“Well,” exclaimed the literal Roswell Gardiner, “I think, deacon, that we have no great reason to complain.  Southold, Shelter Island, and all the islands about here, for that matter, are pretty well off as to poor, and it is little enough that we have to pay for their support.”

“That’s the idea of a young man who never sees the tax-gatherers,” returned the deacon.  “However, there are islands, captain Gar’ner, that are better off still, and I hope you will live to find them.”

“Is our young friend to sail in the Sea Lion in quest of any such?” inquired the pastor, a little curiously.

The deacon now repented him of the allusion.  But his heart had warmed with the subject, and the rum-and-water had unlocked some of its wards.  So timid and nervous had he become, however, that the slightest indication of anything like a suspicion that his secrets were known, threw him into a sweat.

“Not at all—­not at all—­the captain goes on well-known and beaten ground—­Sam, what is wanting, now?”

“Here is Baiting Joe comed up from the wharf, wanting to see master,” returned a grey-headed negro, who had formerly been a slave, and who now lived about the place giving his services for his support.

“Baiting Joe!  He is not after his sheepshead, I hope—­if he is, he is somewhat late in the day.”

“Ay, ay,” put in the young sailor, laughing—­“tell him Sam, that no small part of it is bound to the southward meaning to cross the line in my company, and that right soon.”

“I paid Joe his half-dollar, certainly—­you saw me pay him, captain Gar’ner.”

“I don’t think it’s any sich thing, master.  There is a stranger with Joe, that he has ferried across from Shelter Island, and he’s comed up from the wharf too.  Yes—­that’s it, master.”

A stranger!  Who could it be?  A command was given to admit him, and no sooner did Mary get a sight of his person, than she quietly arose to procure a plate, in order that he, too, might have his share of the fish.

Chapter V.

  “Stranger!  I fled the home of grief,
  At Connoeht Moran’s tomb to fall;
  I found the helmet of my chief,
  His bow still hanging on our wall.”

  Campbell.

“Amphibious!” exclaimed Roswell Gardiner, in an aside to Mary, as the stranger entered the room, following Baiting Joe’s lead.  The last only came for his glass of rum-and-water, served with which by the aid of the negro, he passed the back of his hand across his mouth, napkin-fashion, nodded his “good-day,” and withdrew.  As for the stranger, Roswell Gardiner’s term being particularly significant, it may be well to make a brief explanation.