skins seemed sufficiently easy, but how to obtain the skins! The one miserable hide

of the unlucky she-goat was utterly inadequate for the purpose. Sylvia-her face beaming with hope of escape, and with delight at having been the means of suggesting it—watched narrowly the countenance of Rufus Dawes, but she marked no answering gleam of joy in those downcast eyes. Can't it be done, Mr. Dawes ?" she asked, trembling for the reply. The convict knitted his brows gloomily. "Come, Dawes!" cried Frere, forgetting his enmity for an instant, in the flash of new hope, "can't you suggest something?"

Rufus Dawes, thus appealed to as the acknowledged Head of the little society, felt a pleasant thrill of self-satisfaction.

"I don't know," he said, "I must think of it. It looks easy, and yet- He paused as something in the water caught his eye. It was a mass of bladdery seaweed that the returning tide was wafting slowly to the shore. This object, which would have passed unnoticed at any time, suggested to Rufus Dawes a new idea. "Yes," he added slowly, with a change of tone, "it may be done. I think I see my

way."

The others preserved a respectful silence

until he should speak again.

"How far do

you think it is across the bay ?" he asked of

Frere.

"What, to Sarah Island ?"

No, to the Pilot Station." "About four miles."

The convict sighed. "Too far to swim now, though I might have done it once. But this sort of life weakens a man.

done, after all."

It must be

"What are you going to do?" asked Frere. "To kill the goat.

Sylvia uttered a little cry; she had become fond of her dumb companion. "Kill Nanny!

Oh Mr. Dawes! 'What for?"

"I am going to make a boat for you," he said; "and I want hides, and thread, and tallow."

A few weeks back Maurice Frere would have laughed at such a sentence, but he had begun now to comprehend that this escaped convict was not a man to be laughed at, and though he detested him for his superiority, he could not but admit that he was superior.

You can't get more than one hide off a goat, man?" he said, with an inquiring tone in his voice—as though it was just possible that such a marvellous being as Dawes could

get a second hide, by virtue of some secret process known only to himself.

"I am going to catch other goats.'

"Where ?"

"At the Pilot Station."

"But how are you going to get there?" "Float across. Come, there is no time for questioning! Go and cut down some saplings, and let us begin!"

The lieutenant-master looked at the convict prisoner with astonishment, and then gave way to the power of knowledge, and did as he was ordered. Before sundown that evening, the carcase of poor Nanny, broken into various most unbutcherly fragments, was hanging on the nearest tree; and Frere, returning with as many young saplings as he could drag together, found Rufus Dawes engaged in a curious occupation. He had killed the goat, and, having cut off its head close under the jaws, and its legs at the knee-joint, had extracted. the carcase through a slit made in the lower portion of the belly, which slit he had now sewn together with string. This proceeding gave him a rough bag, and he was busily engaged in filling this bag with such coarse grass as he could collect. Frere observed, also, that the fat of the animal was carefully pre

served, and the intestines had been placed in a pool of water to soak.

The convict, however, declined to give information as to what he intended to do. "It's my own notion," he said. may make a failure of it.”

"Let me alone. I Frere, on being

pressed by Sylvia, affected to know all about the scheme, but to impose silence on himself. He was galled to think that a convict brain. should contain a mystery which he might not share.

On the next day, by Rufus Dawes's directions, Frere cut down some rushes that grew about a mile from the camping ground, and brought them in on his back. This took him

nearly half a day to accomplish. Short rations were beginning to tell upon his physical powers. The convict, on the other hand, trained by a woeful experience in the Boats, to endurance of hardship, was slowly recovering his original strength.

"What are they for ?" asked Frere, as he flung the bundles down.

His master condescended to reply. "To make a float."

Well ?"

The other shrugged his broad shoulders. "You are very dull, Mr. Frere. I am going

to swim over to the Pilot Station, and catch some of those goats. I can get across on the stuffed skin, but I must float them back on the reeds."

"How the doose do you mean to catch 'em?" asked Frere, wiping the sweat from his brow.

This

The convict motioned to him to approach. He did so, and saw that his companion was cleaning the intestines of the goat. The outer membrane having been peeled off, Rufus Dawes was turning the gut inside out. he did by turning up a short piece of it, as though it were a coat-sleeve, and dipping the .turned-up cuff into a pool of water. The weight of the water pressing between the cuff and the rest of the gut, bore down a further portion; and so, by repeated dippings, the whole length was turned inside out. The inner membrane having been scraped away, there remained a fine transparent tube, which was tightly twisted, and set to dry in the sun.

"There is the catgut for the noose,” said Dawes. "I learnt that trick at the settlement. Now come here."

Frere, following, saw that a fire had been made between two stones, and that the kettle was partly sunk in the ground near it. On