"Captain Wells stopped at the door a little while ago to see what time we should be down to get the deed, and luckily I told him that we might not be down until into the evening. He said he 'd stay at home and wait till we came."

"Delia," said David, when he had seated himself in the house, "I 've got bad news to tell you, and I may as well out with it first as last."

"You have n't shipped for another whaling voyage?"

"No; that would be nothing," he said.

Delia stood and looked at him.

"Well," she said, "didn't you get as much as you counted on?"

"Yes,—twenty more."

"It isn't anything about the children? I expect them home every minute."

"No."

"Delia," he said, "you was a great fool ever to have me. You ought to have taken advice."

"What is the matter?" she said. "Why don't you tell me?"

"I 've lost the money," he said. "The Captain warned me how apt a seafaring man is to lose money; but I did n't take any heed, and I went off with Calvin Green—"

"With Calvin Green! What did I tell you!" she said.

"Wait a minute—and I stopped into a jewelry store and bought you a pair of ear-rings, and I came off and left my wallet on the counter, the way that fool Joe Bassett did, to Gloucester. When I went back, the rascal claimed he never saw me before—said he didn't know me from the Prophet Samuel, as if I was born that minute. And now they'll all say—and it's true—that I'm a chip of the old block, and that I 'm bound to come out at the little end. There!" he said, as he opened a little parcel and took out the earrings. "There 's what 's left of five hundred and twenty dollars, and you must make the most of 'em. Hold 'em up to the light and see how handsome they are. I don't know, after all, but they are worth while for a man to pitch overboard off Cape Horn and harpoon whales two years for. All is, just tell folks they cost five hundred dollars, and they 'll be just as good as hen's-egg diamonds.

"In fact, I don't know but I sort o' like the situation," he went on, in a moment. "It seems sort of natural and home-like. I should have felt homesick if I 'd really succeeded in getting this place paid for. 'T would have seemed like getting proud, and going back on my own relations. And then it 'll please everybody to say, 'I told you so.' There 'll be high sport round town, when it gets out, and we back water down to the old place.

"Come, say something, Delia!" he said, in a moment. "Why don't you say something about it? Don't you care that the money's lost, that you stand there and don't say a word, and look at nothing?"

"I don't want to say anything now," she said, "I want to think."

"Well!" said Captain Bennett, the next day, to his wife, "Delia 's got more spunk! I should have felt like laying right down in the shafts, in her place; but instead of that, to actually go and talk them into letting her keep the Cal-lender place and pay for it so much a month! And David's signed a paper to do it."

"I guess if the truth was known," said Mrs. Bennett, knitting on, "that, come to think it over, she was more scared of David's settling back than she was for losing the money."

"She 's got a pull on him now," said the Captain, "anyway, for if he once agrees to a thing he always does it."

III.

No one fully knows the New England autumn who has not seen its colors on the extreme Old Colony sea-board. There are no mountain ranges, opening out far reaches of burning maples; but there are miles of salt-marsh, spreading as far as the eye can reach, cut by countless creeks, displaying a vast expanse of soft, rich shades of brown; there are cranberry-meadows of twenty, thirty, or fifty level acres, covered with matted vines and crimson with berries; there are deserted pastures, bright with golden-rod and asters. And everywhere along the shores, against the dark pine woods, are the varied reds of oaks, of blackberry vines, of woodbine, and of sumach.

It was a bright fall afternoon; most of the boats were in, and lay near, shore before the sail-loft door; the sails were up to dry,—for it had been wet outside,—looking doubly white against the colors of the shore.

In the sail-loft they were telling stories.

"No, I don't think myself," said Deacon Luce, from the rocking-chair, "that ministers always show what we call horse sense. They used to tell a story of Parson Allen, that preached in the Old Town, in my father's time, that pleased me. One spring the parson took a notion to raise a pig. So he went down to Jim Barrows, that lived there handy by, and says he, 'Mr. Barrows, I hear you have a litter of young pigs, and I should like to have one to raise.' So Jim he got his stilyards and weighed him out one, and the minister paid him, and Jim he sent it up. Well, the minister kep' it some three months, and he used to go out every day and put on his spectacles and take his scythe down from the apple-tree and mow pig-weed for him, and he bought corn-meal to feed him up with, and one way and another he laid out a good deal on him. The pig fattened well, but the whole incessant time he was either rooting out and gitting into the garden, or he'd ketch his foot in behind the trough and squeal like mad, or something else, so that the minister had to keep leaving his sermon-writing to straighten him out, and the minister's wife complained of the squealing when she had company. And so the parson decided to heave the enterprise up, and Jim sent up and took the pig back. Come to settle, 'How do we stand?' says the minister. 'Oh, just as you say,' says Jim, 'I'll leave it to you.' 'Well,' says the minister, 'on the one hand you've got back a pig that you've been paid for; but, on the other hand, I 've had the use of him for some three months,—and so I guess we 're square.'" "Talking of preachers," said Caleb Parker, "reminds me of a story they tell of Uncle Cephas Bascom, of Northhaven. Uncle Cephas was a shoemaker, and he never went to sea much, only to anchor his skift in the Narrows abreast of his house, and catch a mess of scup, or to pole a load of salt-hay from San-quitt Island. But he used to visit his married daughter, in Vermont, and up there they knew he come from the sea-board, and they used to call him 'Captain Bascom.' So, one time when he was there, they had a Sabbath-school concert, and nothing would do but 'Captain Bascom' must talk to the boys, and tell a sea-yarn, and draw a moral, the way the Deacon, here, does." The Deacon gravely smiled, and stroked his beard. "Well, Uncle Cephas was ruther pleased with his name of 'Captain Bascom,' and he did n't like to go back on it, and so he flaxed round to git up something. It seems he had heard a summer boarder talk in Sabbath-school, at Northhaven; he told how a poor boy minded his mother, and then got to tend store, and then kep' store himself, and then he jumped it on them. 'That poor boy,' says he, 'now stands before you.' So Uncle Cephas thought him up a similar yarn. Well, he had never spoke in meeting before, and he hemmed and hawed some, but he got on quite well while he was telling about a certain poor boy, and all that, and how the boy when he grew up was out at sea, in an open boat, and saw a great sword-fish making for the boat Hail Columbia, and bound to stave right through her and sink her,—and how this man he took an oar, and give it a swing, and broke the critter's sword square off; and then Uncle Cephas—he 'd begun to git a little flustered—he stops short, and waves his arms, and says he, 'Boys, what do you think! That sword-fish now stands before you!' I cal'late that brought the house down." Captain Philo, who had laid down his three-cornered sail-needle, to listen to this exciting story, readjusted the leather thimble that covered his palm, and began to sew again. Uncle Silas, sitting near the water door, in his brown overalls made with a breast-apron and suspender-straps, looked out at the