“Oh! my dear sir he cannot possibly live, I think, and I do most earnestly entreat that you will let me send across to the Harbour for Dr. Sage.”

By the Harbour was meant Sag’s, and the physician named was one of merited celebrity in old Suffolk.  So healthy was the country in general, and so simple were the habits of the people, that neither lawyer nor physician was to be found in every hamlet, as is the case to-day.  Both were to be had at Riverhead, as well as at Sag Harbour; but, if a man called out “Squire,” or “Doctor,” in the highways of Suffolk, sixteen men did not turn round to reply, as is said to be the case in other regions; one half answering to the one appellation, and the second half to the other.  The deacon had two objections to yielding to his niece’s earnest request; the expense being one, though it was not, in this instance, the greatest; there was another reason that he kept to himself, but which will appear as our narrative proceeds.

A few weeks previously to the Sunday in question, a sea-going vessel, inward bound, had brought up in Gardiner’s Bay, which is a usual anchorage for all sorts of craft.  A worn-out and battered seaman had been put ashore on Oyster Pond, by a boat from this vessel, which sailed to the westward soon after, proceeding most probably to New York.  The stranger was not only well advanced in life, but he was obviously wasting away with disease.

The account given of himself by this seaman was sufficiently explicit.  He was born on Martha’s Vineyard, but, as is customary with the boys of that island, he had left home in his twelfth year, and had now been absent from the place of his birth a little more than half a century.  Conscious of the decay which beset him, and fully convinced that his days were few and numbered, the seaman, who called himself Tom Daggett, had felt a desire to close his eyes in the place where they had first been opened to the light of day.  He had persuaded the commander of the craft mentioned, to bring him from the West Indies, and to put him ashore as related, the Vineyard being only a hundred miles or so to the eastward of Oyster Pond Point.  He trusted to luck to give him the necessary opportunity of overcoming these last hundred miles.

Daggett was poor, as he admitted, as well as friendless and unknown.  He had with him, nevertheless, a substantial sea-chest, one of those that the sailors of that day uniformly used in merchant-vessels, a man-of-war compelling them to carry their clothes in bags, for the convenience of compact stowage.  The chest of Daggett, however, was a regular inmate of the forecastle, and, from its appearance, had made almost as many voyages as its owner.  The last, indeed, was heard to say that he had succeeded in saving it from no less than three shipwrecks.  It was a reasonably heavy chest, though its contents, when opened, did not seem to be of any very great value.