his friends. His father was justified in his opinion, and his mother was now quite satisfied.

But on the evening of the day after their arrival, Lucy came to Harry with no face. of rejoicing.

"Oh! my dear Harry, here you are standing on the sea shore, looking at the tide very happily; but you do not know what a misfortune has happened to you.'

"What misfortune can have happened to me without my knowing it?" said Harry.

"I have been unpacking our trunk," said Lucy.

"The glass of my camera obscura is broken, I suppose," said Harry.

"You suppose, so calmly!" cried Lucy. Perhaps it can be mended," said

Harry.

"Impossible!" said Lucy: "come and look at it, my dear Harry, it is broken into a hundred pieces."

"Then there is no use in looking at the hundred pieces," said Harry.

"But if you will come in and look at it," said Lucy, "I can show you just how it happened."

"I cannot help it now," said Harry, "so it does not much signify to me how it happened. I will look at it when I go in, but I want to stay here just to see how high the waves come at full tide."

"I am glad your head is so full of the tide, Harry," said Lucy; "I was afraid that you would be excessively vexed, as I was when I opened the box and saw it. Besides, I was afraid that you would think it was my fault."

66

No, I could not be so unjust," said Harry. "I remember how carefully you packed it, and how good-natured you were about it; and I do not forget your shell box, which you left at home to make room for my camera obscura. Now I am sorry you did not bring it."

"I can do without it," said Lucy.

"I will make a shell box for you," cried Harry; "and I know how I can make it, out of that camera obscura of mine, and

without spoiling it, even if I should get a new glass. I will go in and look at it, and begin directly," said Harry. "I mean as soon as ever I have seen the tide come in, and marked how high it comes up on this rock."

Withinside of the box of Harry's camera obscura there was a set of hinged flaps, which lay at the bottom, when it was not used, but which, when it was to be used as a camera obscura, were lifted up, and, joining together, formed a sort of pyramid, on the top of which the eye glass was fixed. This glass being broken, Harry cleared away the fragments, and took out the pins from the hinges of the flaps which formed the pyramid. Then he could take out the flaps, and these with their pins and hinges he gave into Lucy's charge to take care of till they should be wanted again. Then with the help of an old knife, the only tool to be had in Rupert's cottage, he cut up a blue bandbox, the only pasteboard to be had in Rupert's cottage; he carved and cut this pasteboard into a number of slips

with tolerably straight edges, and these were to be fastened inside of his box at the bottom, so as to form divisions from the middle, in the shape of a large star; the corners round it filled up with other divisions of hearts and crescents, with some, as Lucy described them, of no particular shape. This was the ground plan, these divisions were but half the height of the depth of the box: over this first story, there was to be another, a tray was to be made to fit in, and to lie on the top of the basement story, as Harry would have it called. With difficulty the blue bandbox furnished sufficient pasteboard for this. Every scrap was required, and some parts of its rim had been so much bent, and bruised, and battered, that they could scarcely be made fit for service, with Harry's utmost care and skill. When the work was all cut out, Harry set Lucy to write numbers on the pieces of the stars, hearts, crescents, and nondescripts, that each might fit rightly into its place. This he had learned, he said, from reading the description of the building of the Ed

dystone lighthouse. It was a precaution he found of great use in the present work, the first of the kind he had ever attempted. He had no glue. The cook, or she who acted as cook in Rupert's cottage, had no time to make paste. Harry, however, searched in the orchard on the cherry trees for gum, and found some, which he melted in hot water. It was too thin, so thin, that it would not stick his divisions together. By his mother's advice, he melted it in vinegar, with which he made an excellent cement. Though his fingers were unused to this fiddle-faddle work, as he thought it, he persevered for Lucy's sake, and for the sake of his promise. It was difficult to make the tray fit rightly, or draw up and let down easily; but he po-. lished all friction at the four corners, away and he fastened tapes to the middle of each of the four sides so judgmatically, that it could be drawn up without hitching, and without danger that when filled to the brim, with the smallest of sugar-plum