Rudyard Kipling I on the beach while Dick methodically bombarded the breakwater. “Got it at last!” he exclaimed, as a lock of weed flew from the wood. “Let me try,” said Maisie, imperiously. “I’m all right now. They fired in turns till the rickety little revolver nearly shook itself to pieces, and Amomma the outcast — because he might blow up at any moment — browsed in the background and wondered why stones were thrown at him. Then they found a balk of timber floating in a pool which was commanded by the seaward slope of Fort Keeling, and they sat down together before this new target. “Next holidays,” said Dick, as the now thoroughly fouled revolver kicked wildly in his hand, “we'll get another pistol, — central fire, — that will carry farther.” “There won’t b any next holidays for me,” said Maisie. “I’m going away.” “Where to?” “I don’t know. My lawyers have written to Mrs. Jennett, and I’ve got to be educated somewhere, — in France, perhaps, — I don’t know where; but I shall be glad to go away.” “T shan’t like it a bit. I suppose I shall be left. Look here, Maisie, is it really true you're going? Then these holidays will be the last I shall see anything of you; and I go back to school next week. I wish — The young blood turned his cheeks scarlet. Maisie was picking grass-tufts and throwing them down the slope at a yellow sea-poppy nodding all by itself to the illimitable levels of the mud-flats and the milk-white sea beyond. “I wish,” she said, after a pause, “that I could see you again sometime. You wish that, too?” “Yes, but it would have been better if — if — you had — shot straight over there — down by the breakwater.”