sidewalk, at the shops and the stores where goods hung in the windows,
and, most of all, the fortifications and the battery at the point, at
the rows of threatening cannon, and at the scarlet-coated sentries
pacing up and down the ramparts. All this was very wonderful, and so
were the clustered boats riding at anchor in the harbor. It was like a
new world, so different was it from the sand-hills and the sedgy levels
of Henlopen.

Tom Chist took up his lodgings at a coffeehouse near to the town-hall,
and thence he sent by the post-boy a letter written by Parson Jones to
Master Chillingsworth. In a little while the boy returned with a
message, asking Tom to come up to Mr. Chillingsworth's house that
afternoon at two o'clock.

Tom went thither with a great deal of trepidation, and his heart fell
away altogether when he found it a fine, grand brick house, three
stories high, and with wrought-iron letters across the front.

The counting-house was in the same building; but Tom, because of Mr.
Jones's letter, was conducted directly into the parlor, where the great
rich man was awaiting his coming. He was sitting in a leather-covered
arm-chair, smoking a pipe of tobacco, and with a bottle of fine old
Madeira close to his elbow.

Tom had not had a chance to buy a new suit of clothes yet, and so he
cut no very fine figure in the rough dress he had brought with him from
Henlopen. Nor did Mr. Chillingsworth seem to think very highly of his
appearance, for he sat looking sideways at Tom as he smoked.

"Well, my lad," he said; "and what is this great thing you have to tell