never would forget that fact. They spent a short time in looking around the island, with its attractive hotel, so finely situated, and its half dozen pretty cottages. One of them Mrs. Tracy pointed out as the home of Celia Thaster, who, she told them, was a poetess who had written so feelingly of the sea, and who had told, in a pretty poem, how in the years gone by she had often lighted with her own hands the light in the lighthouse which they could see on White Island, a short distance from them. The boys wished to go there, as they had never been near a lighthouse; but as Mrs. Tracy felt that in their limited time Star Island would, on the whole, afford them more pleasure and profit, they took the little miniature steamer Pinafore, which constantly plied between the two islands, and in a few minutes' time were landed on its historic ground. After they had dined at the Oceanic, a hotel kept by the same proprietors as the Appledore House, on the island which they had just left, they found that they had an hour and a half in which to look around before the steamer should return to Portsmouth. As they sauntered along over the rocks back of the hotel, they came near enough to the little meeting-house, which was standing there, to read on its side the following inscription:-- GOSPORT CHURCH. ORIGINALLY CONSTRUCTED OF THE TIMBERS FROM THE WRECK OF A SPANISH SHIP, A.D. 1685; WAS REBUILT IN 1720, AND BURNED BY THE ISLANDERS IN 1790. THIS BUILDING OF STONE WAS ERECTED A.D. 1800. Through the kindness of a gentleman who had brought the key to gain entrance into the interior, they all went in through the little side door to see a comparatively small room, with about twenty-five pews, and a quaint desk with a large chair each side of it. Mrs. Tracy said that when this church was built, in 1800, that island had only fifteen families and ninety-two persons, while Smutty Nose had three families and twenty persons, and Appledore had not an inhabitant upon it. Reuben said that there was a time, more than a hundred years before the Revolutionary War, when the town of Gosport, which included all the islands, contained from three hundred to six hundred inhabitants. Miss De Severn wished that they had time to read some old preserved records of that place, which were now to be seen at the hotel. As they came out of the church, Reuben spied the weather-vane, in the form of a fish, which crowned the little wooden tower, in which was the bell, still used, although rather dismal in sound. As they wandered on, Mrs. Tracy noticed that the march of improvement had torn down most of the old fishing-houses, as well as the little old school-house, which she knew had once been there. They soon came upon the old burial-ground among the rocks, where they found inscribed on two horizontal slabs the only two inscriptions which were there. On one they saw this tribute:--