Mary Pratt was observant, and of a mind so constituted, that its observations usually led her to safe and accurate deductions.  Great was the surprise of all on the Point when it became known that Deacon Pratt had purchased and put into the water, the new sea-going craft that was building on speculation, at Southold.  Not only had he done this, but he had actually bought some half-worn copper, and had it placed on the schooner’s bottom, as high as the bends, ere he had her launched.  While the whole neighbourhood was “exercised” with conjectures on the motive which could induce the deacon to become a ship-owner in his age, Mary did not fail to impute it to some secret but powerful influence, that the sick stranger had obtained over him.  He now spent nearly half his time in private communications with Daggett; and, on more than one occasion, when the niece had taken some light article of food over for the use of the last, she found him and her uncle examining one or two dirty and well-worn charts of the ocean.  As she entered, the conversation invariably was changed; nor was Mrs. White ever permitted to be present at one of these secret conferences.

Not only was the schooner purchased, and coppered, and launched, and preparations made to fit her for sea, but “Young Gar’ner” was appointed to command her!  As respects Roswell Gardiner, or “Gar’ner,” as it would be almost thought a breach of decorum, in Suffolk, not to call him, there was no mystery.  Six-and-twenty years before the opening of our legend, he had been born on Oyster Pond itself, and of one of its best families.  Indeed, he was known to be a descendant of Lyon Gardiner, that engineer who had been sent to the settlement of the lords Saye and Seal, and Brook, since called Saybrook, near two centuries before, to lay out a town and a fort.  This Lyon Gardiner had purchased of the Indians the island in that neighbourhood, which still bears his name.  This establishment on the island was made in 1639; and now, at an interval of two hundred and nine years, it is in possession of its ninth owner, all having been of the name and blood of its original patentee.  This is great antiquity for America, which, while it has produced many families of greater wealth, and renown, and importance, than that of the Gardiners, has seldom produced any of more permanent local respectability.  This is a feature in society that we so much love to see, and which is so much endangered by the uncertain and migratory habits of the people, that we pause a moment to record this instance of stability, so pleasing and so commendable, in an age and country of changes.