their shipmates will go and draw it out.  I suppose there are thousands of dollars unclaimed in New York banks, where men have left it charged to their false names; then they get lost at sea or something, and never go to get it, and nobody knows whose it is.  They’re curious folks, take ’em altogether, sailors is; specially these foreign fellows that wander about from ship to ship.  They’re getting to be a dreadful low set, too, of late years.  It’s the last thing I’d want a boy of mine to do,—­ship before the mast with one of these mixed crews.  It’s a dog’s life, anyway, and the risks and the chances against you are awful.  It’s a good while before you can lay up anything, unless you are part owner.  I saw all the p’ints a good deal plainer after I quit followin’ the sea myself, though I’ve always been more or less into navigation until this last war come on.  I know when I was ship’s husband of the Polly and Susan there was a young man went out cap’n of her,—­her last voyage, and she never was heard from.  He had a wife and two or three little children, and for all he was so smart, they would have been about the same as beggars, if I hadn’t happened to have his life insured the day I was having the papers made out for the ship.  I happened to think of it.  Five thousand dollars there was, and I sent it to the widow along with his primage.  She hadn’t expected nothing, or next to nothing, and she was pleased, I tell ye.”

“I think it was very kind in you to think of that, Captain Sands,” said Kate.  And the old man said, flushing a little, “Well, I’m not so smart as some of the men who started when I did, and some of ’em went ahead of me, but some of ’em didn’t, after all.  I’ve tried to be honest, and to do just about as nigh right as I could, and you know there’s an old sayin’ that a cripple in the right road will beat a racer in the wrong.”

The Circus at Denby

Kate and I looked forward to a certain Saturday with as much eagerness as if we had been little school-boys, for on that day we were to go to a circus at Denby, a town perhaps eight miles inland.  There had not been a circus so near Deephaven for a long time, and nobody had dared to believe the first rumor of it, until two dashing young men had deigned to come themselves to put up the big posters on the end of ’Bijah Mauley’s barn.  All the boys in town came as soon as possible to see these amazing pictures, and some were wretched in their secret hearts at the thought that they might not see the show itself.  Tommy Dockum was more interested than any one else, and mentioned the subject so frequently one day when he went blackberrying with us, that we grew enthusiastic, and told each other what fun it would be to go, for everybody would be there, and it would be the greatest loss to us if we were absent.  I thought I had lost my childish fondness for circuses, but it came back redoubled; and Kate may contradict me if she chooses, but I am sure she never looked forward to the Easter Oratorio with half the pleasure she did to this “caravan,” as most of the people called it.