“Ay, ay; when I was over on the P’int, they told me the name of the carver, in Boston, who cut your seal, and I sent to him to cut me a twin.  If they lay in a ship-yard, side by side, I don’t think you could tell one from the other.”

“So it seems, sir.  Pray haven’t you a man aboard there of the name of Watson?”

“Ay, ay—­he’s my second-mate.  I know what you mean, Captain Gar’ner—­ you ’re right enough, ’tis the same hand who was aboard you; but wanting a second officer, I offered him the berth, and he thought that better than taking a foremast lay in your craft.”

This explanation probably satisfied all who heard it, though the truth was not more than half told.  In point of fact, Watson was engaged as Daggett’s second mate before he had ever laid eyes on Roswell Gardiner, and had been sent to watch the progress of the work on Oyster Pond, as has been previously stated.  It was so much in the natural order of events for a man to accept preferment when offered, however, that even Gardiner himself blamed the delinquent for the desertion far less than he had previously done.  In the mean time the conversation proceeded.

“You told us nothing of your having that schooner fitting, when you were on the Point,” observed Roswell Gardiner, whose thoughts just then happened to advert to this particular fact.

“My mind was pretty much taken up with the affairs of my poor uncle, I suppose, Captain Gar’ner.  Death must visit each of us, once; nevertheless, it makes us all melancholy when he comes among friends.”

Now, Roswell Gardiner was not in the least sentimental, nor had he the smallest turn towards indulging in moral inferences, from ordinary events; but, this answer seemed so proper, that it found no objection in his mind.  Still, the young man had his suspicions on the subject of the equipment of the other schooner, and suspicions that were now active and keen, and which led him directly to fancy that Daggett had also some clue to the very objects he was after himself.  Singular as it may seem at first, Deacon Pratt’s interests were favourably affected by this unexpected meeting with the Sea Lion of Holmes’ Hole.  From the first, Roswell Gardiner had been indisposed to give full credit to the statements of the deceased mariner, ascribing no small part of his account to artifice, stimulated by a desire to render himself important.  But, now that he found one of this man’s family embarked in an enterprise similar to his own, his views of its expediency were sensibly changed.  Perfectly familiar with the wary economy with which every interest was regulated in that part of the world, he did not believe a company of Martha’s Vineyard men would risk their money in an enterprise that they had not good reasons for believing would succeed.  Although it exceeded his means to appreciate fully the information possessed by the Vineyard folk, and covetousness did not quicken his faculties on