"Ay, ay," said the Captain, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, and looking down at us both, "that's the man, my lads, that's the man, you may depend upon it."

He then walked up and down the cabin, pulling his whiskers, rubbing his hands, and looking at us as though he was very much pleased. suppose

he was thinking about the eggs, for after a moment or two he went forward to the cook's kitchen and got them, two turkey's eggs in a small basket.

"I want you, lads," he said, in a whisper, "to take these up to Mr. Davids, and give them to him when no one is looking. Do you mind, when no one is looking?"

Both Chris and I said we would do so, for we were in a hurry to leave.

"Don't tell him where they came from," he whispered again, as we were clambering over the ship's side. "Just give them to him, basket and all, and say, 'His ship will be on the high seas in the morning, and there's no use of looking for him.' Say that, and-"

We heard him jingle a lot of silver and gold in his pocket as we hurried away. But we did not stop for anything until we had left a long distance behind, and were near the school.

"Goodness!" said Chris, dropping from our run into a walk, “what do you suppose Uncle Rufus will want of these eggs, Sid?"

I thought perhaps the captain was crazy, or playing some joke on Uncle Rufus.

"Let's look at them, anyhow," said Chris, stopping and raising the lid of the basket. "Here's a slip of paper with them also." And he drew out a piece of brown wrapping-paper, on which was written in big, awkward letters

"Boil these eggs hard, and then examine them closely.”

We read the words over three or four times, and then Chris lay down on the grass and broke out laughing. I laughed, too, till the water came in my eyes; for it seemed funny indeed to carry such a present to such a man as dear old Uncle Rufus, who would always blush if any of us boys even looked straight at him. Ah! if we could only have guessed the secret those two eggs contained, we would not have laughed much. It is more probable we should have spent our time wishing we were Uncle Rufus; though, of course, no one ought to have wished himself fortunate in place of him, for he always deserved everything good.

on.

It soon began to grow dark, however, and, coming to our senses, we hurried As we approached the playground we met Uncle Rufus going out alone for his walk after supper, and Chris carried the basket right up to him. "Here is something a gentleman down at the harbour wished us to give you, sir," he said.

"Give to me?" inquired Uncle Rufus, astonished.

mistake, Christopher."

"There must be some

"No, sir; he said we must give the basket to you when nobody was looking."

Uncle Rufus drew open the cover, and peeped in.

"Very well," he replied, suddenly becoming as red as any of us ever saw him. "I thank you. You may go now."

If he had tossed them out on the ground right there and then, as we hoped he would-well, we should not have thought much more about it, I think; nor would he have been such a happy Uncle Rufus as he was six months afterwards. As it was, we went and ate our supper; and then we found a

dozen or more of the boys in Tom Webber's room, where we told all about it. Some of the oldest boys thought that the eggs might be a rare kind which the captain had gotten in a foreign country, and wanted Uncle Rufus to put among the curiosities in the cabinet. Two or three believed it was only a freak of the old fellow's, and the rest of us had various opinions.

The next day we talked about it so much that there was not one among us who would not have given every penny of his pocket-money to find out whether Uncle Rufus really did boil the eggs. Most of us half expected to see him eat them at breakfast. But he neither ate eggs nor said anything about them; and when he came into the schoolroom to hear our lessons he looked quite as mild and unconcerned as ever. That was the kind of man he wasa pleasant, quiet man, with big brown eyes, and straggling grey hairs here and there in his beard. He used to get a lot of us little fellows around the jolly study fire in the winter evenings, and then read aloud from the grand old story-books. Are there any of the Brighthope boys who have forgotten how his face used to look when he smiled and laughed and read on and on till we could hardly wait for the end to come? Are there any who have forgotten how proud of him we all felt that night when Captain-? But never mind that now. It was six months before it happened, and in the meanwhile our summer vacation came, and we all went home. When we came back after ten weeks a surprise awaited us. was having built a handsome stone house across the street from the school, and he and his wife were going to live in it as soon as it was finished.

Uncle Rufus

None of us liked that at first, for we wanted them to live with us just as they always had done. We watched the carpenters put in the doors and windows, and work away as fast as they could day after day. Then by-andby the painters came and painted everything inside and a good deal outside; and just right over the front door they put these words in large, gold letters :

"ONE GOOD DEED BUILT THIS HOUSE."

Of course we all were puzzled. Uncle Rufus had done several good deeds, but we could not guess how any such thing had built his house. And not a boy in the school had any idea that the two turkey's eggs were at the bottom of the whole mystery. No one would have thought of that.

"You will have to wait nine days, boys," Uncle Rufus said, laughing, when some of us were bold enough to ask about it. "I shall have the new furniture moved in by that time, and then we'll have a feast and a brand-new story that will beat anything you have heard for a year."

So it turned out a thorough mystery with us, and on the Saturday morning when we each and all received from Uncle Rufus a dainty envelope containing an invitation to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Davids in their new home at six o'clock that evening, you may be sure every one hastened to send in his card, saying that it would give him much pleasure, and so forth, and that he might be expected to be present promptly at the hour appointed. I remember that Chris borrowed one of my coloured neckties, and got it on wrong-side before, and that in our hurry and haste to dress after an exciting afternoon

of base ball, I put a shoe on one foot and a boot on the other without knowing what I was about.

When we finally went over to the house, Uncle Rufus received us in a room that looked as though it had come straight out of fairyland. It was full of flowers and pictures, and birds with bright, rare plumage. A great aquarium stood in one of the bow-windows, just where the sunlight could fall through it and make the goldfish sparkle as they darted hither and thither in the water. Curious images rested here and there on brackets; a wonderful clock on the mantelpiece had a whole troop of soldiers that marched in and out of its sides whenever it struck the hour; and over this were the eggs, the same identical turkey's eggs that the Captain had given Chris and me. They had been blown clear, and were suspended from the ceiling by golden threads. Every little breath swung them to and fro; and after I had been watching them from across the room a long while, I believed that I could see a sentence or two on one of them in faded letters. Uncle Rufus led the way just then, however, to the dining-room, and I did not have a chance to make any further discovery.

"Once upon a time," began Uncle Rufus, after he had said grace and removed the covers-"once upon a time there was a man sitting on a dock-"

The door-bell rang sharply, and made us all look inquiringly at one another. The next moment the servant ushered in a little, weather-beaten man with tremendous grey whiskers and bright eyes.

Why, bless us all!" exclaimed Uncle Rufus, jumping up. "Here's the very man himself. Boys, let me introduce you to Captain Birdsley, a man who has sailed the seas over and kept a warm place in his heart these twenty years for me."

"Ay, ay, my lads!" said the captain, heartily, and at the same time running his bright eyes over us all; "he's the man, you may be sure of that. When you find a friend, just clap your hand on him and hold on,—that's what I say. Just clap your hand on him and hold on."

He took a seat at the head of the table, tucked a couple of napkins over his shirt bosom, joined us with knife and fork, and continued,

"Once upon a time, my lads, there was a little boy sitting on a dock fishing-"

"Why, I was just saying when you came, Captain," broke in Uncle Rufus, "that it was a man who sat on the dock."

"Ay, friend, it was a man and a boy too; but I'll tell about the boy. He was sitting on a dock fishing, as I said; and by-and-by along came a rough, homely-looking sailor and sat down near him. The fellow had been out of work a good while, and he had no friends, no money, nor anything to eat. He was almost starved, and didn't care what happened to him next. Pretty soon the boy took a little notice of him. 'You don't look well, mister,' he said, timidly. 'No, I ain't,' the man answered, surlily. Anything I can do for you?' asked the boy, timidly, again. 'Got anything to eat?' replied the man. 'Yes; a couple of eggs. Here they are,' he said. 'You are welcome to them, and more too if I had them.' From that moment I—

"Well, I was the man, my lads," the captain said, after a moment's hesitation, "and that was the boy," nodding at Uncle Rufus, who was red as a coal.

"And about six months ago," said Uncle Rufus, "I got those eggs back, or two in their stead."

"To be sure," put in the Captain. "I didn't forget that boy, though I went a good piece round the world afterwards, and had a lot more hard knocks. He made me feel kind towards every poor hungry fellow I saw, and I got on better in several ways. I helped the captain of our ship one time when he was in trouble, and that made him feel kindly too; and then a lot of men in the forecastle caught the feeling, and, you see, the thing spread, like the whooping-cough or the measles, until we were a different sort altogether."

Uncle Rufus got right up here, and asked us to excuse his absence a moment. We thought he wanted to stop the captain's story about him; but in two or three minutes he returned holding the eggs before him dangling on their golden threads.

"And now," said he, "I am going to finish my story about the man. I met him a number of years after that day he sat on the dock, and I found that he was one of the kindest men in the world. He had become the captain of a great ship, and all the men under him said he was the best master to sail with in the port. But it is about these eggs that I want particularly to tell you," he said, pausing, and holding the two high, so we all could see them. "He sent these to me in a sly way, with only a few words written in pencil telling me to boil them hard and then examine them carefully. What do you suppose happened when I did that?"

We looked at the Captain, who was now quite as red as Uncle Rufus had been, and stroking his beard nervously.

"It was just a trick of mine, you see, boys," he said, his curious eyes growing brighter than ever and sparkling with a smile. "I had heard that if you mix a little lemon juice with grease, you can write anything you have a mind to on an egg, and nobody can read it until the egg has been in boiling water or vinegar. So when I sent his eggs back to him after twenty years, I thought I'd put a word or two on them."

"And this is what he wrote, boys," put in Uncle Rufus, turning one of the eggs so that we could catch a glimpse of something which looked like printed words. 'If Mr. Rufus Davids will call on the Seaman's Bank he will learn something to his advantage.'

I think we boys all flushed up a little then when we began to see what was coming.

"Why, he had placed a thousand pounds in that bank for me—for me, boys!"

Instantly we sprang up from the table, and, waving the napkins, gave three hearty cheers for Captain Birdsley; and then every one of us managed to give his hand a good, jolly shake. Our nine days' mystery ended in one of the pleasantest evenings I ever had in my life.-F. B. Stanford, in American S. S. Times.