worked and the little bit of a shop, about eight feet every way, in
which he worked, stood on a street leading down to the town dock, and
the name of the town we will say was Barkhampstead, on Cape Cod Bay.

Now and then--that is, once or twice in the year--a whaling vessel set
sail from the dock, and sometimes, not always, the same vessels
returned to the dock.

The going and the coming of a "whaler" made Crip's father, Mr. John
Allen, glad. It was his busy season, for when the seamen went, they
always wanted stout new boots and shoes, and, when they came, they
always needed new coverings on their feet to go home in.

Two years before this dismal time that Crip was having, the ship "Sweet
Home" went away, and it had not been spoken or signaled or heard from
in any way, since four months from the time it left the dock at
Barkhampstead.

The fathers and mothers and wives and little children of the men who
went in the "Sweet Home" kept on hoping, and fearing, and feeling
terribly bad about everybody on board whom they loved, when, without
any warning whatever, right in the midst of a raging snow storm, the
"Sweet Home," all covered in ice from mast-head to prow, sailed, stiff
and cold, into Barkhampstead harbor.

Oh! wasn't there a great gladness over all the old town then! They rang
the meeting-house bell. It was a hoarse, creaking old bell, but there
was music in it that time, as it throbbed against the falling snow, and
made a most delicious concert of joy and gratitude in every house
within a mile and more of the dock.