"Have you an anchor?"

"No. We use it as a mooring, and I-I buoyed it and left it." The scowling man saw that these two questions twice exposed his negligence. "Then we must sail," she said.

"Sail?" he cried. "In that squall?"

"What would you do?" she asked him. "Drift!"

"Drift!" she retorted. "And turn broadside, and perhaps capsize?"

Jones rapidly cast off the sheet. "Then we can swing out the boom and run before it." He fumbled with the lashings of the crutch.

"Run?" she rejoined. In her turn she began to busy herself with the gaskets that tied the furled sail. "The wind will come from the head of the bay, and we could n't hope to escape that stony point to leeward."

Jones, lifting the boom out of the crutch, demanded angrily, "You mean to sail against it?" "It's the only way," she answered quietly. "We 've got to beat away from this position. Harriet! Pelham!" she said sharply, ignoring ceremony, "help me to untie these gaskets. Jones, stand by the halyards."

There was another moment in which Pelham wondered if the man would obey. But Lois's cool certainty, and the man's own doubt of the danger in which they stood,-greater, perhaps, than he realized,-were too much for him. He went to the halyards and began to cast them off.

While the man worked rapidly at his ropes Harriet and Pelham eagerly assisted Lois in undoing the sail from the canvas bands that held it. As it began to tumble from its tight furl they helped to shake it out until all its great breadth 'lay massed at their feet.

"Ready, Jones?" asked Lois. "Now up with it till the first reef-points show."

As the man began to hoist the huge thing, Pelham, glancing nervously at the silent cloud, ever blacker and ever nearer, wondered how they could hope to sail under so much canvas; but the gaff, the spar to which the head of the sail was attached, had hardly climbed six feet of the mast when Lois called, "Enough!" Jones stopped hoisting and made the ropes fast.

The boy then saw that rows of cords, each cord perhaps eighteen inches long, were let into the sail at regular intervals, parallel with the bottom. He recognized the cords as the reef-points of which Lois had spoken. At either end, each row ended in a stout eyelet, and Lois, snatching up a strong cord, began to work busily on the inner eyelet of the upper row. Jones, after a moment's hesitation, began folding the lower part of the sail along the boom, a work at which

Pelham and Harriet began to help him. The three lower rows of reef-points were folded in, and Jones had already begun to tie the upper reef-points around the folded canvas when Lois cried over her shoulder: "Tie the leech-earing first! Can you manage it?"

"What?" he asked, confused.

She beckoned him to her place. "Finish this," she said. "Harriet, hold the sail as it is, but tie no more reef-points till I tell you. Pelham, get me a light line about twenty feet long."

Pelham had seen ends of rope in the cabin, and at once dived into it. As, after hasty rummaging, he emerged with the line and passed it quickly to Lois he seized the chance to glance once more across the water in the direction of the storm.

The group of yachts was hidden behind a sweeping wall of rain. One tiny sail he thought he saw, pressed over and staggering; but it disappeared so quickly that he could not be sure. A grumble of thunder came to his ears; he could not hear the wind which he knew was driving the advancing storm. To Pelham these unusual surroundings were uncanny and alarming.

Lois had knotted the end of the rope to the eyelet at the end of the row of reef-points. Then, leaning out beyond the stern, she tried to reach to the end of the boom, but it was too far for her. One glance at Pelham was enough for the boy. He took the end from her, squirmed out upon the boom, and, reaching forward, passed the line through an iron eye-bolt. "Shall I tie it?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Bring it back," she answered.

When again he was at her side he helped her pull the rope tight, knot it around the boom, and begin to wind it again toward the end, furling the sail before them as they went. At a word from Lois, Harriet and Jones began tying the reef-points. But Harriet spoke: "It 's coming!" In the thrill of his sister's tones Pelham knew that she was calling on her courage. Instantly Lois gave the end of the rope to him. "Finish this," she said. "No matter what happens, finish and tie!"

He realized the importance of his task. If the wind should tear loose this furled leech, the flapping mass would make sailing very difficult. Behind him he heard the other three hastily tying the remaining reef-points. A longing to know how near the storm was made him ache to look back; he preferred to face the danger. But setting his teeth, he wound the rope tightly for another yard, knotted it with a jerk, and furled farther. Then he felt the boom begin to swing away from him as a little wind pushed it slowly out. But Lois, seizing a rope that ran in and out

THIS is the story of a young hero of to-day-of a leader who has, we may well hope, as many rich, useful years before him as those that make the tale we are about to tell.

History is not often willing to call a man happy -or a hero-while life lies ahead of him. Time can change everything. Time alone can prove everything. We must wait for the judgment of time, it is said.

We feel very sure, however, of the worth of the work of Herbert Clark Hoover, the man who gave up a business that meant the directorship of more than 125,000 workers in order that he might give his time and his powers to the task of feeding ten million helpless people in war-ravaged Belgium and northern France.

"If England could have availed herself of such talent for organization as H. C. Hoover has displayed in feeding the Belgians, we should be a good year nearer the end of the war than we are to-day," said a prominent member of the British Parliament.

"There is a man who knows how to get things done!" we are hearing said on every side. “If America should have to go to war, Mr. Hoover could meet the problem of putting us on rations, and there would be no food riots."

Who is this man who knows how to do things? In what school did he learn how to meet emergencies and how to manage men?

They tell us he was a Quaker lad, born on an Iowa farm, who in his early boyhood moved to California. Was it because of this early transplanting this change to new scenes, new problems, new interests-that he learned to see things in a big way and to get a grip on what really matters in Iowa, in California, in the world?

"The first thing you think about Hoover," said a man who knew him in college, "is that he is a free soul and feels himself free. Most people are more or less hedged in by their own little affairs. His interests have no walls to shut him away from other people and their interests. He is a man who is in vital touch with what concerns other men."

But we come once more to the question: how did he come by the vital touch which gives him this power over men and makes him in a very real sense a citizen of the world? High-school young folk may remember the exclamation of

envious Cassius when he was protesting to Brutus against the growing influence of Cæsar:

Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat does this our Cæsar feed,
That he is grown so great?

Cassius was, of course, speaking in grudging scorn; but we often find ourselves thinking quite simply and sincerely that we should like to know what goes to the making of true power.

Sometimes we like to pretend that we can explain the making of a great man. We say, for example, of Lincoln: he early learned what it meant to meet hardship, so he was strong to endure; by hard times and hard work he learned the value of things, the things that really count;

he knew what sorrow was, and the faith that is greater than grief, so he had a heart that could feel with the sorrows of others and could help them to win faithfulness through suffering. Because a truly sympathetic heart beats with the joys as well as the griefs of others, he cared for the little things that go to make up the big thing we call living, and his warm human touch made him a friend of simple people, with an understanding of all. Thus it was that he knew people in a real way and life in a true way, and so was able to be the leader of a nation in a time that tried the souls of the bravest. So we say, and fancy that we have explained Lincoln. But have we? Many other boys knew toil and want and sorrow, and many learned much, perhaps, in that hard school; but there was only one Lincoln.

We can, in truth, no more explain a great man than we can explain life itself. How is it that the acorn has power to take from the earth and air and sunshine the things that make the oaktree, the monarch of the forest? How is it that of all the oaks in the woods of the world there are no two exactly alike? How is it that among all the children in a family, in a school, in a nation, there are no two really alike?

All that we can say is that each child is himself alone, and that as the days go by the things he sees and hears, the things he thinks about and loves, the things he dreams and the things he does, are somehow made a part of him just as the soil and sunshine are made into the tree.

What was it in the Iowa farm life that became a part of the Quaker boy Herbert Hoover? He learned to look life in the face, simply and frankly. Hard work, resolute wrestling with the brown earth, made his muscles firm and his nerves steady. The passing of the days and the seasons, the coming of the rain, the dew, and the frost, and the sweep of the storm, awoke in his spirit a love of nature and a delight in nature's laws. "All 's love, yet all 's law," whispered the wind. as it passed over the fields of bending grain. Since all was law, one might, by studying the ways of seed and soil and weather, win a larger harvest than the steadiest toil, unaided by reason and resource, could coax from the long furrows. It was clear that thinking and planning brought a liberal increase to the yield of each acre. The might of man was not in muscle but in mind.

Then came the move to California. How the Golden West opened up a whole vista of new ideas! How many kinds of interesting people there were in the world! He longed to go to college, where one could get a bird's-eye view of the whole field of what life had to offer, before settling down to work in his own garden-patch.

"I don't want to go to a Quaker school, or a college founded by any other special sect," he said. "I want to go where I will have a chance to see and judge everything fairly, without prejudice for or against any one line of thought."

"The way of the Friends is a liberal enough way for a son of mine, or for any God-fearing person," was the parent's reply. "Thee must not expect thy people to send thee to a place of worldly fashions and ideas."

"It looks as if I should have to send myself, then," said the young man, with a smile in his clear eyes, but with his chin looking even more determined than was its usual firm habit.

When Leland Stanford Junior University opened its doors in 1891, Herbert C. Hoover was one of those applying for admission. The first student to register for the engineering course, he was the distinguished nucleus of the Department of Geology and Mining. The first problem young Hoover had to solve at college, however, was the way of meeting his living expenses.

"What chances are there for a chap to earn money here?" he asked.

"The only job that seems to be lying about loose is that of serving in the dining-rooms," he was told. "Student waiters are always in demand."

The young Quaker looked as if he had been offered an unripe persimmon. "I suppose it 's true that they also serve who only stand and wait,'" he drawled whimsically, "but somehow I can't quite see myself in the part. And anyway," he added reflectively, "I don't know that I need depend on a job that is lying about loose.' I should n't wonder if I 'd have to look out for an opening that has n't been offered to every passerby and become shop-worn."

He had not been many days at the university before he discovered a need and an opportunity. There was no college laundry. "I think that the person who undertakes to organize the cleanlinen business in this academic settlement will 'also serve,' and he won't have to 'wait' for his reward!" he said to himself.

The really successful man of business is one who can at the same time create a demand and provide the means of meeting it. T The college community awoke one morning to the realization that it needed above everything else efficient laundry-service. And it seemed that an alert young student of mining engineering was managing the business. Before long it was clear not only that the college was by way of being systematically and satisfactorily served in this respect, but that, what was even more important, a man with a veritable genius for organization had appeared