songs and spinning yarns, for the ship was "homeward bound".

* * * * *

"Oh, by the by," said Tom one day to the professor, "I forgot to tell you
that in the cave where poor Veevee got lost I picked up this curious
stone!"

The professor put his spectacles on his nose and gazed at it for a
moment.

"Why, my dear Tom, this is solid gold, in the centre of a coating of
quartz! You're in luck, lad; and it is just as I said; that is the Island
of Gold. We shall return another year, and you will be one of the richest
men in the kingdom."

* * * * *

My story is finished, or almost.

'Fessor Pete and Tom, with Uncle Staysail, to say nothing of the mastiff
Briton, are out there in the Frozen North this very summer, and I do hope
they will have luck.

But Aralia and Pansy, with sometimes Frank and always Veevee, may be seen
any day playing on the sands not far from their mother's home, and Flossy
too.

Flossy is wondrously tame, and spends an hour or two almost every day in
the sea, or on the beach, to the great delight of all who see her. But