than I fished out of the water.  Cold weather it was.  Her leg was hurt, and her eye, and I thought first I’d drop her overboard again, and then I didn’t, and I took her aboard the schooner and put her by the stove.  I thought she might as well die where it was warm.  She eat a little mite of chowder before night, but she was very slim; but next morning, when I went to see if she was dead, she fell to licking my finger, and she did purr away like a dolphin.  One of her eyes was out, where a stone had took her, and she never got any use of it, but she used to look at you so clever with the other, and she got well of her lame foot after a while.  I got to be ter’ble fond of her.  She was just the knowingest thing you ever saw, and she used to sleep alongside of me in my bunk, and like as not she would go on deck with me when it was my watch.  I was coasting then for a year and eight months, and I kept her all the time.  We used to be in harbor consider’ble, and about eight o’clock in the forenoon I used to drop a line and catch her a couple of cunners.  Now, it is cur’us that she used to know when I was fishing for her.  She would pounce on them fish and carry them off and growl, and she knew when I got a bite,—­she’d watch the line; but when we were mackereling she never give us any trouble.  She would never lift a paw to touch any of our fish.  She didn’t have the thieving ways common to most cats.  She used to set round on deck in fair weather, and when the wind blew she al’ays kept herself below.  Sometimes when we were in port she would go ashore awhile, and fetch back a bird or a mouse, but she wouldn’t eat it till she come and showed it to me.  She never wanted to stop long ashore, though I never shut her up; I always give her her liberty.  I got a good deal of joking about her from the fellows, but she was a sight of company.  I don’ know as I ever had anything like me as much as she did.  Not to say as I ever had much of any trouble with anybody, ashore or afloat.  I’m a still kind of fellow, for all I look so rough.

“But then, I han’t had a home, what I call a home, since I was going on nine year old.”

“How has that happened?” asked Kate.

“Well, mother, she died, and I was bound out to a man in the tanning trade, and I hated him, and I hated the trade; and when I was a little bigger I ran away, and I’ve followed the sea ever since.  I wasn’t much use to him, I guess; leastways, he never took the trouble to hunt me up.

“About the best place I ever was in was a hospital.  It was in foreign parts.  Ye see I’m crippled some?  I fell from the topsail yard to the deck, and I struck my shoulder, and broke my leg, and banged myself all up.  It was to a nuns’ hospital where they took me.  All of the nuns were Catholics, and they wore big white things on their heads.  I don’t suppose you ever saw any.  Have you?  Well, now, that’s queer!  When I was first there I was scared of them; they were real ladies, and I wasn’t used to being in a