“Well, I had pretty good luck to-day,” said the old fisherman, as he stopped his boat at the pier, and pointed to Margy and Mun Bun.  “See what I caught!”

“Margy!” cried her mother, in great surprise.

“Mun Bun!” exclaimed the little boy’s father.

“Did you go out in a boat again?” asked Mrs. Bunker.

“Oh, no’m, we didn’t do that!” said Mun Bun quickly.

“We just waded over to the little island,” said Margy.  “But somebody poured water in the river, and it got high and we couldn’t wade back again.”

“They were marooned in the middle of Clam River for a fact!  That’s what they were!” said Mr. Burnett.  “But I heard ’em yell, and I took ’em off.  Here they are.”

“You must never wade out like that again,” said the father of Mun Bun and Margy.  “This river isn’t like ours at home.  An island there is always an island, unless floods come, and you know about them.  There is a tide here twice a day and what may seem a safe bit of sand on which to play at one time may be covered with water at another.  So don’t go wading unless you ask your mother or me first.”

“We won’t,” promised Mun Bun and Margy.

Then Mr. Bunker thanked Mr. Burnett and after the lobster had been bought the fisherman puffed away in his boat, waving a good-bye to the children he had saved from being marooned on the island.

Mun Bun and Margy had to tell their story over again several times and they had to answer many questions from their brothers and sisters, about how they felt when they saw the water coming up.

Of course the two smallest of the six little Bunkers had been in some danger, though if Mr. Burnett had not seen them and rescued them, some one else might have done so.  But it taught all the little Bunkers a lesson about the dangers of the rising tide, and if any of you ever go to the seashore I hope you will be careful.  If you live at the shore, of course you know about the tides.

As the August days went on, the children played in the sand and had many good times.  Often they would pretend to be digging for gold, as they had heard Sammie Brown tell of his father having done, but they had given up hoping to find any.

“But we might find my locket,” said Rose.

“And we might find that queer box the tide washed away before we could see what was in it,” said Russ.  “I wish we could find that.”

Often he would walk along the beach looking at the driftwood and other things cast up by the waves and hope for a sight of the mysterious box.

“If we’d only seen what was in it we wouldn’t feel so bad,” said Rose.  “But it’s like a puzzle you never can guess.”

One evening Daddy Bunker came home from the village with some round tin boxes.

“What’s in ’em?” cried Violet, always the first to ask a question.

“Let’s guess!” proposed Laddie.  “Maybe I can make up a riddle about ’em.”