"We are all in the hands of Divine Providence," said the deacon, with a
sober mien, "and it is our duty to submit. To my thinking, Oyster Pond
catches more of its share of the poor and needy, who are landed from
vessels passing east and west, and add considerably to our burthens."

This was said of a spot as much favoured by Divine Providence, in the way
of abundance, as any other in highly-favoured America. Some eight or ten
such events as the landing of a stranger had occurred within the last
half-century, and this was the only instance in which either of them had
cost the deacon a cent. But, so little was he accustomed, and so little
was he disposed, to give, that even a threatened danger of that sort
amounted, in his eyes, nearly to a loss.

"Well," exclaimed the literal Roswell Gardiner, "I think, deacon, that we
have no great reason to complain. Southold, Shelter Island, and all the
islands about here, for that matter, are pretty well off as to poor, and
it is little enough that we have to pay for their support."

"That's the idea of a young man who never sees the tax-gatherers,"
returned the deacon. "However, there are islands, captain Gar'ner, that
are better off still, and I hope you will live to find them."

"Is our young friend to sail in the Sea Lion in quest of any such?"
inquired the pastor, a little curiously.

The deacon now repented him of the allusion. But his heart had warmed
with the subject, and the rum-and-water had unlocked some of its wards. So
timid and nervous had he become, however, that the slightest indication of
anything like a suspicion that his secrets were known, threw him into a