--"Why, I quite like it!" said she.



THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF.


"Yes, sir," said my host the quarryman, reaching down the relics from
their hook in the wall over the chimney-piece; "they've hung there
all my time, and most of my father's. The women won't touch 'em;
they're afraid of the story. So here they'll dangle, and gather dust
and smoke, till another tenant comes and tosses 'em out o' doors for
rubbish. Whew! 'tis coarse weather."

He went to the door, opened it, and stood studying the gale that
beat upon his cottage-front, straight from the Manacle Reef.
The rain drove past him into the kitchen, aslant like threads of gold
silk in the shine of the wreckwood fire. Meanwhile by the same
firelight I examined the relics on my knee. The metal of each was
tarnished out of knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old
cavalry trumpet, and the threads of its parti-coloured sling, though
frayed and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-drum, beneath
its cracked brown varnish, I could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms,
and a legend running--_Per Mare per Terram_--the motto of the
Marines. Its parchment, though coloured and scented with wood-smoke,
was limp and mildewed; and I began to tighten up the straps--under
which the drumsticks had been loosely thrust--with the idle purpose
of trying if some music might be got out of the old drum yet.

But as I turned it on my knee, I found the drum attached to the