and there to-morrow,—coming and going all the time, until he fairly tired out the public curiosity and people’s patience altogether, so that even the greatest gossips in the town had to confess at length that there was no use trying to make anything of Captain Jack, and they prudently gave up inquiring and bothering their heads about him; but they were glad to see him always, none the less.

The Captain was known as a great talker, and was always, in former years, brimful of stories of adventure to tell to any one he met during his short visits to the village,—any one, indeed, who would listen to him; and, in truth, everybody was glad to listen, he talked so well. Many and many a summer evening he spent seated on an old bench in front of the village inn, reciting tales of shipwrecks, and stories of the sea and land, to the wondering people. Of late years, however, he was not disposed to talk so much, and was not so often seen at his favorite haunt. “I’m getting too old,” he would say, “to tarry from home after nightfall.”

He had now grown to be fifty-nine years old, although he really looked much more aged, for he bore about him the marks of much hardship and privation. His hair was quite white, and fell in long silvery locks over his shoulders, while a heavy snow-white beard covered his breast. There was always something in his appearance denoting the sailor. Perhaps it was that he always wore loose pantaloons,—white in summer, and blue in winter,—and a sort of tarpaulin hat, with long blue ribbons tied around it, the ends flowing off behind like the pennant of a man-of-war.

Captain Hardy was known to everybody as a generous, warm-hearted, and harmless man; but he was thought to be equally improvident. The poor had a constant friend in him. No beggar ever asked the Captain for a shilling without getting it, if the Captain had a shilling anywhere about him. Sometimes he had plenty of money, yet when at home he always lived in a frugal, homely way. Great was the rejoicing therefore, among his friends (and they were many), when it was known that he had fallen in with a streak of good fortune. Having been instrumental in saving the British bark Dauntless from shipwreck, the insurance companies had awarded him a liberal salvage, and it was to secure this that he had gone away on his last voyage. As soon as he came home he went right off and bought the house which we have before described, with the money he brought back; and for once got the credit of doing a prudent thing.

The old man’s happiness seemed now complete. “Here,” exclaimed he, “Heaven willing, I will bring the old craft to an anchor, and end my days in peace.” But after the excitement of fitting up his house and grounds, and getting his little yacht in order, had passed over, he began to feel a little lonely. He was so far away from the village that he could not meet his old friends as often as he wished to. We have seen that he was a great talker; and he liked so much to talk, and thus to “fight his battles over again,” as it were, and he had so much to talk about, that an audience was quite necessary to him. It is not improbable, therefore, that he looked upon his meeting with William and Fred and Alice as a fortunate event for him; and if the children were delighted, so was he. He was very fond of children, and these were children after his own heart. To them the coming story was a great event,—how great the reader could scarcely understand, unless he knew how much every boy in Rockdale was envied by all the other boys, big and little, when he was known to have been especially picked out by Captain Hardy to be the listener to some tale of adventure on the sea.

As we may well suppose, the Captain’s little friends did not tarry at home next day beyond the appointed time; but true as the hands of the clock to mark the hour and minute on the dial-plate, they set out for Captain Hardy’s house as fast as they could go,—as if their very lives depended on their speed. They found the Captain seated in the shady arbor, smoking a long clay pipe. “I’m glad to see you, children,” was his greeting to them; and glad enough he was too,—much more glad, maybe, than he would care to own,—as glad, perhaps, as the children were themselves.

“And now, my dears,” continued he, “shall we have the story? There is no wind, you see, so we cannot have a sail.”

“O, the story! yes, yes, the story,” cried the children, all at once.

“Then the story it shall be,” replied the old man; “but first you must sit down,”—and the children sat down upon the rustic seat, and closed their mouths, and opened wide their ears, prepared to listen; while the Captain knocked the ashes from his long clay pipe, and stuck it in the rafter overhead, and clearing up his throat, prepared to talk.

“Now you must know,” began the Captain, “that I cannot finish the story I’m going to tell you all in one day,—indeed, I can only just begin it. It’s a very long one, so you must come down to-morrow, and next day, and every bright day after that until we’ve done. Does that please you?”

“Yes, yes,” was the ready answer, and little Alice laughed loud with joy.

“Will you be sure to remember the name of the place you come to? Will you remember that its name is ‘Mariner’s Rest’? Will you remember that?”

“Yes, indeed we will.”

“And now for the boat we’re to have a sail in by and by; what do you think I’ve called that?” asked the Captain.

“Sea-Gull?” guessed William.

“Water-Witch?” guessed Fred.

“White Dove?” guessed Alice.

“All wrong,” said the Captain, smiling a smile of the greatest satisfaction. “I’ve painted the name on her in bright golden letters, and when you go down again to look at her, you’ll see Alice there, and the letters are just the color of some little girl’s hair I know of.”

“Is that really her name?” shouted both the boys at once, glad as they could be; “how jolly!” But little Alice said never a word, but crept close to the old man’s side, and the old man put his great, big arm around the child’s small body, and as the soft sunlight came stealing in through the openings in the foliage of the trees, flinging patches of brightness here and there upon the grass around, the Captain began his story.

“Now, my little listeners,” spoke the Captain, “you must know that what I am going to tell you occurred to me at a very early period of my life, when I was a mere boy; in fact, the adventures which I shall now relate to you were the first I ever had.

“To begin, then, at the very beginning, I must tell you that I was born quite near Rockdale. So you see I have good reason for always liking to come back here. It is like coming home, you know. The place of my birth is only eleven miles from Rockdale by the public road, which runs off there in a west-nor’westerly direction.

“My mother died when I was six years old, but I remember her as a good and gentle woman. She was taken away, however, too early to have left any distinct impression upon my mind or character. I was thus left to grow up with three brothers and two sisters, all but one of whom were older than myself, without a mother’s kindly care and instruction; and I must here own, that I grew to be a self-willed and obstinate boy; and this disposition led me into a course of disobedience which, but for the protecting care of a merciful Providence, would have brought my life to a