nice little games in the cabin upon which he closed both eyes.  And this retrieved nine hundred and fifty dollars was a dead loss of—­well, it does not matter how much, to the virtuous and highly honorable captain.  His proportion would have been large enough at least to pay his wife’s pew-rent in St. James’s Church, with a little something over for charitable purposes.  For the captain did not mind giving a disinterested twenty-five dollars occasionally to those charities that were willing to show their gratitude by posting his name as director, or his wife’s as “Lady Manageress.”  In this case his right hand never knew what his left hand did—­how it got the money, for instance.

So when August drew his pay he was informed that he was discharged.  No reason was given.  He tried to see the captain.  But the captain was in the bosom of his family, kissing his own well-dressed little boys, and enjoying the respect which only exemplary and provident fathers enjoy.  And never asking down in his heart if these boys might become gamblers’ victims, or gamblers, indeed.  The captain could not see August the striker, for he was at home, and must not be interfered with by any of his subordinates.  Besides, it was Sunday, and he could not be intruded upon—­the rector of St. James’s was dining with him on his wife’s invitation, and it behooved him to walk circumspectly, not with eye-service as a man-pleaser, but serving the Lord.

So he refuted to see the anxious striker, and turned to compliment the rector on his admirable sermon on the sin of Judas, who sold his master for thirty pieces of silver.

And August Wehle had nothing left to do.  The river was falling fast, the large boats above the Falls were, in steamboat-man’s phrase, “laying up” in the mouths of the tributaries and other convenient harbors, there were plenty of engineers unemployed, and there were no vacancies.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CYNTHY ANN’S SACRIFICE.

Jonas had been all his life, as he expressed it in his mixed rhetoric, “a wanderin’ sand-hill crane, makin’ many crooked paths, and, like the cards in French monte, a-turnin’ up suddently in mighty on-expected places.”  He had been in every queer place from Halifax to Texas, and then had come back to his home again.  Naturally cautious, and especially suspicious of the female sex, it is not strange that he had not married.  Only when he “tied up to the same w’arf-boat alongside of Cynthy Ann, he thought he’d found somebody as was to be depended on in a fog or a harricane.”  This he told to Cynthy Ann as a reason why she should accept his offer of marriage.

“Jonas,” said Cynthy Ann, “don’t flatter.  My heart is dreadful weak, and prone to the vanities of this world.  It makes me abhor myself in dust and sackcloth fer you to say such things about poor unworthy me.”