Mary Pratt was observant, and of a mind so constituted, that its
observations usually led her to safe and accurate deductions. Great was
the surprise of all on the Point when it became known that Deacon Pratt
had purchased and put into the water, the new sea-going craft that was
building on speculation, at Southold. Not only had he done this, but he
had actually bought some half-worn copper, and had it placed on the
schooner's bottom, as high as the bends, ere he had her launched. While
the whole neighbourhood was "exercised" with conjectures on the motive
which could induce the deacon to become a ship-owner in his age, Mary did
not fail to impute it to some secret but powerful influence, that the sick
stranger had obtained over him. He now spent nearly half his time in
private communications with Daggett; and, on more than one occasion, when
the niece had taken some light article of food over for the use of the
last, she found him and her uncle examining one or two dirty and well-worn
charts of the ocean. As she entered, the conversation invariably was
changed; nor was Mrs. White ever permitted to be present at one of these
secret conferences.

Not only was the schooner purchased, and coppered, and launched, and
preparations made to fit her for sea, but "Young Gar'ner" was appointed to
command her! As respects Roswell Gardiner, or "Gar'ner," as it would be
almost thought a breach of decorum, in Suffolk, not to call him, there was
no mystery. Six-and-twenty years before the opening of our legend, he had
been born on Oyster Pond itself, and of one of its best families. Indeed,
he was known to be a descendant of Lyon Gardiner, that engineer who had
been sent to the settlement of the lords Saye and Seal, and Brook, since
called Saybrook, near two centuries before, to lay out a town and a fort.
This Lyon Gardiner had purchased of the Indians the island in that
neighbourhood, which still bears his name. This establishment on the
island was made in 1639; and now, at an interval of two hundred and nine