"I am ready," he said, and even as he spoke, his head dropped upon the open book and Mordecai's restless spirit was at rest forever. THE LUCKY STONE _The Adventures of Uriah P. Levy, the First Naval Officer of his Day._ A little brown sand piper scudded along the beach. Uriah Levy, a brown-faced lad who looked several years older than a boy who had just passed his eleventh birthday, lay upon the shore and smiled to see it flirt importantly past him as though in a tremendous hurry to reach its destination. Then his keen eyes turned toward the sea, blue and stainless, as level as the long looking glass in his mother's parlor at home. Several sea gulls skimmed the quiet waters, now rising until their gray-white plumage melted into the clouds, now seeming to float upon the tide. Uriah was a trifle sorry when they disappeared at last, for he loved the sea gulls dearly. They seemed so akin to him in their wild freedom, in their love for the solitary waste of waters. Ever since he could remember, he, too, had loved the sea, since the days when he was a tiny boy, sailing his paper boats to strange ports across the ocean. And tomorrow he was going to sea at last--a real cabin boy in a real vessel! He threw himself back upon the warm sands and with half-closed eyes lay dreaming of the future. He was aroused from his day dreaming by the strange uneasiness that comes to one who feels that he is being observed. Sitting up, he saw that Ned Allison, a lad whose father owned a fishing shack near by, had come down to the beach and was now standing over him, his hands thrust into the pockets of his ragged trousers, his bare, brown toes kicking among the pebbles at his feet. The newcomer was a few years younger than Levy, a grave, stolid lad with bright, restless eyes. "Hello, Ned," Uriah greeted him. "Did you know I was going to sea tomorrow?" "No. You're lucky." The other's tone was delightfully envious of Uriah's good fortune. "I've got to wait till I'm twelve or maybe fifteen, I guess. Father's rheumatism is bad lately and I have to help him. How're you going?" He sank beside Uriah on the sands and gazed longingly over the blue waters. "I'm going to ship as cabin boy; but I won't be gone long." Uriah couldn't help bragging a little as he told his good fortune. "I'm going to be like Paul Jones and that crowd--if it takes a hundred years." "You'll be too old then," observed Ned dryly. He began to turn over the heap of pebbles that lay between them. "Now if you were to find an oyster or clam shell with several big pearls you could buy a ship of your own right now and----"