“That’s not for salvage.  The next thing will be a demand for salvage in behalf of the owners and crew of the Sea Lion of Humses’ Hull!  I know how it will be, child:  I know how it will be!  Gar’ner has undone me, and I shall go down into my grave a beggar, as his father has done already.”

“If such be the fact, uncle, no one but I would be the sufferer, and I will strive not to grieve over your losses.  But, here is a paper that Roswell has inclosed in his letter to me, by mistake, no doubt.  See, sir; it is an acknowledgment, signed by Captain Daggett and all his crew, admitting that they went into Beaufort with Roswell out of good feeling, and allowing that they have no claims to salvage.  Here it is, sir; you can read it for yourself.”

The deacon did not only read it—­he almost devoured the paper, which, as Mary suggested, had been inclosed in her letter by mistake.  The relief produced by this document so far composed the uncle, that he not only read Gardiner’s letter himself, with a very close attention to its contents, but he actually forgave the cost of the repairs incurred at Beaufort.  While he was in the height of his joy at this change in the aspect of things, the niece stole into her own room in order to read the missive she had received, by herself.

The tears that Mary Pratt profusely shed over Roswell’s letter, were both sweet and bitter.  The manifestations of his affection for her, which were manly and frank, brought tears of tenderness from her eyes; while the recollection of the width of the chasm that separated them, had the effect to embitter these proofs of love.  Most females would have lost the sense of duty which sustained our heroine in this severe trial, and, in accepting the man of their heart, would have trusted to time, and her own influence, and the mercy of Divine Providence, to bring about the change she desired; but Mary Pratt could not thus blind herself to her own high obligations.  The tie of husband and wife she rightly regarded as the most serious of all the obligations we can assume, and she could not—­would not plight her vows to any man whose ‘God was not her God.’

Still there was much of sweet consolation in this little-expected letter from Roswell.  He wrote, as he always did, simply and naturally, and attempted no concealments.  This was just as true of his acts, as the master of the schooner, as it was in his character of a suitor.  To Mary he told the whole story of his weakness, acknowledging that a silly spirit of pride which would not permit him to seem to abandon a trial of the qualities of the two schooners, had induced him to stand on to the westward longer than he should otherwise have done, and the currents had come to assist in increasing the danger.  As for Daggett, he supposed him to have been similarly influenced; though he did not withhold his expressions of gratitude for the generous manner in which that seaman had stuck to him to the last.