Skelton sailed up and down, almost up to Newington, and down again to Lone Point--a dreary, sandy point, where three tall and melancholy pine trees grew almost at the water’s edge, and where the river opened widely into the bay. He felt that strange mixture of sadness and exultation which people felt in those far-off days when they were about to start for distant countries. There was not a soul in sight, except in the creek by the water fence; Sylvia Shapleigh was standing barefooted, with her skirts tucked up. Her shoes and stockings lay on the bank. She had on a white sunbonnet, much beruffled, and was holding something down in the water with a forked stick. She was then about twelve years old, with a delicate, pretty, thoughtful face, and beautiful grey eyes. So unlike was she to her father and mother that she might have been a changeling. Skelton guessed at once what she was after. She was catching the crabs that came up to feed in these shallow, marshy creeks; but after pinning her crab down she was evidently in a quandary how to get at him. As Skelton watched her with languid interest she suddenly gave a faint scream, her sunbonnet fell off into the water, and she stood quite still and began to cry. Skelton ran the boat’s nose ashore within twenty yards of her, and, jumping out, went to her, splashing through the water. “Oh, oh!” screamed poor Sylvia, “my foot--he’s got my foot!” Skelton raised her small white foot out of the water, and in half a minute the crab was dexterously “spancelled” and thrown away, but there was a cruel mark on the child’s foot, and blood was coming. She looked at Skelton with wide, frightened eyes, crying bitterly all the time. “Come, my dear,” said Skelton, soothingly, “let me pick you up and carry you home.” “I d-d-don’t want to go home,” wailed Sylvia. “But something must be done for your foot, child.” “Then take me to Deerchase, and let Mammy Kitty do it.” Skelton was puzzled by the child’s unwillingness to go home. But Sylvia soon enlightened him. “If I g-go home mamma will scold me, and she will cry over me, and make me keep on crying, and that will make my head ache; and if I can get s-something done for my foot--” “But won’t your mother be frightened about you if I take you to Deerchase?” asked Skelton. “No--ooo--oo!” bawled Sylvia, still weeping; “she lets me stay out until sundown. And she’ll make _such_ a fuss over my foot if I go home!”