there was a feeling of unrest in the still air.

"Looks thundery, don' it?" Bill observed. ""Twas just such another day as this us had thic waterspowet. Don't like the looks o' it. You'll get he catched in a storm o' rain, an' wind too, p'raps."

Tell

"What if I do? "Twon't hurt 'en. An't never hurted me. Send your Polly up to tell 'en I be shoving off in an hour an' should be glad o' his company, if he's minded to some. 'en 'twill be perty cold come midnight." Vivian Maddicke, clothed as if for a shooting expedition in the Arctic regions, was down to the minute. "You might have given me a longer warning," he remarked with make-believe jollity.

"Ah!" said Benjie, "so might, if you was going for a drive on land, like you'm used to. But when you'm depending on the sea you never knows from hour to hour what you'm going to be about."

Very polite as host, but as skipper of his own craft not to be played with, he put the bow-oar into Maddicke's hand. With the fleet of sixteen nets and their buoys piled up on the stern seats, they rowed away westward over Broken Rocks, along the shore into the wet golden haze of sunset. Whether or no Maddicke found his sea oar and the beamy boat heavier than he had expected, they did not arrive underneath Steep Head till its outlines were blurred in the twilight, till its redness was become black, and it seemed nothing but a vast overhanging shadow tenanted by mewing but hardly visible seagulls.

"Now," commanded Benjie, "you row wi' both paddles, please, while I baits the nets, an' then us'll shoot 'em across Conger Pool just the other side o' the Head. Keep her like that. You'll get wet if you splashes. You don't need for to strain yourself."

From one of his catty sacks Benjie took out a mass of putrid fishmonger's offal-fish heads and plaice from which the meat had been filleted-which he cut up and fitted into the cross-strings of the nets. The smell made Maddicke shudder; he turned his head this way and that, but there was no escaping the stink-the various sorts of stink. It took the strength out of him as the smell of dead things will do.

"An' now," directed Benjie with a quiet chuckle of satisfaction, "you paddle along slow across Conger Pool, while I shoots the nets."

Taking up the hoops from a tangle of corks and lines, trying the baits again to make sure, he cast the nets into the water about three boats' length apart, and threw the buoys and lines after them. Maddicke was glad to see them go. He heard Benjie talking all the time, but his brain did not gather very well the sense of what the old man was saying. He sweated at the oars, and yet he was cold. Steep Head loomed above them. The sound of the swell, breaking, rattling, swishing among the rocks, had in it a sullen wildness not noticeable during full daylight.

"An' now," said Benjie, when he had shot the sixteenth net and had taken its bearings, "you can hae a bit o' supper. Us got a night's work afore us.-No? Won't 'ee hae nort? Well I never don't nuther when I be shrimping, 'cept a mouthful o' cold tay. The bread and butter I brings I gen'rally gives to the birds or else carries it home to breakfast. There! Did 'ee hear thic cliff rooze out to the west'ard? "Twill all be into the sea one day, Steep Head an' all. Aye! 'tis an ironbound shop, this here, but the sea has it sooner or later, specially after rain." "There hasn't been much rain lately?"

"No. But there's been frostises, an' that's every bit so bad. Now us'll

haul up an' see what's there. Perty night for shrimping, this, if it don't come on dirty. Can 'ee see the end buoy? You can't? There 'tis! Now row t'ards it-easy now!"

Benjie's directions came fast and peremptory whilst, with the help of the tiller, he grabbed the lines and hauled the nets up through the water, at first gently, then as swiftly as possible. "Pull your outside oar-pull insideinside, not outside-back outside-back both. You'm on the line steadysteady there! Pull outside botheasy. Easy, easy now! I can't haul 'em up straight while you be pulling. Wants some learning, don't it, this here job? Now row easy up to the next buoy while I shoots this out again. Can't 'ee see it? I can. There 'tis, thic little black mark in the water just outside the shadow o' the cliff."

Feeling around the inside of the net, shaking it, holding it up dripping to what light there was, Benjie caught the lobsters and threw them for'ard in the boat, chased the wild crabs with his hands and threw them aft, and placed the prawns carefully in a basket beside him. Then he shot the net, and the volley of directions began all over again-all over again for each net. Meddicke was confused by them. He was still more confused, and irritated also, by his own mistakes. He breathed hard with vexation. At the end of the fourth round, the sixty-fourth haul, he was plainly flagging. He was "proper mazed."

"You be jumping the water wi' your oars. You'll catch one o' they there t'other sort o' crabs an' crack your skull if you bain't careful," Benjie warned him with perceptible satisfaction. "Better to take a rest, an' while I count the prawns, you measure the lobsters like they says us ought to. Here's a footrule I got. The lobsters be under your feet an' for’ard. If

you can't see, better to strike a match. We'm out o' everybody's sight hereabout."

Maddicke felt for a lobster in the dark, and after several gingerly attempts--and several amiable warnings from Benjie to mind its claws-he succeeded in holding it. He found also the nine-inch mark on the rule; but while he was trying to spread the lobster out flat on a thwart and to feel where the tip of its beak was, according to regulations, the thing nipped him suddenly and savagely.

"Ough!" he cried like a child. "Ough-ah-h-h!"

"What's the matter there? Can't 'ee do it?" he heard from the shadow of Benjie, aft.

"It's bitten me-it's biting me now!"

"Squeeze his eyes, then he'll leave go. Lord! They bites me every night, but I don't take no heed o' it."

"You just put thic whatever 'tis back into your pocket, please. The likes o' us an't got the money for to pay for what us spoils. 'Twasn't your fault. You didn't know. But there! You wasn't brought up to it like us be. Α bit upset, be 'ee? I could feel 'ee shaking. You hae a rest while I goes ashore an' looks in one or two lobsterholes I knows for. You stay in the boat. 'Tis nearly low tide an' her won't hurt for an hour or so where I'll leave 'ee; 'tis a little natural harbor like. If you got time, you can measure the rest o' 'em an' chuck the undersized ones overboard, when you'm feeling better. My senses, ain't it dark!"

Maddicke saw Benjie jump out of the boat with a skim-net in his hand, glimpsed him hopping from the nearest rock to the next one, then saw nothing except the black darkness; but he heard an uncanny chuckle which might equally have come from a man or from a half-awakened sea-bird. Unstrung already by the cold, by hunger, by the unusual toil, by the blind savagery of the lobster, by Benjie's relentless volleys of directions, and above all by his own failures to carry them out, he heard with an oppressive sense of something terrible impending that mutterings of thunder to the southward were being answered by rumblings overland. Everything else was for the moment hushed. A flash of lightning revealed Steep Head, its pinnacles and the patches of bush and bracken upon its upper slopes, and showed up brightly the tumbled rocks around the boat and the blackness of the hollows between them. Rain splashed down. Maddicke shrank into his coat

Presently, with a flash that made the blood prick in his veins, and crashes that hit like blows, the storm broke right overhead. Flash followed flash; crash followed crash, and echoed -against the cliff. There was no rest

from blinding light and overwhelming noise. The solid earth was in an uproar. Steep Head, it seemed was toppling over, was tumbling down upon him.

He tried to reassure himself, then suddenly gave way. In obedience to a blind impulse of flight, he scrambled out of the boat into water that was knee-deep. He gained the rocks, slipped on some seaweed, bruising himself, and fell headlong into a pool. Jumping up quickly, he felt around him. Rocks were everywhere-wherever he felt, wherever he tried to go. By the light of the flashes they looked like squat live things, extending on every side, endlessly. The boat was what he wanted again most of all; that at least seemed to be partly human, to be company for him. But the boat he had lost. He did not even know in which direction it lay. Another flash

lit it up only a couple of paces from where he was standing. He lunged out and clutched it, as if it would have slipped away from him. It was a refuge, though the rain ran down his back as he sat on the wet stern-seat. "Benjamin! Benjamin Prowse!" he called. "Benjie! Come back!"

Had he looked the right way during a flash he would have seen Benjie's face, screwed up with laughter and mockery, peeping at him round a rock close by.

There was no escaping the cruel brightness of the storm; no escaping the continuous tumult of thunder. Flashes there were that sounded like the crackling of dry twigs; others like the flicking of whips. The thunder, reverberating in the darkness, was a relief from the lightning. Sometimes Maddicke caught sight of the grotesque shapes of the shell-fish; crabs standing up on their hinder legs, bubbling at the mouth, and looking at him with their stalk-like eyes; lobsters-black, shining, and fantastic-brandishing

their claws. He crouched down on his seat, away from the madness of the sky. He tried to lift up his feet, away from the malice of the wild crabs. The noise they made, scuttling around the boat, teased the silences between the peals of thunder. He covered up his face and ears. He ceased struggling to escape. A shapeless fear, a formless misery that was almost a relief, took possession of him. He was done.

At last Benjie stepped carelessly into the boat, as if he were boarding a railway train. Maddicke grabbed his wet trousers. "Let's get home!" he gasped. "I can't stand it."

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Benjie coolly. "You be flittering like a sail that's up in the wind's eye. We'm going home right 'nuff. There'll be wind along after this. My senses, what a storm! Did 'ee hear it? But I've a-see'd worse, aye! an' down hereunder, too."

Maddicke stayed still; did nothing to help put the boat to rights. He was helpless. Benjie took hold of him, laid him gently in the bow of the boat, covered him up, head and all, with sacking, took both oars, and rowed homewards.

Underneath the sacking that smelt of cats, Maddicke dozed off, with the regular rocking sound of the oars in his ears. When that stopped he awoke and looked out dully. The storm had drifted away to the eastward. It was bright starlight above. The boat was just outside Salterport. To see the sheltering town, with its gaslights so close at hand, was like waking from a nightmare to find the morning sun shining into the room. Maddicke, safe at home, was another man. His confidence returned, and at the same time he felt ashamed-so ashamed that he did not think of helping to haul up the boat.

While Benjie was saying, "An' now

you know what the likes o' us got to contend with," he poked stiff, damp fingers into one of his pockets. "If you will send up to-morrow," he said, with returning dignity, "I will give you the sovereign to pay your fine.

Benjie flared up. "If you thinks I be 'bliged to call on the likes o' you for the pound to pay me fine wi', you'm much mistaken. I be only too glad you knows the nature o' it. Now you can tell 'em what you thinks. Tell 'em all o' it, not only what's suiting to 'ee. I don't want no pound for teaching o' 'ee. Be your gold for to pay me for me silence on what I've a-see'd this night when I peeped at 'ee there in the boat to Conger Pool? Didn' know I was looking, did 'ee? A perty sight for any one as calls hisself a man! Pity thic Fishery Board, what you does your duty to, couldn' ha' see'd it!"

Maddicke, with a miserable gesture, turned towards the seawall lights to go up the beach; and, on catching sight of his woe-begone face, Benjie added in a kindlier tone: "Lookse here, sir, you an't got no call proper for to be ashamed o' fearing the storm. There's many a man born an' bred to fishing what's mortal afeard o' a thunderstorm to sea, an' 'tis worse down under they cliffs; an' nobody what an't been there wouldn't think what 'twas like; for 'tis a great an' terrible thing, look you, an' man be nort in the midst o' it. Lord's sakes, an't I felt like it when I been down there by meself. Will 'ee hae a lobster or two to carry home? You'm very welcome.-Well, then, good night to you, sir, an' thank you. Only don't you deceive yourself that I be going to send up to 'ee for money to pay for what you didn't know. That ain't Benjamin. Good night!"

Benjie went so far as to pat Maddicke on the shoulder.

The sovereign was sent down right

enough next morning, together with a note which nobody has ever seen; and Benjie did accept it. As to the bogey Blackwood's Magazine.

man-Benjie that the bogey man has never been seen on the beach since.

congratulates himself

Stephen Reynolds.

We reprint Mr. Owen Seaman's paper on "The Poetical Works of Robert Browning," with the correct answer to each question.

1. From which of his poems (not itself a drama) may we gather that Browning fancied himself as a playwright? Answer: "A Light Woman." 2. How does one of the poet's unnamed characters propose to treat his runaway wife if they should meet in Paradise? Quote the actual words. Answer: "I will pass, nor turn my face."

3. You and I and Galileo-what defect common to us all is noted by Browning? Answer: Incapability of seeing the other side of the moon. 4. "For they do all, dear women young and old,

Upon the heads of them bear notably

This badge of soul and body in repose."

What was the badge? and in what country worn? Answer: White cotNormandy.

ton nightcaps.

5. Which two of Browning's characters had the best whole day's holiday? Answer: Pippa and Hervé Riel. 6. "All's gules again." On whose arms? and how was the color reThe Cornhill Magazine.

9. (a) To whom did Browning give the title "sun-treader"? (b) Who took her name from the flower of the wild pomegranate? Answers: (a) Shelley. (b) Balaustion.

10. (a) Quote the passage in which Browning laughs at Byron's grammar. (b) In which other of his longer poems does he ridicule Byron's address to Ocean in "Childe Harold"? Answers: (a) "There let him lay"-the swan's one addled egg! (b) Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Savior of Society.

11. Who described Elys' head as being "sharp and perfect like a pear"? Who quoted, and to whom, the song in which these words occur? Answer: Sordello. Palma to Taurello. 12. Who was it that found, in the spectacle of "Charles's Wain" at midnight, a sign that he must get his hair cut at once? Answer: Mr. Sludge, the Medium.

There has been some discussion of late in the United States-and it is a problem which deserves wide attention -on the question of whether the officials of corporations and financial institutions and public offices are paid too little or too much. The question what a particular man is worth to a particular company or city or State is, of course, one that cannot be decided

on abstract principles, nor would it be easy to lay down the general lines of remuneration. A fixed salary is at best only an approximation to the value of services rendered. The most successful and enterprising business men naturally like to be paid by results, or to be partners sharing in the profits. Others, again, who dislike risk, and like to be able to sleep at night, are