“They say that Minister Whittle took it very hard that nawthin’ was said about him, or about meetin’, in the deacon’s will,” observed Jake Davis, one of Baiting Joe’s cronies.

“That he did; and he tuck it so hard that everybody allows the two sermons he preached the next Sabba’ day to be the very two worst he ever did preach.”

“They must have been pretty bad, then,” quaintly observed Davis:  “I’ve long set down Minister Whittle’s discourses as being a leetle the worst going, when you give him a chance.”

It is unnecessary to relate any more of this dialogue, nor should we have given the little we have, did it not virtually explain what actually occurred on the publication of the contents of the will.  Roswell met with no opposition in proving the instrument, and the day after he was admitted to act as executor he was married to Mary Pratt, and became tenant, by the courtesy, to all her real estate; such being the law then, though it is so no longer. Now, a man and his wife may have a very pretty family quarrel about the ownership of a dozen tea-spoons, and the last, so far as we can see, may order the first out of one of her rocking chairs, if she see fit!  Surely domestic peace is not so trifling a matter that the law should seek to add new subjects of strife to the many that seem to be nearly inseparable from the married state.

Let this be as it may, no such law existed when Roswell Gardiner and Mary Pratt became man and wife.  One of the first acts of the happy young couple, after they were united, was to make a suitable disposition of the money found buried at the foot of the tree, on the so-much-talked of key.  Its amount was a little more than 2000 dollars, the pirate who made the revelation to Daggett having, in all probability, been ignorant himself of the real sum that had been thus secreted.  By a specific bargain with the crew, all this money belonged to the deacon; and, consequently, it had descended to his niece, and through her was now legally the property of Roswell.  The young man was not altogether free from scruples about using money that had been originally taken as booty by pirates, and his conscientious wife had still greater objections.  After conferring together on the subject, however, and seeing the impossibility of restoring the gold to those from whom it had been forced in the first place, the doubloons were distributed among the families of those who had lost their lives at Sealer’s Land.  The shares did not amount to much, it is true; but they did good, and cheered the hearts of two or three widows and dependent sisters.

Nor did Roswell Gardiner’s care for their welfare stop here.  He had the Sea Lion put in good order, removed her decks, raised upon her, and put her in her original condition, and sent her to Sealer’s Land, again, under the orders of Hazard, who was instructed to take in all the oil and skins that had been left behind, and to fill up, if he could, without risking too much by delay.  All this was successfully done, the schooner coming back, after a very short voyage, and quite full.  The money made by this highly successful adventure, had the effect to console several of those who had great cause to regret their previous losses.