reconstructed, so that the rents and patches which were here and
there visible on their fair exteriors, served as mementos of former
exploits, and called up associations of the past without at all
deteriorating from the striking effect of the present. Glengary
bonnets adorned their heads, and served to complete the costume.

The labor of dressing was followed by a hurried arrangement of the
trunks and bedding; after which they all emerged from the hold and
ascending to the deck, looked around upon the scene. Above, the
sky was blue and cloudless, and between them and the blue sky
floated the flag, from whose folds the face looked benignantly
down. The tide was now on the ebb, and as the wind was fair, both
wind and tide united to bear them rapidly onward. Before them was
Blomidon, while all around was the circling sweep of the shores of
Minas Bay. A better day for a start could not have been found, and
everything promised a rapid and pleasant run.

"I must say," remarked Captain Corbet, who had for some time been
standing buried in his own meditations at the helm,--"I must say,
boys, that I don't altogether regret bein once more on the briny
deep. There was a time," he continued, meditatively, "when I kine
o' anticipated givin up this here occypation, an stayin to hum a
nourishin of the infant. But man proposes, an woman disposes, as
the sayin is,--an you see what I'm druv to. It's a great thing for
a man to have a companion of sperrit, same as I have, that keeps a'
drivin an a drivin at him, and makes him be up an doin. An now, I
declar, if I ain't gittin to be a confirmed wanderer agin, same as
I was in the days of my halcyon an shinin youth. Besides, I have a
kine o' feelin as if I'd be a continewin this here the rest of all
my born days."