plied up and down the coast of the island, running in at the inlets, and
stopping to gather up the farmers' produce and take it to Charlottetown
markets, seemed to him as grand as Indiamen; and when, in his twelfth
year, he found himself launched in life as a boy-of-all-work on one of
these sloops, whose captain was a friend of his father's, he felt that
his fortune was made. And so it was. He was in the line of promotion by
virtue of his own enthusiasm. No plank too small for the born sailor to
swim by. Before Donald was twenty-five he himself commanded one of these
little coasting-vessels. From this he took a great stride forward, and
became first officer on the iron-clad steamer plying between
Charlottetown and the mainland. The winter service on this boat was
terrible,--ploughing and cutting through nearly solid ice for long days
and nights of storm. Donald did not like it. He felt himself lost out in
the wild channel. His love was for the water near shore,--for the bays,
inlets, and river-mouths he had known since he was a child.

He began to think he was not so much of a sailor as he had supposed,--so
great a shrinking grew up in him winter after winter from the perils and
hardships of the mail-steamer's route. But he persevered and bided his
time, and in ten years had the luck to become owner and master of a trim
little coasting-steamer which had been known for years as the "Sally
Wright," making two trips a week from Charlottetown to Orwell
Head,--known as the "Sally Wright" no longer, however; for the first
thing Donald did was to repaint her, from stem to stern, white, with
green and pink stripes, on her prow a cluster of pink heather blossoms,
and "Heather Bell" in big letters on the side.

When he was asked where he got this fancy name, he said, lightly, he
did not know; it was a good Scotch name. This was not true. Donald knew
very well. On the window-sill in his mother's kitchen had stood always a