dark curling hair, and bright modest eyes under
his Sou'-Wester hat, and with a frank but simple
and retiring manner which the captain found
uncommonly taking. "I'd bet a thousand
dollars," said the captain to himself, "that
your father was an honest man!"

"Might you be married now?" asked the
captain when he had had some talk with this
new acquaintance.

"Not yet."

"Going to be?" said the captain.

"I hope so."

The captain's keen glance followed the
slightest possible turn of the dark eye, and the
slightest possible tilt of the Sou'-Wester hat.
The captain then slapped both his legs, and said
to himself:

"Never knew such a good thing in all my
life! There's his sweetheart looking over the
wall!"

There was a very pretty girl looking over the
wall, from a little platform of cottage, vine, and
fuchsia; and she certainly did not look as if the
presence of this young fisherman in the
landscape, made it any the less sunny and hopeful
for her.

Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to
laugh with that hearty good nature which is
quite exultant in the innocent happiness of
other people, had undoubled himself and was
going to start a new subject, when there
appeared coming down the lower ladders of stones
a man whom he hailed as "Tom Pettifer Ho!"
Tom Pettifer Ho responded with alacrity, and
in speedy course descended on the pier.

"Afraid of a sunstroke in England in November,
Tom, that you wear your tropical hat,
strongly paid outside and paper-lined inside,
here?" said the captain, eyeing it.

"It's as well to be on the safe side, sir,"
replied Tom.

"Safe side!" repeated the captain, laughing.
"You'd guard against a sunstroke with that old
hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa'al! What have you
made out at the Post-office?"

"It is the Post-office, sir."

"What's the Post-office?" said the captain.

"The name, sir. The name keeps the Post-
office."

"A coincidence!" said the captain. "A
lucky hit! Show me where it is. Good-by,
shipmates, for the present! I shall come and
have another look at you, afore I leave, this
afternoon."

This was addressed to all there, but especially
the young fisherman; so, all there acknowledged
it, but especially the young fisherman. "He's
a sailor!" said one to another, as they looked
after the captain moving away. That he was;
and so outspeaking was the sailor in him, that
although his dress had nothing nautical about
it with the single exception of its colour, but
was a suit of a shore-going shape and form, too
long, in the sleeves, and too short in the legs,
and too unaccommodating everywhere,
terminating earthward in a pair of Wellington boots,
and surmounted by a tall stiif hat which no
mortal could have worn at sea in any wind
under Heaven; nevertheless, a glimpse of his
sagacious weather-beaten face or his strong
brown hand would have established the
captain's calling. Whereas, Mr. Pettifer—a man
of a certain plump neatness with a curly whisker,
and elaborately nautical in a jacket and shoes
and all things correspondent—looked no more
like a seaman, beside Captain Jorgan, than he
looked like a sea-serpent.

The two climbed high up the village—which
had the most arbitrary turns and twists in it, so
that the cobbler's house came dead across the
ladder, and to have held a reasonable course you
must have gone through his house, and through,
him too, as he sat at his work between two little
windows, with one eye microscopically on the
geological formation of that part of Devonshire,
and the other telescopically on the open sea—
the two climbed high up the village, and stopped
before a quaint little house, on which was
painted "MRS. RAYBROCK, DRAPER;" and also,
"POST-OFFICE." Before it, ran a rill of murmuring
water, and access to it was gained by a little
plank-bridge.

"Here's the name," said Captain Jorgan,
"sure enough. You can come in if you like,
Tom."

The captain opened the door, and passed
into an odd little shop about six feet high,
with a great variety of beams and bumps in
the ceiling, and, besides the principal window
giving on the ladder of stones, a purblind little
window of a single pane of glass: peeping out
of an abutting corner at the sun-lighted ocean,
and winking at its brightness.

"How do you do, ma'am?" said the captain.
"I am very glad to see you. I have come a
long way to see you."

"Have you, sir? Then I am sure I am very
glad to see you, though I don't know you from.
Adam."

Thus, a comely elderly woman, short of
stature, plump of form, sparkling and dark of eye,
who, perfectly clean and neat herself, stood in
the midst of her perfectly clean and neat
arrangements, and surveyed Captain Jorgan with
smiling curiosity. "Ah! but you are a sailor,
sir," she added, almost immediately, and with a
slight movement of her hands, that was not very
unlike wringing them; " then you are heartily
welcome."

"Thankee, ma'am," said the captain. "I
don't know what it is, I am sure, that brings
out the salt in me, but everybody seems to see
it on the crown of my hat and the collar of my
coat. Yes, ma'am, I am in that way of life."

"And the other gentleman, too," said Mrs.
Raybrock.

"Well now, ma'am," said the captain, glancing
shrewdly at the other gentleman, "you are
that nigh right, that he goes to sea—if that
makes him a sailor. This is my steward, ma'am,
Tom Pettifer; he's been a'most all trades you
could name, in the course of his life—would
have bought all your chairs and tables, once,
if you had wished to sell 'em—but now he's