All this, however, did not bring back the missing Roswell.  Another winter was fast approaching, with its chilling storms and gales, to awaken apprehensions by keeping the turbulence of the ocean, as it might be, constantly before the senses.  Not a week now passed that the deacon did not get a letter from some wife, or parent, or sister, or perhaps from one who hesitated to avow her relations to the absent mariner; all inquiring after the fate of those who had sailed in the Sea Lion of Oyster Pond, under the orders of Captain Roswell Gardiner.

Even those of the Vineyard sent across questions, and betrayed anxiety and dread, in the very manner of putting their interrogatories.  Each day did the deacon’s apprehensions increase, until it was obvious to all around him that this cause, united to others that were more purely physical, perhaps, was seriously undermining his health, and menacing his existence.  It is a sad commentary on the greediness for gain, manifested by this person, that ere the adventure he had undertaken on the strength of Daggett’s reluctant communications was brought to any apparent result, he himself was nearly in the condition of that diseased seaman, with as little prospect of being benefited by his secrets as was the man himself who first communicated their existence.  Mary saw all this clearly, and mourned almost as much over the blindness and worldliness of her uncle as she did over the now nearly assured fate of him whom she had so profoundly loved in her heart’s core.

Day by day did time roll on, without bringing any tidings of either of the Sea Lions.  The deacon grew weak fast, until he seldom left his room, and still more rarely the house.  It was now that he was induced to make his will, and this by an agency so singular as to deserve being mentioned.  The Rev. Mr. Whittle broached the subject one day, not with any interested motive of course, but simply because the “meeting-house” wanted some material repairs, and there was a debt on the congregation that it might be a pleasure to one who had long stood in the relation to it that Deacon Pratt filled, to pay off, when he no longer had any occasion for the money for himself.  It is probable the deacon at length felt the justice of this remark; for he sent to Riverhead for a lawyer, and made a will that would have stood even the petulant and envious justice of the present day; a justice that inclines to divide a man’s estate infinitesimally, lest some heir become a little richer than his neighbours.  After all, no small portion of that which struts about under the aspects of right, and liberty, and benevolence, is in truth derived from some of the most sneaking propensities of human nature!

Chapter XXI.