and the chances against you are awful. It's a good while before you can
lay up anything, unless you are part owner. I saw all the p'ints a good
deal plainer after I quit followin' the sea myself, though I've always
been more or less into navigation until this last war come on. I know
when I was ship's husband of the Polly and Susan there was a young man
went out cap'n of her,--her last voyage, and she never was heard from.
He had a wife and two or three little children, and for all he was so
smart, they would have been about the same as beggars, if I hadn't
happened to have his life insured the day I was having the papers made
out for the ship. I happened to think of it. Five thousand dollars there
was, and I sent it to the widow along with his primage. She hadn't
expected nothing, or next to nothing, and she was pleased, I tell ye."

"I think it was very kind in you to think of that, Captain Sands," said
Kate. And the old man said, flushing a little, "Well, I'm not so smart
as some of the men who started when I did, and some of 'em went ahead of
me, but some of 'em didn't, after all. I've tried to be honest, and to
do just about as nigh right as I could, and you know there's an old
sayin' that a cripple in the right road will beat a racer in the wrong."




_The Circus at Denby_


Kate and I looked forward to a certain Saturday with as much eagerness
as if we had been little school-boys, for on that day we were to go to a
circus at Denby, a town perhaps eight miles inland. There had not been a
circus so near Deephaven for a long time, and nobody had dared to