“A good diplomatist, I have heard it said, friend Tickler, never blurts out what he means to do, but keeps a still tongue until he has effected his ends.  Keep then your faith square, ask no questions, watch closely, and the result shall come as clear as day to you when I am on the field.”  The secretary gradually became more reconciled to his fate, and soon renewed the labor of restoring his beard.

Several days now passed with so much pleasantry that the general and his secretary became the admiration of all on board.  Not a man, from the commander down to the humblest “ordinary,” but was eager to pay them homage, minister to their comfort, or afford them amusement.  They were thus happily pursuing their voyage when the commander, one pleasant evening, having entertained the general with various sea stories, was approached by one of his officers, who reported that Spark Island had been sighted from aloft.  This news sent a thrill of joy into the hearts of all on board, for Spark Island lay ten leagues off the coast of Kalorama.  Every eye was now fixed in the direction indicated, and many were the glasses brought into use.  After various scannings, what seemed a mere speck on the horizon was pronounced by the commander to be nothing less than the famous Spark Island, a bit of land quite resembling the steeple of one of our fashionable churches, and which nature, in one of her strange freaks had ejected from the bottom of the sea, that certain gulls and other sea-birds, having no other convenient place to build their nests, might take advantage of its solitude.  “Verily, your excellency,” said the commander, addressing General Potter with great suavity of manner, “there is so curious a history connected with this pitiful little island, that I feel you would be deeply interested with a recital of it.”

“Indeed, sir,” returned the general, “as this history concerns me as a diplomatist, I should be delighted to hear it from your lips.”

“You must know, then,” resumed the commander, “that the natives along the coast have a tradition they firmly believe in, and which sets forth that this island was thrown up by a special act of providence as a place of refuge for a poor priest, a good and holy man, who, being admitted to the confidence of the court of a Chief then ruling over Kalorama, was discovered, by a keen-sighted attendant, in an amour with one of his daughters, a girl of so much beauty that various chiefs had come from the east, and the west, and the north, and the south, to lay their offerings at her feet.  But to none of them would she give her hand and heart.  And although the priest protested his innocence before heaven, and the girl, whose name was Matura, declared her chastity as unsullied as the driven snow, the father was not to be moved, but per-emptorily ordering them both into a canoe, sent them to drift at the mercy of the waves, a merited banishment-in his eyes.  Many years passed, and nothing being