ice, and we were waiting and hoping the look-out would see seals. The ice had been piled up in some places and just south it looked like a town, a little village with houses and meeting house and school, all a sparklin' pretty. I never seed bluer sky, deep as chicory flowers and you could see fer miles, seems though you was a-goin' to see thru it almost to 'tother side o' the world.

"Long about two o'clock the look-out yelled: 'Seals to the nor-east!'

"No sooner did he yell than the Cap'en shouted: 'Look alive men! Over and after!'

"Then with gaffs and guns and ropes we went over the ship's side and after the seals. The ice was uncertain and some of the men went thru the crust into the sea, but we quickly pulled them out and were off agin.

"Now in the days before we had decided to make a contest of it, as we often did. It made good sport and we would get more seals. Harbor Jim and I had chosen up, like they do in a spellin' bee, and all the men had been divided into two sides to see which one on'em would bring the biggest load o' seals back to the ship.

"Unfortunately the seals were some distance from the ship and it was after two when we started. We were so intent on getting the catch that we failed to note it was not only beginning to snow, but also getting on toward the end o' the day.

"At the moment when we should have turned back, I saw an old hood, that's an old seal that pulls a visor over his eyes and fights to a finish. I'd been tender-hearted and passed by just then a young seal that looked kinder pitiful at me and begged for life and I resolved that I'd get the old hood, come what would. He lured me away from the crowd, and when I finally succeeded in silencing him, the men were gone, and thru the snow I could not see the ship.

"Worse luck still the ice-pan on which I stood was beginning to shake and break up. I thought of the woman at home and the boy, and I thought of freezing to death out to sea and I guess, too, I thought o' my sins. The other fellows had gone back to the ship and I was alone, facing the cold, the storm and the night. Then I began to shout in the hope that they were not too far away to hear me. After some waiting, that seemed longer than probably 'twas, I heared two words and I don't honest think, if I gets to Paradise and the good Lord says, 'Come, Bob, there's room,' it'll sound half so good as it did to me then when I heared ringing out:

"'Comin', Bob!' It was the shout of Harbor Jim. I kept hollering and he found me and together we made our way back. I don't know jes' how and I don't believe he does, but when we reached the rest, we joined hands and felt our way back to the ship.

"I have asked him about it, many a time, but he always says, 'He showed me the way, Bob, and He'll show you the way. Ask Him, Bob.'

"He went after me when all the rest said he was a fool and a riskin' of his life. That's how I found my friend and I don't believe Jonathan ever loved David more'n I love Jim. He never goes scow-ways; he always sails straight. But you mustn't think I am the only one that loves him. Jerusalem spriggins, I do believe the whole world would love Jim, if they only could know him."

The lethargy that had been born out of the morning had completely disappeared. Bob had become all animation as he told of the finding of his friend. If I had not known that Bob was a man who never showed his feelings, except in most orderly and measured fashion, I should have thought, once or twice, that the tears were starting, but it must have been the dampness of the morning, that the sun was now fast drying up.

The city of St. John's now stood out clear in the sunshine. Harbor Jim's boat had gone thru the narrow entrance and disappeared out to sea. Both sides of the bay stood out sharp, revealing a harbor that from many viewpoints is as beautiful as that of Naples.

Bob carefully laid out his last fish and left it to dry on the flakes. Rubbing his sleeve across his face, he abruptly turned and said:

"I needs a plug of terbaccy. Walk down town and I'll tell you how Jim got his name."

I did not need a second invitation and we started toward town.

"You see it was this-away. His mother gave him the Jim, but his friends and neighbors give him the Harbor.

"Jim was always one to take chances, 'specially if some one needed him. Didn't he take a chance—a big one—when he saved me on the ice-pan? But somehow he always pulled thru. Other boats would lie outside and wait but Jim would pull thru the Narrows and tie up and be home afore the others. The others dasn't come into the Harbor, a fear o' the rocks.

"Folks come to say, 'Jim always makes the Harbor.' Then jes' naturally they come to call him Harbor Jim. It's so now that the women folks are always glad if their men can go with Jim, for they feel that then they'll sure come back. Everybody who lives yere loves Harbor Jim."

"I would like to meet Harbor Jim and have a talk with him," I said, when Bob ceased talking and trudged on in silence. "I am sure he has a philosophy worth hearing about and adopting."

"You can meet him all right," replied Bob, "but as for talkin' much with him, I don't know. He isn't very strong on talkin'. He says some folks talk so much, they set their tongue to goin' and go off and leave it runnin' and it does a heap a mischief. Another time he sed to me that he thought most folks would do more if they talked less.

"I remember a year ago a white-washed Yankee was here travelling for some soap concern. He heared about Harbor Jim and wanted me to take him over to his house and introduce him and I did. That Yankee started right in doing all the talkin'. He had a tongue that was balanced and would wag easy. He told Jim he was making a mistake in not having a bigger garden, that he ought to farm more and fish less. He told him what the Dominion needed and when at last he began to get out of breath he turned to Jim and said:

"'What do you think?'

"And Harbor Jim just said kind of slow like and deliberate:

"'Guess you have said it all, sir, but mebbe when everybody goes to farming they will need a little fish to change off from potatoes and cabbage, and I guess I better bid you good day and go fishing.' That was every word Jim said and that Yankee watched him go out of sight and what that Yankee said then want a credit to him nor favorable to the Dominion."

I smiled at the thought of the discomforted travelling man and wondered if my own luck or my own tact would succeed any better, for I was already convinced that Harbor Jim was a man worth knowing.

"Suppose we go and meet Mrs. Harbor Jim," I said to Bob when the tobacco had been purchased and his pipe was doing right.

"If you say so, but meetin' her ain't the same as meetin' him. She's all right, but she's jes' learning from Jim, she says so herself," answered Bob.

Their home was in a little town a few miles out from St. John's and it was kind of Bob to go out with me. After a walk of about an hour we stood looking down upon a little fishing village with great, brown-stained rocks protecting it a little from the sea.

"This is his town," said Bob, "can you find his house?"

But they looked alike to me; for all were small rectangular affairs, flat-roofed, shingled and painted white. Jim's house was evidently no different from his neighbor's.

"I guess I'll have to tell you," Bob chuckled, as we went down a lane and saw two rather dirty children at play in front of a house where a woman was bending over a tub of clothes.

"Hello, Bob, did Jim go out?" the woman called, as soon as she recognized Bob.

"Yes, he went out a couple of