When West again looked at Bess she could not resist a smile, and remarked that at least some one would enjoy the spoils. The man was greatly relieved at the restoration of her good humor, and when they joined James he informed them that in a few minutes all could have something to eat, even the horses. “I hope it won’t be beef,” suggested Bess. “I should think that you two would never dare to look a cow in the face again.” While at dinner James told his companions a story which was positively authentic. He remembered how, one day when he was about fifteen years of age, several of the grades, where he was attending school, met for the purpose of giving jointly a Longfellow programme. Everything went along smoothly and beautifully, and presently he heard his teacher announce that Miss Emma Lane would recite _The Wreck of the Hesperus_. He laughed now as he recalled how his heart thumped when the idol of his youthful dreams arose and walked nervously to the rostrum. In his swift yet ardent gaze at the object of his adoration, all he remembered seeing was a beautiful pink bow tucked snugly under a soft, generous chin, and two hands, fingering franticly at either side of her freshly laundered white dress. He did not dare look again for he felt himself too sympathetically nervous. Then he heard a tentative, quavering voice begin—“It was the schooner,”—a pause, a gulp, and again, “It was the schooner,” etc., and this time the Hesperus was fairly and swiftly launched with the skipper and his little daughter aboard. On sailed the craft and on sailed Emmie (“as I called her,” James explained), both rising and falling with the angry sea and rolling waves. With her ever-increasing confidence he felt his own courage returning, and presently he gazed with mouth wide open at the fair and fat girl on the platform. Oh, the joy he felt that she was his. If he could meet her on the way from school that afternoon he believed he would tell her how he loved her and thus relieve his overburdened heart. She, so simple, so fair, so plump (if a trifle too short), and withal so very modest! He did not hear a word now of the recitation, so engrossed was he in the living poem before him. But, as she made a frantic, sweeping gesture, he came back to earth with a thud as he heard: “The waves looked soft as carded wool; But the cruel rocks, they gored her side, Like the horns of an angry—cow.” “Now, that settled me; that settled Emmie; for shame, Longfellow!” concluded James, laughing as he brought to his mind’s eye the tragedy of that day at school. When the three were able to resume their meal after the merriment caused by his narrative, Bess remarked: “And that fatal Hesperus wrecked all his faith in women. I have scarcely even found him looking at one, if he could avoid it. Poor, brokenhearted brother,” she mocked, teasingly.