps I’d better get out of its way.”

But he didn’t.]

THE LION-KILLER.

(From the French of Duatyeff.)

By Mary Wager Fisher.

People in Tunis, Africa,—­at least, some of the older people,—­often talk of the wonderful exploits of a lion-killer who was famous there forty years ago.  The story is this, and is said to be entirely true: 

The lion-killer was called “The Sicilian,” because his native country was Sicily; and he was known as “The Christian” among the people in Tunis, who were mostly Arabs, and, consequently, Mohammedans.  He was also called “Hercules,” because of his strength,—­that being the name of a strong demi-god of the ancient Greeks.  He was not built like Hercules, however; he was tall, but beautifully proportioned, and there was nothing in his form that betrayed his powerful muscles.  He performed prodigies of strength with so much gracefulness and ease as to astonish all who saw them.

He was a member of a traveling show company that visited Tunis,—­very much as menagerie and circus troupes go about this country now from town to town.  His part of the business was, not simply to do things that would display his great strength, but also to represent scenes by pantomime so that they would appear to the audience exactly as if the real scenes were being performed before their very eyes.  In one of these scenes he showed the people how he had encountered and killed a lion with a wooden club in the country of Damascus.  This is the manner in which he did it: