With his clam hoe and bucket under his arm, Abner appeared at the door of Pegleg’s shanty the next afternoon.

“Thought I’d dig a mess o’ clams for supper,” he explained casually, “an’ seeing’s I was passin’, I dropped in.  Some time since you an’ me crossed the line on the old Almeda, ain’t it?”

“A matter of twenty year,” agreed Pegleg.

“Them was great days,” reminiscenced Abner.  “Do you remember how we used to read your ‘Guide to Courtship and Matrimony’?  I was thinkin’ about it only yesterday.”

Pegleg grinned.  “I paid fifty cents for that book,” he remarked.  “An’ I ain’t never had any real use for it.  I’ve got it now in my old dunnage bag.”

“I’d kind o’ like to see it, if it’s handy,” suggested Abner.  “The tide’s risin’, but I guess I’ve got a few minutes to spare.”

Pegleg disappeared into the shanty and returned after some time with a dog-eared volume, minus a portion of its pages, and with the edges of the remainder strangely scalloped.

“Th’ pesky rats has be’n chewin’ it,” he complained loudly.  “They’ve clean e’t up the first chapter.”

Abner drew a secret breath of relief.  The “How to Propose” chapter was not the first one.  Eagerly he turned the battered volume over.

“If you ’ll sell it, I’d like to have it,” he remarked carelessly.  “Half of the pages is e’t up, so I s’pose you’ll sell it for half price.”

“Make it thirty-five cents an’ you can have it,” bargained Pegleg.  “The rats ain’t gnawed into the readin’ so awful bad, only in the first chapter.”

“Wall, thirty-five then, as you’re an old shipmate,” conceded Abner.

Pegleg looked at him shrewdly, as he laid down three dimes and a nickel.

“I didn’t know but mebbe you was buyin’ it for Captain Burgess,” he hazarded.  “He’s boardin’ to your house, an’ folks say he’s courtin’ M’lissy Macy.”

“Folks is always sayin’ things,” responded Abner.  “Mebbe Enoch might know a ‘Guide to Courtship and Matrimony’ from a last year’s pill almanac, if somebody showed him.”

Once around the corner of the beach from Pegleg’s shanty, Abner danced a hornpipe, shocking a flock of gulls.

“Thirty-five cents from twenty-five dollars leaves twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents,” he calculated swiftly.  “And I’ll get a mess of clams beside.  The papers will be mentionin’ me as a financier pretty soon.”

“Did Pegleg suspect anything?” was Captain Enoch’s first question when Abner returned in triumph.

“Oh, he suspected,” replied Abner jubilantly.  “He wouldn’t be Pegleg if he didn’t.  But I didn’t help him any, and he looked dreadful disappointed.  You can eat your chowder in peace, if you ain’t so love sick you’ve lost your appetite.”

“It ain’t hurt my appetite a mite,” retorted the Captain.  “And I ain’t goin’ to let it.  Let’s see that book.  I want to find out how much I’ve be’n cheated.”