upon a certain occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do
not mind telling you that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest
discoveries that man has ever made."

Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense
of his sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and
I asked to hear more with all the deference I really felt. A
swallow flew into the schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird
were after it, and beat itself against the walls for a minute, and
escaped again to the open air; but Captain Littlepage took no
notice whatever of the flurry.

"I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London
docks to Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson's
Bay," said the captain earnestly. "We were delayed in lading, and
baffled by head winds and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-
about and across. Then the fog kept us off the coast; and when I
made port at last, it was too late to delay in those northern
waters with such a vessel and such a crew as I had. They cared for
nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but my first mate was
a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being frozen in there
until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could to get
clear of Hudson's Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the
vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged
ship, called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I
meant it should be my last v'y'ge in her, and so it proved. She
had been an excellent vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her
I can't say so much."

"Then you were wrecked?" I asked, as he made a long pause.