It is not usually difficult for a strong, active lad, with merry black eyes and cheery manners, to obtain employment. At least Jeffrey Benson did not find it so. A few miles from his native town there was a seaport. Thither he repaired, and looked about him. In the harbour lay a small vessel which looked like a yacht, it was so trim and clean. On the quay near to it stood a seafaring man with an amiable expression of countenance. "Is that your schooner?" asked Jeff of this man. "Yes, it is." "D'you want a hand?" "No, I don't." Jeff turned on his heel, and was walking away, when the seafaring man recalled him. "Have 'ee ever bin to sea, lad?" he asked. "No, never." "D'ye know anything about ships?" "Next to nothing." "D'ye think you could do anything, now, aboard of a ship?" "Perhaps." "Come along, then, wi' me to the office, an' I'll see to this." Thus was Jeff introduced to the skipper of the coasting vessel in which he spent the succeeding six years of his life. At the end of that time his schooner was totally wrecked in a gale that sent more than two hundred vessels on the rocks of the British Isles. The skipper was washed overboard and drowned, but Jeff was saved along with the rest of the crew, by means of the rocket apparatus. By that time our hero had become a tall, powerful man, with a curly black beard and moustache. Through the influence of a friend he was offered a situation in the coastguard; accepted it, and, to his great satisfaction, was stationed in the neighbourhood of Cranby, his native town. Now, near to that town Jeff had a confidante, into whose sympathetic bosom he had poured his joys and sorrows from the days of little boyhood. Of course this confidante was a woman--a thin, little, elderly creature, with bright blue eyes, and grey hair that had once been golden, who had a sort of tremble in her voice, and whose frame was so light that the fishermen were wont to say of her that if she was to show her nose outside when it was blowing only half a gale she'd be blowed away like a fleck of foam. Nevertheless Miss Millet was a distinct power in Cranby. Being off duty one fine afternoon, our coastguardsman walked along the beach in the direction of Cranby, bent on paying a visit to Miss Millet, whom he had not seen for several years. On his way he had to pass a piece of common close to the town, where he found that a number of the townsmen and some of the fishermen from the neighbouring hamlet had assembled to hold high holiday and engage in athletic exercises. The memory of school-days came strong upon him as he watched the sport, and he longed to join, but was modest enough to feel that his offering to do so in connection with games which seemed to have been already organised might be an intrusion.