CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.AT THE STATION.Walter was at the life saving station looking up a stairway leading from the crew’s room to an open scuttle in the roof. If Walter had put his head out of the scuttle, he would have seen a railing, hemming in a small platform; and from its center, rose a modest flag–staff. There was no chance though for explorations, as the way was entirely blocked. On the stairway, Walter saw an immense pair of boots, and above them a stout pair of legs; and then a man’s bulky body, roofed by a huge “sou’wester.”“No room for me to pass there,” thought Walter.The man held in his hand the object that at a life saving station comes under the head, “marine glasses.”“Do you see anything?” asked Walter recognizing the man to be Tom Walker.“Only a fishin’ smack, and a mean one at that. It’s my watch, you know.”The boots, the legs, the big body, and the sou’wester all came down.“Step up if you want to, Walter.”Climbing the stairway, Walter swept the sea with his bright eyes, and then looked landward across the black rocks and the fading fields. Then he turned toward the sea again. Off in the east was the fishing smack, slowly sailing in the sun. Then he looked up at the flag–staff, which carried some specimen of marine architecture on its top.“I see two craft,” said Walter.“Two?” inquired Tom, solicitously.“The fishing smack and this on top of the staff.”“Ho—ho!” roared Tom.“Only I can’t make out this second one in the air.”“Itwasa brig, but the last gale we had tore away its rigging, and made some improvements; and I don’t know what on airth or water to call that thing. I guess she is ’phibious, and will go on either.”Walter’s eager eyes caught a glimpse of a box, on a landing half way up the stairway to the lookout, and from this box projectedbundles of cloth, here and there showing bits of color.“That is the signal box?” remarked Walter.“Yes. Sometime I will explain them to you.”“Will you?” inquired Walter, his hazel eyes snapping at the prospect of this new continent of knowledge,—the signal department of the life saving service.“Sartin. Give you a hint now. For instance, we have a pennant, a triangular flag, blue, with a white ball in it; and if I h’ist it, it would mean ‘no’ to some question asked by a vessel off shore signaling to me. Or, s’posin’ I h’isted a white pennant with a red ball. That would mean ‘yes.’”Walter desired to overhaul that unpretending box at once, but he knew he must return to the store; and he only remarked, “I would like to see all those signals out sometime.”“I guess you can without any doubt. You take a good deal of interest in our station, don’t you?”“Yes, I do. It is something entirely new to me.”“You would make a pretty good surfman,” said Tom, glancing approvingly at Walter’scompact frame. “Woodbury Elliott says you row a pretty good stroke.”“Oh! That his name? I came in his boat from the Crescent the other night.”“Yes,” said Tom deliberately, looking at Walter’s frame as if he were a recruiting officer examining the physical points of a candidate for the ranks of Uncle Sam’s army. “I think, I think—you would do.”Walter laughed. “I guess I must be a storekeeper. However, I am pleased if you think I have strength enough for a surfman.”Tom now turned away, and with his glass swept the misty horizon again.“There is the fishin’ smack,” he said. “And hullo! What’s that? I missed her afore, sartin.”“What is it?”“She’s a fore–and–aft, sure as you are born; and—and—it is a coaster, and she’s headin’ this way. Queer I missed her.”“I didn’t see her. Uncle Boardman is expecting a coaster to come after a load of potatoes. I wonder if that’s the one!”“I shouldn’t wonder one bit. It’s hazy where she is, and that’s the reason we didn’t see her.”“I think I had better report that to uncle.”“Of course,” remarked the surfman, pointing his glass again at the schooner. “She may go somewhere else, but she acts to me as if she wanted to run in at The Harbor.”“I think I will tell Uncle Boardman.”“What does she bring here, if it’s bound here for your uncle’s potatoes?”“I believe she brings a variety of things; some groceries for the store, some salt for the fishermen, and so on. Her cargo is what they call miscellaneous.”It was not long before a coasting schooner was beating off the mouth of the harbor, saying plainly by her actions that she wished to make port as soon as possible.“It must be theOlive Ann,” declared Boardman Blake; “and, Walter, I think you had better go down to Spring’s wharf, and see if everything is ready for the coaster there.”Walter went to the wharf. Jabez Wherren, a fisherman, stood leaning against an oaken pier, watching the fluttering efforts of the coaster to reach a sheltered resting–place.“I expect that is a schooner uncle is expecting, and she will come here, Mr. Wherren. Will you look after her, please? I must go back to the store.”Receiving from the gray–headed old man apromise that he would give theOlive Anna reception befitting a dame of her commercial position, Walter hurried away. He returned to the store, and then left again in an hour for the wharf, above which now shot up two tapering masts, signaling the arrival of the coaster. He was passing the schoolhouse at The Harbor, when a little girl playing on the rough step of stone before the door, looked up and said, “I know you.”It was Woodbury Elliott’s young companion, the day he had visited Baggs’ shanty, and found Walter there.“Oh, that you?” said Walter stopping. “Do you go to school here?”“Yes.”“Who is your teacher?”“Sister.”“Don’t you have any school to–day?”“School is just out, but my sister hasn’t gone.”“I wonder if she is the one that Woodbury said gave him his supper and hot coffee,” thought Walter. “She knew how to cure a man in trouble.”“Good afternoon,” said a pleasant voice in the entry. Walter looked up, and there before him, advancing also toward him with a handoutstretched in welcome, was May Elliott. The old schoolhouse in the fishing village seemed to disappear at once, as by the touch of a magician’s wand. In its place, was the academy. Again, it was “composition day,” and in May Elliott’s hand was a schoolgirl’s composition, from which she was reading these words: “The life that does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is making a serious mistake.”All this came to Walter, and he stood in a daze.“Don’t you know me, Plympton? May Elliott?”“Oh, yes,” he said, quickly recovering from his surprise. “But I was not looking for you, and—”“It gave you a surprise? Won’t you come in?”“I am glad to see you, Miss Elliott. Why, I didn’t know you were here!”He followed her into the low–storied schoolroom, and sat down in a chair that she placed for him near the door.“Yes, I am here. My home is here at The Harbor, and you can see the house through this window; that white house beyond the fishflakesin the field. There are some apple–trees back of it, which you can see.”“I didn’t know you were here,” said Walter again, looking off from the house, and rapidly taking the picture of the young teacher. She was hardly of medium height, and was simply clad, in a black alpaca dress, wearing at her throat a crimson ribbon pinned with a small cross of gold. Her brown hair was very soft and fine, and of a luxuriant growth. Her features were a little irregular, but her complexion was fair, and then a certain brightness and directness of look gave her blue eyes a magnetic power.“Yes,” she laughingly said, “I suppose you would call me the village ‘schoolmarm,’ at least, this fall. When I was a little girl, I remember—sitting on one of those benches in front,—I had an ambition to be some day the teacher of the school. But, Plympton, I have been wanting to see you, and thank you for your kindness to my brother, Woodbury. He has—has—a weakness, as you know; and what you did that afternoon, checked him when he was sorely tempted.”“I am very glad if I did any good. And—and—I have thought I would like to thankyou, sometime.”“For what?”“Do you remember your composition?”“Oh, I believe I wrote a number of them. Which one was it?”“That one called, ‘What are we living for?’ That influenced me a good deal,” said Walter, rising as if to go.“Did it? I never knew that it helped anybody, except, perhaps, it set me to thinking more fully afterwards on the subject. Are you going?”“I think I must. But I want to thank you for what you said; and if I can help Woodbury, I will.”In response, there was a bright look of sincere pleasure shining out of May Elliott’s face. Through the day, a pair of blue eyes followed Walter in his thoughts, as if intent to overtake him and ask him some question.“Miss Elliott keeps your school,” he said to Jabez Wherren on the wharf at a little later hour.“May, you mean? Wall, yes, and she’s a smart leetle critter, not more’n sixteen or seventeen; but she makes them young ones toe the mark, I tell ye. We all think a good deal of May; brought up here amongst us, you know. There’s Woodbury, her brother; a smartfeller as ever lived, if he would never tech liquor. He might be a captain of his own craft, jest as easy, jest as easy—as—as—mud.” After this expressive and telling simile, Jabez recovered the breath he had lost in that effort, and continued: “It’s a bright family, the Elliotts is. That little Amy, she’ll beat the whole school a–spellin’—that is, all of her age. Woodbury’s father and mother are well–to–do, forehanded folks. He’s a skipper, and is on this very schooner. What’s that?”Jabez was now directing his attention to the gangway of theOlive Ann, which had been securely moored to the little wharf. A colored boy in a shabby brown suit was disembarking, carrying a very small bundle in his hand. Springing out upon the wharf, he looked in various directions, as if a stranger, and he was calculating which way he had better go. A choice between two routes offered itself, and he chanced to take that which would lead him to Boardman Blake’s store.“Who’s that passenger?” asked Jabez of Captain Elliott, a muscular, heavy man of fifty.“I can’t say. He shipped at New York, and worked for his passage. He wanted to be off soon as I could spare him, and I said he might go now, or stay longer. He’d rather be off now.I’m afeared he won’t pick up any work very soon, but he will probably push on till he finds some sort of a chance.”Walter went home thinking of this unknown youth, a stranger, homeless, tramping off anywhere. Aunt Lydia met him in the kitchen. A very broad grin was on her face, as if the old lady had found a prize that made her very happy.“Come into the addition,” said she, beckoning mysteriously. “Step softly, you know. I’ve got suthin’ to show you.”The “addition” was built on to the rear of the house, and contained two rooms, the lower being a kind of store–room.“There!” said Aunt Lydia, pointing at the corner.Curled up under an old quilt, a smile brightening a face happy in a trip to some beautiful dream–land, was the “passenger,” as Jabez had entitled him, who had just arrived per coasterOlive Ann.“Ho, Aunt Lyddy! You got Young Africa there?” whispered Walter.“Yes, and I didn’t have the heart to turn him away. You see he came to the door, and sort of mournful, looked up and asked for a leetle suthin’ to eat, and said he would workfirst, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse him. Then I sez, ‘Where you goin’?’ ‘Dunno,’ he sez; and I thought it wasn’t jest Christian to let him go a–wanderin’ off into the world when the night was a–comin’, and I sez, pointin’ to your Uncle Boardman in the barnyard, ‘you might ax that man, and if he’s a–willin’, and can give you suthin’ to do, you can stay here till mornin’.’ And it would have done your soul good to have seen how grateful that child was when Boardman sez—and I knew he would—‘I’ll leave it to Lyddy.’”“What’s his name?” asked Walter, when they were in the kitchen once more, leaving that “child” to his happy rest under Aunt Lyddy’s homemade bedquilt; which, like its owner, was a little rough on the outside, but exceedingly warm within.“Pedro White, he told me. And jest think, I told it to your Uncle Boardman, and he laffed and said ‘Pedro’ was Spanish, and he ought to be called ‘Don Pedro.’ You know your uncle has read a ’mazin’ sight.”Aunt Lydia had a very large respect for her husband’s “book–larnin’,” as she called it. It must be acknowledged though, that before the pressure of each day’s necessities, Uncle Boardman, with his “book–larnin’,” wouldoften retreat; while Aunt Lydia, gifted only with her sharp, practical sense, would advance triumphantly. This fact does not prove that book knowledge is of little worth. It is extremely valuable. It should go hand in hand with excellent judgment to make it of the greatest value to its possessor. “That child” slept profoundly under Aunt Lydia’s bedquilt, which rivaled the rain–bow in its many colors and the sunshine in its warmth.CHAPTER IX.THE HALL SERVICE.Did I not say there was only one store at The Harbor? I beg Miss P. Green’s pardon. She did not claim in so many words to “keep store,” and yet if anybody had actually denied her right to the use of that grand word, “store,” there would have been a tempest at The Harbor. She merely said that she “kept a few little articles”; and yet the black king of the Bigboos in the depths of Africa, would not think more of a red handkerchief and a hand looking–glass, than Miss P. Green did of her three shelves of “goods,” and one small show–case of pins, needles, gooseberries, lemon drops, and stationary, in her front room. Gooseberries and lemon drops, I say, for Miss P. Green kept only these, believing that you could sell more if you kept one article, and “got your name up” on the merits of that one article. In this case therewere two articles; but never were there such gooseberries before, nor have there been such lemon drops since. The gooseberries would have been excellent to pitch with—just big, and hard, and round enough—at a game of baseball; and as for the lemon drops, into what rapture those sugared acids, or that acidulated sugar rather, would throw any schoolboy or girl, at “recess–time.” Then Miss P. Green kept the post–office! There is no adjective I can now recall, of sufficient magnitude and magnificence to represent the importance which Miss P. Green attached to this position. Her ideas were not unduly exalted until she had seen the Boston post–office, and enjoyed an interview with the Boston post–master. She then felt that her position was unusual. She never looked upon her humble wooden walls as she came down the street, but that they changed to a granite façade, with lofty doors and pillars; and when she entered her abode she walked at once upon a marble pavement. What importance she felt when she handled the stamp, whose magic impress she must first make, before any letter could start on its travels from The Harbor. The Great Charlemagne pounding with his golden seal, did not feel half as grand. And those clumsy leathern pouches that werecalled mai–lbags, and which only Miss P. Green could open—how she venerated them! True Billings, the driver of the mail–wagon, handled them roughly, and pitched them upon the doorstep without ceremony, bawling out, “Here you have ’em!” By the post–mistress, they were approached with a certain respect and awe, whose weight would crush the official opening the great treasury–vaults of the nation, did he regard these with corresponding feelings of importance. It was stoutly secured to the door frame outside with good shingle nails, that sign indicating Miss P. Green’s official place in The Harbor world: “Post–office.” On the door leading from the entry into the front room was the name “P. Green.” This indicated her place in the great world of trade. If it had been attached to the outer door, it would have saved me an ugly omission, for I should at once have given her honorable mention in the business list of The Harbor. The sign occupied an outer position once, but boys do not always have that respect for authority which is becoming, and had changed the name one night to “Pea Green.” It was indignantly withdrawn the next day. It was just as well removed, I dare say, for if she had continued to daily see those two signs, “Post–office,” and “P. Green,” as she approached the building, the sense of her official and commercial importance would finally have been too much for her. As it was, she passed from the contemplation of one sign to the other, and there was a gradual letting down from that sense of exaltation which she had on seeing the front door.But all of Miss P. Green’s merits have not been mentioned. She was a very little body, and that may seem a detraction from her excellencies, and yet it was only another praiseworthy feature; for never in such small compass was packed so much knowledge. No “Saratoga” trunk ever went to “Springs,” so loaded, crowded, jammed. She was the village register; could tell the births and deaths and marriages for the year, giving each date. Not so surprising a fact, considering that the village was small; but when you add to this a complete knowledge of every household, how many were in each family, their names, occupations, what they had for breakfast, dinner and supper, what time they went to bed, and what time they left their beds, the register kept by P. Green, grew into a village directory and a village history. But this tree of knowledge did not stop its growth here. It had other branches. She knew all of the mysteriesof dressmaking and millinery; had a large acquaintance with housekeeping and nursing; kept posted in politics, and considered it her duty to defend the “administration,” though unfairly denied the right of suffrage.One of the latest achievements of this encyclopedia, was to obtain complete and reliable information about the life saving station. This she had done by carefully cultivating the acquaintance of Keeper Barney. She was now at work on these two subjects, the Baggs family and all its branches; also the Plympton family; and this had the second place, as Walter’s arrival was the more recent. Such a wonder! So very much in so very little! It was a terrible satire on her size, that misnomer Pea Green, for in one sense it was exceedingly unjust. Not even the mammoth peas that grow in the land of the giants, could furnish so much comfort and delight to a dining circle of twelve, as this feminine wonder by the sea. And to all hungry gossipers, she did what no restaurant will do; she fed without cost all who came.It was the most natural thing in the world, then, that Aunt Lydia should say one day to Walter, “I know how I can find out. I can ask Miss Green.”She accordingly went to the post–office andasked Miss Green as follows: “My nephew, Walter Plympton, wants to know about the Hall. Who has the say about it; that is, who lets people use it?”Miss Green was delighted. She would not only find out what this use of the Hall might mean, but oh, what an opportunity to learn about the Plympton family! Sitting on a tall stool, which was an innocent contrivance to eke out her scanty height, she persuasively bent her gray curls over the show–case. Her once bright eyes had softened down to a faded blue; and time had laid on her forehead and cheeks its stamp whose mark was as certain as that of the begrimed die with which she fiercely struck the daily mail. She had a pleasant voice, an affable manner, a temperament sunny and hopeful; and people liked to talk with the post–mistress. The initiated also knew that in a certain back sitting–room there was a brown teapot always kept on the stove, adding to the charms of that snug retreat to which any tea–toper might be favored with an invitation.“The Hall! Indeed! Going to be a singing–school?—a—a?” inquired the post–mistress.“Oh, no! Now it’s strange Walter should have such a notion, you may think, but he’sone of that kind whose head is allers full of suthin’. He came to me yesterday, and sez to me, ‘Aunt Lyddy!’ Sez I, ‘What?’ He didn’t say any more, for suthin’ called him to the door, and I was a–ironin’ and went on where I was. It was warm, you know. Don’t you think it was? I did feel it over the ironin’.”Aunt Lydia had a tantalizing way sometimes of telling a story. She would enter very fully into details, amplifying little items and leaving the main subject untouched.“But the point—the point—Lyddy,” gently observed the post–mistress.“Oh, yes. By and by he came back agin; and what do you s’pose he said he was a thinkin’ about?”“I don’t know.”“I was then in the kitchen. No, I was standin’ afore the clock—yes—”“But that’s no matter. What did he say, Lyddy? The point, dear?”“Well, he axed who had the say about the Hall. I told him I didn’t know; and how could I be ’spected to know, Phebe?”“Of course not. Then you want to know who can let him or anybody else have the Hall? It’s Cap’n Elliott, you know. He’s the trustee, as I call it. Why, the Hall wasgiven by old Nathan Grant for the good of The Harbor, he said, and he made Cap’n Elliott trustee. So Walter must ask him.”“I see, I see.”“Now, Lyddy! Is Walter’s father’s name Adoniram?”Aunt Lydia perceived at once that the post–mistress now wished to take her turn in obtaining information, and she knew it would be a long turn. She moved towards the door, remarking, “Oh, no, it’s Ezra. Thank you, Miss Green; I guess I must be a–goin’.”“But do take a cup of tea before you go,” pleaded Miss Green, fastening on Aunt Lydia a beseeching look. At the same time, the post–mistress sidled down from her tall, four–legged throne, and began to move towards the little brown teapot. Aunt Lydia said something to the effect that yesterday it was warm, but it was a “chilly east wind to–day”; and she followed the post–mistress in the direction of the warmer atmosphere of the teapot. Having obtained all the knowledge she wished in the Plympton line, Miss P. Green poured out another cup of tea, and remarked suddenly, “And isn’t Baggs queer?”“Queer! That don’t begin to describe him, Phebe.”“He was here the other day. Came, you know, on special business about his mail, and said he had been a–trying to get down here I don’t know how long. He wanted an arrangement so that letters could come to him, in a box. Now that’s very nice, you know, when you have a class of customers wanting it. They have boxes in the Boston post–office you know, and I thought I might take it into consideration. He said he was going to send out circulars about something, and answers would come for ‘Rambler, Box one,’ if I would put one in for him. Well, if you believe it, before I had a chance to give him an answer, he went to that window in the office that looks toward the harbor—the offing, I mean.” Miss Green was, or aimed to be, very correct, having once taught school. “What a start he gave! and he turned round, pale as—as—that paint on the office–door.” It was not very white. “I didn’t seem to notice it, but only said in an off–hand way, ‘Do you see anything, Mr. Baggs?’ I thought it might be a vessel sailing in. But he didn’t take any notice. Then I said again—mild, sort of—‘The sea quiet, Mr. Baggs? Anything out of the way? Can you see the Chair? You know if we can’t see the Chair on account of fog, it is a bad sign anyway; and every day, people look off there.’ You ought to have seen that man start again and almost give a real jump. ‘Chair?’ he said. ‘What have I got to do with that Chair? Chair?’ And if he didn’t rush out of the store! I couldn’t see anything that was the matter with the Chair. And there that man who had been so anxious to see me, went off and left everything unsettled. Now wasn’t it queer, Lyddy?”“Yes, but that Baggs is a very, very unprofitable subject of talk for me, and I have made up my mind to shet my mouth on him—for the present.”Aunt Lydia’s mouth here shut with all the decision of a portcullis.Miss Green, though, was not prepared to close her portals of speech, and question after question did she ask about the Plymptons, back to the first that came from England.If she had only known there was a Don Pedro in the world! She had a way of pursing up her mouth after a question, and then of fastening on one a very direct look, and all this was as irresistible as a corkscrew in the presence of a stopper. Aunt Lydia left the post–mistress and returned home.But what was Walter’s object that led to thisinterview? What did he want the Hall for? St. John’s, the parish church, was a mile and a half away. On days when the wind was right, its bell could be heard faintly, musically calling all souls to prayer. Not often though did these sweet notes travel as far as The Harbor, and the consequence was, that very few souls traveled up to church. In fair weather, Miss Green and Mrs. Jabez Wherren might walk there, or they would report at Uncle Boardman’s in season to take passage in his big covered wagon that, rain or shine, was sure to be heard rattling along to St. John’s every Sunday. The remainder of the population virtually ignored St. John’s, and St. John’s ignored them. Its clergyman came down to say a few words of Christian farewell over the bodies that might rest behind the stunted firs in the little cemetery swept by the sea–winds, or to join for a life–long clasp, the two hands willing thus to fall into one another. Otherwise St. John’s had very little to do with The Harbor, and The Harbor responded in the same fashion.“Why,” thought Walter, walking down through The Harbor one Sunday, “it doesn’t look much like Sunday down here. Uncle Boardman doesn’t live in one of these houses.”The Harbor village had anything but that Sunday look which marked Uncle Boardman’s premises. Some of the fishermen were out in their yards overhauling and mending their trawls. One or two were doing a little autumn work in their rough gardens. In an open lot behind the gray, lichen–patched ledges, several young fishermen, in red shirts, were playing ball. There was a row of fishing–smacks at an ancient wharf, and their owners were improving Sunday’s convenient leisure for the accomplishment of odd little jobs. Sunday at The Harbor was respected by the inhabitants after their peculiar fashion. Every fishing–boat came back to its quiet moorings before Sunday, as promptly as if a police force had ordered it there. Then came a day at home, not of entire abstinence from work, but of less work. To do less, not to quit work altogether, was the Sunday fashion of The Harbor. A man would have lost caste, and been ranked as a heathen, if he had taken his boat out to sea, every Sunday. He might stay at home, and be busy all day with little “jobs,” and not hurt his reputation for religion. One fisherman abstained entirely from work, Jabez Wherren. He did not go to church, declaring that “somebody must stay at home and lookarter it; at which place all religion began.” He did not work though. He would lounge about all day, dressed in his very best suit, and decked out with some very bright necktie, and flourishing a flaming red or yellow silk handkerchief, so that he looked like a man–of–war decorated with flags. Because he did not go to church, Jabez knew that his wife ranked him as a very deficient being; but on the other hand, because he did not work, he was well aware that in the eyes of his fellow–fishermen, he was regarded as a person of superior virtues. In his walk that Sunday, Walter at last was opposite the Hall, an antiquated, one–storied building that needed the services of both painter and carpenter. It was prefaced, though, by a porch, with two very imposing Doric pillars. This porch compensated for all deficiencies; and the villagers walking between those pillars felt grand as a Roman army, marching under the triumphal arch of Titus, in the “Eternal City.” Walter halted before the Hall and there held this soliloquy. “I have got an idea. Mother wanted me to do some special religious work; and, I’m afraid—I know I haven’t. She wanted me to get people to go to church if they didn’t go, and now here is a chance. There’s the new rector at St. John’s. He isyoung, and full of life, and I wonder if he couldn’t come down here and hold services, once every now and then at any rate. It would be just the thing, I declare.” Walter’s hazel eyes snapped with interest, and a smile swept over his round, full face.“What’s Boardman Blake’s nephew up to, a lookin’ at the Hall?” wondered Jabez Wherren. Walter did not relieve him of his wonder, but soon turned about and went home.“The first thing,” he said, “is to find out who has the letting of the Hall.”Aunt Lydia ascertained this fact for him, and informed him that the trustee was May Elliott’s grandfather.“Then I must go and see the schoolmarm,” remarked Walter, “and get her to help me.”“Then you’re going to really try?” said Aunt Lydia.“Yes,” answered Walter positively.“Seems to me they might go up to St. John’s.”“But they won’t, and St. John’s must come to them.”“Now, Walter, I don’t want to throw a speck of cold water on it, but do you expect to succeed?”“Well, Aunt, it won’t do any harm to try,and I am going to expect to succeed, too. I was reading about Admiral Farragut, what he said, that any man who is prepared for defeat would be half defeated before he commenced. He said he hoped for success and would try to have it, and trust God for the rest.”“It looks to me jest like castin’ pearls afore swine.”Walter laughed, and said he would go to the schoolhouse and find its mistress. May said she would see her grandfather, and ask for the Hall.“But whom shall we get to play? Somebody said there was a melodeon in the Hall, and somebody else said—you—you played on it.”“And you want me to play? Well, I will do what I can. I am interested, and where I can help, I will. I will see if I can’t get two or three singers.”That day, May went to her grandfather’s. He sat by the window of his little house that looked out upon the river racing, at the base of the rough, rocky banks, toward the wide, restless sea. He was not a happy old man. True he had been a successful seaman. He had a sufficient amount of property to make him comfortable. He had no vices to regret. Hehad, though, known sorrow, losing wife and children. He and his housekeeper were the only ones in his home. He had been disappointed in his grandson, Woodbury, whom he desired to share his home with; and people said that old Capt. Elliott wished to give Woodbury the largest fraction of the money and other valuables he was supposed to keep in a certain bulky safe in his sitting–room. Woodbury, though, in the short interval he had tried to live at his grandfather’s, had been twice intoxicated, and the last time angry words had flamed between them like hot coals that they were throwing. He left the house in wrath, and in wrath Capt. Elliott shut the door after him. The captain was not a religious man. He was very honest, and having once been cheated by a professor of religion who was a very scanty possessor of it, wholly lacking it indeed, Capt. Elliott ever afterwards declared himself superior to the character that the church required. He shut out God from his soul, because a hypocrite shut him out from his dues. He made his honesty his all, and was a prayerless, peevish, fault–finding, selfish old man. When May called, he was still looking out of the window. The sea–wind lifted and let fall his thin, white hair, but could notlift from his stern, sharp–cut features, the shadow of a cheerless, selfish life. He heard his granddaughter’s voice, and turned to meet her. When she had made her request, he said, “For how long do you want the Hall?”“Oh, I don’t know. We are going to begin at any rate. We want to see what interest there will be.”“Well, yes, I s’pose you can have it. That’s what the Hall is for, to hold all kind of reason’ble meetin’s.”Here May made a bold movement, and her blue eyes were full of courage as she asked, “And, grandfather, won’t you come too?”“Oh, nonsense, child! I have more religion now than you could pack into St. John’s. Why, I’d be ashamed to do what some of them folks do.”May was a strategist. She knew it was useless to argue with him. She also knew that he liked to hear her play her melodeon in the sacred parlor at home, kept in state there all the week with the dried grasses on the mantel, and the family register on the wall, and the big family Bible on the mahogany table.“Won’t you come to hear me play?”“May, I’ll make this agreement. I’ll come down and stay as long as you play and sing,but I’m not a–goin’ to stay and have any min’ster advise me in a long sermon, for I know as much as he about it, and more too.”“Well, grandfather, stay while the singing lasts.”There was another invitation extended. This was given by Walter to Chauncy Aldrich.“Ah, ah,” said Chauncy in his self–important way, lifting his hat, and with great dignity running his hand through his wall of hair, “you want me to honor the place with the presence of C. Aldrich? Yes, I’ll come. But look here, none of your long, prosy sermons, but something warm, and something short. Ha, ha!”One by one, all preparations were made for the service. Miss Green promised to lend her cracked voice to the “choir,” and two or three young fishermen offered to roar in the bass. Don Pedro, whom Uncle Boardman had kept at his house to assist in some of the autumn work on the farm, made himself very helpful in sweeping out the Hall and arranging its seats.“What time do you expect the clergyman will hold the service?” inquired Miss Green, as Walter was about leaving the post–office one day.“Oh, I think he will come in the evening, if we want him,” replied Walter.“There!” reflected this young master of ceremonies as he left the house. “If that isn’t just like me! I declare if I didn’t forget to ask the clergyman! But of course he will come, and I will take Uncle Boardman’s team and go up at once, to ask him.”Alas, the rector couldn’t come!Walter drove back in despair.“I’ll stop at the schoolhouse and see the schoolmarm,” he said, “and ask what is to be done, though I know she will laugh at me.”The school had just been dismissed; and May only lingered to set away her few books in her desk.“Ah, Miss Elliott,” said Walter confusedly. “I—I—I’m afraid it doesn’t look hopeful—about—about our Hall service?”“Why not?”He laughed, and blushed, and said frankly, “I went ahead and got everything ready but the minister!”“You hadn’t spoken to him!”“No, and it was just like me, mother would say. I got my cart and had it nicely packed, or you did rather,” a compliment which made the young teacher look quite rosy,—“I got mycart, but I hadn’t thought about my horse! When I spoke just now to Dr. Ellton, he said his hands were full, and he couldn’t possibly come. Just like me! I needed it perhaps, for I was saying, ‘What a grand thing I am helping along!’ And here is my cart all packed and ready to start, and where is my horse?”The young teacher was amused and pleased with Walter’s frankness.“Oh, well, Plympton, we won’t give up. I have done things that way myself. Somebody can take the service, I know. Isn’t there any one else at St. John’s?”“There is a young fellow who, I believe, comes on Sundays to help the doctor; Raynham, I think, is his name.”“You ask him.”Mr. Raynham was asked. Would he come? His black eyes lighted up as he gave his answer: “I should be delighted. I only help at the morning service, and I can come down as well as not in the evening. The doctor would like to have me, I know.”“It does me good,” thought Walter, “just the way he accepts my invitation. Wonder if ministers—and other folks—know how much good it does when they promise a thing that fashion!”Mr. Raynham engaged to take tea at Aunt Lydia’s, Sunday afternoon, and for this young prophet, she heaped her table with biscuit, and cake, and doughnuts, till it looked liked a fort with its outworks.“Now,” she said to Mr. Raynham, when he was leaving for the Hall, “you mustn’t go a–flyin’ over our heads to–night when you speak.”He gave his shoulders a nervous twitch, smiled, and said, “It’s only a talk, I have, when we have finished evening prayer.”“If you let it come from the heart,” said Aunt Lydia encouragingly, “your arrer will be sent out from a strong bow. You see ’twon’t do allers to have jest what will do for big–folks. You jest talk out of your heart, and think of us as leetle folks, and your arrers will hit the mark, sure.”“I hope so,” thought the young assistant, “and may God give me my message.”He felt his need all the more, for May Elliott came to him and said, “If you see an old man going out when we have finished the singing, don’t you think anything of it. I could only get him here on the condition that he might be excused after the music.”“Indeed!” reflected Mr. Raynham. “I will see that the music lasts some time.”What a service that was! The choir sang with remarkable heartiness, even if it did not execute with remarkable skill. True, Miss Green’s voice was a little unsteady on the high notes, and fluttered about like a man on a high ladder, who growing dizzy, and threatening to fall, catches distractedly at the rounds.The young fishermen, too, thundered away on the “Ah–men” as if to atone for previous deficiencies, and roared for half a minute in a bass monotone that suggested the ocean. Then there was Don Pedro. When he was clearing up the hall, May Elliott was rehearsing on the melodeon, and she heard his voice several times accompanying the tunes. She impressed him into the musical service at once, and never did any royal tenor or bass from Italy, feel his importance more sensibly. As Don Pedro was very lacking in the department of “best clothes,” Aunt Lydia promised to “rig” him out in some of Uncle Boardman’s superfluous garments. Don Pedro was somewhat tall and slender, and Uncle Boardman was short and thick, and the “rigging” was not a close fit. The clothes hung about Don Pedro like the sails of a ship about the slender poles of a fishing–smack. Genius, though, is superior to all inconveniences, and above Uncle Boardman’simmense coat, Don Pedro’s head struggled manfully. He did not have a sharp sense of the ludicrous, and only remarked, “I guess as how dese clo’es was made for anudder man, shuah.”And the audience—it filled all the rough seats in the hall. Did Mr. Raynham see that face of an old man, sad and hopeless, near the door? No, he only knew some indefinite, nameless “old man” was there, itching to go out when the musical part of the service had been completed.“We will vary the usual order of such services as these, to–night, and after I have spoken five minutes, we will have more music; a hymn,” said Mr. Raynham.“Ah,” thought Capt. Elliott, squirming in his seat and ready to retreat, “I guess I shall have to hold on, for I promised my grand–darter.”How Mr. Raynham did talk “out of his heart,” to some imaginary old sinner trying to avoid his duty, and get away from God’s house!What would that soul do when God met him in judgment, and he could not escape, possibly? Capt. Elliott wriggled very uneasily; but there was his promise to May!“We will now have some music,” said Mr.Raynham. Again rose the choir, Don Pedro struggling above his mammoth outfit; Miss Green springing up with voice ready to mount to the ladder’s top, and there tumble; the young fishermen on hand for an oceanic roar—at the close.“I’ll go now,” thought the captain, but the young prophet called out, “I will say a few words, and then we will have more music, another hymn.”Capt. Elliott felt that he was a pinioned bird. Stay he must, and all the while the young man on the platform shot his arrows.“He’s a talkin’ out of his heart to some poor prodigal,” thought Aunt Lydia. “God help him!”Then that beautiful appeal in the hymnal was sung, that Advent appeal;“O Jesus, thou art standingOutside the fast–closed door,In lowly patience waitingTo pass the threshold o’er:We bear the name of Christians,His name and sign we bear:O shame, thrice shame upon us,To keep him standing there.”“O dear!” groaned the captain. “That’s me! I can’t stand this. Guess I’ll go now.”The young fishermen were now roaring “Ah–men!” and if they had been allowed to imitate the ocean long as they pleased, Capt. Elliott might have escaped. Mr. Raynham saw an old man rising, and guessing the object of the movement, waved his hand imperatively to the male singers. The ocean did not finish its roar very gracefully, but above the confused tumbling of the surf, Mr. Raynham’s voice rose triumphantly. “We will have music again, in a moment. A few words more.” Capt. Elliott remembered his promise to May, and reluctantly sat down.“Oh, dear! Catch me makin’ sich a promise next time!” inwardly moaned the captain.In those “few words more,” Mr. Raynham made a pathetic appeal to his audience, and especially to those who were old, and yet trying to live without the love of their Father in heaven.“That would go to the heart of a stone krockerdile,” declared Aunt Lydia.No, it went to the heart of a human being; and stony though it may have seemed to an outsider, it was tender yet, for homeward went that night an old man, creeping slowly and alone, sore and wounded in his soul, conscience–sick.And Chauncy Aldrich, how did he feel?“That was a good sermon, Aldrich,” said Walter after the service.Chauncy gave a laugh, ringing, and hard, and brassy: “Ah—ah! That young feller did get warmed up, warmed up, Plympton; but you can’t expect a business man like me, always watching the market and pushing trade, to be thinking about these things. By and by, Plympton!” Ah, that by–and–by flag! Many noble ships have sailed fatally under.The people were interested in the service.“Come again,” said Aunt Lydia to Mr. Raynham; “come again. We all want you. Come, if you haven’t anything big for wise folks, and only suthin’ simple for fools; for you will have lots of ’em here.”Mr. Raynham said he would come another Sunday; perhaps the very next.The Sunday that the Hall had been occupied, chanced to be Michaelmas beautiful festival, ripe like the landscape with color and fruitage. All nature—its maples, its oaks, its fields, its orchards—was shining with the glow of St. Michael’s triumph over the dragon. And in the rough little fishing village by the sea, it seemed as if the brave, mighty archangel had given the old dragon another thrust, and Right had sorely wounded the Wrong.CHAPTER X.THE BOAT–RACE.No less a wonder than a boat–race was announced on an October day, and no less a person than Chauncy Aldrich planned the wonder.“We need to wake ’em up, wake ’em up,” he said to Walter, and he ran his hand through his bristling rampart of hair. “Trade is dull, and needs stimulating. People that want to do business must make business. I have passed a subscription paper round, and the business men of the community have handed out quite liberally. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, did not seem to have a commendable local pride, I should say, and refused to help us. However, we propose to have the race, and give a purse of twenty–five dollars to the successful boat in a six–oared race. Entries can be made by any parties living inside of ten miles from here. Yes, we are going to wake up sometrade, and so we have thought it best to have a boat–race.” A purse of twenty–five dollars! That sounded large as—the Atlantic Ocean. It consisted, however, of Baggs’ very liberal “promise” of twenty dollars, or double even (and it is very easy to multiply a “promise” any number of times), an actual subscription of four dollars from Timothy Pullins—Uncle Boardman’s business–rival at The Harbor—and then Miss Green was so tickled to be accounted one of the business community, and to receive an invitation to subscribe, that she had actually handed over the magnificent sum of one silver dollar.The neighborhood was very much excited over the event. Walter had been selected as one of the crew in Chauncy’s boat, and with his usual enthusiasm, he practiced rowing at all leisure moments. Aunt Lydia found him “going through the motions,” as he declared it, behind the counter of the store, even.“What ye doin’, Walter?”“Ha, ha, Aunt! Only going through the motions, practicing the stroke Chauncy gave us. He says it is the best in the country. There, you shove forward so—”“Nonsense! I want somebody to shove the saw for me in the shed. My fire is dreadfullow. I’ll tend the store while you are gone.”Walter transferred this trial stroke to the saw–horse at once.He planned the next morning, to rise half an hour earlier than usual, and row awhile on the river. “Am I late?” he said, opening his eyes early, and from his bed looking out of a window toward the sea. The sun was just coming up, and had suffused with a rich crimson the placid waters.“I’m all right,” Walter said, and hurriedly dressed himself. He was about leaving the room, when he said, “There’s my Bible! I almost forgot that. The fact is you have to be particular about reading, or you will miss a morning pretty readily.”It is very easy to make gaps in our devotions, and a gap made to–day may mean a gap to–morrow, and when two or three days go by and no Bible has been read, it is very easy to widen the break into an interval of a week. There is nothing so weakening as an intermission now and then. On the other hand, there is nothing that so pays us a handsome profit, as a little care to keep up a good habit. The human will is a curious piece of machinery, and the simple fact that we are in thehabit of doing certain things, of going to church, of reading our Bible, saying our prayers, this year, is one of the strongest reasons why we shall be likely to do this next year, and will have vast influence in giving a set and direction to our character. Walter had begun to realize this, and he said to himself, “If I am going to read my Bible, I must be particular to read it every morning.” He sat down in a yellow chair by the window fronting the sea, and opened his Bible. This was one of the verses he read that morning; “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”Somehow, those words were pressed into his memory; printed vividly there like those shining colors off in the sea. When he had finished his reading, he stepped softly downstairs, passed out into the yard, and then made his way to his boat on the shore of the river. The morning though bright and clear, was chilly, and the rowing of the new stroke imparted by Chauncy was “good as the stove in Aunt Lyddy’s kitchen to make one feel warm,” Walter thought. He finished his practice, andwas about stepping from the boat upon the smooth little pebbles strewn along the “landin’,” as the fishermen called it, when a sharp voice startled him. “Hul–lo!”Turning, Walter saw Chauncy Aldrich.“That you, Aldrich?”“Nobody else, Plympton. Out trying my new stroke?”“Yes, it’s first rate to warm a fellow up.”“And you’ll find it good to make a boat go. It’s as good a stroke as you will find in the market.”Here Chauncy lifted his hat, and thrusting his hand through his hair and piling it up anew, gave a defiant look, as if saying to all the world, “I’ll dare you to bring on another stroke as good as this.” Then he resumed his conversation.“See here, Plympton. I just wanted to see you, and I came out here on purpose, thinking I might find you, after what you said one day that you thought you should take an early hour for practice. A business man, you know, must be on hand early to catch custom, and I wanted to see you about something special. Just you and me, and no more!”Chauncy said this with an air of secrecy, of patronage also; as if he had reserved for Walterand Walter only, some unknown, distinguished honor. He drew close to Walter, and dropping his voice said, “I expect that our opponents next Tuesday, the day for the race, will be the Scarlet Grays from Campton.”“Scarlet Grays?”“Yes, they wear scarlet caps and gray pants, and then scarlet slippers again, and look quite nobby. But that’s according to fancy. You and I mean business, and that’s what we are after, and can get along in our every day wear. That’s what I think.”Here he gave a wise little chuckle, and shook his head very decidedly and knowingly, so that he reminded Walter of those days when the academy students called him, “Solomon.”“But here’s to the point. A–hem!”Chauncy dropped his voice still lower, and tapping the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, sharply eyed a rock in the river as if he would be willing to take this rock into the secret, but for no consideration could he admit a second rock.“You see, Plympton—ahem!”Then he shrugged his shoulders. It was evident he wished to say something, and yet had a misgiving with regard to the fitness of the message, or Walter’s fitness to hear it.“Well, out with it, Aldrich!” said Walter, his open, honest face contrasting strongly with the sly look of reserve on his companion’s features. “Out with it! That’s business, as you say.”“Ha, ha, Plympton! You’ve got me there, sure. Well, as I was going to say, Lang Tripp, the captain of the Scarlet Grays, came to me the other day and said he, ‘Look here, Aldrich! This is between you and me.’ ‘Of course,’ said I. ‘Are you anxious to win in that boat–race?’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘we mean business, of course; but if we are whipped, we must submit. When a man goes into the market to buy, he must do the best he can, and let it go at that. That’s the way of it, of course,’ said I. ‘When a man goes into the market,’ he said—you said—no—he said”—The business man tumbled over half a dozen “saids” and began again. “I mean that he referred to what I said about going into the market, and then went on, ‘That helps me to come to the point, which is—is—a little understanding—trade, some folks might call it, though I don’t.’ Then he went on, and this is what it amounted to. They have gone—I mean the Scarlet Grays—to a good deal of expense in getting up their uniform—they’rerich, you know! Rich isn’t the word. O they could buy out a gold mine and not feel it. Well, after all, they haven’t won a race. They are going to play with us, you know—row, I mean, and then they row with a set of mill–hands at Campton. Well, their folks feel badly because they don’t whip anybody, and Tripp says his mother is all worked up about it. Then Tripp asked, ‘Who is that rather heavy, strong, well–built fellow in your crew, who wears a stiff, round–top felt, and pulls a neat, strong stroke too, for I saw him at it the other day?’ Well, I knew my goods of course, and I knew it was—you.”Here Walter straightened up. The compliment was very acceptable, and Chauncy’s quick eyes saw it. This apt disciple of Baggs appreciated the customer he was dealing with, and repeated the opinion of the renowned leader of the “Scarlet Grays.” Then he continued: “After that, Tripp said, ‘I really feel that we are at your mercy, especially with that fellow against us—’” here Chauncy looked slyly at Walter, who now stood erect as a king at a coronation—“‘and I know it’s going to make our fellers feel bad, and our folks feel bad, and we shall surely lose that next race with those mill fellers—and of course,’ he said, ‘Idon’t mean that you shall lose by it—’ ‘Lose what?’ said I, for a business man must have his teeth cut. ‘Oh,’ said Tripp, ‘I am coming to it. We don’t, or I don’t, care a snap for the money. How much is it?’ Well, I told him; and then yesterday, I got ten fishermen to give each fifty cents, making between thirty and forty dollars in all as—as subscribed. Of course, Uncle Baggs is the heaviest name on the list, and he didn’t hand it to me; but then he’s good for twenty times twenty.”Chauncy did not say whether he was good for the money, or simply for a “subscription”; a difference which all handlers of “subscription papers” appreciate. All this time, Walter was wondering what Chauncy was driving at.“Of course I said I didn’t care about the money, and Tripp said he didn’t; and Tripp said that it should be all right. It should all be paid over to us; or rather, the equivalent of it. His folks would feel so badly if they lost another race, and he knew his crew wouldn’t have the heart to row that next race. ‘There,’ said he, ‘it shall be between us. If you and that Plympton—that’s what you call him—will just let up now and then on your rowing, and pull easy, I think we can handle the rest of you, and—and—’”“What do you mean?” said Walter abruptly. “Sell out?”He was now more erect than ever, straightening up because stiffened by a sense of indignation.“Hold on, Plympton, you don’t understand,” said Chauncy soothingly. He saw that he had made a mistake. He “had put too many goods on the market at once,” to use his own phrase. Continuing his soothing tone of voice, he said: “I can’t but pity the Scarlet Grays, if they are feeling so badly and their folks are stirred up, and ‘the town is down on ’em.’ Lang says, why, his mother is just awful, he says, and is real nervous. To oblige them, I’d give it all away—I mean the prize.”Such self–sacrifice! He was willing to throw himself away—as far as this boat–race was concerned—all for the sake of the Scarlet Grays’ feelings! In reality, he had already received a present of “five dollars” from Tripp, and expected another “five,” if successful with Walter. Walter’s instincts were always in the right place. A wrong thing coming to him, he would condemn as wrong, and a right thing, he would commend as right. But he was sympathetic, while conscientious. He felt for the individual sinner, while he disapproved of hissin; and his sympathy might cloud the decision of his judgment. When he thought of the Scarlet Grays, the occasion of so much parental disappointment, and the object of so much town talk and town sport, he did pity “the poor chaps,” as Chauncy whiningly labeled them in his continued talk. Chauncy saw that he was making an impression; that he was “putting the right goods on the market, and the right quantity;” and he continued to deliver them in a sympathetic, pitying, self–sacrificing tone. Suddenly Walter said to himself, “What am I doing, allowing this fellow to talk so? Where’s mother’s advice, ‘Honest, boy’? And then that psalm I was reading from, this morning. What did that say? Why, I can almost seem to see it written in the sky!”And looking away to the east all afire with a shining crimson above the placid sea, he seemed to see those words traced in the clouds:“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee; O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”He turned quickly to Chauncy, and said in a very positive way, “Aldrich, this thing is not right; and I won’t have anything to do with it.”“A–em!” said a voice.Somebody was passing. The two young men turned, and there was Capt. Barney, the keeper of the life saving station. He passed so near that they heard his step distinctly, and yet he did not seem to be noticing them, and rapidly moved away. Another moment, he had turned the corner of an old mossy ledge, tufted with a few bushes, and planted near the water’s edge, now sparkling in the sunshine. Chauncy was much confused for “a cool, clear–headed business man,” as he judged himself to be. Walter’s decided opinion, again abruptly presented, had taken this soft talking, pitying young trader by surprise. His face flushed, he stammered, and he looked angry, as Walter now spoke on his side:—“Aldrich, this thing is wrong. I don’t care about the money; but as I understand it, quite a number of people, including those ten fishermen, have given toward the race. They will all take an interest in the race, and want The Harbor crew to do its best, its honest best. The people that take the trouble to come and look at us will all expect us to do our best. Why, I couldn’t do that thing,—let up on the rowing, and then walk up the street and hold up my head. As for those ninnies from Campton,if they didn’t want to get licked, what did they enter for? They were not obliged to do it!”Chauncy’s feelings were of a very mixed character. He knew the proposition from the other crew was not fair, and was really ashamed of himself; and then he was mad because Walter had shown himself to be more honest than he. Walter now startled and confused him with another proposition:—“See here, Aldrich! If we get the prize–money, I don’t want it any more than you. Let’s give it away, say to start a library down here at The Harbor, or somewhere in town; a Town Library, I mean; of course, if the other fellers in the crew are willing, and if—if—we get it.”This was another unexpected blow. Chauncy already had begun to reckon what his share of money from the race would probably be, and had paid it over in his own mind toward a pair of new trousers which he very much needed. The failure of his wealthy uncle to pay Chauncy for some reason all the money he owed his clerk, interfered with the young man’s desire to dress well on Sunday, at least. With a face reddened by shame and anger, he had begun to stammer out a reply to Walter, when his namewas suddenly called. Turning, he saw the keeper of the life saving station. At Capt. Barney’s side was a stranger, who was introduced as the superintendent of the life saving station district, Mr. Eames.“I want to get a little lumber at your mill,” said the keeper, “if you could go with us.”“Yes,sir!” replied Chauncy with an air of patronage, to his patron. “I’m ready for a trade.”Off he strode, glad of any excuse for ending a conversation in which he felt that he was making little progress. In a jaunty way, he sported his hat on one side of his head, and moved as proudly as if going off to a bargain of millions.The boat–race had been announced to come off the afternoon of the second day after this interview between Walter and Chauncy, at the hour of two, and it came off as promptly as that hour itself. There was great interest felt on the occasion. It seemed as if the sun had given his golden disk an extra polish, so bright was it; while the maples that dotted the banks of the river flew their gay banners from morning till night. All the able bodied inhabitants that The Harbor could muster, turned out with curious eyes and sympathetichearts. People from the outside world came in vehicles of various kinds. Certain anxious looking women tucked away in a coach, Walter fancied to be the mothers of some of the Scarlet Grays. But where were the latter?“There they are!” shouted some one at last, and round a rocky point in the river, came the brilliant Scarlet Grays. Wearing their scarlet caps, they looked like poppy stalks all a–blossom, and conspicuous on their caps were the dark letters S. G. Chauncy’s crew, consisting of Chauncy, Walter, Don Pedro and others, seemed very humble and tame beside these brilliant floral oarsmen.“Fact is we made a blunder,” observed Chauncy, “in not having a uniform. But never mind; merit wins. The trade does not always go to the man in the best clothes.”Remembering their late morning talk, Walter could but think that a trade, and a bad one, had almost gone in favor of these gaily decorated seamen.“Fellers, who are those coming?” asked Chauncy, now slowly rising in his boat and pointing out another that was now shooting out of a little creek that emptied into the river. “There are six rowing in it? Does that mean a new entry? I suppose they havea right to come, as we gave out that boats could enter any time before the race.”As the strange craft approached nearer, the comments of Chauncy’s crew were more curious and eager.“Seaweed Townies!” exclaimed somebody. All wonder was at an end, and disgust now began. “Seaweed Town” was a nook of the sea where half a dozen poor houses were clustered on a rocky shore, and their inhabitants were shabby people nicknamed “Seaweed Townies.” The occupants of this boat were boys of about sixteen, lean and scraggy, with long, tangled black hair. Although not equal in size to the members of Chauncy’s crew, they had a certain wiry, tough look, and their dark eyes flashed with an eager ambition to win. The Scarlet Grays—and how brilliantly they outshone these rivals who did not indeed shine at all—hailed the advent of this new “entry” with derision.“Arabs!” they said with a sneer; but the Seaweed Townies did not reply to them, only looking more eager, and occasionally giving their oars a nervous twitch.Off darted the three boats at the appointed signal; while the spectators applauded, and the very maples seemed to be waving red handkerchiefs.“Don’t they look handsome!” screamed little Miss P. Green. “Those Scarlet Grays are be—be—witching.”“Nonsense!” said Aunt Lydia with commendable local pride. “Those little turkey gobblers hain’t got no last to ’em! Jest see our boys!”“Our boys” certainly pulled with vigor. Chauncy was now sincerely anxious to win the laurels of the day, the arrival of the Seaweed Townies having “toned up the market.” Walter handled his oar with vigor, and Don Pedro pulled with a grim resoluteness. Who would praise the Seaweed Townies? Now and then some sympathizing fellow, or “Arab!” yelled from a boat in the river, a note of cheer; but among The Harbor populace, Jabez Wherren alone ventured a word of commendation.“Wall, now,” said Jabez, “them little chaps from Seaweed Town do pull well. They don’t seem to have any friends, but I shouldn’t wonder—shouldn’t—wonder—”“Wall, what?” asked his spouse, impatiently and meaningly.“Don’t—don’t dare say,” replied Jabez, in a tone of mock humility, squinting afresh at the struggling crews.“Wall,Idare to say,” affirmed that warm partisan, Aunt Lydia. “You ought ter be ashamed of yourself!”On sped the boats; stoutly pulled the oarsmen; the spectators huzzahed; while the maples, in silence, showed their warm admiration. The Scarlet Grays took the lead at the opening of the race, a fact that created much excitement among the Campton carriages, and, all a–flutter with fragrant white handkerchiefs was the coach filled with ladies. The “S. G’s” though, could not maintain their position. They frantically struggled, and one boy in his violent contortions even lost his scarlet cap overboard, and pulled bare–headed the rest of the way. When the stake–boat was reached, and the contending craft rounded this limit of their course, it was seen that Chauncy’s crew was in the front place. This excited The Harbor people to furious applause, as soon as this fact was appreciated by them.“It looks now,” said Aunt Lydia, “as if our boys would win, and we’ll have a Libr’y down here. Walter said, the boys all agreed, if they got the money to give it toward a Public Libr’y.”“Hoo–ray for our boys!” screamed Miss P. Greene, who had transferred her admirationfrom the Scarlet Grays to the proper crew, and wished to show her appreciation of all “educational movements” as she termed them. “Hoo—”She was about to give another cheer, but a tall butter firkin on which she had been standing because it put her sharp nose and sharp eyes just above the shoulders of other people, here refused to serve as a lookout any longer. It was something altogether apart from the usual vocation of butter tubs; and naturally asserting the right of revolution, or in this case, of devolution, the tub canted over, and began to roll; and down somewhere went Miss Green! But while she went down, her voice went up, the tongue asserting its accustomed supremacy in this trying moment, even, and the cheer for Chauncy’s crew ended in a scream. It made a little stir among the spectators, but Jabez Wherren was promptly on hand, and gallantly fished the post–mistress up. He set the rebellious butter firkin in its proper subordinate place, and then set Miss Green on top of it, where like a queen on her throne she received the commiseration and congratulations of her friends, who shuddered at her fall, and rejoiced over her rise once more. I am afraid this fall was ominous though, and my readers will soonsee for themselves. As the crews pulled away in the river, Jabez Wherren, with a lack of patriotism, declared that those “little Seaweed fellers are givin’ it to our boat. Jest about up with ’em and crowdin’ ’em hard!”“There, Jabez!” said his spouse, who like the butter firkin could only stand a certain amount of strain, “ef you can’t talk any more sensible, you’d better go hum.”“No—no,” quietly remarked the grinning Jabez, “I’m goin’—to see the upshot of this.”Unlucky prophet! What did he want to use that word “upshot” for? He had no sooner spoken it, than there was an unhappy commotion noticed in Chauncy’s boat. The crew had been complaining of the new stroke which Chauncy had introduced, but he had insisted upon its use, saying it was very “scientific”; that “just now it was the top thing in the market, and would fetch a premium any day.” When it was noticed in the race that the Seaweed Townies were gaining on them, Chauncy, who acted as captain of The Harbor crew, energetically stimulated them by such remarks as: “Muscle pays—now, boys!” “Don’t let them have a cheap bargain. Hum—now!” “Crowd the market! Give it to ’em!”Finally he called out: “The stroke, boys!Give them our stroke good! Science, boys!” Every boy now watched his oar intently, and pulled with all the “science” he could muster. Chauncy aimed to set the example, and as he strove to handle his oar with precision, he gave it an unlucky violent jostle in the thole–pins. One of these like the butter firkin on shore, could not patiently submit to everything, and—broke! There is such a thing in an oarsman’s experience as “catching a crab.” The oarsman concludes for some reason, generally an irresistible one, to go over backwards, and there catch his crab. As he tumbles into the bottom of the boat, his feet naturally go up and his arms also, while his head and shoulders go down; and his whole figure may possibly suggest a crab, with its crooked, wriggling members. Chauncy now ignominiously “caught a crab.” The great Solomon went down in disgrace and disaster! The effect on The Harbor spectators was as if the sun had gone into mourning, while the maples all shivered in sympathy. Chauncy quickly was up again, a new thole–pin was inserted, and the crew gallantly pulled away. But there were the Seaweed Townies, ahead now by two boat lengths! This advanced position, with grins and giggles, those “dark–eyed monkeys,” asAunt Lydia promptly labeled them, stubbornly maintained. Chauncy with frenzied efforts tried to “work up the market,” but the “Arabs” were victors. Lean and wiry as ever, they triumphantly pulled their boat ashore.“Well, boys, we whipped the Scarlet Grays,” said Chauncy, wiping his face. “Fact was I had from the very outset a strong desire to whip them, and we succeeded.”Chauncy’s assertion about his “strong desire” would not bear investigation.It was a fact, however, that Chauncy’s crew had whipped the Scarlet Grays. Like poppies that have been picked and then left out in a frost, the “S. G.’s” pulled listlessly to the landing–place.The crowd slowly dribbled away, the people making their comments as they retired.“There’s a chance for a Public Library gone,” moaned Miss P. Green.“Yes, yes,” sympathetically wailed Aunt Lydia and Mrs. Wherren.“There, Jabez,” said his wife, “I hope another time you won’t cheer fur the en’my so.”“I didn’t cheer ’em, Huldy,” replied Jabez in surprise.“You made sympathizin’ remarks, though.”“Yes, yes,” said Aunt Lydia, and Miss P. Green.And poor Jabez went home, feeling that the weight of responsibility for some great national disaster rested on his shoulders. His wife, “Huldy,” had remarkable success in making Jabez feel that he was guilty, even when innocent.

CHAPTER VIII.AT THE STATION.Walter was at the life saving station looking up a stairway leading from the crew’s room to an open scuttle in the roof. If Walter had put his head out of the scuttle, he would have seen a railing, hemming in a small platform; and from its center, rose a modest flag–staff. There was no chance though for explorations, as the way was entirely blocked. On the stairway, Walter saw an immense pair of boots, and above them a stout pair of legs; and then a man’s bulky body, roofed by a huge “sou’wester.”“No room for me to pass there,” thought Walter.The man held in his hand the object that at a life saving station comes under the head, “marine glasses.”“Do you see anything?” asked Walter recognizing the man to be Tom Walker.“Only a fishin’ smack, and a mean one at that. It’s my watch, you know.”The boots, the legs, the big body, and the sou’wester all came down.“Step up if you want to, Walter.”Climbing the stairway, Walter swept the sea with his bright eyes, and then looked landward across the black rocks and the fading fields. Then he turned toward the sea again. Off in the east was the fishing smack, slowly sailing in the sun. Then he looked up at the flag–staff, which carried some specimen of marine architecture on its top.“I see two craft,” said Walter.“Two?” inquired Tom, solicitously.“The fishing smack and this on top of the staff.”“Ho—ho!” roared Tom.“Only I can’t make out this second one in the air.”“Itwasa brig, but the last gale we had tore away its rigging, and made some improvements; and I don’t know what on airth or water to call that thing. I guess she is ’phibious, and will go on either.”Walter’s eager eyes caught a glimpse of a box, on a landing half way up the stairway to the lookout, and from this box projectedbundles of cloth, here and there showing bits of color.“That is the signal box?” remarked Walter.“Yes. Sometime I will explain them to you.”“Will you?” inquired Walter, his hazel eyes snapping at the prospect of this new continent of knowledge,—the signal department of the life saving service.“Sartin. Give you a hint now. For instance, we have a pennant, a triangular flag, blue, with a white ball in it; and if I h’ist it, it would mean ‘no’ to some question asked by a vessel off shore signaling to me. Or, s’posin’ I h’isted a white pennant with a red ball. That would mean ‘yes.’”Walter desired to overhaul that unpretending box at once, but he knew he must return to the store; and he only remarked, “I would like to see all those signals out sometime.”“I guess you can without any doubt. You take a good deal of interest in our station, don’t you?”“Yes, I do. It is something entirely new to me.”“You would make a pretty good surfman,” said Tom, glancing approvingly at Walter’scompact frame. “Woodbury Elliott says you row a pretty good stroke.”“Oh! That his name? I came in his boat from the Crescent the other night.”“Yes,” said Tom deliberately, looking at Walter’s frame as if he were a recruiting officer examining the physical points of a candidate for the ranks of Uncle Sam’s army. “I think, I think—you would do.”Walter laughed. “I guess I must be a storekeeper. However, I am pleased if you think I have strength enough for a surfman.”Tom now turned away, and with his glass swept the misty horizon again.“There is the fishin’ smack,” he said. “And hullo! What’s that? I missed her afore, sartin.”“What is it?”“She’s a fore–and–aft, sure as you are born; and—and—it is a coaster, and she’s headin’ this way. Queer I missed her.”“I didn’t see her. Uncle Boardman is expecting a coaster to come after a load of potatoes. I wonder if that’s the one!”“I shouldn’t wonder one bit. It’s hazy where she is, and that’s the reason we didn’t see her.”“I think I had better report that to uncle.”“Of course,” remarked the surfman, pointing his glass again at the schooner. “She may go somewhere else, but she acts to me as if she wanted to run in at The Harbor.”“I think I will tell Uncle Boardman.”“What does she bring here, if it’s bound here for your uncle’s potatoes?”“I believe she brings a variety of things; some groceries for the store, some salt for the fishermen, and so on. Her cargo is what they call miscellaneous.”It was not long before a coasting schooner was beating off the mouth of the harbor, saying plainly by her actions that she wished to make port as soon as possible.“It must be theOlive Ann,” declared Boardman Blake; “and, Walter, I think you had better go down to Spring’s wharf, and see if everything is ready for the coaster there.”Walter went to the wharf. Jabez Wherren, a fisherman, stood leaning against an oaken pier, watching the fluttering efforts of the coaster to reach a sheltered resting–place.“I expect that is a schooner uncle is expecting, and she will come here, Mr. Wherren. Will you look after her, please? I must go back to the store.”Receiving from the gray–headed old man apromise that he would give theOlive Anna reception befitting a dame of her commercial position, Walter hurried away. He returned to the store, and then left again in an hour for the wharf, above which now shot up two tapering masts, signaling the arrival of the coaster. He was passing the schoolhouse at The Harbor, when a little girl playing on the rough step of stone before the door, looked up and said, “I know you.”It was Woodbury Elliott’s young companion, the day he had visited Baggs’ shanty, and found Walter there.“Oh, that you?” said Walter stopping. “Do you go to school here?”“Yes.”“Who is your teacher?”“Sister.”“Don’t you have any school to–day?”“School is just out, but my sister hasn’t gone.”“I wonder if she is the one that Woodbury said gave him his supper and hot coffee,” thought Walter. “She knew how to cure a man in trouble.”“Good afternoon,” said a pleasant voice in the entry. Walter looked up, and there before him, advancing also toward him with a handoutstretched in welcome, was May Elliott. The old schoolhouse in the fishing village seemed to disappear at once, as by the touch of a magician’s wand. In its place, was the academy. Again, it was “composition day,” and in May Elliott’s hand was a schoolgirl’s composition, from which she was reading these words: “The life that does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is making a serious mistake.”All this came to Walter, and he stood in a daze.“Don’t you know me, Plympton? May Elliott?”“Oh, yes,” he said, quickly recovering from his surprise. “But I was not looking for you, and—”“It gave you a surprise? Won’t you come in?”“I am glad to see you, Miss Elliott. Why, I didn’t know you were here!”He followed her into the low–storied schoolroom, and sat down in a chair that she placed for him near the door.“Yes, I am here. My home is here at The Harbor, and you can see the house through this window; that white house beyond the fishflakesin the field. There are some apple–trees back of it, which you can see.”“I didn’t know you were here,” said Walter again, looking off from the house, and rapidly taking the picture of the young teacher. She was hardly of medium height, and was simply clad, in a black alpaca dress, wearing at her throat a crimson ribbon pinned with a small cross of gold. Her brown hair was very soft and fine, and of a luxuriant growth. Her features were a little irregular, but her complexion was fair, and then a certain brightness and directness of look gave her blue eyes a magnetic power.“Yes,” she laughingly said, “I suppose you would call me the village ‘schoolmarm,’ at least, this fall. When I was a little girl, I remember—sitting on one of those benches in front,—I had an ambition to be some day the teacher of the school. But, Plympton, I have been wanting to see you, and thank you for your kindness to my brother, Woodbury. He has—has—a weakness, as you know; and what you did that afternoon, checked him when he was sorely tempted.”“I am very glad if I did any good. And—and—I have thought I would like to thankyou, sometime.”“For what?”“Do you remember your composition?”“Oh, I believe I wrote a number of them. Which one was it?”“That one called, ‘What are we living for?’ That influenced me a good deal,” said Walter, rising as if to go.“Did it? I never knew that it helped anybody, except, perhaps, it set me to thinking more fully afterwards on the subject. Are you going?”“I think I must. But I want to thank you for what you said; and if I can help Woodbury, I will.”In response, there was a bright look of sincere pleasure shining out of May Elliott’s face. Through the day, a pair of blue eyes followed Walter in his thoughts, as if intent to overtake him and ask him some question.“Miss Elliott keeps your school,” he said to Jabez Wherren on the wharf at a little later hour.“May, you mean? Wall, yes, and she’s a smart leetle critter, not more’n sixteen or seventeen; but she makes them young ones toe the mark, I tell ye. We all think a good deal of May; brought up here amongst us, you know. There’s Woodbury, her brother; a smartfeller as ever lived, if he would never tech liquor. He might be a captain of his own craft, jest as easy, jest as easy—as—as—mud.” After this expressive and telling simile, Jabez recovered the breath he had lost in that effort, and continued: “It’s a bright family, the Elliotts is. That little Amy, she’ll beat the whole school a–spellin’—that is, all of her age. Woodbury’s father and mother are well–to–do, forehanded folks. He’s a skipper, and is on this very schooner. What’s that?”Jabez was now directing his attention to the gangway of theOlive Ann, which had been securely moored to the little wharf. A colored boy in a shabby brown suit was disembarking, carrying a very small bundle in his hand. Springing out upon the wharf, he looked in various directions, as if a stranger, and he was calculating which way he had better go. A choice between two routes offered itself, and he chanced to take that which would lead him to Boardman Blake’s store.“Who’s that passenger?” asked Jabez of Captain Elliott, a muscular, heavy man of fifty.“I can’t say. He shipped at New York, and worked for his passage. He wanted to be off soon as I could spare him, and I said he might go now, or stay longer. He’d rather be off now.I’m afeared he won’t pick up any work very soon, but he will probably push on till he finds some sort of a chance.”Walter went home thinking of this unknown youth, a stranger, homeless, tramping off anywhere. Aunt Lydia met him in the kitchen. A very broad grin was on her face, as if the old lady had found a prize that made her very happy.“Come into the addition,” said she, beckoning mysteriously. “Step softly, you know. I’ve got suthin’ to show you.”The “addition” was built on to the rear of the house, and contained two rooms, the lower being a kind of store–room.“There!” said Aunt Lydia, pointing at the corner.Curled up under an old quilt, a smile brightening a face happy in a trip to some beautiful dream–land, was the “passenger,” as Jabez had entitled him, who had just arrived per coasterOlive Ann.“Ho, Aunt Lyddy! You got Young Africa there?” whispered Walter.“Yes, and I didn’t have the heart to turn him away. You see he came to the door, and sort of mournful, looked up and asked for a leetle suthin’ to eat, and said he would workfirst, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse him. Then I sez, ‘Where you goin’?’ ‘Dunno,’ he sez; and I thought it wasn’t jest Christian to let him go a–wanderin’ off into the world when the night was a–comin’, and I sez, pointin’ to your Uncle Boardman in the barnyard, ‘you might ax that man, and if he’s a–willin’, and can give you suthin’ to do, you can stay here till mornin’.’ And it would have done your soul good to have seen how grateful that child was when Boardman sez—and I knew he would—‘I’ll leave it to Lyddy.’”“What’s his name?” asked Walter, when they were in the kitchen once more, leaving that “child” to his happy rest under Aunt Lyddy’s homemade bedquilt; which, like its owner, was a little rough on the outside, but exceedingly warm within.“Pedro White, he told me. And jest think, I told it to your Uncle Boardman, and he laffed and said ‘Pedro’ was Spanish, and he ought to be called ‘Don Pedro.’ You know your uncle has read a ’mazin’ sight.”Aunt Lydia had a very large respect for her husband’s “book–larnin’,” as she called it. It must be acknowledged though, that before the pressure of each day’s necessities, Uncle Boardman, with his “book–larnin’,” wouldoften retreat; while Aunt Lydia, gifted only with her sharp, practical sense, would advance triumphantly. This fact does not prove that book knowledge is of little worth. It is extremely valuable. It should go hand in hand with excellent judgment to make it of the greatest value to its possessor. “That child” slept profoundly under Aunt Lydia’s bedquilt, which rivaled the rain–bow in its many colors and the sunshine in its warmth.

AT THE STATION.

Walter was at the life saving station looking up a stairway leading from the crew’s room to an open scuttle in the roof. If Walter had put his head out of the scuttle, he would have seen a railing, hemming in a small platform; and from its center, rose a modest flag–staff. There was no chance though for explorations, as the way was entirely blocked. On the stairway, Walter saw an immense pair of boots, and above them a stout pair of legs; and then a man’s bulky body, roofed by a huge “sou’wester.”

“No room for me to pass there,” thought Walter.

The man held in his hand the object that at a life saving station comes under the head, “marine glasses.”

“Do you see anything?” asked Walter recognizing the man to be Tom Walker.

“Only a fishin’ smack, and a mean one at that. It’s my watch, you know.”

The boots, the legs, the big body, and the sou’wester all came down.

“Step up if you want to, Walter.”

Climbing the stairway, Walter swept the sea with his bright eyes, and then looked landward across the black rocks and the fading fields. Then he turned toward the sea again. Off in the east was the fishing smack, slowly sailing in the sun. Then he looked up at the flag–staff, which carried some specimen of marine architecture on its top.

“I see two craft,” said Walter.

“Two?” inquired Tom, solicitously.

“The fishing smack and this on top of the staff.”

“Ho—ho!” roared Tom.

“Only I can’t make out this second one in the air.”

“Itwasa brig, but the last gale we had tore away its rigging, and made some improvements; and I don’t know what on airth or water to call that thing. I guess she is ’phibious, and will go on either.”

Walter’s eager eyes caught a glimpse of a box, on a landing half way up the stairway to the lookout, and from this box projectedbundles of cloth, here and there showing bits of color.

“That is the signal box?” remarked Walter.

“Yes. Sometime I will explain them to you.”

“Will you?” inquired Walter, his hazel eyes snapping at the prospect of this new continent of knowledge,—the signal department of the life saving service.

“Sartin. Give you a hint now. For instance, we have a pennant, a triangular flag, blue, with a white ball in it; and if I h’ist it, it would mean ‘no’ to some question asked by a vessel off shore signaling to me. Or, s’posin’ I h’isted a white pennant with a red ball. That would mean ‘yes.’”

Walter desired to overhaul that unpretending box at once, but he knew he must return to the store; and he only remarked, “I would like to see all those signals out sometime.”

“I guess you can without any doubt. You take a good deal of interest in our station, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. It is something entirely new to me.”

“You would make a pretty good surfman,” said Tom, glancing approvingly at Walter’scompact frame. “Woodbury Elliott says you row a pretty good stroke.”

“Oh! That his name? I came in his boat from the Crescent the other night.”

“Yes,” said Tom deliberately, looking at Walter’s frame as if he were a recruiting officer examining the physical points of a candidate for the ranks of Uncle Sam’s army. “I think, I think—you would do.”

Walter laughed. “I guess I must be a storekeeper. However, I am pleased if you think I have strength enough for a surfman.”

Tom now turned away, and with his glass swept the misty horizon again.

“There is the fishin’ smack,” he said. “And hullo! What’s that? I missed her afore, sartin.”

“What is it?”

“She’s a fore–and–aft, sure as you are born; and—and—it is a coaster, and she’s headin’ this way. Queer I missed her.”

“I didn’t see her. Uncle Boardman is expecting a coaster to come after a load of potatoes. I wonder if that’s the one!”

“I shouldn’t wonder one bit. It’s hazy where she is, and that’s the reason we didn’t see her.”

“I think I had better report that to uncle.”

“Of course,” remarked the surfman, pointing his glass again at the schooner. “She may go somewhere else, but she acts to me as if she wanted to run in at The Harbor.”

“I think I will tell Uncle Boardman.”

“What does she bring here, if it’s bound here for your uncle’s potatoes?”

“I believe she brings a variety of things; some groceries for the store, some salt for the fishermen, and so on. Her cargo is what they call miscellaneous.”

It was not long before a coasting schooner was beating off the mouth of the harbor, saying plainly by her actions that she wished to make port as soon as possible.

“It must be theOlive Ann,” declared Boardman Blake; “and, Walter, I think you had better go down to Spring’s wharf, and see if everything is ready for the coaster there.”

Walter went to the wharf. Jabez Wherren, a fisherman, stood leaning against an oaken pier, watching the fluttering efforts of the coaster to reach a sheltered resting–place.

“I expect that is a schooner uncle is expecting, and she will come here, Mr. Wherren. Will you look after her, please? I must go back to the store.”

Receiving from the gray–headed old man apromise that he would give theOlive Anna reception befitting a dame of her commercial position, Walter hurried away. He returned to the store, and then left again in an hour for the wharf, above which now shot up two tapering masts, signaling the arrival of the coaster. He was passing the schoolhouse at The Harbor, when a little girl playing on the rough step of stone before the door, looked up and said, “I know you.”

It was Woodbury Elliott’s young companion, the day he had visited Baggs’ shanty, and found Walter there.

“Oh, that you?” said Walter stopping. “Do you go to school here?”

“Yes.”

“Who is your teacher?”

“Sister.”

“Don’t you have any school to–day?”

“School is just out, but my sister hasn’t gone.”

“I wonder if she is the one that Woodbury said gave him his supper and hot coffee,” thought Walter. “She knew how to cure a man in trouble.”

“Good afternoon,” said a pleasant voice in the entry. Walter looked up, and there before him, advancing also toward him with a handoutstretched in welcome, was May Elliott. The old schoolhouse in the fishing village seemed to disappear at once, as by the touch of a magician’s wand. In its place, was the academy. Again, it was “composition day,” and in May Elliott’s hand was a schoolgirl’s composition, from which she was reading these words: “The life that does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is making a serious mistake.”

All this came to Walter, and he stood in a daze.

“Don’t you know me, Plympton? May Elliott?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, quickly recovering from his surprise. “But I was not looking for you, and—”

“It gave you a surprise? Won’t you come in?”

“I am glad to see you, Miss Elliott. Why, I didn’t know you were here!”

He followed her into the low–storied schoolroom, and sat down in a chair that she placed for him near the door.

“Yes, I am here. My home is here at The Harbor, and you can see the house through this window; that white house beyond the fishflakesin the field. There are some apple–trees back of it, which you can see.”

“I didn’t know you were here,” said Walter again, looking off from the house, and rapidly taking the picture of the young teacher. She was hardly of medium height, and was simply clad, in a black alpaca dress, wearing at her throat a crimson ribbon pinned with a small cross of gold. Her brown hair was very soft and fine, and of a luxuriant growth. Her features were a little irregular, but her complexion was fair, and then a certain brightness and directness of look gave her blue eyes a magnetic power.

“Yes,” she laughingly said, “I suppose you would call me the village ‘schoolmarm,’ at least, this fall. When I was a little girl, I remember—sitting on one of those benches in front,—I had an ambition to be some day the teacher of the school. But, Plympton, I have been wanting to see you, and thank you for your kindness to my brother, Woodbury. He has—has—a weakness, as you know; and what you did that afternoon, checked him when he was sorely tempted.”

“I am very glad if I did any good. And—and—I have thought I would like to thankyou, sometime.”

“For what?”

“Do you remember your composition?”

“Oh, I believe I wrote a number of them. Which one was it?”

“That one called, ‘What are we living for?’ That influenced me a good deal,” said Walter, rising as if to go.

“Did it? I never knew that it helped anybody, except, perhaps, it set me to thinking more fully afterwards on the subject. Are you going?”

“I think I must. But I want to thank you for what you said; and if I can help Woodbury, I will.”

In response, there was a bright look of sincere pleasure shining out of May Elliott’s face. Through the day, a pair of blue eyes followed Walter in his thoughts, as if intent to overtake him and ask him some question.

“Miss Elliott keeps your school,” he said to Jabez Wherren on the wharf at a little later hour.

“May, you mean? Wall, yes, and she’s a smart leetle critter, not more’n sixteen or seventeen; but she makes them young ones toe the mark, I tell ye. We all think a good deal of May; brought up here amongst us, you know. There’s Woodbury, her brother; a smartfeller as ever lived, if he would never tech liquor. He might be a captain of his own craft, jest as easy, jest as easy—as—as—mud.” After this expressive and telling simile, Jabez recovered the breath he had lost in that effort, and continued: “It’s a bright family, the Elliotts is. That little Amy, she’ll beat the whole school a–spellin’—that is, all of her age. Woodbury’s father and mother are well–to–do, forehanded folks. He’s a skipper, and is on this very schooner. What’s that?”

Jabez was now directing his attention to the gangway of theOlive Ann, which had been securely moored to the little wharf. A colored boy in a shabby brown suit was disembarking, carrying a very small bundle in his hand. Springing out upon the wharf, he looked in various directions, as if a stranger, and he was calculating which way he had better go. A choice between two routes offered itself, and he chanced to take that which would lead him to Boardman Blake’s store.

“Who’s that passenger?” asked Jabez of Captain Elliott, a muscular, heavy man of fifty.

“I can’t say. He shipped at New York, and worked for his passage. He wanted to be off soon as I could spare him, and I said he might go now, or stay longer. He’d rather be off now.I’m afeared he won’t pick up any work very soon, but he will probably push on till he finds some sort of a chance.”

Walter went home thinking of this unknown youth, a stranger, homeless, tramping off anywhere. Aunt Lydia met him in the kitchen. A very broad grin was on her face, as if the old lady had found a prize that made her very happy.

“Come into the addition,” said she, beckoning mysteriously. “Step softly, you know. I’ve got suthin’ to show you.”

The “addition” was built on to the rear of the house, and contained two rooms, the lower being a kind of store–room.

“There!” said Aunt Lydia, pointing at the corner.

Curled up under an old quilt, a smile brightening a face happy in a trip to some beautiful dream–land, was the “passenger,” as Jabez had entitled him, who had just arrived per coasterOlive Ann.

“Ho, Aunt Lyddy! You got Young Africa there?” whispered Walter.

“Yes, and I didn’t have the heart to turn him away. You see he came to the door, and sort of mournful, looked up and asked for a leetle suthin’ to eat, and said he would workfirst, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse him. Then I sez, ‘Where you goin’?’ ‘Dunno,’ he sez; and I thought it wasn’t jest Christian to let him go a–wanderin’ off into the world when the night was a–comin’, and I sez, pointin’ to your Uncle Boardman in the barnyard, ‘you might ax that man, and if he’s a–willin’, and can give you suthin’ to do, you can stay here till mornin’.’ And it would have done your soul good to have seen how grateful that child was when Boardman sez—and I knew he would—‘I’ll leave it to Lyddy.’”

“What’s his name?” asked Walter, when they were in the kitchen once more, leaving that “child” to his happy rest under Aunt Lyddy’s homemade bedquilt; which, like its owner, was a little rough on the outside, but exceedingly warm within.

“Pedro White, he told me. And jest think, I told it to your Uncle Boardman, and he laffed and said ‘Pedro’ was Spanish, and he ought to be called ‘Don Pedro.’ You know your uncle has read a ’mazin’ sight.”

Aunt Lydia had a very large respect for her husband’s “book–larnin’,” as she called it. It must be acknowledged though, that before the pressure of each day’s necessities, Uncle Boardman, with his “book–larnin’,” wouldoften retreat; while Aunt Lydia, gifted only with her sharp, practical sense, would advance triumphantly. This fact does not prove that book knowledge is of little worth. It is extremely valuable. It should go hand in hand with excellent judgment to make it of the greatest value to its possessor. “That child” slept profoundly under Aunt Lydia’s bedquilt, which rivaled the rain–bow in its many colors and the sunshine in its warmth.

CHAPTER IX.THE HALL SERVICE.Did I not say there was only one store at The Harbor? I beg Miss P. Green’s pardon. She did not claim in so many words to “keep store,” and yet if anybody had actually denied her right to the use of that grand word, “store,” there would have been a tempest at The Harbor. She merely said that she “kept a few little articles”; and yet the black king of the Bigboos in the depths of Africa, would not think more of a red handkerchief and a hand looking–glass, than Miss P. Green did of her three shelves of “goods,” and one small show–case of pins, needles, gooseberries, lemon drops, and stationary, in her front room. Gooseberries and lemon drops, I say, for Miss P. Green kept only these, believing that you could sell more if you kept one article, and “got your name up” on the merits of that one article. In this case therewere two articles; but never were there such gooseberries before, nor have there been such lemon drops since. The gooseberries would have been excellent to pitch with—just big, and hard, and round enough—at a game of baseball; and as for the lemon drops, into what rapture those sugared acids, or that acidulated sugar rather, would throw any schoolboy or girl, at “recess–time.” Then Miss P. Green kept the post–office! There is no adjective I can now recall, of sufficient magnitude and magnificence to represent the importance which Miss P. Green attached to this position. Her ideas were not unduly exalted until she had seen the Boston post–office, and enjoyed an interview with the Boston post–master. She then felt that her position was unusual. She never looked upon her humble wooden walls as she came down the street, but that they changed to a granite façade, with lofty doors and pillars; and when she entered her abode she walked at once upon a marble pavement. What importance she felt when she handled the stamp, whose magic impress she must first make, before any letter could start on its travels from The Harbor. The Great Charlemagne pounding with his golden seal, did not feel half as grand. And those clumsy leathern pouches that werecalled mai–lbags, and which only Miss P. Green could open—how she venerated them! True Billings, the driver of the mail–wagon, handled them roughly, and pitched them upon the doorstep without ceremony, bawling out, “Here you have ’em!” By the post–mistress, they were approached with a certain respect and awe, whose weight would crush the official opening the great treasury–vaults of the nation, did he regard these with corresponding feelings of importance. It was stoutly secured to the door frame outside with good shingle nails, that sign indicating Miss P. Green’s official place in The Harbor world: “Post–office.” On the door leading from the entry into the front room was the name “P. Green.” This indicated her place in the great world of trade. If it had been attached to the outer door, it would have saved me an ugly omission, for I should at once have given her honorable mention in the business list of The Harbor. The sign occupied an outer position once, but boys do not always have that respect for authority which is becoming, and had changed the name one night to “Pea Green.” It was indignantly withdrawn the next day. It was just as well removed, I dare say, for if she had continued to daily see those two signs, “Post–office,” and “P. Green,” as she approached the building, the sense of her official and commercial importance would finally have been too much for her. As it was, she passed from the contemplation of one sign to the other, and there was a gradual letting down from that sense of exaltation which she had on seeing the front door.But all of Miss P. Green’s merits have not been mentioned. She was a very little body, and that may seem a detraction from her excellencies, and yet it was only another praiseworthy feature; for never in such small compass was packed so much knowledge. No “Saratoga” trunk ever went to “Springs,” so loaded, crowded, jammed. She was the village register; could tell the births and deaths and marriages for the year, giving each date. Not so surprising a fact, considering that the village was small; but when you add to this a complete knowledge of every household, how many were in each family, their names, occupations, what they had for breakfast, dinner and supper, what time they went to bed, and what time they left their beds, the register kept by P. Green, grew into a village directory and a village history. But this tree of knowledge did not stop its growth here. It had other branches. She knew all of the mysteriesof dressmaking and millinery; had a large acquaintance with housekeeping and nursing; kept posted in politics, and considered it her duty to defend the “administration,” though unfairly denied the right of suffrage.One of the latest achievements of this encyclopedia, was to obtain complete and reliable information about the life saving station. This she had done by carefully cultivating the acquaintance of Keeper Barney. She was now at work on these two subjects, the Baggs family and all its branches; also the Plympton family; and this had the second place, as Walter’s arrival was the more recent. Such a wonder! So very much in so very little! It was a terrible satire on her size, that misnomer Pea Green, for in one sense it was exceedingly unjust. Not even the mammoth peas that grow in the land of the giants, could furnish so much comfort and delight to a dining circle of twelve, as this feminine wonder by the sea. And to all hungry gossipers, she did what no restaurant will do; she fed without cost all who came.It was the most natural thing in the world, then, that Aunt Lydia should say one day to Walter, “I know how I can find out. I can ask Miss Green.”She accordingly went to the post–office andasked Miss Green as follows: “My nephew, Walter Plympton, wants to know about the Hall. Who has the say about it; that is, who lets people use it?”Miss Green was delighted. She would not only find out what this use of the Hall might mean, but oh, what an opportunity to learn about the Plympton family! Sitting on a tall stool, which was an innocent contrivance to eke out her scanty height, she persuasively bent her gray curls over the show–case. Her once bright eyes had softened down to a faded blue; and time had laid on her forehead and cheeks its stamp whose mark was as certain as that of the begrimed die with which she fiercely struck the daily mail. She had a pleasant voice, an affable manner, a temperament sunny and hopeful; and people liked to talk with the post–mistress. The initiated also knew that in a certain back sitting–room there was a brown teapot always kept on the stove, adding to the charms of that snug retreat to which any tea–toper might be favored with an invitation.“The Hall! Indeed! Going to be a singing–school?—a—a?” inquired the post–mistress.“Oh, no! Now it’s strange Walter should have such a notion, you may think, but he’sone of that kind whose head is allers full of suthin’. He came to me yesterday, and sez to me, ‘Aunt Lyddy!’ Sez I, ‘What?’ He didn’t say any more, for suthin’ called him to the door, and I was a–ironin’ and went on where I was. It was warm, you know. Don’t you think it was? I did feel it over the ironin’.”Aunt Lydia had a tantalizing way sometimes of telling a story. She would enter very fully into details, amplifying little items and leaving the main subject untouched.“But the point—the point—Lyddy,” gently observed the post–mistress.“Oh, yes. By and by he came back agin; and what do you s’pose he said he was a thinkin’ about?”“I don’t know.”“I was then in the kitchen. No, I was standin’ afore the clock—yes—”“But that’s no matter. What did he say, Lyddy? The point, dear?”“Well, he axed who had the say about the Hall. I told him I didn’t know; and how could I be ’spected to know, Phebe?”“Of course not. Then you want to know who can let him or anybody else have the Hall? It’s Cap’n Elliott, you know. He’s the trustee, as I call it. Why, the Hall wasgiven by old Nathan Grant for the good of The Harbor, he said, and he made Cap’n Elliott trustee. So Walter must ask him.”“I see, I see.”“Now, Lyddy! Is Walter’s father’s name Adoniram?”Aunt Lydia perceived at once that the post–mistress now wished to take her turn in obtaining information, and she knew it would be a long turn. She moved towards the door, remarking, “Oh, no, it’s Ezra. Thank you, Miss Green; I guess I must be a–goin’.”“But do take a cup of tea before you go,” pleaded Miss Green, fastening on Aunt Lydia a beseeching look. At the same time, the post–mistress sidled down from her tall, four–legged throne, and began to move towards the little brown teapot. Aunt Lydia said something to the effect that yesterday it was warm, but it was a “chilly east wind to–day”; and she followed the post–mistress in the direction of the warmer atmosphere of the teapot. Having obtained all the knowledge she wished in the Plympton line, Miss P. Green poured out another cup of tea, and remarked suddenly, “And isn’t Baggs queer?”“Queer! That don’t begin to describe him, Phebe.”“He was here the other day. Came, you know, on special business about his mail, and said he had been a–trying to get down here I don’t know how long. He wanted an arrangement so that letters could come to him, in a box. Now that’s very nice, you know, when you have a class of customers wanting it. They have boxes in the Boston post–office you know, and I thought I might take it into consideration. He said he was going to send out circulars about something, and answers would come for ‘Rambler, Box one,’ if I would put one in for him. Well, if you believe it, before I had a chance to give him an answer, he went to that window in the office that looks toward the harbor—the offing, I mean.” Miss Green was, or aimed to be, very correct, having once taught school. “What a start he gave! and he turned round, pale as—as—that paint on the office–door.” It was not very white. “I didn’t seem to notice it, but only said in an off–hand way, ‘Do you see anything, Mr. Baggs?’ I thought it might be a vessel sailing in. But he didn’t take any notice. Then I said again—mild, sort of—‘The sea quiet, Mr. Baggs? Anything out of the way? Can you see the Chair? You know if we can’t see the Chair on account of fog, it is a bad sign anyway; and every day, people look off there.’ You ought to have seen that man start again and almost give a real jump. ‘Chair?’ he said. ‘What have I got to do with that Chair? Chair?’ And if he didn’t rush out of the store! I couldn’t see anything that was the matter with the Chair. And there that man who had been so anxious to see me, went off and left everything unsettled. Now wasn’t it queer, Lyddy?”“Yes, but that Baggs is a very, very unprofitable subject of talk for me, and I have made up my mind to shet my mouth on him—for the present.”Aunt Lydia’s mouth here shut with all the decision of a portcullis.Miss Green, though, was not prepared to close her portals of speech, and question after question did she ask about the Plymptons, back to the first that came from England.If she had only known there was a Don Pedro in the world! She had a way of pursing up her mouth after a question, and then of fastening on one a very direct look, and all this was as irresistible as a corkscrew in the presence of a stopper. Aunt Lydia left the post–mistress and returned home.But what was Walter’s object that led to thisinterview? What did he want the Hall for? St. John’s, the parish church, was a mile and a half away. On days when the wind was right, its bell could be heard faintly, musically calling all souls to prayer. Not often though did these sweet notes travel as far as The Harbor, and the consequence was, that very few souls traveled up to church. In fair weather, Miss Green and Mrs. Jabez Wherren might walk there, or they would report at Uncle Boardman’s in season to take passage in his big covered wagon that, rain or shine, was sure to be heard rattling along to St. John’s every Sunday. The remainder of the population virtually ignored St. John’s, and St. John’s ignored them. Its clergyman came down to say a few words of Christian farewell over the bodies that might rest behind the stunted firs in the little cemetery swept by the sea–winds, or to join for a life–long clasp, the two hands willing thus to fall into one another. Otherwise St. John’s had very little to do with The Harbor, and The Harbor responded in the same fashion.“Why,” thought Walter, walking down through The Harbor one Sunday, “it doesn’t look much like Sunday down here. Uncle Boardman doesn’t live in one of these houses.”The Harbor village had anything but that Sunday look which marked Uncle Boardman’s premises. Some of the fishermen were out in their yards overhauling and mending their trawls. One or two were doing a little autumn work in their rough gardens. In an open lot behind the gray, lichen–patched ledges, several young fishermen, in red shirts, were playing ball. There was a row of fishing–smacks at an ancient wharf, and their owners were improving Sunday’s convenient leisure for the accomplishment of odd little jobs. Sunday at The Harbor was respected by the inhabitants after their peculiar fashion. Every fishing–boat came back to its quiet moorings before Sunday, as promptly as if a police force had ordered it there. Then came a day at home, not of entire abstinence from work, but of less work. To do less, not to quit work altogether, was the Sunday fashion of The Harbor. A man would have lost caste, and been ranked as a heathen, if he had taken his boat out to sea, every Sunday. He might stay at home, and be busy all day with little “jobs,” and not hurt his reputation for religion. One fisherman abstained entirely from work, Jabez Wherren. He did not go to church, declaring that “somebody must stay at home and lookarter it; at which place all religion began.” He did not work though. He would lounge about all day, dressed in his very best suit, and decked out with some very bright necktie, and flourishing a flaming red or yellow silk handkerchief, so that he looked like a man–of–war decorated with flags. Because he did not go to church, Jabez knew that his wife ranked him as a very deficient being; but on the other hand, because he did not work, he was well aware that in the eyes of his fellow–fishermen, he was regarded as a person of superior virtues. In his walk that Sunday, Walter at last was opposite the Hall, an antiquated, one–storied building that needed the services of both painter and carpenter. It was prefaced, though, by a porch, with two very imposing Doric pillars. This porch compensated for all deficiencies; and the villagers walking between those pillars felt grand as a Roman army, marching under the triumphal arch of Titus, in the “Eternal City.” Walter halted before the Hall and there held this soliloquy. “I have got an idea. Mother wanted me to do some special religious work; and, I’m afraid—I know I haven’t. She wanted me to get people to go to church if they didn’t go, and now here is a chance. There’s the new rector at St. John’s. He isyoung, and full of life, and I wonder if he couldn’t come down here and hold services, once every now and then at any rate. It would be just the thing, I declare.” Walter’s hazel eyes snapped with interest, and a smile swept over his round, full face.“What’s Boardman Blake’s nephew up to, a lookin’ at the Hall?” wondered Jabez Wherren. Walter did not relieve him of his wonder, but soon turned about and went home.“The first thing,” he said, “is to find out who has the letting of the Hall.”Aunt Lydia ascertained this fact for him, and informed him that the trustee was May Elliott’s grandfather.“Then I must go and see the schoolmarm,” remarked Walter, “and get her to help me.”“Then you’re going to really try?” said Aunt Lydia.“Yes,” answered Walter positively.“Seems to me they might go up to St. John’s.”“But they won’t, and St. John’s must come to them.”“Now, Walter, I don’t want to throw a speck of cold water on it, but do you expect to succeed?”“Well, Aunt, it won’t do any harm to try,and I am going to expect to succeed, too. I was reading about Admiral Farragut, what he said, that any man who is prepared for defeat would be half defeated before he commenced. He said he hoped for success and would try to have it, and trust God for the rest.”“It looks to me jest like castin’ pearls afore swine.”Walter laughed, and said he would go to the schoolhouse and find its mistress. May said she would see her grandfather, and ask for the Hall.“But whom shall we get to play? Somebody said there was a melodeon in the Hall, and somebody else said—you—you played on it.”“And you want me to play? Well, I will do what I can. I am interested, and where I can help, I will. I will see if I can’t get two or three singers.”That day, May went to her grandfather’s. He sat by the window of his little house that looked out upon the river racing, at the base of the rough, rocky banks, toward the wide, restless sea. He was not a happy old man. True he had been a successful seaman. He had a sufficient amount of property to make him comfortable. He had no vices to regret. Hehad, though, known sorrow, losing wife and children. He and his housekeeper were the only ones in his home. He had been disappointed in his grandson, Woodbury, whom he desired to share his home with; and people said that old Capt. Elliott wished to give Woodbury the largest fraction of the money and other valuables he was supposed to keep in a certain bulky safe in his sitting–room. Woodbury, though, in the short interval he had tried to live at his grandfather’s, had been twice intoxicated, and the last time angry words had flamed between them like hot coals that they were throwing. He left the house in wrath, and in wrath Capt. Elliott shut the door after him. The captain was not a religious man. He was very honest, and having once been cheated by a professor of religion who was a very scanty possessor of it, wholly lacking it indeed, Capt. Elliott ever afterwards declared himself superior to the character that the church required. He shut out God from his soul, because a hypocrite shut him out from his dues. He made his honesty his all, and was a prayerless, peevish, fault–finding, selfish old man. When May called, he was still looking out of the window. The sea–wind lifted and let fall his thin, white hair, but could notlift from his stern, sharp–cut features, the shadow of a cheerless, selfish life. He heard his granddaughter’s voice, and turned to meet her. When she had made her request, he said, “For how long do you want the Hall?”“Oh, I don’t know. We are going to begin at any rate. We want to see what interest there will be.”“Well, yes, I s’pose you can have it. That’s what the Hall is for, to hold all kind of reason’ble meetin’s.”Here May made a bold movement, and her blue eyes were full of courage as she asked, “And, grandfather, won’t you come too?”“Oh, nonsense, child! I have more religion now than you could pack into St. John’s. Why, I’d be ashamed to do what some of them folks do.”May was a strategist. She knew it was useless to argue with him. She also knew that he liked to hear her play her melodeon in the sacred parlor at home, kept in state there all the week with the dried grasses on the mantel, and the family register on the wall, and the big family Bible on the mahogany table.“Won’t you come to hear me play?”“May, I’ll make this agreement. I’ll come down and stay as long as you play and sing,but I’m not a–goin’ to stay and have any min’ster advise me in a long sermon, for I know as much as he about it, and more too.”“Well, grandfather, stay while the singing lasts.”There was another invitation extended. This was given by Walter to Chauncy Aldrich.“Ah, ah,” said Chauncy in his self–important way, lifting his hat, and with great dignity running his hand through his wall of hair, “you want me to honor the place with the presence of C. Aldrich? Yes, I’ll come. But look here, none of your long, prosy sermons, but something warm, and something short. Ha, ha!”One by one, all preparations were made for the service. Miss Green promised to lend her cracked voice to the “choir,” and two or three young fishermen offered to roar in the bass. Don Pedro, whom Uncle Boardman had kept at his house to assist in some of the autumn work on the farm, made himself very helpful in sweeping out the Hall and arranging its seats.“What time do you expect the clergyman will hold the service?” inquired Miss Green, as Walter was about leaving the post–office one day.“Oh, I think he will come in the evening, if we want him,” replied Walter.“There!” reflected this young master of ceremonies as he left the house. “If that isn’t just like me! I declare if I didn’t forget to ask the clergyman! But of course he will come, and I will take Uncle Boardman’s team and go up at once, to ask him.”Alas, the rector couldn’t come!Walter drove back in despair.“I’ll stop at the schoolhouse and see the schoolmarm,” he said, “and ask what is to be done, though I know she will laugh at me.”The school had just been dismissed; and May only lingered to set away her few books in her desk.“Ah, Miss Elliott,” said Walter confusedly. “I—I—I’m afraid it doesn’t look hopeful—about—about our Hall service?”“Why not?”He laughed, and blushed, and said frankly, “I went ahead and got everything ready but the minister!”“You hadn’t spoken to him!”“No, and it was just like me, mother would say. I got my cart and had it nicely packed, or you did rather,” a compliment which made the young teacher look quite rosy,—“I got mycart, but I hadn’t thought about my horse! When I spoke just now to Dr. Ellton, he said his hands were full, and he couldn’t possibly come. Just like me! I needed it perhaps, for I was saying, ‘What a grand thing I am helping along!’ And here is my cart all packed and ready to start, and where is my horse?”The young teacher was amused and pleased with Walter’s frankness.“Oh, well, Plympton, we won’t give up. I have done things that way myself. Somebody can take the service, I know. Isn’t there any one else at St. John’s?”“There is a young fellow who, I believe, comes on Sundays to help the doctor; Raynham, I think, is his name.”“You ask him.”Mr. Raynham was asked. Would he come? His black eyes lighted up as he gave his answer: “I should be delighted. I only help at the morning service, and I can come down as well as not in the evening. The doctor would like to have me, I know.”“It does me good,” thought Walter, “just the way he accepts my invitation. Wonder if ministers—and other folks—know how much good it does when they promise a thing that fashion!”Mr. Raynham engaged to take tea at Aunt Lydia’s, Sunday afternoon, and for this young prophet, she heaped her table with biscuit, and cake, and doughnuts, till it looked liked a fort with its outworks.“Now,” she said to Mr. Raynham, when he was leaving for the Hall, “you mustn’t go a–flyin’ over our heads to–night when you speak.”He gave his shoulders a nervous twitch, smiled, and said, “It’s only a talk, I have, when we have finished evening prayer.”“If you let it come from the heart,” said Aunt Lydia encouragingly, “your arrer will be sent out from a strong bow. You see ’twon’t do allers to have jest what will do for big–folks. You jest talk out of your heart, and think of us as leetle folks, and your arrers will hit the mark, sure.”“I hope so,” thought the young assistant, “and may God give me my message.”He felt his need all the more, for May Elliott came to him and said, “If you see an old man going out when we have finished the singing, don’t you think anything of it. I could only get him here on the condition that he might be excused after the music.”“Indeed!” reflected Mr. Raynham. “I will see that the music lasts some time.”What a service that was! The choir sang with remarkable heartiness, even if it did not execute with remarkable skill. True, Miss Green’s voice was a little unsteady on the high notes, and fluttered about like a man on a high ladder, who growing dizzy, and threatening to fall, catches distractedly at the rounds.The young fishermen, too, thundered away on the “Ah–men” as if to atone for previous deficiencies, and roared for half a minute in a bass monotone that suggested the ocean. Then there was Don Pedro. When he was clearing up the hall, May Elliott was rehearsing on the melodeon, and she heard his voice several times accompanying the tunes. She impressed him into the musical service at once, and never did any royal tenor or bass from Italy, feel his importance more sensibly. As Don Pedro was very lacking in the department of “best clothes,” Aunt Lydia promised to “rig” him out in some of Uncle Boardman’s superfluous garments. Don Pedro was somewhat tall and slender, and Uncle Boardman was short and thick, and the “rigging” was not a close fit. The clothes hung about Don Pedro like the sails of a ship about the slender poles of a fishing–smack. Genius, though, is superior to all inconveniences, and above Uncle Boardman’simmense coat, Don Pedro’s head struggled manfully. He did not have a sharp sense of the ludicrous, and only remarked, “I guess as how dese clo’es was made for anudder man, shuah.”And the audience—it filled all the rough seats in the hall. Did Mr. Raynham see that face of an old man, sad and hopeless, near the door? No, he only knew some indefinite, nameless “old man” was there, itching to go out when the musical part of the service had been completed.“We will vary the usual order of such services as these, to–night, and after I have spoken five minutes, we will have more music; a hymn,” said Mr. Raynham.“Ah,” thought Capt. Elliott, squirming in his seat and ready to retreat, “I guess I shall have to hold on, for I promised my grand–darter.”How Mr. Raynham did talk “out of his heart,” to some imaginary old sinner trying to avoid his duty, and get away from God’s house!What would that soul do when God met him in judgment, and he could not escape, possibly? Capt. Elliott wriggled very uneasily; but there was his promise to May!“We will now have some music,” said Mr.Raynham. Again rose the choir, Don Pedro struggling above his mammoth outfit; Miss Green springing up with voice ready to mount to the ladder’s top, and there tumble; the young fishermen on hand for an oceanic roar—at the close.“I’ll go now,” thought the captain, but the young prophet called out, “I will say a few words, and then we will have more music, another hymn.”Capt. Elliott felt that he was a pinioned bird. Stay he must, and all the while the young man on the platform shot his arrows.“He’s a talkin’ out of his heart to some poor prodigal,” thought Aunt Lydia. “God help him!”Then that beautiful appeal in the hymnal was sung, that Advent appeal;“O Jesus, thou art standingOutside the fast–closed door,In lowly patience waitingTo pass the threshold o’er:We bear the name of Christians,His name and sign we bear:O shame, thrice shame upon us,To keep him standing there.”“O dear!” groaned the captain. “That’s me! I can’t stand this. Guess I’ll go now.”The young fishermen were now roaring “Ah–men!” and if they had been allowed to imitate the ocean long as they pleased, Capt. Elliott might have escaped. Mr. Raynham saw an old man rising, and guessing the object of the movement, waved his hand imperatively to the male singers. The ocean did not finish its roar very gracefully, but above the confused tumbling of the surf, Mr. Raynham’s voice rose triumphantly. “We will have music again, in a moment. A few words more.” Capt. Elliott remembered his promise to May, and reluctantly sat down.“Oh, dear! Catch me makin’ sich a promise next time!” inwardly moaned the captain.In those “few words more,” Mr. Raynham made a pathetic appeal to his audience, and especially to those who were old, and yet trying to live without the love of their Father in heaven.“That would go to the heart of a stone krockerdile,” declared Aunt Lydia.No, it went to the heart of a human being; and stony though it may have seemed to an outsider, it was tender yet, for homeward went that night an old man, creeping slowly and alone, sore and wounded in his soul, conscience–sick.And Chauncy Aldrich, how did he feel?“That was a good sermon, Aldrich,” said Walter after the service.Chauncy gave a laugh, ringing, and hard, and brassy: “Ah—ah! That young feller did get warmed up, warmed up, Plympton; but you can’t expect a business man like me, always watching the market and pushing trade, to be thinking about these things. By and by, Plympton!” Ah, that by–and–by flag! Many noble ships have sailed fatally under.The people were interested in the service.“Come again,” said Aunt Lydia to Mr. Raynham; “come again. We all want you. Come, if you haven’t anything big for wise folks, and only suthin’ simple for fools; for you will have lots of ’em here.”Mr. Raynham said he would come another Sunday; perhaps the very next.The Sunday that the Hall had been occupied, chanced to be Michaelmas beautiful festival, ripe like the landscape with color and fruitage. All nature—its maples, its oaks, its fields, its orchards—was shining with the glow of St. Michael’s triumph over the dragon. And in the rough little fishing village by the sea, it seemed as if the brave, mighty archangel had given the old dragon another thrust, and Right had sorely wounded the Wrong.

THE HALL SERVICE.

Did I not say there was only one store at The Harbor? I beg Miss P. Green’s pardon. She did not claim in so many words to “keep store,” and yet if anybody had actually denied her right to the use of that grand word, “store,” there would have been a tempest at The Harbor. She merely said that she “kept a few little articles”; and yet the black king of the Bigboos in the depths of Africa, would not think more of a red handkerchief and a hand looking–glass, than Miss P. Green did of her three shelves of “goods,” and one small show–case of pins, needles, gooseberries, lemon drops, and stationary, in her front room. Gooseberries and lemon drops, I say, for Miss P. Green kept only these, believing that you could sell more if you kept one article, and “got your name up” on the merits of that one article. In this case therewere two articles; but never were there such gooseberries before, nor have there been such lemon drops since. The gooseberries would have been excellent to pitch with—just big, and hard, and round enough—at a game of baseball; and as for the lemon drops, into what rapture those sugared acids, or that acidulated sugar rather, would throw any schoolboy or girl, at “recess–time.” Then Miss P. Green kept the post–office! There is no adjective I can now recall, of sufficient magnitude and magnificence to represent the importance which Miss P. Green attached to this position. Her ideas were not unduly exalted until she had seen the Boston post–office, and enjoyed an interview with the Boston post–master. She then felt that her position was unusual. She never looked upon her humble wooden walls as she came down the street, but that they changed to a granite façade, with lofty doors and pillars; and when she entered her abode she walked at once upon a marble pavement. What importance she felt when she handled the stamp, whose magic impress she must first make, before any letter could start on its travels from The Harbor. The Great Charlemagne pounding with his golden seal, did not feel half as grand. And those clumsy leathern pouches that werecalled mai–lbags, and which only Miss P. Green could open—how she venerated them! True Billings, the driver of the mail–wagon, handled them roughly, and pitched them upon the doorstep without ceremony, bawling out, “Here you have ’em!” By the post–mistress, they were approached with a certain respect and awe, whose weight would crush the official opening the great treasury–vaults of the nation, did he regard these with corresponding feelings of importance. It was stoutly secured to the door frame outside with good shingle nails, that sign indicating Miss P. Green’s official place in The Harbor world: “Post–office.” On the door leading from the entry into the front room was the name “P. Green.” This indicated her place in the great world of trade. If it had been attached to the outer door, it would have saved me an ugly omission, for I should at once have given her honorable mention in the business list of The Harbor. The sign occupied an outer position once, but boys do not always have that respect for authority which is becoming, and had changed the name one night to “Pea Green.” It was indignantly withdrawn the next day. It was just as well removed, I dare say, for if she had continued to daily see those two signs, “Post–office,” and “P. Green,” as she approached the building, the sense of her official and commercial importance would finally have been too much for her. As it was, she passed from the contemplation of one sign to the other, and there was a gradual letting down from that sense of exaltation which she had on seeing the front door.

But all of Miss P. Green’s merits have not been mentioned. She was a very little body, and that may seem a detraction from her excellencies, and yet it was only another praiseworthy feature; for never in such small compass was packed so much knowledge. No “Saratoga” trunk ever went to “Springs,” so loaded, crowded, jammed. She was the village register; could tell the births and deaths and marriages for the year, giving each date. Not so surprising a fact, considering that the village was small; but when you add to this a complete knowledge of every household, how many were in each family, their names, occupations, what they had for breakfast, dinner and supper, what time they went to bed, and what time they left their beds, the register kept by P. Green, grew into a village directory and a village history. But this tree of knowledge did not stop its growth here. It had other branches. She knew all of the mysteriesof dressmaking and millinery; had a large acquaintance with housekeeping and nursing; kept posted in politics, and considered it her duty to defend the “administration,” though unfairly denied the right of suffrage.

One of the latest achievements of this encyclopedia, was to obtain complete and reliable information about the life saving station. This she had done by carefully cultivating the acquaintance of Keeper Barney. She was now at work on these two subjects, the Baggs family and all its branches; also the Plympton family; and this had the second place, as Walter’s arrival was the more recent. Such a wonder! So very much in so very little! It was a terrible satire on her size, that misnomer Pea Green, for in one sense it was exceedingly unjust. Not even the mammoth peas that grow in the land of the giants, could furnish so much comfort and delight to a dining circle of twelve, as this feminine wonder by the sea. And to all hungry gossipers, she did what no restaurant will do; she fed without cost all who came.

It was the most natural thing in the world, then, that Aunt Lydia should say one day to Walter, “I know how I can find out. I can ask Miss Green.”

She accordingly went to the post–office andasked Miss Green as follows: “My nephew, Walter Plympton, wants to know about the Hall. Who has the say about it; that is, who lets people use it?”

Miss Green was delighted. She would not only find out what this use of the Hall might mean, but oh, what an opportunity to learn about the Plympton family! Sitting on a tall stool, which was an innocent contrivance to eke out her scanty height, she persuasively bent her gray curls over the show–case. Her once bright eyes had softened down to a faded blue; and time had laid on her forehead and cheeks its stamp whose mark was as certain as that of the begrimed die with which she fiercely struck the daily mail. She had a pleasant voice, an affable manner, a temperament sunny and hopeful; and people liked to talk with the post–mistress. The initiated also knew that in a certain back sitting–room there was a brown teapot always kept on the stove, adding to the charms of that snug retreat to which any tea–toper might be favored with an invitation.

“The Hall! Indeed! Going to be a singing–school?—a—a?” inquired the post–mistress.

“Oh, no! Now it’s strange Walter should have such a notion, you may think, but he’sone of that kind whose head is allers full of suthin’. He came to me yesterday, and sez to me, ‘Aunt Lyddy!’ Sez I, ‘What?’ He didn’t say any more, for suthin’ called him to the door, and I was a–ironin’ and went on where I was. It was warm, you know. Don’t you think it was? I did feel it over the ironin’.”

Aunt Lydia had a tantalizing way sometimes of telling a story. She would enter very fully into details, amplifying little items and leaving the main subject untouched.

“But the point—the point—Lyddy,” gently observed the post–mistress.

“Oh, yes. By and by he came back agin; and what do you s’pose he said he was a thinkin’ about?”

“I don’t know.”

“I was then in the kitchen. No, I was standin’ afore the clock—yes—”

“But that’s no matter. What did he say, Lyddy? The point, dear?”

“Well, he axed who had the say about the Hall. I told him I didn’t know; and how could I be ’spected to know, Phebe?”

“Of course not. Then you want to know who can let him or anybody else have the Hall? It’s Cap’n Elliott, you know. He’s the trustee, as I call it. Why, the Hall wasgiven by old Nathan Grant for the good of The Harbor, he said, and he made Cap’n Elliott trustee. So Walter must ask him.”

“I see, I see.”

“Now, Lyddy! Is Walter’s father’s name Adoniram?”

Aunt Lydia perceived at once that the post–mistress now wished to take her turn in obtaining information, and she knew it would be a long turn. She moved towards the door, remarking, “Oh, no, it’s Ezra. Thank you, Miss Green; I guess I must be a–goin’.”

“But do take a cup of tea before you go,” pleaded Miss Green, fastening on Aunt Lydia a beseeching look. At the same time, the post–mistress sidled down from her tall, four–legged throne, and began to move towards the little brown teapot. Aunt Lydia said something to the effect that yesterday it was warm, but it was a “chilly east wind to–day”; and she followed the post–mistress in the direction of the warmer atmosphere of the teapot. Having obtained all the knowledge she wished in the Plympton line, Miss P. Green poured out another cup of tea, and remarked suddenly, “And isn’t Baggs queer?”

“Queer! That don’t begin to describe him, Phebe.”

“He was here the other day. Came, you know, on special business about his mail, and said he had been a–trying to get down here I don’t know how long. He wanted an arrangement so that letters could come to him, in a box. Now that’s very nice, you know, when you have a class of customers wanting it. They have boxes in the Boston post–office you know, and I thought I might take it into consideration. He said he was going to send out circulars about something, and answers would come for ‘Rambler, Box one,’ if I would put one in for him. Well, if you believe it, before I had a chance to give him an answer, he went to that window in the office that looks toward the harbor—the offing, I mean.” Miss Green was, or aimed to be, very correct, having once taught school. “What a start he gave! and he turned round, pale as—as—that paint on the office–door.” It was not very white. “I didn’t seem to notice it, but only said in an off–hand way, ‘Do you see anything, Mr. Baggs?’ I thought it might be a vessel sailing in. But he didn’t take any notice. Then I said again—mild, sort of—‘The sea quiet, Mr. Baggs? Anything out of the way? Can you see the Chair? You know if we can’t see the Chair on account of fog, it is a bad sign anyway; and every day, people look off there.’ You ought to have seen that man start again and almost give a real jump. ‘Chair?’ he said. ‘What have I got to do with that Chair? Chair?’ And if he didn’t rush out of the store! I couldn’t see anything that was the matter with the Chair. And there that man who had been so anxious to see me, went off and left everything unsettled. Now wasn’t it queer, Lyddy?”

“Yes, but that Baggs is a very, very unprofitable subject of talk for me, and I have made up my mind to shet my mouth on him—for the present.”

Aunt Lydia’s mouth here shut with all the decision of a portcullis.

Miss Green, though, was not prepared to close her portals of speech, and question after question did she ask about the Plymptons, back to the first that came from England.

If she had only known there was a Don Pedro in the world! She had a way of pursing up her mouth after a question, and then of fastening on one a very direct look, and all this was as irresistible as a corkscrew in the presence of a stopper. Aunt Lydia left the post–mistress and returned home.

But what was Walter’s object that led to thisinterview? What did he want the Hall for? St. John’s, the parish church, was a mile and a half away. On days when the wind was right, its bell could be heard faintly, musically calling all souls to prayer. Not often though did these sweet notes travel as far as The Harbor, and the consequence was, that very few souls traveled up to church. In fair weather, Miss Green and Mrs. Jabez Wherren might walk there, or they would report at Uncle Boardman’s in season to take passage in his big covered wagon that, rain or shine, was sure to be heard rattling along to St. John’s every Sunday. The remainder of the population virtually ignored St. John’s, and St. John’s ignored them. Its clergyman came down to say a few words of Christian farewell over the bodies that might rest behind the stunted firs in the little cemetery swept by the sea–winds, or to join for a life–long clasp, the two hands willing thus to fall into one another. Otherwise St. John’s had very little to do with The Harbor, and The Harbor responded in the same fashion.

“Why,” thought Walter, walking down through The Harbor one Sunday, “it doesn’t look much like Sunday down here. Uncle Boardman doesn’t live in one of these houses.”

The Harbor village had anything but that Sunday look which marked Uncle Boardman’s premises. Some of the fishermen were out in their yards overhauling and mending their trawls. One or two were doing a little autumn work in their rough gardens. In an open lot behind the gray, lichen–patched ledges, several young fishermen, in red shirts, were playing ball. There was a row of fishing–smacks at an ancient wharf, and their owners were improving Sunday’s convenient leisure for the accomplishment of odd little jobs. Sunday at The Harbor was respected by the inhabitants after their peculiar fashion. Every fishing–boat came back to its quiet moorings before Sunday, as promptly as if a police force had ordered it there. Then came a day at home, not of entire abstinence from work, but of less work. To do less, not to quit work altogether, was the Sunday fashion of The Harbor. A man would have lost caste, and been ranked as a heathen, if he had taken his boat out to sea, every Sunday. He might stay at home, and be busy all day with little “jobs,” and not hurt his reputation for religion. One fisherman abstained entirely from work, Jabez Wherren. He did not go to church, declaring that “somebody must stay at home and lookarter it; at which place all religion began.” He did not work though. He would lounge about all day, dressed in his very best suit, and decked out with some very bright necktie, and flourishing a flaming red or yellow silk handkerchief, so that he looked like a man–of–war decorated with flags. Because he did not go to church, Jabez knew that his wife ranked him as a very deficient being; but on the other hand, because he did not work, he was well aware that in the eyes of his fellow–fishermen, he was regarded as a person of superior virtues. In his walk that Sunday, Walter at last was opposite the Hall, an antiquated, one–storied building that needed the services of both painter and carpenter. It was prefaced, though, by a porch, with two very imposing Doric pillars. This porch compensated for all deficiencies; and the villagers walking between those pillars felt grand as a Roman army, marching under the triumphal arch of Titus, in the “Eternal City.” Walter halted before the Hall and there held this soliloquy. “I have got an idea. Mother wanted me to do some special religious work; and, I’m afraid—I know I haven’t. She wanted me to get people to go to church if they didn’t go, and now here is a chance. There’s the new rector at St. John’s. He isyoung, and full of life, and I wonder if he couldn’t come down here and hold services, once every now and then at any rate. It would be just the thing, I declare.” Walter’s hazel eyes snapped with interest, and a smile swept over his round, full face.

“What’s Boardman Blake’s nephew up to, a lookin’ at the Hall?” wondered Jabez Wherren. Walter did not relieve him of his wonder, but soon turned about and went home.

“The first thing,” he said, “is to find out who has the letting of the Hall.”

Aunt Lydia ascertained this fact for him, and informed him that the trustee was May Elliott’s grandfather.

“Then I must go and see the schoolmarm,” remarked Walter, “and get her to help me.”

“Then you’re going to really try?” said Aunt Lydia.

“Yes,” answered Walter positively.

“Seems to me they might go up to St. John’s.”

“But they won’t, and St. John’s must come to them.”

“Now, Walter, I don’t want to throw a speck of cold water on it, but do you expect to succeed?”

“Well, Aunt, it won’t do any harm to try,and I am going to expect to succeed, too. I was reading about Admiral Farragut, what he said, that any man who is prepared for defeat would be half defeated before he commenced. He said he hoped for success and would try to have it, and trust God for the rest.”

“It looks to me jest like castin’ pearls afore swine.”

Walter laughed, and said he would go to the schoolhouse and find its mistress. May said she would see her grandfather, and ask for the Hall.

“But whom shall we get to play? Somebody said there was a melodeon in the Hall, and somebody else said—you—you played on it.”

“And you want me to play? Well, I will do what I can. I am interested, and where I can help, I will. I will see if I can’t get two or three singers.”

That day, May went to her grandfather’s. He sat by the window of his little house that looked out upon the river racing, at the base of the rough, rocky banks, toward the wide, restless sea. He was not a happy old man. True he had been a successful seaman. He had a sufficient amount of property to make him comfortable. He had no vices to regret. Hehad, though, known sorrow, losing wife and children. He and his housekeeper were the only ones in his home. He had been disappointed in his grandson, Woodbury, whom he desired to share his home with; and people said that old Capt. Elliott wished to give Woodbury the largest fraction of the money and other valuables he was supposed to keep in a certain bulky safe in his sitting–room. Woodbury, though, in the short interval he had tried to live at his grandfather’s, had been twice intoxicated, and the last time angry words had flamed between them like hot coals that they were throwing. He left the house in wrath, and in wrath Capt. Elliott shut the door after him. The captain was not a religious man. He was very honest, and having once been cheated by a professor of religion who was a very scanty possessor of it, wholly lacking it indeed, Capt. Elliott ever afterwards declared himself superior to the character that the church required. He shut out God from his soul, because a hypocrite shut him out from his dues. He made his honesty his all, and was a prayerless, peevish, fault–finding, selfish old man. When May called, he was still looking out of the window. The sea–wind lifted and let fall his thin, white hair, but could notlift from his stern, sharp–cut features, the shadow of a cheerless, selfish life. He heard his granddaughter’s voice, and turned to meet her. When she had made her request, he said, “For how long do you want the Hall?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We are going to begin at any rate. We want to see what interest there will be.”

“Well, yes, I s’pose you can have it. That’s what the Hall is for, to hold all kind of reason’ble meetin’s.”

Here May made a bold movement, and her blue eyes were full of courage as she asked, “And, grandfather, won’t you come too?”

“Oh, nonsense, child! I have more religion now than you could pack into St. John’s. Why, I’d be ashamed to do what some of them folks do.”

May was a strategist. She knew it was useless to argue with him. She also knew that he liked to hear her play her melodeon in the sacred parlor at home, kept in state there all the week with the dried grasses on the mantel, and the family register on the wall, and the big family Bible on the mahogany table.

“Won’t you come to hear me play?”

“May, I’ll make this agreement. I’ll come down and stay as long as you play and sing,but I’m not a–goin’ to stay and have any min’ster advise me in a long sermon, for I know as much as he about it, and more too.”

“Well, grandfather, stay while the singing lasts.”

There was another invitation extended. This was given by Walter to Chauncy Aldrich.

“Ah, ah,” said Chauncy in his self–important way, lifting his hat, and with great dignity running his hand through his wall of hair, “you want me to honor the place with the presence of C. Aldrich? Yes, I’ll come. But look here, none of your long, prosy sermons, but something warm, and something short. Ha, ha!”

One by one, all preparations were made for the service. Miss Green promised to lend her cracked voice to the “choir,” and two or three young fishermen offered to roar in the bass. Don Pedro, whom Uncle Boardman had kept at his house to assist in some of the autumn work on the farm, made himself very helpful in sweeping out the Hall and arranging its seats.

“What time do you expect the clergyman will hold the service?” inquired Miss Green, as Walter was about leaving the post–office one day.

“Oh, I think he will come in the evening, if we want him,” replied Walter.

“There!” reflected this young master of ceremonies as he left the house. “If that isn’t just like me! I declare if I didn’t forget to ask the clergyman! But of course he will come, and I will take Uncle Boardman’s team and go up at once, to ask him.”

Alas, the rector couldn’t come!

Walter drove back in despair.

“I’ll stop at the schoolhouse and see the schoolmarm,” he said, “and ask what is to be done, though I know she will laugh at me.”

The school had just been dismissed; and May only lingered to set away her few books in her desk.

“Ah, Miss Elliott,” said Walter confusedly. “I—I—I’m afraid it doesn’t look hopeful—about—about our Hall service?”

“Why not?”

He laughed, and blushed, and said frankly, “I went ahead and got everything ready but the minister!”

“You hadn’t spoken to him!”

“No, and it was just like me, mother would say. I got my cart and had it nicely packed, or you did rather,” a compliment which made the young teacher look quite rosy,—“I got mycart, but I hadn’t thought about my horse! When I spoke just now to Dr. Ellton, he said his hands were full, and he couldn’t possibly come. Just like me! I needed it perhaps, for I was saying, ‘What a grand thing I am helping along!’ And here is my cart all packed and ready to start, and where is my horse?”

The young teacher was amused and pleased with Walter’s frankness.

“Oh, well, Plympton, we won’t give up. I have done things that way myself. Somebody can take the service, I know. Isn’t there any one else at St. John’s?”

“There is a young fellow who, I believe, comes on Sundays to help the doctor; Raynham, I think, is his name.”

“You ask him.”

Mr. Raynham was asked. Would he come? His black eyes lighted up as he gave his answer: “I should be delighted. I only help at the morning service, and I can come down as well as not in the evening. The doctor would like to have me, I know.”

“It does me good,” thought Walter, “just the way he accepts my invitation. Wonder if ministers—and other folks—know how much good it does when they promise a thing that fashion!”

Mr. Raynham engaged to take tea at Aunt Lydia’s, Sunday afternoon, and for this young prophet, she heaped her table with biscuit, and cake, and doughnuts, till it looked liked a fort with its outworks.

“Now,” she said to Mr. Raynham, when he was leaving for the Hall, “you mustn’t go a–flyin’ over our heads to–night when you speak.”

He gave his shoulders a nervous twitch, smiled, and said, “It’s only a talk, I have, when we have finished evening prayer.”

“If you let it come from the heart,” said Aunt Lydia encouragingly, “your arrer will be sent out from a strong bow. You see ’twon’t do allers to have jest what will do for big–folks. You jest talk out of your heart, and think of us as leetle folks, and your arrers will hit the mark, sure.”

“I hope so,” thought the young assistant, “and may God give me my message.”

He felt his need all the more, for May Elliott came to him and said, “If you see an old man going out when we have finished the singing, don’t you think anything of it. I could only get him here on the condition that he might be excused after the music.”

“Indeed!” reflected Mr. Raynham. “I will see that the music lasts some time.”

What a service that was! The choir sang with remarkable heartiness, even if it did not execute with remarkable skill. True, Miss Green’s voice was a little unsteady on the high notes, and fluttered about like a man on a high ladder, who growing dizzy, and threatening to fall, catches distractedly at the rounds.

The young fishermen, too, thundered away on the “Ah–men” as if to atone for previous deficiencies, and roared for half a minute in a bass monotone that suggested the ocean. Then there was Don Pedro. When he was clearing up the hall, May Elliott was rehearsing on the melodeon, and she heard his voice several times accompanying the tunes. She impressed him into the musical service at once, and never did any royal tenor or bass from Italy, feel his importance more sensibly. As Don Pedro was very lacking in the department of “best clothes,” Aunt Lydia promised to “rig” him out in some of Uncle Boardman’s superfluous garments. Don Pedro was somewhat tall and slender, and Uncle Boardman was short and thick, and the “rigging” was not a close fit. The clothes hung about Don Pedro like the sails of a ship about the slender poles of a fishing–smack. Genius, though, is superior to all inconveniences, and above Uncle Boardman’simmense coat, Don Pedro’s head struggled manfully. He did not have a sharp sense of the ludicrous, and only remarked, “I guess as how dese clo’es was made for anudder man, shuah.”

And the audience—it filled all the rough seats in the hall. Did Mr. Raynham see that face of an old man, sad and hopeless, near the door? No, he only knew some indefinite, nameless “old man” was there, itching to go out when the musical part of the service had been completed.

“We will vary the usual order of such services as these, to–night, and after I have spoken five minutes, we will have more music; a hymn,” said Mr. Raynham.

“Ah,” thought Capt. Elliott, squirming in his seat and ready to retreat, “I guess I shall have to hold on, for I promised my grand–darter.”

How Mr. Raynham did talk “out of his heart,” to some imaginary old sinner trying to avoid his duty, and get away from God’s house!

What would that soul do when God met him in judgment, and he could not escape, possibly? Capt. Elliott wriggled very uneasily; but there was his promise to May!

“We will now have some music,” said Mr.Raynham. Again rose the choir, Don Pedro struggling above his mammoth outfit; Miss Green springing up with voice ready to mount to the ladder’s top, and there tumble; the young fishermen on hand for an oceanic roar—at the close.

“I’ll go now,” thought the captain, but the young prophet called out, “I will say a few words, and then we will have more music, another hymn.”

Capt. Elliott felt that he was a pinioned bird. Stay he must, and all the while the young man on the platform shot his arrows.

“He’s a talkin’ out of his heart to some poor prodigal,” thought Aunt Lydia. “God help him!”

Then that beautiful appeal in the hymnal was sung, that Advent appeal;

“O Jesus, thou art standingOutside the fast–closed door,

In lowly patience waitingTo pass the threshold o’er:

We bear the name of Christians,His name and sign we bear:

O shame, thrice shame upon us,To keep him standing there.”

“O dear!” groaned the captain. “That’s me! I can’t stand this. Guess I’ll go now.”

The young fishermen were now roaring “Ah–men!” and if they had been allowed to imitate the ocean long as they pleased, Capt. Elliott might have escaped. Mr. Raynham saw an old man rising, and guessing the object of the movement, waved his hand imperatively to the male singers. The ocean did not finish its roar very gracefully, but above the confused tumbling of the surf, Mr. Raynham’s voice rose triumphantly. “We will have music again, in a moment. A few words more.” Capt. Elliott remembered his promise to May, and reluctantly sat down.

“Oh, dear! Catch me makin’ sich a promise next time!” inwardly moaned the captain.

In those “few words more,” Mr. Raynham made a pathetic appeal to his audience, and especially to those who were old, and yet trying to live without the love of their Father in heaven.

“That would go to the heart of a stone krockerdile,” declared Aunt Lydia.

No, it went to the heart of a human being; and stony though it may have seemed to an outsider, it was tender yet, for homeward went that night an old man, creeping slowly and alone, sore and wounded in his soul, conscience–sick.

And Chauncy Aldrich, how did he feel?

“That was a good sermon, Aldrich,” said Walter after the service.

Chauncy gave a laugh, ringing, and hard, and brassy: “Ah—ah! That young feller did get warmed up, warmed up, Plympton; but you can’t expect a business man like me, always watching the market and pushing trade, to be thinking about these things. By and by, Plympton!” Ah, that by–and–by flag! Many noble ships have sailed fatally under.

The people were interested in the service.

“Come again,” said Aunt Lydia to Mr. Raynham; “come again. We all want you. Come, if you haven’t anything big for wise folks, and only suthin’ simple for fools; for you will have lots of ’em here.”

Mr. Raynham said he would come another Sunday; perhaps the very next.

The Sunday that the Hall had been occupied, chanced to be Michaelmas beautiful festival, ripe like the landscape with color and fruitage. All nature—its maples, its oaks, its fields, its orchards—was shining with the glow of St. Michael’s triumph over the dragon. And in the rough little fishing village by the sea, it seemed as if the brave, mighty archangel had given the old dragon another thrust, and Right had sorely wounded the Wrong.

CHAPTER X.THE BOAT–RACE.No less a wonder than a boat–race was announced on an October day, and no less a person than Chauncy Aldrich planned the wonder.“We need to wake ’em up, wake ’em up,” he said to Walter, and he ran his hand through his bristling rampart of hair. “Trade is dull, and needs stimulating. People that want to do business must make business. I have passed a subscription paper round, and the business men of the community have handed out quite liberally. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, did not seem to have a commendable local pride, I should say, and refused to help us. However, we propose to have the race, and give a purse of twenty–five dollars to the successful boat in a six–oared race. Entries can be made by any parties living inside of ten miles from here. Yes, we are going to wake up sometrade, and so we have thought it best to have a boat–race.” A purse of twenty–five dollars! That sounded large as—the Atlantic Ocean. It consisted, however, of Baggs’ very liberal “promise” of twenty dollars, or double even (and it is very easy to multiply a “promise” any number of times), an actual subscription of four dollars from Timothy Pullins—Uncle Boardman’s business–rival at The Harbor—and then Miss Green was so tickled to be accounted one of the business community, and to receive an invitation to subscribe, that she had actually handed over the magnificent sum of one silver dollar.The neighborhood was very much excited over the event. Walter had been selected as one of the crew in Chauncy’s boat, and with his usual enthusiasm, he practiced rowing at all leisure moments. Aunt Lydia found him “going through the motions,” as he declared it, behind the counter of the store, even.“What ye doin’, Walter?”“Ha, ha, Aunt! Only going through the motions, practicing the stroke Chauncy gave us. He says it is the best in the country. There, you shove forward so—”“Nonsense! I want somebody to shove the saw for me in the shed. My fire is dreadfullow. I’ll tend the store while you are gone.”Walter transferred this trial stroke to the saw–horse at once.He planned the next morning, to rise half an hour earlier than usual, and row awhile on the river. “Am I late?” he said, opening his eyes early, and from his bed looking out of a window toward the sea. The sun was just coming up, and had suffused with a rich crimson the placid waters.“I’m all right,” Walter said, and hurriedly dressed himself. He was about leaving the room, when he said, “There’s my Bible! I almost forgot that. The fact is you have to be particular about reading, or you will miss a morning pretty readily.”It is very easy to make gaps in our devotions, and a gap made to–day may mean a gap to–morrow, and when two or three days go by and no Bible has been read, it is very easy to widen the break into an interval of a week. There is nothing so weakening as an intermission now and then. On the other hand, there is nothing that so pays us a handsome profit, as a little care to keep up a good habit. The human will is a curious piece of machinery, and the simple fact that we are in thehabit of doing certain things, of going to church, of reading our Bible, saying our prayers, this year, is one of the strongest reasons why we shall be likely to do this next year, and will have vast influence in giving a set and direction to our character. Walter had begun to realize this, and he said to himself, “If I am going to read my Bible, I must be particular to read it every morning.” He sat down in a yellow chair by the window fronting the sea, and opened his Bible. This was one of the verses he read that morning; “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”Somehow, those words were pressed into his memory; printed vividly there like those shining colors off in the sea. When he had finished his reading, he stepped softly downstairs, passed out into the yard, and then made his way to his boat on the shore of the river. The morning though bright and clear, was chilly, and the rowing of the new stroke imparted by Chauncy was “good as the stove in Aunt Lyddy’s kitchen to make one feel warm,” Walter thought. He finished his practice, andwas about stepping from the boat upon the smooth little pebbles strewn along the “landin’,” as the fishermen called it, when a sharp voice startled him. “Hul–lo!”Turning, Walter saw Chauncy Aldrich.“That you, Aldrich?”“Nobody else, Plympton. Out trying my new stroke?”“Yes, it’s first rate to warm a fellow up.”“And you’ll find it good to make a boat go. It’s as good a stroke as you will find in the market.”Here Chauncy lifted his hat, and thrusting his hand through his hair and piling it up anew, gave a defiant look, as if saying to all the world, “I’ll dare you to bring on another stroke as good as this.” Then he resumed his conversation.“See here, Plympton. I just wanted to see you, and I came out here on purpose, thinking I might find you, after what you said one day that you thought you should take an early hour for practice. A business man, you know, must be on hand early to catch custom, and I wanted to see you about something special. Just you and me, and no more!”Chauncy said this with an air of secrecy, of patronage also; as if he had reserved for Walterand Walter only, some unknown, distinguished honor. He drew close to Walter, and dropping his voice said, “I expect that our opponents next Tuesday, the day for the race, will be the Scarlet Grays from Campton.”“Scarlet Grays?”“Yes, they wear scarlet caps and gray pants, and then scarlet slippers again, and look quite nobby. But that’s according to fancy. You and I mean business, and that’s what we are after, and can get along in our every day wear. That’s what I think.”Here he gave a wise little chuckle, and shook his head very decidedly and knowingly, so that he reminded Walter of those days when the academy students called him, “Solomon.”“But here’s to the point. A–hem!”Chauncy dropped his voice still lower, and tapping the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, sharply eyed a rock in the river as if he would be willing to take this rock into the secret, but for no consideration could he admit a second rock.“You see, Plympton—ahem!”Then he shrugged his shoulders. It was evident he wished to say something, and yet had a misgiving with regard to the fitness of the message, or Walter’s fitness to hear it.“Well, out with it, Aldrich!” said Walter, his open, honest face contrasting strongly with the sly look of reserve on his companion’s features. “Out with it! That’s business, as you say.”“Ha, ha, Plympton! You’ve got me there, sure. Well, as I was going to say, Lang Tripp, the captain of the Scarlet Grays, came to me the other day and said he, ‘Look here, Aldrich! This is between you and me.’ ‘Of course,’ said I. ‘Are you anxious to win in that boat–race?’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘we mean business, of course; but if we are whipped, we must submit. When a man goes into the market to buy, he must do the best he can, and let it go at that. That’s the way of it, of course,’ said I. ‘When a man goes into the market,’ he said—you said—no—he said”—The business man tumbled over half a dozen “saids” and began again. “I mean that he referred to what I said about going into the market, and then went on, ‘That helps me to come to the point, which is—is—a little understanding—trade, some folks might call it, though I don’t.’ Then he went on, and this is what it amounted to. They have gone—I mean the Scarlet Grays—to a good deal of expense in getting up their uniform—they’rerich, you know! Rich isn’t the word. O they could buy out a gold mine and not feel it. Well, after all, they haven’t won a race. They are going to play with us, you know—row, I mean, and then they row with a set of mill–hands at Campton. Well, their folks feel badly because they don’t whip anybody, and Tripp says his mother is all worked up about it. Then Tripp asked, ‘Who is that rather heavy, strong, well–built fellow in your crew, who wears a stiff, round–top felt, and pulls a neat, strong stroke too, for I saw him at it the other day?’ Well, I knew my goods of course, and I knew it was—you.”Here Walter straightened up. The compliment was very acceptable, and Chauncy’s quick eyes saw it. This apt disciple of Baggs appreciated the customer he was dealing with, and repeated the opinion of the renowned leader of the “Scarlet Grays.” Then he continued: “After that, Tripp said, ‘I really feel that we are at your mercy, especially with that fellow against us—’” here Chauncy looked slyly at Walter, who now stood erect as a king at a coronation—“‘and I know it’s going to make our fellers feel bad, and our folks feel bad, and we shall surely lose that next race with those mill fellers—and of course,’ he said, ‘Idon’t mean that you shall lose by it—’ ‘Lose what?’ said I, for a business man must have his teeth cut. ‘Oh,’ said Tripp, ‘I am coming to it. We don’t, or I don’t, care a snap for the money. How much is it?’ Well, I told him; and then yesterday, I got ten fishermen to give each fifty cents, making between thirty and forty dollars in all as—as subscribed. Of course, Uncle Baggs is the heaviest name on the list, and he didn’t hand it to me; but then he’s good for twenty times twenty.”Chauncy did not say whether he was good for the money, or simply for a “subscription”; a difference which all handlers of “subscription papers” appreciate. All this time, Walter was wondering what Chauncy was driving at.“Of course I said I didn’t care about the money, and Tripp said he didn’t; and Tripp said that it should be all right. It should all be paid over to us; or rather, the equivalent of it. His folks would feel so badly if they lost another race, and he knew his crew wouldn’t have the heart to row that next race. ‘There,’ said he, ‘it shall be between us. If you and that Plympton—that’s what you call him—will just let up now and then on your rowing, and pull easy, I think we can handle the rest of you, and—and—’”“What do you mean?” said Walter abruptly. “Sell out?”He was now more erect than ever, straightening up because stiffened by a sense of indignation.“Hold on, Plympton, you don’t understand,” said Chauncy soothingly. He saw that he had made a mistake. He “had put too many goods on the market at once,” to use his own phrase. Continuing his soothing tone of voice, he said: “I can’t but pity the Scarlet Grays, if they are feeling so badly and their folks are stirred up, and ‘the town is down on ’em.’ Lang says, why, his mother is just awful, he says, and is real nervous. To oblige them, I’d give it all away—I mean the prize.”Such self–sacrifice! He was willing to throw himself away—as far as this boat–race was concerned—all for the sake of the Scarlet Grays’ feelings! In reality, he had already received a present of “five dollars” from Tripp, and expected another “five,” if successful with Walter. Walter’s instincts were always in the right place. A wrong thing coming to him, he would condemn as wrong, and a right thing, he would commend as right. But he was sympathetic, while conscientious. He felt for the individual sinner, while he disapproved of hissin; and his sympathy might cloud the decision of his judgment. When he thought of the Scarlet Grays, the occasion of so much parental disappointment, and the object of so much town talk and town sport, he did pity “the poor chaps,” as Chauncy whiningly labeled them in his continued talk. Chauncy saw that he was making an impression; that he was “putting the right goods on the market, and the right quantity;” and he continued to deliver them in a sympathetic, pitying, self–sacrificing tone. Suddenly Walter said to himself, “What am I doing, allowing this fellow to talk so? Where’s mother’s advice, ‘Honest, boy’? And then that psalm I was reading from, this morning. What did that say? Why, I can almost seem to see it written in the sky!”And looking away to the east all afire with a shining crimson above the placid sea, he seemed to see those words traced in the clouds:“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee; O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”He turned quickly to Chauncy, and said in a very positive way, “Aldrich, this thing is not right; and I won’t have anything to do with it.”“A–em!” said a voice.Somebody was passing. The two young men turned, and there was Capt. Barney, the keeper of the life saving station. He passed so near that they heard his step distinctly, and yet he did not seem to be noticing them, and rapidly moved away. Another moment, he had turned the corner of an old mossy ledge, tufted with a few bushes, and planted near the water’s edge, now sparkling in the sunshine. Chauncy was much confused for “a cool, clear–headed business man,” as he judged himself to be. Walter’s decided opinion, again abruptly presented, had taken this soft talking, pitying young trader by surprise. His face flushed, he stammered, and he looked angry, as Walter now spoke on his side:—“Aldrich, this thing is wrong. I don’t care about the money; but as I understand it, quite a number of people, including those ten fishermen, have given toward the race. They will all take an interest in the race, and want The Harbor crew to do its best, its honest best. The people that take the trouble to come and look at us will all expect us to do our best. Why, I couldn’t do that thing,—let up on the rowing, and then walk up the street and hold up my head. As for those ninnies from Campton,if they didn’t want to get licked, what did they enter for? They were not obliged to do it!”Chauncy’s feelings were of a very mixed character. He knew the proposition from the other crew was not fair, and was really ashamed of himself; and then he was mad because Walter had shown himself to be more honest than he. Walter now startled and confused him with another proposition:—“See here, Aldrich! If we get the prize–money, I don’t want it any more than you. Let’s give it away, say to start a library down here at The Harbor, or somewhere in town; a Town Library, I mean; of course, if the other fellers in the crew are willing, and if—if—we get it.”This was another unexpected blow. Chauncy already had begun to reckon what his share of money from the race would probably be, and had paid it over in his own mind toward a pair of new trousers which he very much needed. The failure of his wealthy uncle to pay Chauncy for some reason all the money he owed his clerk, interfered with the young man’s desire to dress well on Sunday, at least. With a face reddened by shame and anger, he had begun to stammer out a reply to Walter, when his namewas suddenly called. Turning, he saw the keeper of the life saving station. At Capt. Barney’s side was a stranger, who was introduced as the superintendent of the life saving station district, Mr. Eames.“I want to get a little lumber at your mill,” said the keeper, “if you could go with us.”“Yes,sir!” replied Chauncy with an air of patronage, to his patron. “I’m ready for a trade.”Off he strode, glad of any excuse for ending a conversation in which he felt that he was making little progress. In a jaunty way, he sported his hat on one side of his head, and moved as proudly as if going off to a bargain of millions.The boat–race had been announced to come off the afternoon of the second day after this interview between Walter and Chauncy, at the hour of two, and it came off as promptly as that hour itself. There was great interest felt on the occasion. It seemed as if the sun had given his golden disk an extra polish, so bright was it; while the maples that dotted the banks of the river flew their gay banners from morning till night. All the able bodied inhabitants that The Harbor could muster, turned out with curious eyes and sympathetichearts. People from the outside world came in vehicles of various kinds. Certain anxious looking women tucked away in a coach, Walter fancied to be the mothers of some of the Scarlet Grays. But where were the latter?“There they are!” shouted some one at last, and round a rocky point in the river, came the brilliant Scarlet Grays. Wearing their scarlet caps, they looked like poppy stalks all a–blossom, and conspicuous on their caps were the dark letters S. G. Chauncy’s crew, consisting of Chauncy, Walter, Don Pedro and others, seemed very humble and tame beside these brilliant floral oarsmen.“Fact is we made a blunder,” observed Chauncy, “in not having a uniform. But never mind; merit wins. The trade does not always go to the man in the best clothes.”Remembering their late morning talk, Walter could but think that a trade, and a bad one, had almost gone in favor of these gaily decorated seamen.“Fellers, who are those coming?” asked Chauncy, now slowly rising in his boat and pointing out another that was now shooting out of a little creek that emptied into the river. “There are six rowing in it? Does that mean a new entry? I suppose they havea right to come, as we gave out that boats could enter any time before the race.”As the strange craft approached nearer, the comments of Chauncy’s crew were more curious and eager.“Seaweed Townies!” exclaimed somebody. All wonder was at an end, and disgust now began. “Seaweed Town” was a nook of the sea where half a dozen poor houses were clustered on a rocky shore, and their inhabitants were shabby people nicknamed “Seaweed Townies.” The occupants of this boat were boys of about sixteen, lean and scraggy, with long, tangled black hair. Although not equal in size to the members of Chauncy’s crew, they had a certain wiry, tough look, and their dark eyes flashed with an eager ambition to win. The Scarlet Grays—and how brilliantly they outshone these rivals who did not indeed shine at all—hailed the advent of this new “entry” with derision.“Arabs!” they said with a sneer; but the Seaweed Townies did not reply to them, only looking more eager, and occasionally giving their oars a nervous twitch.Off darted the three boats at the appointed signal; while the spectators applauded, and the very maples seemed to be waving red handkerchiefs.“Don’t they look handsome!” screamed little Miss P. Green. “Those Scarlet Grays are be—be—witching.”“Nonsense!” said Aunt Lydia with commendable local pride. “Those little turkey gobblers hain’t got no last to ’em! Jest see our boys!”“Our boys” certainly pulled with vigor. Chauncy was now sincerely anxious to win the laurels of the day, the arrival of the Seaweed Townies having “toned up the market.” Walter handled his oar with vigor, and Don Pedro pulled with a grim resoluteness. Who would praise the Seaweed Townies? Now and then some sympathizing fellow, or “Arab!” yelled from a boat in the river, a note of cheer; but among The Harbor populace, Jabez Wherren alone ventured a word of commendation.“Wall, now,” said Jabez, “them little chaps from Seaweed Town do pull well. They don’t seem to have any friends, but I shouldn’t wonder—shouldn’t—wonder—”“Wall, what?” asked his spouse, impatiently and meaningly.“Don’t—don’t dare say,” replied Jabez, in a tone of mock humility, squinting afresh at the struggling crews.“Wall,Idare to say,” affirmed that warm partisan, Aunt Lydia. “You ought ter be ashamed of yourself!”On sped the boats; stoutly pulled the oarsmen; the spectators huzzahed; while the maples, in silence, showed their warm admiration. The Scarlet Grays took the lead at the opening of the race, a fact that created much excitement among the Campton carriages, and, all a–flutter with fragrant white handkerchiefs was the coach filled with ladies. The “S. G’s” though, could not maintain their position. They frantically struggled, and one boy in his violent contortions even lost his scarlet cap overboard, and pulled bare–headed the rest of the way. When the stake–boat was reached, and the contending craft rounded this limit of their course, it was seen that Chauncy’s crew was in the front place. This excited The Harbor people to furious applause, as soon as this fact was appreciated by them.“It looks now,” said Aunt Lydia, “as if our boys would win, and we’ll have a Libr’y down here. Walter said, the boys all agreed, if they got the money to give it toward a Public Libr’y.”“Hoo–ray for our boys!” screamed Miss P. Greene, who had transferred her admirationfrom the Scarlet Grays to the proper crew, and wished to show her appreciation of all “educational movements” as she termed them. “Hoo—”She was about to give another cheer, but a tall butter firkin on which she had been standing because it put her sharp nose and sharp eyes just above the shoulders of other people, here refused to serve as a lookout any longer. It was something altogether apart from the usual vocation of butter tubs; and naturally asserting the right of revolution, or in this case, of devolution, the tub canted over, and began to roll; and down somewhere went Miss Green! But while she went down, her voice went up, the tongue asserting its accustomed supremacy in this trying moment, even, and the cheer for Chauncy’s crew ended in a scream. It made a little stir among the spectators, but Jabez Wherren was promptly on hand, and gallantly fished the post–mistress up. He set the rebellious butter firkin in its proper subordinate place, and then set Miss Green on top of it, where like a queen on her throne she received the commiseration and congratulations of her friends, who shuddered at her fall, and rejoiced over her rise once more. I am afraid this fall was ominous though, and my readers will soonsee for themselves. As the crews pulled away in the river, Jabez Wherren, with a lack of patriotism, declared that those “little Seaweed fellers are givin’ it to our boat. Jest about up with ’em and crowdin’ ’em hard!”“There, Jabez!” said his spouse, who like the butter firkin could only stand a certain amount of strain, “ef you can’t talk any more sensible, you’d better go hum.”“No—no,” quietly remarked the grinning Jabez, “I’m goin’—to see the upshot of this.”Unlucky prophet! What did he want to use that word “upshot” for? He had no sooner spoken it, than there was an unhappy commotion noticed in Chauncy’s boat. The crew had been complaining of the new stroke which Chauncy had introduced, but he had insisted upon its use, saying it was very “scientific”; that “just now it was the top thing in the market, and would fetch a premium any day.” When it was noticed in the race that the Seaweed Townies were gaining on them, Chauncy, who acted as captain of The Harbor crew, energetically stimulated them by such remarks as: “Muscle pays—now, boys!” “Don’t let them have a cheap bargain. Hum—now!” “Crowd the market! Give it to ’em!”Finally he called out: “The stroke, boys!Give them our stroke good! Science, boys!” Every boy now watched his oar intently, and pulled with all the “science” he could muster. Chauncy aimed to set the example, and as he strove to handle his oar with precision, he gave it an unlucky violent jostle in the thole–pins. One of these like the butter firkin on shore, could not patiently submit to everything, and—broke! There is such a thing in an oarsman’s experience as “catching a crab.” The oarsman concludes for some reason, generally an irresistible one, to go over backwards, and there catch his crab. As he tumbles into the bottom of the boat, his feet naturally go up and his arms also, while his head and shoulders go down; and his whole figure may possibly suggest a crab, with its crooked, wriggling members. Chauncy now ignominiously “caught a crab.” The great Solomon went down in disgrace and disaster! The effect on The Harbor spectators was as if the sun had gone into mourning, while the maples all shivered in sympathy. Chauncy quickly was up again, a new thole–pin was inserted, and the crew gallantly pulled away. But there were the Seaweed Townies, ahead now by two boat lengths! This advanced position, with grins and giggles, those “dark–eyed monkeys,” asAunt Lydia promptly labeled them, stubbornly maintained. Chauncy with frenzied efforts tried to “work up the market,” but the “Arabs” were victors. Lean and wiry as ever, they triumphantly pulled their boat ashore.“Well, boys, we whipped the Scarlet Grays,” said Chauncy, wiping his face. “Fact was I had from the very outset a strong desire to whip them, and we succeeded.”Chauncy’s assertion about his “strong desire” would not bear investigation.It was a fact, however, that Chauncy’s crew had whipped the Scarlet Grays. Like poppies that have been picked and then left out in a frost, the “S. G.’s” pulled listlessly to the landing–place.The crowd slowly dribbled away, the people making their comments as they retired.“There’s a chance for a Public Library gone,” moaned Miss P. Green.“Yes, yes,” sympathetically wailed Aunt Lydia and Mrs. Wherren.“There, Jabez,” said his wife, “I hope another time you won’t cheer fur the en’my so.”“I didn’t cheer ’em, Huldy,” replied Jabez in surprise.“You made sympathizin’ remarks, though.”“Yes, yes,” said Aunt Lydia, and Miss P. Green.And poor Jabez went home, feeling that the weight of responsibility for some great national disaster rested on his shoulders. His wife, “Huldy,” had remarkable success in making Jabez feel that he was guilty, even when innocent.

THE BOAT–RACE.

No less a wonder than a boat–race was announced on an October day, and no less a person than Chauncy Aldrich planned the wonder.

“We need to wake ’em up, wake ’em up,” he said to Walter, and he ran his hand through his bristling rampart of hair. “Trade is dull, and needs stimulating. People that want to do business must make business. I have passed a subscription paper round, and the business men of the community have handed out quite liberally. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, did not seem to have a commendable local pride, I should say, and refused to help us. However, we propose to have the race, and give a purse of twenty–five dollars to the successful boat in a six–oared race. Entries can be made by any parties living inside of ten miles from here. Yes, we are going to wake up sometrade, and so we have thought it best to have a boat–race.” A purse of twenty–five dollars! That sounded large as—the Atlantic Ocean. It consisted, however, of Baggs’ very liberal “promise” of twenty dollars, or double even (and it is very easy to multiply a “promise” any number of times), an actual subscription of four dollars from Timothy Pullins—Uncle Boardman’s business–rival at The Harbor—and then Miss Green was so tickled to be accounted one of the business community, and to receive an invitation to subscribe, that she had actually handed over the magnificent sum of one silver dollar.

The neighborhood was very much excited over the event. Walter had been selected as one of the crew in Chauncy’s boat, and with his usual enthusiasm, he practiced rowing at all leisure moments. Aunt Lydia found him “going through the motions,” as he declared it, behind the counter of the store, even.

“What ye doin’, Walter?”

“Ha, ha, Aunt! Only going through the motions, practicing the stroke Chauncy gave us. He says it is the best in the country. There, you shove forward so—”

“Nonsense! I want somebody to shove the saw for me in the shed. My fire is dreadfullow. I’ll tend the store while you are gone.”

Walter transferred this trial stroke to the saw–horse at once.

He planned the next morning, to rise half an hour earlier than usual, and row awhile on the river. “Am I late?” he said, opening his eyes early, and from his bed looking out of a window toward the sea. The sun was just coming up, and had suffused with a rich crimson the placid waters.

“I’m all right,” Walter said, and hurriedly dressed himself. He was about leaving the room, when he said, “There’s my Bible! I almost forgot that. The fact is you have to be particular about reading, or you will miss a morning pretty readily.”

It is very easy to make gaps in our devotions, and a gap made to–day may mean a gap to–morrow, and when two or three days go by and no Bible has been read, it is very easy to widen the break into an interval of a week. There is nothing so weakening as an intermission now and then. On the other hand, there is nothing that so pays us a handsome profit, as a little care to keep up a good habit. The human will is a curious piece of machinery, and the simple fact that we are in thehabit of doing certain things, of going to church, of reading our Bible, saying our prayers, this year, is one of the strongest reasons why we shall be likely to do this next year, and will have vast influence in giving a set and direction to our character. Walter had begun to realize this, and he said to himself, “If I am going to read my Bible, I must be particular to read it every morning.” He sat down in a yellow chair by the window fronting the sea, and opened his Bible. This was one of the verses he read that morning; “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”

Somehow, those words were pressed into his memory; printed vividly there like those shining colors off in the sea. When he had finished his reading, he stepped softly downstairs, passed out into the yard, and then made his way to his boat on the shore of the river. The morning though bright and clear, was chilly, and the rowing of the new stroke imparted by Chauncy was “good as the stove in Aunt Lyddy’s kitchen to make one feel warm,” Walter thought. He finished his practice, andwas about stepping from the boat upon the smooth little pebbles strewn along the “landin’,” as the fishermen called it, when a sharp voice startled him. “Hul–lo!”

Turning, Walter saw Chauncy Aldrich.

“That you, Aldrich?”

“Nobody else, Plympton. Out trying my new stroke?”

“Yes, it’s first rate to warm a fellow up.”

“And you’ll find it good to make a boat go. It’s as good a stroke as you will find in the market.”

Here Chauncy lifted his hat, and thrusting his hand through his hair and piling it up anew, gave a defiant look, as if saying to all the world, “I’ll dare you to bring on another stroke as good as this.” Then he resumed his conversation.

“See here, Plympton. I just wanted to see you, and I came out here on purpose, thinking I might find you, after what you said one day that you thought you should take an early hour for practice. A business man, you know, must be on hand early to catch custom, and I wanted to see you about something special. Just you and me, and no more!”

Chauncy said this with an air of secrecy, of patronage also; as if he had reserved for Walterand Walter only, some unknown, distinguished honor. He drew close to Walter, and dropping his voice said, “I expect that our opponents next Tuesday, the day for the race, will be the Scarlet Grays from Campton.”

“Scarlet Grays?”

“Yes, they wear scarlet caps and gray pants, and then scarlet slippers again, and look quite nobby. But that’s according to fancy. You and I mean business, and that’s what we are after, and can get along in our every day wear. That’s what I think.”

Here he gave a wise little chuckle, and shook his head very decidedly and knowingly, so that he reminded Walter of those days when the academy students called him, “Solomon.”

“But here’s to the point. A–hem!”

Chauncy dropped his voice still lower, and tapping the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of his right, sharply eyed a rock in the river as if he would be willing to take this rock into the secret, but for no consideration could he admit a second rock.

“You see, Plympton—ahem!”

Then he shrugged his shoulders. It was evident he wished to say something, and yet had a misgiving with regard to the fitness of the message, or Walter’s fitness to hear it.

“Well, out with it, Aldrich!” said Walter, his open, honest face contrasting strongly with the sly look of reserve on his companion’s features. “Out with it! That’s business, as you say.”

“Ha, ha, Plympton! You’ve got me there, sure. Well, as I was going to say, Lang Tripp, the captain of the Scarlet Grays, came to me the other day and said he, ‘Look here, Aldrich! This is between you and me.’ ‘Of course,’ said I. ‘Are you anxious to win in that boat–race?’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘we mean business, of course; but if we are whipped, we must submit. When a man goes into the market to buy, he must do the best he can, and let it go at that. That’s the way of it, of course,’ said I. ‘When a man goes into the market,’ he said—you said—no—he said”—

The business man tumbled over half a dozen “saids” and began again. “I mean that he referred to what I said about going into the market, and then went on, ‘That helps me to come to the point, which is—is—a little understanding—trade, some folks might call it, though I don’t.’ Then he went on, and this is what it amounted to. They have gone—I mean the Scarlet Grays—to a good deal of expense in getting up their uniform—they’rerich, you know! Rich isn’t the word. O they could buy out a gold mine and not feel it. Well, after all, they haven’t won a race. They are going to play with us, you know—row, I mean, and then they row with a set of mill–hands at Campton. Well, their folks feel badly because they don’t whip anybody, and Tripp says his mother is all worked up about it. Then Tripp asked, ‘Who is that rather heavy, strong, well–built fellow in your crew, who wears a stiff, round–top felt, and pulls a neat, strong stroke too, for I saw him at it the other day?’ Well, I knew my goods of course, and I knew it was—you.”

Here Walter straightened up. The compliment was very acceptable, and Chauncy’s quick eyes saw it. This apt disciple of Baggs appreciated the customer he was dealing with, and repeated the opinion of the renowned leader of the “Scarlet Grays.” Then he continued: “After that, Tripp said, ‘I really feel that we are at your mercy, especially with that fellow against us—’” here Chauncy looked slyly at Walter, who now stood erect as a king at a coronation—“‘and I know it’s going to make our fellers feel bad, and our folks feel bad, and we shall surely lose that next race with those mill fellers—and of course,’ he said, ‘Idon’t mean that you shall lose by it—’ ‘Lose what?’ said I, for a business man must have his teeth cut. ‘Oh,’ said Tripp, ‘I am coming to it. We don’t, or I don’t, care a snap for the money. How much is it?’ Well, I told him; and then yesterday, I got ten fishermen to give each fifty cents, making between thirty and forty dollars in all as—as subscribed. Of course, Uncle Baggs is the heaviest name on the list, and he didn’t hand it to me; but then he’s good for twenty times twenty.”

Chauncy did not say whether he was good for the money, or simply for a “subscription”; a difference which all handlers of “subscription papers” appreciate. All this time, Walter was wondering what Chauncy was driving at.

“Of course I said I didn’t care about the money, and Tripp said he didn’t; and Tripp said that it should be all right. It should all be paid over to us; or rather, the equivalent of it. His folks would feel so badly if they lost another race, and he knew his crew wouldn’t have the heart to row that next race. ‘There,’ said he, ‘it shall be between us. If you and that Plympton—that’s what you call him—will just let up now and then on your rowing, and pull easy, I think we can handle the rest of you, and—and—’”

“What do you mean?” said Walter abruptly. “Sell out?”

He was now more erect than ever, straightening up because stiffened by a sense of indignation.

“Hold on, Plympton, you don’t understand,” said Chauncy soothingly. He saw that he had made a mistake. He “had put too many goods on the market at once,” to use his own phrase. Continuing his soothing tone of voice, he said: “I can’t but pity the Scarlet Grays, if they are feeling so badly and their folks are stirred up, and ‘the town is down on ’em.’ Lang says, why, his mother is just awful, he says, and is real nervous. To oblige them, I’d give it all away—I mean the prize.”

Such self–sacrifice! He was willing to throw himself away—as far as this boat–race was concerned—all for the sake of the Scarlet Grays’ feelings! In reality, he had already received a present of “five dollars” from Tripp, and expected another “five,” if successful with Walter. Walter’s instincts were always in the right place. A wrong thing coming to him, he would condemn as wrong, and a right thing, he would commend as right. But he was sympathetic, while conscientious. He felt for the individual sinner, while he disapproved of hissin; and his sympathy might cloud the decision of his judgment. When he thought of the Scarlet Grays, the occasion of so much parental disappointment, and the object of so much town talk and town sport, he did pity “the poor chaps,” as Chauncy whiningly labeled them in his continued talk. Chauncy saw that he was making an impression; that he was “putting the right goods on the market, and the right quantity;” and he continued to deliver them in a sympathetic, pitying, self–sacrificing tone. Suddenly Walter said to himself, “What am I doing, allowing this fellow to talk so? Where’s mother’s advice, ‘Honest, boy’? And then that psalm I was reading from, this morning. What did that say? Why, I can almost seem to see it written in the sky!”

And looking away to the east all afire with a shining crimson above the placid sea, he seemed to see those words traced in the clouds:

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart, have I sought Thee; O let me not wander from Thy commandments.”

He turned quickly to Chauncy, and said in a very positive way, “Aldrich, this thing is not right; and I won’t have anything to do with it.”

“A–em!” said a voice.

Somebody was passing. The two young men turned, and there was Capt. Barney, the keeper of the life saving station. He passed so near that they heard his step distinctly, and yet he did not seem to be noticing them, and rapidly moved away. Another moment, he had turned the corner of an old mossy ledge, tufted with a few bushes, and planted near the water’s edge, now sparkling in the sunshine. Chauncy was much confused for “a cool, clear–headed business man,” as he judged himself to be. Walter’s decided opinion, again abruptly presented, had taken this soft talking, pitying young trader by surprise. His face flushed, he stammered, and he looked angry, as Walter now spoke on his side:—

“Aldrich, this thing is wrong. I don’t care about the money; but as I understand it, quite a number of people, including those ten fishermen, have given toward the race. They will all take an interest in the race, and want The Harbor crew to do its best, its honest best. The people that take the trouble to come and look at us will all expect us to do our best. Why, I couldn’t do that thing,—let up on the rowing, and then walk up the street and hold up my head. As for those ninnies from Campton,if they didn’t want to get licked, what did they enter for? They were not obliged to do it!”

Chauncy’s feelings were of a very mixed character. He knew the proposition from the other crew was not fair, and was really ashamed of himself; and then he was mad because Walter had shown himself to be more honest than he. Walter now startled and confused him with another proposition:—

“See here, Aldrich! If we get the prize–money, I don’t want it any more than you. Let’s give it away, say to start a library down here at The Harbor, or somewhere in town; a Town Library, I mean; of course, if the other fellers in the crew are willing, and if—if—we get it.”

This was another unexpected blow. Chauncy already had begun to reckon what his share of money from the race would probably be, and had paid it over in his own mind toward a pair of new trousers which he very much needed. The failure of his wealthy uncle to pay Chauncy for some reason all the money he owed his clerk, interfered with the young man’s desire to dress well on Sunday, at least. With a face reddened by shame and anger, he had begun to stammer out a reply to Walter, when his namewas suddenly called. Turning, he saw the keeper of the life saving station. At Capt. Barney’s side was a stranger, who was introduced as the superintendent of the life saving station district, Mr. Eames.

“I want to get a little lumber at your mill,” said the keeper, “if you could go with us.”

“Yes,sir!” replied Chauncy with an air of patronage, to his patron. “I’m ready for a trade.”

Off he strode, glad of any excuse for ending a conversation in which he felt that he was making little progress. In a jaunty way, he sported his hat on one side of his head, and moved as proudly as if going off to a bargain of millions.

The boat–race had been announced to come off the afternoon of the second day after this interview between Walter and Chauncy, at the hour of two, and it came off as promptly as that hour itself. There was great interest felt on the occasion. It seemed as if the sun had given his golden disk an extra polish, so bright was it; while the maples that dotted the banks of the river flew their gay banners from morning till night. All the able bodied inhabitants that The Harbor could muster, turned out with curious eyes and sympathetichearts. People from the outside world came in vehicles of various kinds. Certain anxious looking women tucked away in a coach, Walter fancied to be the mothers of some of the Scarlet Grays. But where were the latter?

“There they are!” shouted some one at last, and round a rocky point in the river, came the brilliant Scarlet Grays. Wearing their scarlet caps, they looked like poppy stalks all a–blossom, and conspicuous on their caps were the dark letters S. G. Chauncy’s crew, consisting of Chauncy, Walter, Don Pedro and others, seemed very humble and tame beside these brilliant floral oarsmen.

“Fact is we made a blunder,” observed Chauncy, “in not having a uniform. But never mind; merit wins. The trade does not always go to the man in the best clothes.”

Remembering their late morning talk, Walter could but think that a trade, and a bad one, had almost gone in favor of these gaily decorated seamen.

“Fellers, who are those coming?” asked Chauncy, now slowly rising in his boat and pointing out another that was now shooting out of a little creek that emptied into the river. “There are six rowing in it? Does that mean a new entry? I suppose they havea right to come, as we gave out that boats could enter any time before the race.”

As the strange craft approached nearer, the comments of Chauncy’s crew were more curious and eager.

“Seaweed Townies!” exclaimed somebody. All wonder was at an end, and disgust now began. “Seaweed Town” was a nook of the sea where half a dozen poor houses were clustered on a rocky shore, and their inhabitants were shabby people nicknamed “Seaweed Townies.” The occupants of this boat were boys of about sixteen, lean and scraggy, with long, tangled black hair. Although not equal in size to the members of Chauncy’s crew, they had a certain wiry, tough look, and their dark eyes flashed with an eager ambition to win. The Scarlet Grays—and how brilliantly they outshone these rivals who did not indeed shine at all—hailed the advent of this new “entry” with derision.

“Arabs!” they said with a sneer; but the Seaweed Townies did not reply to them, only looking more eager, and occasionally giving their oars a nervous twitch.

Off darted the three boats at the appointed signal; while the spectators applauded, and the very maples seemed to be waving red handkerchiefs.

“Don’t they look handsome!” screamed little Miss P. Green. “Those Scarlet Grays are be—be—witching.”

“Nonsense!” said Aunt Lydia with commendable local pride. “Those little turkey gobblers hain’t got no last to ’em! Jest see our boys!”

“Our boys” certainly pulled with vigor. Chauncy was now sincerely anxious to win the laurels of the day, the arrival of the Seaweed Townies having “toned up the market.” Walter handled his oar with vigor, and Don Pedro pulled with a grim resoluteness. Who would praise the Seaweed Townies? Now and then some sympathizing fellow, or “Arab!” yelled from a boat in the river, a note of cheer; but among The Harbor populace, Jabez Wherren alone ventured a word of commendation.

“Wall, now,” said Jabez, “them little chaps from Seaweed Town do pull well. They don’t seem to have any friends, but I shouldn’t wonder—shouldn’t—wonder—”

“Wall, what?” asked his spouse, impatiently and meaningly.

“Don’t—don’t dare say,” replied Jabez, in a tone of mock humility, squinting afresh at the struggling crews.

“Wall,Idare to say,” affirmed that warm partisan, Aunt Lydia. “You ought ter be ashamed of yourself!”

On sped the boats; stoutly pulled the oarsmen; the spectators huzzahed; while the maples, in silence, showed their warm admiration. The Scarlet Grays took the lead at the opening of the race, a fact that created much excitement among the Campton carriages, and, all a–flutter with fragrant white handkerchiefs was the coach filled with ladies. The “S. G’s” though, could not maintain their position. They frantically struggled, and one boy in his violent contortions even lost his scarlet cap overboard, and pulled bare–headed the rest of the way. When the stake–boat was reached, and the contending craft rounded this limit of their course, it was seen that Chauncy’s crew was in the front place. This excited The Harbor people to furious applause, as soon as this fact was appreciated by them.

“It looks now,” said Aunt Lydia, “as if our boys would win, and we’ll have a Libr’y down here. Walter said, the boys all agreed, if they got the money to give it toward a Public Libr’y.”

“Hoo–ray for our boys!” screamed Miss P. Greene, who had transferred her admirationfrom the Scarlet Grays to the proper crew, and wished to show her appreciation of all “educational movements” as she termed them. “Hoo—”

She was about to give another cheer, but a tall butter firkin on which she had been standing because it put her sharp nose and sharp eyes just above the shoulders of other people, here refused to serve as a lookout any longer. It was something altogether apart from the usual vocation of butter tubs; and naturally asserting the right of revolution, or in this case, of devolution, the tub canted over, and began to roll; and down somewhere went Miss Green! But while she went down, her voice went up, the tongue asserting its accustomed supremacy in this trying moment, even, and the cheer for Chauncy’s crew ended in a scream. It made a little stir among the spectators, but Jabez Wherren was promptly on hand, and gallantly fished the post–mistress up. He set the rebellious butter firkin in its proper subordinate place, and then set Miss Green on top of it, where like a queen on her throne she received the commiseration and congratulations of her friends, who shuddered at her fall, and rejoiced over her rise once more. I am afraid this fall was ominous though, and my readers will soonsee for themselves. As the crews pulled away in the river, Jabez Wherren, with a lack of patriotism, declared that those “little Seaweed fellers are givin’ it to our boat. Jest about up with ’em and crowdin’ ’em hard!”

“There, Jabez!” said his spouse, who like the butter firkin could only stand a certain amount of strain, “ef you can’t talk any more sensible, you’d better go hum.”

“No—no,” quietly remarked the grinning Jabez, “I’m goin’—to see the upshot of this.”

Unlucky prophet! What did he want to use that word “upshot” for? He had no sooner spoken it, than there was an unhappy commotion noticed in Chauncy’s boat. The crew had been complaining of the new stroke which Chauncy had introduced, but he had insisted upon its use, saying it was very “scientific”; that “just now it was the top thing in the market, and would fetch a premium any day.” When it was noticed in the race that the Seaweed Townies were gaining on them, Chauncy, who acted as captain of The Harbor crew, energetically stimulated them by such remarks as: “Muscle pays—now, boys!” “Don’t let them have a cheap bargain. Hum—now!” “Crowd the market! Give it to ’em!”

Finally he called out: “The stroke, boys!Give them our stroke good! Science, boys!” Every boy now watched his oar intently, and pulled with all the “science” he could muster. Chauncy aimed to set the example, and as he strove to handle his oar with precision, he gave it an unlucky violent jostle in the thole–pins. One of these like the butter firkin on shore, could not patiently submit to everything, and—broke! There is such a thing in an oarsman’s experience as “catching a crab.” The oarsman concludes for some reason, generally an irresistible one, to go over backwards, and there catch his crab. As he tumbles into the bottom of the boat, his feet naturally go up and his arms also, while his head and shoulders go down; and his whole figure may possibly suggest a crab, with its crooked, wriggling members. Chauncy now ignominiously “caught a crab.” The great Solomon went down in disgrace and disaster! The effect on The Harbor spectators was as if the sun had gone into mourning, while the maples all shivered in sympathy. Chauncy quickly was up again, a new thole–pin was inserted, and the crew gallantly pulled away. But there were the Seaweed Townies, ahead now by two boat lengths! This advanced position, with grins and giggles, those “dark–eyed monkeys,” asAunt Lydia promptly labeled them, stubbornly maintained. Chauncy with frenzied efforts tried to “work up the market,” but the “Arabs” were victors. Lean and wiry as ever, they triumphantly pulled their boat ashore.

“Well, boys, we whipped the Scarlet Grays,” said Chauncy, wiping his face. “Fact was I had from the very outset a strong desire to whip them, and we succeeded.”

Chauncy’s assertion about his “strong desire” would not bear investigation.

It was a fact, however, that Chauncy’s crew had whipped the Scarlet Grays. Like poppies that have been picked and then left out in a frost, the “S. G.’s” pulled listlessly to the landing–place.

The crowd slowly dribbled away, the people making their comments as they retired.

“There’s a chance for a Public Library gone,” moaned Miss P. Green.

“Yes, yes,” sympathetically wailed Aunt Lydia and Mrs. Wherren.

“There, Jabez,” said his wife, “I hope another time you won’t cheer fur the en’my so.”

“I didn’t cheer ’em, Huldy,” replied Jabez in surprise.

“You made sympathizin’ remarks, though.”

“Yes, yes,” said Aunt Lydia, and Miss P. Green.

And poor Jabez went home, feeling that the weight of responsibility for some great national disaster rested on his shoulders. His wife, “Huldy,” had remarkable success in making Jabez feel that he was guilty, even when innocent.

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