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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KILLYKINICK ***
+
+
+
+
+KILLYKINICK
+
+By MARY T. WAGGAMAN
+
+Author of
+"Billy Boy," "The Secret of Pocomoke,"
+"White Eagle," "Tommy Travers," etc.
+
+THE AVE MARIA
+
+NOTRE DAME, INDIANA
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1917
+By D. E. HUDSON, C. S. C.
+
+
+
+
+KILLYKINICK.
+
+
+
+
+I.--THE "LEFT OVERS."
+
+
+It was the week after Commencement. The corridors, class-rooms, and study
+hall of Saint Andrew's stretched in dim, silent vistas; over the tennis
+court and the playground there brooded a dead calm; the field, scene of so
+many strenuous struggles, lay bare and still in the summer sunlight; the
+quadrangle, that so lately had rung to parting cheer and "yell," might
+have been a cloister for midnight ghosts to walk. The only sign or sound
+of life came from the open archways of the Gym, where the "left overs" (as
+the boys who for various reasons had been obliged to summer at Saint
+Andrew's) were working off the steam condensed, as Jim Norris declared, to
+the "busting" point by the last seven days.
+
+A city-bound college has its limitations, and vacation at Saint Andrew's
+promised to be a very dull affair indeed. The "left overs" had tried
+everything to kill time. At present their efforts seemed bent on killing
+themselves; for Jim Norris and Dud Fielding, sturdy fellows of fourteen,
+were doing stunts on the flying trapeze worthy of professional acrobats;
+while Dan Dolan, swinging from a high bar, was urging little Fred Neville
+to a precarious poise on his shoulder.
+
+Freddy was what may be called a perennial "left over." He had been the
+"kid" of Saint Andrew's since he was five years old, when his widowed
+father had left him in a priestly uncle's care, and had disappeared no one
+knew how or where. And as Uncle Tom's chosen path lay along hard, lofty
+ways that small boys could not follow, Fred had been placed by special
+privilege in Saint Andrew's to grow up into a happy boyhood, the pet and
+plaything of the house. He was eleven now, with the fair face and golden
+hair of his dead girl-mother, and brown eyes that had a boyish sparkle all
+their own.
+
+They looked up dubiously at Dan now,--"daring Dan," who for the last year
+had been Freddy's especial chum; and to be long-legged, sandy-haired,
+freckle-nosed Dan's chum was an honor indeed for a small boy of eleven.
+Dan wore frayed collars and jackets much too small for him; his shoes were
+stubby-toed and often patched; he made pocket money in various ways, by
+"fagging" and odd jobbing for the big boys of the college. But he led the
+classes and games of the Prep with equal success; and even now the Latin
+class medal was swinging from the breast of his shabby jacket.
+
+Dan had been a newsboy in very early youth; but, after a stormy and often
+broken passage through the parochial school, he had won a scholarship at
+Saint Andrew's over all competitors.
+
+"An' ye'll be the fool to take it," Aunt Winnie had said when he brought
+the news home to the little attic rooms where she did tailor's finishing,
+and took care of Dan as well as a crippled old grandaunt could. "With all
+them fine gentlemen's sons looking down on ye for a beggar!"
+
+"Let them look," Dan had said philosophically. "Looks don't hurt, Aunt
+Win. It's my chance and I'm going to take it."
+
+And he was taking it bravely when poor Aunt Win's rheumatic knees broke
+down utterly, and she had to go to the "Little Sisters," leaving Dan to
+summer with the other "left overs" at Saint Andrew's.
+
+"Swing up," he repeated, stretching a sturdy hand to Fred. "Don't be a
+sissy. One foot on each of my shoulders, and catch on to the bar above my
+head. That will steady you."
+
+Freddy hesitated. It was rather a lofty height for one of his size.
+
+"You can't hold me," he said. "I'm too heavy."
+
+"Too heavy!" repeated Dan, laughing down on the slender, dapper little
+figure at his feet. "Gee whilikins, I wouldn't even _feel_ you!"
+
+This was too much for any eleven-year-old to stand. Freddy was not very
+well. Brother Timothy had been dosing him for a week or more, and these
+long hot summer days made his legs feel queer and his head dizzy. It was
+rather hard sometimes to keep up with Dan, who was making the most of his
+holiday, as he did of everything that came in his way. Freddy was
+following him loyally, in spite of the creeps and chills that betrayed
+malaria. But now his brown eyes flashed fire.
+
+"You're a big brag, Dan Dolan!" he said, stung by such a taunt at his size
+and weight. "Just you try me!"
+
+And catching Dan's hand he made a spring to his waist and a reckless
+scramble to his shoulders.
+
+"Hooray!" said Dan, cheerily. "Steady now, and hold on to the bar!"
+
+"Do you feel me now?" said Fred, pressing down with all his small weight
+on the sturdy figure beneath him.
+
+"A mite!" answered Dan. "Sort of like a mosquito had lit on me up there."
+
+"Do you feel me now?" said Fred, bringing his heels down with a dig.
+
+"Look out now!" cried Dan, sharply. "Don't try dancing a jig up there.
+Hold to the bar."
+
+But the warning came too late. The last move was too much for the
+half-sick boy. Freddy's head began to turn, his legs gave way--he reeled
+down to the floor, and, white and senseless, lay at Dan's feet.
+
+In the big, book-lined study beyond the quadrangle, Father Regan was
+settling final accounts prior to the series of "retreats" he had promised
+for the summer; while Brother Bart, ruddy and wrinkled as a winter apple,
+"straightened up,"--gathering waste paper and pamphlets as his superior
+cast them aside, dusting book-shelves and mantel, casting the while many
+an anxious, watchful glance through the open window. The boys were
+altogether too quiet this morning. Brother Bart distrusted boyish quiet.
+For the "Laddie," as he had called Freddy since the tiny boy had been
+placed six years ago in his special care, was the idol of the good man's
+heart. He had washed and dressed and tended him in those early years with
+almost a woman's tenderness, and was watching with jealous anxiety as
+Laddie turned from childish ways into paths beyond his care. Dan Dolan was
+Brother Bart's especial fear--Dan Dolan, who belonged to the rough outside
+world from which Laddie had been shielded; Dan Dolan, who, despite tickets
+and medals, Brother Bart felt was no mate for a little gentleman like his
+boy.
+
+"They're quarely still this morning," he said at last, giving voice to his
+fear. "I'm thinking they are at no good."
+
+"Who?" asked Father Regan, looking up from the letter he was reading.
+
+"The boys," answered Brother Bart,--"the four of them that was left over
+with us."
+
+"Four of them?" repeated the Father, who, with the closing of the schools,
+had felt the burden of his responsibilities drop. "True, true! I quite
+forgot we have four boys with us. It must be dull for the poor fellows."
+
+"Dull!" echoed Brother Bart, grimly,--"dull is it, yer reverence? It's in
+some divilment they are from morning until night. There's no rule for
+vacation days, as Mr. Linton says; and so the four of them are running
+wild as red Indians, up in the bell tower, and in the ice pond that's six
+feet deep with black water, and scampering over the highest ledge of the
+dormitory roof, till my heart nearly leaps from my mouth."
+
+"Poor fellows!" said Father Regan, indulgently. "It's hard on them, of
+course. Let me see! Colonel Fielding and his wife are in the Philippines,
+I remember, and asked to leave Dudley with us; and Judge Norris couldn't
+take Will with him to Japan; and there's our own little Fred of
+course,--we always have him; and--"
+
+"That dare-devil of a Dan Dolan, that's the worst of all!" burst forth
+Brother Bart. "It's for me sins he was left here, I know; with the Laddie
+following everywhere he leads, like he was bewitched."
+
+"Poor Danny! Aren't you a little hard on him, Brother Bart?" was the
+smiling question.
+
+"Sure I am, I am,--God forgive me for that same!" answered Brother Bart,
+penitently. "But I'm no saint like the rest of ye; and Laddie crept into
+my heart six years ago, and I can't put him out. Wild Dan Dolan is no fit
+mate for him."
+
+"Why not?" asked Father Regan, gravely, though there was a quizzical gleam
+in his eye.
+
+"Sure, because--because--" hesitated Brother Bart, rather staggered by the
+question. "Sure ye know yerself, Father."
+
+"No, I don't," was the calm reply. "Dan may be wild and mischievous--a
+little rough perhaps, poor boy!--but he will do Freddy no harm. He is a
+bright, honest, manly fellow, making a brave fight against odds that are
+hard to face; and we must give him his chance, Brother Bart. I promised
+his good old aunt, who was broken-hearted at leaving him, that I would do
+all I could for her friendless, homeless boy. As for mischief--well, I
+rather like a spice of mischief at his age. It is a sign of good health,
+body and soul. But we must try to give it a safer outlet than roofs and
+bell towers," he added thoughtfully. "Let me see! If we could send our
+'left overs' some place where they could have more freedom. Why--why, now
+that I think of it" (the speaker's grave face brightened as he took up the
+letter he had been reading), "maybe there's a chance for them right here.
+Father Tom Rayburn has just written me that Freddy has fallen heir to some
+queer old place on the New England coast. It belonged to his mother's
+great-uncle, an old whaling captain, who lived there after an eccentric
+fashion of his own. It seems that this ship was stranded on this island
+more than fifty years ago, and he fixed up the wreck, and lived there
+until his death this past month. The place has no value, Father Tom
+thinks; but he spent two of the jolliest summers of his own boyhood with
+an old Captain Kane at Killykinick."
+
+"Killykinick?" echoed Brother Bart. "That sounds Irish, Father."
+
+"It does," laughed Father Regan. "Perhaps the old captain was an Irishman.
+At any rate, there he lived, showing a light every night at his masthead
+to warn other ships off,--which was quite unnecessary of course, as the
+government attends to all such matters now."
+
+"It must be a queer sort of a place," said Brother Bart, doubtfully. "But
+it might do Laddie good to get a whiff of the salt air and a swim in the
+sea. He isn't well, Brother Timothy says, and as everyone can see. He has
+a touch of the fever every day; and as for weight, Dan Dolan would make
+two of him. And his mother died before she was five and twenty. God's holy
+will be done!" Brother Bart's voice broke at the words. "But I'm thinking
+Laddie isn't long for this world, Father. There's an angel-look in his
+face that I don't like to see." And the old Brother shook his head
+lugubriously.
+
+Father Regan laughed.
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that! I've seen plenty of just such angels,
+Brother Bart, and they grew up into very hardy, mortal men, who had to
+scuffle their way through life like the rest of us. But Freddy is looking
+a little peaked of late, as I noticed on Commencement Day. I think that,
+as you say, a breath of salt air would be good for him. We might send all
+four off together to this place of his."
+
+"Is it Dan Dolan with the rest?" asked Brother Bart, in dismay.
+
+"Why, of course! We couldn't keep poor Dan here all alone," was the
+answer.
+
+"He'll have Laddie climbing the rocks and swimming the seas like--like a
+wild Indian," said the good man, despairingly.
+
+"What! That angel boy of yours, Brother Bart?" laughed the priest.
+
+"Aye, aye!" answered the good Brother. "I'm not denying that Laddie has a
+wild streak in him. It came from his poor young father, I suppose. Arrah!
+has there never been word or sign from him, Father?" queried Brother Bart,
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Never," was the grave reply,--"not since he disappeared so strangely six
+years ago. I presume he is dead. He had been rather a wild young fellow;
+but after his wife's death he changed completely, reproached himself for
+having, as he said, broken her heart, and got some morbid notion of not
+being a fit father for his child. He had lost his faith and was altogether
+unbalanced, poor man! Luckily, Freddy inherits a fortune from his mother,
+and is well provided for; and now comes this other heritage from the old
+great-uncle--Killykinick. I really think--O God bless me! What is the
+matter?" asked the speaker, turning with a start, as, reckless of rules
+and reverence, two white-faced boys burst unannounced into the room.
+
+"It's--it's--it's Freddy Neville, Father!" panted Jim Norris.
+
+"Laddie,--my Laddie! What's come to him?" cried Brother Bart.
+
+"He's tumbled off the high bar," gasped Dud Fielding, "and he is lying all
+white and still, and--and dead, Father!"
+
+
+
+
+II.--OLD TOP.
+
+
+There was a hurried rush to the scene of accident; but first aid to the
+injured had already been rendered. Freddy lay on the Gym floor, pillowed
+on Dan's jacket, and reviving under the ministration of a sturdy hand and
+a very wet and grimy pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"What did you go tumbling off like that for?" asked Dan indignantly as the
+"angel eyes" of his patient opened.
+
+"Don't know," murmured Freddy, faintly.
+
+"I told you to stand steady, and you didn't,--you jumped!" said Dan.
+
+"So--so you'd feel me," answered Fred, memory returning as the darkness
+began to brighten, and Brother Bart and Brother Timothy and several other
+anxious faces started out of the breaking clouds. "But I'm not hurt,--I'm
+not hurt a bit, Brother Bart."
+
+"Blessed be God for that same!" cried the good Brother, brokenly, as,
+after close examination, Brother Timothy agreed to this opinion. "And it
+wasn't the fault of the rapscallions wid ye that ye're not killed
+outright. To be swinging like monkeys from a perch, and ye half sick and
+lightheaded! Put him in the bed, Brother Timothy; and keep him there till
+we see what comes of this."
+
+So Freddy was put to bed in the dim quiet of the infirmary, to watch
+developments. Brother Timothy gave him an old fashioned "drought," and he
+went to sleep most comfortably. He woke up feeling very well indeed, to
+enjoy an appetizing repast of chicken broth and custard. But when this
+went on for two days, Freddy began to grow restless.
+
+Infirmary life was very well in school time; indeed, when there were other
+patients not too sick to share its luxuries, it proved rather a pleasant
+break in the routine of class-room and study-hall. In fact, a late
+epidemic of measles that filled every bed had been a "lark" beyond Brother
+Timothy's suppression. But the infirmary in vacation, with no chance for
+the pillow fights that had made the "measles" so hilarious, with no boy in
+the next bed to exchange confidences and reminiscences, with no cheery
+shouts from the playground and quadrangle, with only the long stretch of
+bare, spotless rooms, white cots, and Brother Timothy rolling pills in the
+"doctor shop," the infirmary was dull and dreary indeed.
+
+"Can't I get up to-day, Brother?" asked Freddy on the third morning, as
+Brother Timothy took away a breakfast tray cleared to the last crumb of
+toast.
+
+"No," replied the Brother, who from long dealing with small boys had
+acquired the stony calm of a desert sphinx. Beneath it he was a gentle,
+patient, wise old saint, who watched and prayed over his patients in a way
+they little guessed. "No, you can't."
+
+"Gee!" said Freddy, with a rebellious kick at the counterpane. "The bump
+on my head is gone and I'm not sick at all."
+
+"We're not so sure of that," answered Brother Tim. "You've had
+temperature."
+
+"What's 'temperature'?" asked Freddy, roused with interest.
+
+"Never mind what it is, but you'll have to stay here till it goes,"
+answered Brother Tim, with decision.
+
+And Freddy could only lay back on his pillows in hopeless gloom, watching
+the shadows of the big elm by his window flickering over curtain and
+coverlet. The great elm--or "Old Top," as it had been affectionately
+called by generations of students--was the pride of the college grounds.
+Many a newcomer felt his heart warm to his strange surroundings when he
+found the name of father or grandfather cut into the rough bark, where men
+who had made later marks on history's page had left youthful sign manual.
+More than once the growth of the college buildings had threatened to
+encroach upon Old Top; but the big elm held its prior claim, and new
+dormitory or infirmary was set back that it might rule with kingly right
+in its historic place.
+
+Many were the stories and legends of which Old Top was the hero. In the
+"great fire" its boughs had proven a ladder of safety before modern
+"escapes" were known. Civil-War veterans told of hunted scouts hiding, all
+unknown to the Fathers, in its spreading branches; while the students'
+larks and frolics to which it had lent indulgent ear were ancient history
+at many a grandfather's fireside.
+
+But, like all things earthly, the big tree was growing old; a barbed wire
+fencing surrounded the aging trunk, and effectively prohibited climbing
+the rotten and unsafe branches. Even cutting names was forbidden. Freddy
+had been the last allowed, as the "kid" of the house, to put his initials
+beneath his father's. It had been quite an occasion, his eleventh
+birthday. There had been a party (Freddy always had ten dollars to give a
+party on his birthday); and then, surrounded by his guests, still
+gratefully appreciative of unlimited ice cream and strawberries, he had
+carefully cut "F. W. N. 19--" beneath the same signature of twenty years
+ago. It was then too twenty years ago. It was then too hilarious an
+occasion for sad reflection; but lying alone in the infirmary to-day,
+Freddy's memories took doleful form as he recalled the "F. W. N." above
+his own, and began to think of his father who had vanished so utterly from
+his young life.
+
+He had only the vaguest recollection of a tall, handsome "daddy" who had
+tossed him up in his arms and frolicked and laughed with him in a very
+dim, early youth. He could recall more clearly the stern, silent man of
+later years, of whom the five-year-boy had been a little afraid. And he
+retained a vivid memory of one bewildering evening in the dusky parlor of
+Saint Andrew's when a shaking, low voiced father had held him tight to his
+breast for one startling moment, and then whispered hoarsely in his ear,
+"Good-bye, my little son,--good-bye for ever!" It was very sad, as Freddy
+realized to-day (he had never considered the matter seriously
+before),--very sad to have a father bid you good-bye forever. And to have
+your mother dead, too,--such a lovely mother! Freddy had, in his small
+trunk, a picture of her that was as pretty as any of the angels on the
+chapel windows. And now he had "temperature," and maybe he was going to
+die, too, like some of those very good little boys of whom Father Martin
+read aloud on Sundays.
+
+Freddy's spirits were sinking into a sunless gloom, when suddenly there
+came a whistle through the open window,--a whistle that made him start up
+breathless on his pillow. For only one boy in Saint Andrew's could achieve
+that clear high note. It was Dan Dolan calling,--but how, where? Freddy's
+window was four stories high, without porch or fire escape and that
+whistle was almost in his ear. He pursed up his trembling lips and
+whistled back.
+
+"Hi!" came a cautious voice, and the leafy shadows of Old Top waved
+violently. "You're there, are you? Brother Tim around?"
+
+"No," answered Freddy.
+
+"Then I'll swing in for a minute." And, with another shake of Old Top, Dan
+bestrode the window ledge,--a most cheery-looking Dan, grinning broadly.
+
+"How--how did you get up?" asked Freddy, thinking of the barbed wire
+defences below.
+
+"Dead easy," answered Dan. "Just swung across from the organ-loft windows.
+They wouldn't let me come up and see you. Brother Bart, the old softy,
+said I'd excite you. What's the matter, anyhow? Is it the tumble--or
+typhoid?"
+
+"Neither," said Fred. "I feel fine, but Brother Tim says I've got
+temperature."
+
+"What's that?" asked Dan.
+
+"I don't know," replied Freddy. "You better not come too near, or you may
+catch it."
+
+"Pooh, no!" said Dan, who was poised easily on his lofty perch. "I never
+catch anything. But I'll keep ready for a jump, or Brother Tim will catch
+me, and there will be trouble for sure. And as for Brother Bart, I don't
+know what he'd do if he thought I had come near you. Jing! but he gave it
+to me hot and heavy about letting you get that tumble! He needn't. I felt
+bad enough about it already."
+
+"Oh, did you, Dan?" asked Fred, quite overcome by such an admission.
+
+"Rotten!" was the emphatic answer.
+
+"Couldn't eat any dinner, though we had cherry dumpling. And Brother Bart
+rubbed it in, saying I had killed you. Then I got the grumps, and when Dud
+Fielding gave me some of his sass we had a knock-out fight that brought
+Father Rector down on us good and strong. I tell you it's been tough lines
+all around. And this is what you call--vacation!" concluded Dan,
+sarcastically.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry!" said Freddy. "The tumble didn't hurt me much. I guess I
+was sort of sick anyhow. And to fight Dud Fielding!" The speaker's eyes
+sparkled. "Oh, I bet you laid him out, Dan!"
+
+"Didn't I, though! Shut up one eye, and made that Grecian nose of his look
+like a turnip. It ain't down yet," answered Dan, with satisfaction. "He
+fired me up talking about Aunt Win."
+
+"Oh, did he?" asked Freddy, sympathetically.
+
+"Yes: said I ought to be ditch-digging to keep her out of the poorhouse,
+instead of pushing in with respectable boys here. Sometimes I think that
+myself," added Dan in another tone. "But it wasn't any of that blamed
+plute's business to knock it into me."
+
+"But it isn't true: your aunt isn't in the poorhouse, Dan?" said Freddy,
+eagerly.
+
+"Well, no, not exactly," answered Dan. "But she is with the Little
+Sisters, which is next thing to it. And I ain't like the rest of you, I
+know; and don't need Dud Fielding to tell me. But just let me get a good
+start and I'll show folks what Dan Dolan can do. I'll be ready for
+something better than a newsboy or a bootblack."
+
+"O Dan, you'll never be anything like that!" said Freddy, in dismay.
+
+"I have been," was the frank reply. "Given many a good shine for a nickel.
+Could sell more papers than any little chap on the street. Was out before
+day on winter mornings to get them hot from the press, when I hadn't
+turned seven years old. But I ain't going back to it,--no, sir!" Dan's
+lips set themselves firmly. "I'm on the climb. Maybe I won't get very far,
+but I've got my foot on the ladder. I'm going to hold my own against Dud
+Fielding and all his kind, no matter how they push; and I told Father
+Rector that yesterday when they were plastering up Dud's eye and nose."
+
+"O Dan, you didn't!"
+
+"Yes, I did. I was just boiling up, and had to bust out, I guess. And when
+he lectured us about being gentlemen, I told him I didn't aim at anything
+like that. I wasn't made for it, as I knew; but I was made to be a man,
+and I was going to hold up like one, and stand no shoving."
+
+"O Dan!" gasped Freddy, breathlessly. "And--and what did he say?"
+
+"Nothing," answered Dan, grimly. "But from the looks of things, I rather
+guess I'm in for a ticket of leave. That's why I'm up here. Couldn't go
+off without seeing you,--telling you how sorry I was I let you get that
+fall off my shoulders. I oughtn't to have dared a kid like you to
+fool-tricks like that. I was a big dumb-head, and I'd like to kick myself
+for it. For I think more of you than any other boy in the college, little
+or big,--I surely do. And I've brought you something, so when I'm gone you
+won't forget me."
+
+And Dan dived into his pocket and brought out a round disk of copper about
+the size of a half dollar. It was rimmed with some foreign crest, and name
+and date.
+
+"An old sailor man gave it to me," said Dan, as he reached over to
+Freddy's bed and handed him the treasure. "He was a one-legged old chap
+that used to sit down on the wharf sort of dazed and batty, until the boys
+roused him by pelting and hooting at him; and then he'd fire back curse
+words at them that would raise your hair. It was mean of them, for he was
+old and lame and sick; and one day I just lit out a couple of measly
+little chaps and ducked them overboard for their sass. After that we were
+sort of friends, me and old 'Nutty,' as everyone called him. I'd buy
+tobacco and beer for him, and give him an old paper now and then; and when
+he got down and out for good Aunt Win made me go for the priest for him
+and see him through. He gave me this at the last. He had worn it on a
+string around his neck, and seemed to think it was something grand. It's a
+medal for bravery that the poor old chap had won more than forty years
+ago. Ben Wharton offered me a dollar for it to put in his museum, but I
+wouldn't sell it. It seemed sort of mean to sell poor old Nutty's medal.
+But I'd like to give it to you, so you'll remember me when I've gone."
+
+"Oh, but you're not--not going away, Dan!" said Freddy. "And I can't take
+your medal, anyhow. I'd remember you without it. You're the best chum I
+ever had,--the very best. And--and--"
+
+The speaker broke off, stammering; for a second visitor had suddenly
+appeared at his bedside: Father Regan who had entered the infirmary
+unheard and unseen, and who now stood with his eyes fixed in grave
+displeasure on the daring Dan.
+
+
+
+
+III.--A JUDGMENT.
+
+
+"Dan Dolan!" said Father Regan, as the reckless interloper flushed and
+paled beneath his steady gaze.
+
+"Dan Dolan!" echoed Brother Tim, who had come in behind his honored
+visitor. "How ever did he get past me! I've been saying my beads at the
+door without this half hour."
+
+"Swung in by Old Top," ventured Dan, feeling concealment was vain.
+
+"You dared Old Top at this height, when scarcely a bough is sound! You
+must be mad, boy. It is God's mercy that you did not break your neck.
+Don't you know the tree is unsafe?"
+
+"Yes, Father," answered Dan. "But--but I had to see Freddy again, and they
+wouldn't let me come up. I just _had_ to see him, if it killed me."
+
+And there was a sudden break in the young voice that startled his hearer.
+But a glance at the dizzy and forbidden height of Old Top and Father Regan
+was stern again.
+
+"Why did you have to see him, if it killed you?" he asked briefly.
+
+"Because I wanted to tell how bad I felt about letting him get hurt,
+because--because he has been better to me than any boy in the school,
+because--because--" (again Dan's tone grew husky) "I just had to bid
+Freddy good-bye."
+
+"O Father, no, no!" Freddy burst out tremulously. "Don't let him say
+good-bye! Don't send Dan away, Father, please! He won't fight any more,
+will you, Dan?"
+
+"I am not promising that," answered Dan, sturdily. "I won't stand shoving
+and knocking, not even to keep my place here."
+
+"O Dan!" cried Freddy, in dismay at such an assertion. "Why, you said you
+would work day and night to stay at Saint Andrew's!"
+
+"Work, yes," replied Dan, gruffly. "I don't mind work, but I won't ever
+play lickspittle."
+
+"And is that the way ye'd be talking before his reverence?" broke in
+Brother Tim, indignantly. "Get out of the infirmary this minute, Dan
+Dolan; for it's the devil's own pride that is on yer lips and in yer
+heart, God forgive me for saying it."
+
+"We'll settle this later," said Father Regan, quietly. "Go down to my
+study, Dan, and wait for me. I have a message for Freddy from his uncle."
+
+"O Dan, Dan!" (There was a sob in the younger boy's voice as he felt all
+this parting might mean.) "I'll--I'll miss you dreadfully, Dan!"
+
+"Don't!" said Dan, gripping his little comrade's hand. "I ain't worth
+missing. I'm glad I came, anyhow, to say good-bye and good-luck, Freddy!"
+And he turned away at the words, with something shining in his blue eyes
+that Father Regan knew was not all defiance.
+
+It was a long wait in the study. Dan had plenty of time to think, and his
+thoughts were not very cheerful. He felt he had lost his chance,--the
+chance that had been to him like the sudden opening of a gate in the grim
+stone wall of circumstances that had surrounded him,--a gate beyond which
+stretched free, sunlit paths to heights of which he had never dreamed. He
+had lost his chance; for a free scholarship at Saint Andrew's depended on
+good conduct and observance of rules as well as study; and Dan felt he had
+doubly and trebly forfeited his claim. But he would not whine. Perhaps it
+was only the plucky spirit of the street Arab that filled his breast,
+perhaps something stronger and nobler that steadied his lip and kindled
+his eye, as he looked around the spacious, book-lined room, and realized
+all that he was losing--had lost. For Dan loved his books,--the
+hard-earned scholarship proved it. Many a midnight hour had found him,
+wrapped in his worn blankets, studying by the light of a flaring
+candle-end stuck perilously on his bedpost, after good Aunt Win had
+thriftily put out the lamp, and believed Danny was sound asleep
+preparatory to a start on his beat at break of day.
+
+"One of the brightest, clearest, quickest minds I ever knew," Dan's
+teacher had told Father Regan when awarding the scholarship,--"if he can
+only keep the track. But he has a bold spirit, and it will be hard on him
+among all those 'high-steppers' of yours at Saint Andrew's. He is likely
+to bolt and break away."
+
+But Dan had been too busy with his books all the year to mind
+"high-steppers." His patched jacket kept the head of the classes, and his
+stubby-toed shoes marched up every month to get the ticket, and he had
+helped more than one heavy-witted "high-stepper" through conditions that
+threatened to put him out of the race. Most of the Saint Andrew's boys
+were manly youngsters, with whom jackets and shoes did not count against
+brain and brawn; and strong, clever, quick-witted Dan had held his place
+in schoolroom and playground unquestioned. But there were exceptions, and
+Dud Fielding was one of them. He had disliked the "poor scholar" from the
+first. Dud was a tall, handsome fellow, filled with ideas of his own
+importance; and Dan had downed him more than once in field and class-room,
+to his great disgust. Worst than all, in appreciation of his careful
+costuming, Dan had alluded to him as "Dudey,"--a boyish liberty which,
+considering the speaker's patched jacket, Master Fielding could not
+forgive. It was the repetition of this remark, when Dud had appeared
+garbed in a summer suit of spotless linen, that had precipitated
+yesterday's fight.
+
+Altogether, with all the restraints and interests of school time removed,
+vacation was proving a perilous period to the "left-overs" at Saint
+Andrew's. Dan realized this as, turning his back on the book-lined room,
+with his hands thrust in his pockets, looking gloomily out of the broad
+window that opened on the quadrangle, he stood awaiting "judgment." He
+expected no mercy: he felt grimly he had no claim to it. Maybe if he had a
+rich father or uncle or somebody grand and great to speak up for him, he
+might be given another chance; but a poor boy who, as Dud Fielding said,
+ought to be "ditch digging"--Dan choked up again at the thought that,
+after all, perhaps Dud was right: he was not the sort to be pushing in
+here. He ought to be out in his own rough world, working his own rough
+way. All those fancies of his for better, higher things had been only
+"pipe dreams."
+
+But jing, it would be hard to give up! Dan looked out at the quadrangle
+where he had led so many a merry game; at the ball field, scene of battle
+and victory that even Dud Fielding could not dispute; at the long stretch
+of the study hall windows opposite; at the oriel of the chapel beyond. All
+spoke to him of a life that had been like air and sunshine to a plant
+stretching its roots and tendrils in the dark.
+
+And he must leave it all! He must go back again to the old ways, the old
+work! He was big enough now to drive a butcher's wagon, or clean fish and
+stuff sausages at Pete Patterson's market store; or--or--there were other
+things he could do that a fellow like him must do when he is "down and
+out." And while he still stared from the window, the grim, dogged look
+settling heavier upon his young face, Dan caught a footstep behind him,
+and turned to face Father Regan.
+
+"I've kept you waiting longer than I expected, Dan, but I had great news
+for Freddy,--news that took some time to tell." The speaker sank into the
+tall stiff-backed chair known to many a young sinner as the "judgment
+seat." "Now" (the clear, keen eyes fixed themselves gravely on the boy) "I
+want to have a talk with you. Things can not go on in this way any longer,
+even in vacation time. I must say that, after the last year's good record,
+I am disappointed in you, Dan,--sorely disappointed."
+
+"I'm sorry, Father," was the respectful answer, but the grim, hard look on
+the young face did not change. "I've made a lot of trouble, I know."
+
+"You have," was the grave answer, "and trouble I did not expect from you.
+Still, circumstances have been against you, I must confess. But this does
+not alter the fact that you have broken strict rules that even in vacation
+we can not relax,--broken them deliberately and recklessly. You are
+evidently impatient of the restraint here at Saint Andrew's; so I have
+concluded not to keep you here any longer, Dan."
+
+"I'm not asking it, Father." Dan tried bravely to steady voice and lip.
+"I'm ready to go whenever you say."
+
+"To-morrow, then," continued Father Regan,--"I've made arrangements for
+you to leave to-morrow at ten. Brother Francis will see that your trunk is
+packed to-night."
+
+"Yes, Father," said Dan, somewhat bewildered at the friendly tone in which
+this sentence was delivered. "I'd like to see Mr. Raymond and Mr. Shipman
+before I go, and thank them for all they've done for me; and Father Roach
+and Father Walsh and all of them; and to say I'm sorry I made any
+trouble."
+
+"Good gracious," laughed Father Regan, "one would think you were on your
+dying bed, boy!"
+
+"I--I feel like it," blurted out Dan, no longer able to choke down the
+lump in his throat. "I'd rather die, a good deal."
+
+"Rather die!" exclaimed Father Regan,--"rather die than go to
+Killykinick!"
+
+"Killykinick!" echoed Dan, breathlessly. "You're not--not sending me to a
+Reform, Father?"
+
+"Reform!" repeated the priest.
+
+"For I won't go," said Dan, desperately. "You haven't any right to put me
+there. I'm not wild and bad enough for that. I'll keep honest and
+respectable. I'll go to work. I can get a job at Pete Patterson's sausage
+shop to-morrow."
+
+"Reform! Sausage shop! What are you talking about, you foolish boy, when I
+am only sending you all off for a summer holiday at the seashore?"
+
+"A summer holiday at the seashore!" echoed Dan in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, at Freddy's place--Killykinick. I have just heard from his uncle,
+and he thinks it would be a fine thing to send Freddy up there to shake
+off his malaria. There's a queer old house that his great-uncle left him,
+and an old sailor who still lives there to look out for things; and all
+the boating, bathing, swimming, fishing a set of lively young fellows can
+want; so I am going to ship you all off there to-morrow morning with
+Brother Bart. It's plain you can't stand six weeks of vacation here,
+especially when there will be a general retreat for the Fathers next
+month. You see, I simply have to send you away."
+
+"And you mean--you mean--" (Dan's voice trembled, his eyes shone,)--"you
+mean I can come back?"
+
+"Come back, of course, when school opens."
+
+"Jing!" said Dan, drawing a long breath. "I--I thought you were putting me
+out for good and all. I thought, with the fight and the climb and hurting
+Freddy I--I had done for myself. I thought--" Here Dan's feelings became
+too much for him, and he could only gulp down the sob that rose in his
+throat, with a look that went to Father Regan's kind heart.
+
+"My poor boy, no, no! Put you out of Saint Andrew's for good and all! I
+never thought of such a thing for a moment. Of course I object seriously
+to fighting, to your reckless venture to Old Top; but--well, you had
+strong temptations, and in vacation time one must not be too severe. At
+Killykinick there will be more elbow-room. Have you ever been to the
+seashore?"
+
+"Never farther than the wharfs. But I can swim and dive and float,"
+answered Dan, wisely reserving the information that, as a member of the
+"Wharf Rats," he had been ducked overboard at the age of six, to sink or
+swim.
+
+"Good!" said Father Regan. "Then you'll have a fine time. And I am
+depending on you to look out for the other boys. They have grown up in
+softer ways, and are not used to roughing it, as it is likely you will
+have to rough it at Killykinick. But it will be good for you all,--for you
+all," repeated the speaker cheerily, as he saw in Dan's brightening face
+the joyful relief the boy did not know how to speak. "And you will come
+back ready for double 'X' work in the fall. I am looking for great things
+from you, Dan. You've made a fine start, my boy! Keep it up, and some day
+you will be signing all the capital letters to Dan Dolan's name that Saint
+Andrew's can bestow."
+
+"Sure I don't know about that, Father," said Dan, his speech softening
+into Aunt Winnie's Irish tones with the warming of his heart. "You're very
+good to me, but sometimes I think--well, what I thrashed Dud Fielding for
+telling me: that I've no right to be pushing into a grand school like
+this. I ought to keep my place."
+
+"And where is your place?" was the calm question.
+
+"Sure, sure--" Dan hesitated as he recalled a very checkered childhood.
+"Now that Aunt Winnie is all broke up, I can't say, Father."
+
+"Then I will tell you, my boy! Just now, by the goodness and guidance of
+God, it is here,--here, where you have equal rights with any boy in the
+school. You have won them in winning your scholarship; they are yours as
+justly as if you had a father paying a thousand a year. There may be a
+little rough rubbing now and then from fellows like Dud Fielding;
+but--well, everything that is worth having has its cost. So stand to your
+colors! Be, as you said yesterday, neither a bully nor a coward, but a
+man. Now go to see Aunt Winnie and bid her good-bye. Tell her I am sending
+you off for the jolliest kind of a holiday to Killykinick."
+
+"I--I don't know how to thank you, Father!" stammered Dan, feeling that
+his blackened sky had suddenly burst into rainbow light.
+
+"Don't try," was the kind answer. "I understand, Dan. God bless you, my
+boy!"
+
+And, laying his hand for a moment on Dan's sandy thatch of hair, Father
+Regan dismissed the case.
+
+
+
+
+IV.--AUNT WINNIE.
+
+
+It was a delighted Dan that bounded down the broad staircase and took a
+flying leap from the stone portico of the great hall door.
+
+"Hello!" said Jim Norris, who was lazily stretched on the grass, reading.
+"Is that a jump or a kick out?"
+
+"A jump," answered Dan, grinning: "though I was primed for the other,
+sure. How is Dudey's nose?"
+
+"Coming down," said Jim, who was an easy-going mixer, whom everybody
+liked. "About the size and shape of a spring radish to-day. My, but he's
+hot against you, Dan! Look out for him! Snake in the grass is nothing to
+Dud Fielding on the boil. Won't even rattle fairly before he strikes."
+
+"Wouldn't take the glad hand if I stretched it out to him and said I was
+sorry?" asked Dan. "Just now I feel like being at peace with everybody."
+
+"Not much!" said Jim, impressively. "Or if he did there would be a snake
+sting ready for you, all the same. I know Dud Fielding. He'll get even
+with you if he dies for it."
+
+"All right!" was the cheerful reply. "Let him get even then. Have you
+heard about Killykinick, Jim?"
+
+"Yes: Father Regan told me. I don't know what or where it is, but I'm
+ready for a start if it's a cannibal isle. Anything is better than dying
+of dullness here. Where are you off so fast, Dan?"
+
+"To see my aunt. She--she--" There was a moment's hesitation, for Dan knew
+all the admission meant to boys like Jim. But he added boldly: "She is at
+the Little Sisters', you know, and I want to bid her good-bye before I
+leave."
+
+"Of course you do. These old aunts are great," said Jim, with a friendly
+nod. "I've got one myself up in the country. Wears bonnets and gowns that
+look as if they came out of the Ark. But, golly, she can make doughnuts
+and apple pies that beat the band! I'd rather spend a week at Aunt
+Selina's than any place I know. Going to walk or ride, Dan?"
+
+"Walk," was the answer. "I generally do. It's good for my health."
+
+"Not on a day like this. I've got a pocketful of car tickets," said Jim,
+shaking a dozen or so out on the grass. "We'll have no use for them at
+Killykinick. Help yourself."
+
+"No," said Dan, sturdily. "Thank you all the same, Jim! But I don't mind
+walking a bit. I'll match you at a game of tennis when I get back, and do
+you up."
+
+"All right!" answered Jim, who, though slow and lazy and a bit dull at his
+books, was a gentleman through and through. Three generations of Norrises
+had cut their names on Old Top.
+
+And, lighter hearted for this friendliness, Dan kept on his way by short
+cuts and cross streets until he reached the quiet suburb where the modest
+buildings of the "Little Sisters" stretched long and wide behind their
+grey stone walls. He was admitted by a brisk, kind little old woman, who
+was serving as portress; and after some parley, was shown up into Aunt
+Winnie's room. It was spotless in its cleanliness and bare save for the
+most necessary articles of furniture. There were three other old ladies
+about in various stages of decrepitude, who seemed only dully conscious of
+Dan's appearance; but Aunt Winnie, seated in her armchair by the window,
+started up in tremulous rapture at sight of her boy. Despite her age and
+infirmity, she was still a trig little body, with snow-white hair waved
+about a kind old wrinkled face and dim soft eyes, that filled with tears
+at "Danny's" boyish hug and kiss.
+
+"It's a long time ye've been coming," she said reproachfully. "I thought
+ye were forgetting me entirely, Danny lad."
+
+"Forgetting you!" echoed Dan. "Now, you know better than to talk like
+that, Aunt Win. I'm thinking of you day and night. I've got no one else to
+think of but you, Aunt Win."
+
+"Whisht now,--whisht!" Aunt Winnie sank her voice to a whisper, and nodded
+cautiously towards the nearest old lady. "She do be listening, lad. I've
+told them all of the grand, great college ye're at, and the fine, bright
+lad ye are, but I've told them nothing more. Ye're not to play the poor
+scholar here."
+
+"Oh, I see!" said Dan, grinning. "Go on with your game then, Aunt Win."
+
+"I'm not looking to be remembered," Aunt Winnie continued dolefully. "What
+with all the French and Latin ye have to study, and the ball playing that
+you're doing. I can't look for you to think of a poor lone lame woman like
+me."
+
+"Aunt Win!" burst forth Dan, impetuously.
+
+"Whisht!" murmured Aunt Win again, with a glance at the old lady who was
+blinking sleepily. "Don't ye be giving yerself away. And I suppose it's
+the fine holiday that ye're having now wid the rest of yer mates," she
+went on.
+
+"Yes," said Dan, feeling he could truthfully humor the old lady's harmless
+pride here. "We're off to-morrow for the jolliest sort of a time at the
+seashore. Freddy Neville, the nicest little chap in college, has a place
+up somewhere on the New England coast, and four of us are going there for
+the summer."
+
+And Danny launched into eager details that made Aunt Winnie's eyes open
+indeed. But there was a little quiver in her voice when she spoke.
+
+"Ah, that's fine for you,--that's fine for you indeed, Danny! We can talk
+plain now; for" (as a reassuring snore came from her dozing neighbor)
+"thank God, she's off asleep! It's the grand thing for you to be going
+with mates like that. It's what I'm praying for as I sit here sad and
+lonely, Dan, that God will give ye His blessing, and help ye up, up, up,
+high as mortal man can go."
+
+"And you with me, Aunt Win," said Dan, who, seated on the footstool of the
+chair, was smoothing her wrinkled hand.
+
+"Ah, no, my lad, I don't ask that! I'm not asking that at all, Danny. I'll
+not be houlding to ye, and dragging ye down while ye're climbing. And
+whisper, lad, while there's no one listening: it's naither wise nor best
+for ye to be coming here."
+
+"Why not?" asked Dan, for he knew that he was the light of poor Aunt Win's
+eyes and the joy of her old heart.
+
+"Because--because," faltered Aunt Winnie, "though it's fibs I've been
+telling about yer grandeur and greatness--God forgive me that same!--the
+old busybodies around will be wondering and prating about why ye lave me
+here, Dan,--because I might be a shame to ye before all the fine
+gentlemen's sons that have taken ye up,--because" (Aunt Win's voice broke
+entirely) "a poor old woman like me will only hurt and hinder ye, Dan."
+
+"Hurt and hinder me!" echoed Dan, who, with all his cleverness, could not
+understand the depths and heights of good old Aunt Winnie's love.
+
+"Aye, lad, hurt and hinder ye; for ye're on the way up, and I'll not be
+the one to hould ye back. I do be dreaming grand dreams of ye, Danny
+lad,--dreams that I don't dare to spake out."
+
+"Whisper them, then, Aunt Win," urged Dan, softly. "Maybe I'll make them
+come true."
+
+"Ye couldn't," said the old woman, her dim eyes shining. "Only God in
+heaven can do that. For I dream that I see you on His altar, the brightest
+place that mortal man can reach. I'll ne'er live to see that dream come
+true, Danny; but I believe it would make my old heart leap if I was under
+the sod itself."
+
+"O Aunt Win, Aunt Win!" Dan lifted the wrinkled hand to his lips. "That is
+a great dream, sure enough. Sometimes, Aunt Win, I--I dream it myself.
+But, then, a rough-and-tumble fellow like me, always getting into scrapes,
+soon wakes up. But one thing is sure: you can't shake me, Aunt Win.
+Dreaming or waking, I'll stick to you forever."
+
+"Ah, no, lad,--no!" said the old woman, tremulously. "I'd not have ye
+bother with me. Sure it's the fine place I have here, with my warm room
+and nice bed, and the good Little Sisters to care for me, and the chapel
+close to hand. But I miss our own little place, sure, sometimes, Danny
+dear! I miss the pot of flowers on the window (it's against the rule to
+grow flowers here), and me own little blue teapot on the stove, and Tabby
+curled up on the mat before the fire."
+
+Aunt Winnie broke down and sobbed outright, while Danny was conscious of a
+lump in his throat that held him dumb.
+
+"Poor Tabby!" continued Aunt Winnie. "I hope the Mulligans are good to
+her, Dan. D'ye ever see her as ye pass their gate?"
+
+"I do," answered Dan. "Molly Mulligan has tied a blue ribbon around her
+neck, and she is the pride of the house."
+
+"And she has forgotten me, of course!" sighed Aunt Winnie. "But what could
+I expect of a cat!"
+
+"Forgotten you? Not a bit! Molly says she steals into your room upstairs
+and cries for you every night."
+
+"Ah, it was the sore parting for us all, God help us!" said Aunt Winnie,
+brokenly. "But as long as it brings you luck, lad, I'll never complain.
+This is the holy place to die in, and what could a poor sick ould woman
+ask more?"
+
+"A lot--a lot more!" burst forth Danny, passionately. "You should have a
+place to live and be happy in, Aunt Win. You should have your own fire and
+your own teapot, and your own cat in your own home; and I mean to get it
+back for you just as quick as I can."
+
+"Whisht! whisht!" said Aunt Win, nervously, as the old lady nearby roused
+up, startled from her nap.
+
+"It's time ye were going, Danny; for ye're a long way from college, and I
+wouldn't keep ye against rules. I hope ye'll have a fine time at the
+seashore, with the fishing and boating and all the other sports. Good-bye
+and God bless ye, lad, until we meet again! Good-bye, Danny dear!" And,
+realizing from the wide-open eyes of the old lady near him that all
+confidential communications were over, Dan kissed Aunt Win's withered
+cheek, and, his heart swelling with feelings he could not speak, took his
+way back to Saint Andrew's, all his dreams, hopes, ambitions for the
+future strangely shaken.
+
+Aunt Win,--gentle, loving, heartsick, homesick Aunt Win! Aunt Win, begging
+him to give her up lest she should hurt and hinder him in his opening way!
+Aunt Win sighing for the little place she had called home, even while she
+was ready to give it up forever and die silent and lonely, that her boy
+might climb to heights of which she could only dream and never see! Dear,
+faithful, true-hearted, self-forgetting Aunt Win! Dan felt his own eyes
+blurring as he thought of all she had done, of all she was ready to
+sacrifice.
+
+And--and--the other thought followed swiftly: he could give it all back to
+her,--the little attic rooms over Mulligans', the flowerpot in the window,
+the blue teapot on the stove, Tabby on the hearth-rug,--he could give it
+all back to Aunt Win and bring her home. It would be long, long years
+before the higher paths into which he had turned would yield even humble
+living; but the old ways were open to him still: the "ditch-digging" with
+which Dud Fielding had taunted him, the meat wagon, the sausage shop, that
+he had been considering only a few hours ago. What right had he to leave
+the good old woman, who had mothered him, lonely and heartsick that he
+might climb beyond her reach? And yet--yet to give up Saint Andrew's, with
+all that it meant to him; to give up all his hopes, his dreams; to turn
+his back on those wide corridors and book-lined rooms for counter and
+cleaver; to give up,--to give up! Quite dizzy with his contending
+thoughts, Dan was striding on his way when a hearty voice hailed him:
+
+"Hello! That you, Dan? Jump in and I'll give you a lift." And Pete
+Patterson's ruddy face looked out from the white-topped wagon at the curb.
+"I was just thinking of you," said Pete, as Dan willingly sprang up to the
+seat at his side; for Pete had been a friendly creditor in the days of the
+little attic home when credit was sometimes sorely needed. "Are you in
+with the 'high brows' for good and all?"
+
+"I--I don't know," hesitated Dan.
+
+"Because if you're not," continued Pete--"and what tarnation use a sturdy
+chap like you will find in all that Latin and Greek stuff, I can't
+see,--if you're not in for it, I can give you a chance."
+
+
+
+
+V.--A "CHANCE."
+
+
+"I can give you a chance," repeated Pete, as he turned to Dan with his
+broad, ruddy face illuminated by a friendly smile. "It's a chance I
+wouldn't hold out to everybody, but I know you for a wide-awake youngster,
+as honest as you are slick. Them two don't go together in general; but
+it's the combination I'm looking fur just now, and you seem to have it. I
+was thinking over it this very morning. 'Lord, Lord,' sez I to myself, 'if
+Dan Dolan hadn't gone and got that eddycation bug in his head, wouldn't
+this be the chance for him?"
+
+"What is it?" asked Dan; but there was not much eagerness in his question.
+Wide and springy as was the butcher's cart, it did not appeal to him as a
+chariot of fortune just now. A loin of beef dangled over his head, a dead
+calf was stretched out on the straw behind him. Pete's white apron was
+stained with blood. Dan was conscious of a dull, sick repulsion of body
+and soul.
+
+"Well, it's this," continued Pete, cheerfully. "You see, I've made a
+little money over there at my corner, and I'm planning to spread out,--do
+things bigger and broader. There ain't no sort of use in holding back to
+hams and shoulders when ye can buy yer hogs on the hoof. That's what I'm
+in fur now,--hogs on the hoof; cut 'em, corn 'em, smoke 'em, salt 'em,
+souse 'em, grind 'em into sausage meat and headcheese and scrapple, boil
+'em into lard. Why, a hog is a regular gold mine when he is handled right.
+But I can't handle it in that little corner shop I've got now: there's no
+room fur it. But it's too good a business there fur me to give up. So I'm
+going to open another place further out, and keep both a-going. And I
+can't afford no high-class bookkeeper or clerk, that will maybe jump my
+trade and gobble all my profits. What I want is a boy,--a bright,
+wide-awake boy that knows enough about figguring to keep my accounts, and
+see that no one 'does' me,--a boy that I can send round in the wagon to
+buy and sell 'cording to my orders,--a boy that will be smart enough to
+pick up the whole business from _a_ to _izzard_, and work up as I worked
+up till I kin make him partner. That's the chance I've got, and I believe
+you're the boy to take it."
+
+"I--I would have to give up college of course," said Dan, slowly.
+
+"Give up college!" echoed Pete. "Well, I should rather say you would!
+There ain't no time fur books in a biz like mine. Now, Dan, what's the
+good of college anyhow fur a chap like you? It ain't ez if you were one of
+these high mug-a-mugs with a rich father to pay yer way through, and set
+you up in a white choker and swallow-tail coat afterwards. What's the good
+of a strong, husky fellow fooling along with Latin and Greek, that will
+never be no use to him? You'd a heap better spiel plain strong English
+that will bring you in the spondulics. Why, look at me! I never had two
+years' schooling in my life. It's all I can do to scrawl 'P. J.
+Patterson,' so folks can read it, and thump out the rest on a secondhand
+typewriter. But that 'ere same scrawl will bring five thousand dollars out
+of the bank any time I want it. If I had as much eddycation as you have,
+Dan, nobody couldn't keep me in any school in the land another minute.
+It's all nonsense,--a dead waste of time and money."
+
+"What would you pay me?" asked Dan, as the big loin of beef above joggled
+against his shoulder.
+
+"Well, let me see!" considered Pete. "I ain't paying any fancy price at
+start, fur I don't know how things will work out; but I won't be mean with
+you, Dan. What do you say to four dollars a week and board?"
+
+"No," answered Dan, promptly. "I don't want your board at all."
+
+"Ye don't?" said Pete in surprise. "It will be good board, Dan: no fancy
+fixings but filling, I promise you that,--good and filling."
+
+"I don't care how filling it is," answered Dan, gruffly. "I'd want my own
+board, with Aunt Winnie. That's all I'd come to you for,--to take care of
+Aunt Winnie."
+
+"Ain't they good to her where she is?" asked Pete, who knew something of
+the family history.
+
+"Yes," answered Dan; "but she is not happy: she is homesick, and I want to
+bring her--home."
+
+And something in the tone of the boyish voice told Pete that, with Aunt
+Winnie and a home, Dan would be secured as his faithful henchman forever.
+
+"I don't blame you," he said. "I've got an old mother myself, and if I
+took her out of her little cubby-hole of a house and put her in the marble
+halls that folks sing about, she'd be pining. It's women nature, specially
+old women. Can't tear 'em up by the roots when they're past sixty. And
+that old aunt of yours has been good to you sure,--good as a mother."
+
+"Yes," answered Dan, a little huskily, "good as a mother."
+
+"Then you oughtn't to go back on her sure," said Pete, reflectively.
+"Considering the old lady, I'll make it five dollars a week, if you'll
+agree for a year ahead, Dan."
+
+"A year ahead!" echoed Dan, thinking of all that year had promised him.
+
+"Yes," said Pete, decidedly. "It must be a year ahead. I can't break you
+in at such a big figger, and then hev you bolt the track just as I've got
+used to you. I wouldn't give five dollars a week to any other boy in the
+world, though I know lots of 'em would jump at it. It's only thinking of
+that old mother of mine and how I'd feel in your place, makes me offer it
+to you. Five dollars a week will bring your Aunt Winnie back home. And,
+between you and me, Dan, if she ain't brought back, she'll be in another
+sort of home before long, and past your helping. Mrs. Mulligan was telling
+me the other day that she had been out to see her, and she was looking
+mighty peaked and feeble,--not complaining of course, but just pining away
+natural."
+
+"When will you want me?" blurted out Dan, desperately. "Right off now?"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" was the hasty answer. "I haven't got the other place open
+yet, and this 'ere hot weather ain't no time fur it. I'm just laying plans
+for the fall. What were you thinking of doing this summer?"
+
+"Going off with a lot of fellows to the seashore. But I'm ready to give it
+up," answered Dan, gulping down the lump that rose in his throat.
+
+"No, don't,--don't!" said Pete. "I haven't got things fixed for a start
+yet. Won't have them fixed for a couple of months or so. I ain't
+a-hurrying you. Just you think this 'ere chance over, and make up your
+mind whether it ain't wuth more than all that Greek and Latin they're
+stuffing into your head at Saint Andrew's. Then come around somewhere
+about the first of September and see me 'bout it. I won't go back on my
+offer. It will be five dollars cash down every Saturday night, and no
+renigging. I turn off here," concluded Pete, drawing up as they reached a
+busy corner. "You'll have to jump down; so bye, bye, Dan my boy, until I
+see you again! Remember it's five dollars a week, and a home for Aunt
+Winnie."
+
+"I'll remember," said Dan, as, half dazed, he jumped from the wagon and
+took his way back to Saint Andrew's.
+
+He entered the cross-crowned gateway that guarded the spacious grounds,
+feeling like one in a troubled dream. He could shape nothing clearly: his
+past, present, and future seemed shaken out of place like the vari-colored
+figures of a kaleidoscope. To give up all his hopes, to shut out the
+beautiful vista opening before him and settle down forever to--to--"hogs
+on the hoof!" And yet it was his only chance to cheer, to gladden, perhaps
+to save gentle Aunt Win's life,--to bring her home again.
+
+But would she be happy at such a sacrifice? Would she not grieve even at
+the fireside she had regained over her broken dreams? And Dan would come
+down from his dreams and visions (which, after all, are very vague and
+uncertain things for boys of thirteen) to Tabby and the teapot, to the
+fluttering old hand in his clasp, the trembling old voice in his ear.
+
+The sun was close to its setting; supper was over, he knew; and Jim Norris
+was waiting impatiently for his promised game. But he could not think of
+tennis just now; still less was he disposed for a meeting with Dud
+Fielding, whose voice he could hear beyond the box hedge at his right. So,
+turning away from tennis court and playground, Dan plunged into the quiet
+shelter of the walk that skirted the high, ivy-grown wall, and was already
+growing dim with evening shadows, though lances of sunlight glinting here
+and there through the arching pines broke the gloom.
+
+Pacing the quiet way with feeble step was an old priest, saying his
+Office. Father Mack's earthly work was done. He could no longer preach or
+teach; he was only lingering in the friendly shadows of Saint Andrew's,
+waiting his Master's call home; his long, busy life ending in a sweet
+twilight peace. Sometimes at retreats or on great feasts, when there was a
+crowd of juvenile penitents in the college chapel, Father Mack, gentle and
+indulgent, had his place in a quiet corner, where he was rather avoided by
+young sinners as a "dying saint."
+
+But Dan, whatever might be his month's record of wrong-doing, had taken to
+Father Mack from the first. Perhaps it was something in the Irish voice
+that recalled Aunt Winnie; perhaps some deeper sympathy between souls
+akin. Though they seldom met, for the old priest had his room in a
+building remote from the students' quarters, Father Mack and Dan were fast
+friends. His presence here was most unlooked for; and Dan was about to
+retire without further intrusion, when the old priest closed his book and
+turned to him with a kindly nod.
+
+"You needn't run off. I'm done, my boy. These long, hot days are a bit
+hard on me; but I like to stay out here in the evening to say my Office
+and watch the sunset. Did you ever watch the sunset, Danny?"
+
+"Yes, Father," answered Dan. "It's great."
+
+"What do you see in it, Danny?" was the low question.
+
+"Oh, all sorts of things, Father,--domes and spires and banners of gold
+and red and purple, and pillars of cloud and fire--"
+
+"And gates," broke in Father Mack. "Don't you see the gates, Danny,--gates
+that seem to open in the shining way that leads to God's Throne? Ah, it's
+a wonderful sight, the sunset, when your day is near done and you are
+tired and old,--too old to be picturing and dreaming. I'll soon
+see--beyond the cloud and the dream, Danny,--I'll soon see."
+
+The old man paused for a moment, his dim eye kindling, his withered face
+rapt. Then suddenly, as if recalled from some cloudy height to earth, his
+look and voice changed into fatherly interest.
+
+"Were you looking for me,--were you wanting to talk to me, my son?"
+
+"No--yes--no," faltered Dan, who had not thought of such a thing. "Well,
+yes, I believe I do. I'm all muddled up, and maybe you can set me right,
+Father Mack. For--for," Dan blurted out without further hesitation, "I
+can't see things clear myself. Aunt Winnie is grieving and pining and
+homesick at the Little Sisters. She is trying to hide it, but she is
+grieving, I know. She broke down and cried to-day when I went to see
+her,--cried real sobs and tears. And--and" Dan went on with breathless
+haste, "Peter Patterson, that keeps the meatshop at our old corner, has
+offered me five dollars a week to come and work for him. To give up Saint
+Andrew's--and--and--all it means, Father Mack, and work for him."
+
+
+
+
+VI.--FATHER MACK.
+
+
+"Give up Saint Andrew's!" repeated Father Mack in a low, startled voice.
+"You, Dan! Give up!  Oh, no, my boy,--no!"
+
+"Aunt Winnie will die if I don't," blurted out Dan, despairingly. "Pete
+Patterson says so. And I can take her home and give her back her little
+rooms over Mulligans', and the blue teapot and Tabby, and everything she
+loves. And Pete says I can work up to be his partner."
+
+"His partner,--his partner! In what?" asked Father Mack, anxiously.
+
+"Meat business," answered Dan. "He's made money, and he's going in for it
+big,--corning, smoking, sausage, everything. I--I could take care of Aunt
+Winnie fine."
+
+"Meat business, sausage? I don't think I understand," said Father Mack, in
+bewilderment. "Sit down here, Dan, and tell me all this over again."
+
+Dan took his seat on a broken slab that had been a gravestone before the
+old college cemetery had been condemned and removed beyond the limits of
+the growing city. It was a very old slab, bearing the Latin title of some
+Brother or Father who had died fifty years ago. The sunset fell through a
+gap in the pines that showed the western sky, with its open gates, their
+pillars of cloud and fire all aglow.
+
+"Tell me slowly, calmly, Dan. My ears are growing dull."
+
+And Dan told his story again, more clearly and less impetuously; while
+Father Mack listened, his bent head haloed by the setting sun.
+
+"I can't let Aunt Winnie die," concluded Dan. "You see, I have to think of
+Aunt Winnie, Father."
+
+"Yes, I see,--I see, my boy," was the low answer. "And it is only of Aunt
+Winnie you are thinking, Dan?"
+
+"Only of Aunt Winnie," replied Dan, emphatically. "You don't suppose
+anything else would count against Saint Andrew's, Father. I'd work, I'd
+starve, I'd die, I believe, rather than give up my chance here?"
+
+"Yes, yes, it's hard lines sometimes," said Father Mack. "You may find it
+even harder as the years go by, Dan. I heard about the trouble
+yesterday."
+
+"Oh, did you, Father?" said Dan, somewhat abashed. "Dud Fielding did stir
+the old Nick in me for sure."
+
+"Yes," said Father Mack. "And that same fierce spirit will be stirred
+again and again, Dan. Despite all your teachers can do for you, there will
+be pricks and goads we can not help."
+
+"I know it," answered Dan, sturdily. "I'm ready for them. Saint Andrew's
+is worth all the pricks and goads I'll get. But Aunt Winnie, Father,--I
+can't forget Aunt Winnie. I've got to take Aunt Winnie back home."
+
+"Would she--wish it, at such--such a cost, Dan?" Father Mack questioned.
+
+"Cost," repeated Dan, simply. "It wouldn't cost much. The rooms are only a
+dollar a week, and Aunt Winnie can make stirabout and Irish stews and
+potato cake to beat any cook I know. Three dollars a week would feed us
+fine. And there would be a dollar to spare. And she could have her teapot
+on the stove again, and Tabby on the hearth-rug, only--only" (the young
+face clouded a little) "I'm afraid great as it all would be, she'd be
+grieving about her dreams."
+
+"Her dreams!" echoed Father Mack, a little puzzled.
+
+"Yes," said Dan. "You see, I am all she has in the world, and she is awful
+soft on me, and since I got into Saint Andrew's she's softer still. She
+thinks there's nothing too great or grand for me to do. My, it would make
+you laugh, Father, to hear poor old Aunt Winnie's pipe dreams about a
+tough chap like me!"
+
+"What does she dream, Dan?" asked the old priest softly.
+
+"I suppose she'd get out of them if she were home where things are natural
+like," said Dan; "but now she sits up there in the Little Sisters'
+dreaming that I'm going to be a priest,--a rough-and-tumble fellow like
+me!"
+
+"Stranger things than that have happened, Dan," said Father Mack, quietly.
+"I was a rough-and-tumble fellow myself."
+
+"You, Father!" exclaimed Dan.
+
+"The 'roughest-and-tumblest' kind," said Father Mack, his worn face
+brightening into a smile that took away twenty years at least. "I ran away
+to sea, Dan, leaving a gentle mother to break her heart for me. When I
+came back" (the old face shadowed again) "she was gone. Ah, God's ways are
+full of mystery, Dan! I think it was that made me a priest."
+
+Father Mack was silent for a moment. His dim eyes turned to the sunset,
+where the cloud curtains were swept asunder, the pillared gates a glory of
+crimson and gold. Something in his old friend's face hushed Dan's
+questioning until Father Mack spoke again.
+
+"That was a long time ago,--a long time ago. But the thought of it makes
+me understand about Aunt Winnie, Dan, and how hard it is to give you up.
+Still--still--even of old God asked the firstlings of the flock.
+Sacrifice! sacrifice! It is the way to heaven, Dan. Heart, hopes, tears,
+blood,--always sacrifice." And again the old speaker paused as if in
+troubled thought. "How soon must you make your choice, Dan?" he asked at
+length.
+
+"My choice?  About leaving, you mean, Father? Oh, Pete Patterson doesn't
+want me until the fall. And I haven't any place to go this summer, if I
+give up now. Father Regan is going to send us off to-morrow with Brother
+Bart for a summer at the seashore."
+
+"A summer at the seashore! Ah, good, good,--very good!" said Father Mack,
+his old face brightening. "That will give us time to think, to pray, Dan.
+A summer! Ah, God can work wonders for those who trust Him in a summer,
+Dan! Think what He does with the seed, the grain, the fruit. It is not
+well to move or to choose hastily when we are in the dark as to God's
+will. So say nothing about all this to any one as yet, Dan,--nothing this
+summer."
+
+"I won't, Father," agreed Dan.
+
+"And I promise that every day you will be remembered in my Mass, Dan."
+
+"Thank you, Father! That ought to keep me out of trouble sure."
+
+"And now where is this seashore place?" asked Father Mack, quite
+cheerfully.
+
+"An island called Killykinick, Father."
+
+"Killykinick?" echoed Father Mack, startled. "You are going to
+Killykinick? God bless me, how wonderful!"
+
+"You know the place, Father?" asked Dan, with interest.
+
+"I know it indeed," was the answer. "I was wrecked there in the wild days
+of which I told you, Dan, sixty years ago. The 'Maria Teresa' (I was on a
+Portuguese ship) went upon the rocks on a dark winter night, that I
+thought was likely to be my last. For the first time in my reckless youth
+I really prayed. My dear mother, no doubt, was praying for me, too; for I
+learned afterwards that it was on that night she died, offering with her
+last breath her life for her boy. Well, we held together somehow until
+morning, and got off to the shore of Killykinick before the 'Maria Teresa'
+went down, loaded with the golden profits of a two years' cruise."
+
+"And did they never get her up?" asked Dan, quite breathless with interest
+at this glimpse of a "dying saint's" past.
+
+"Never," answered Father Mack,--"at least never that I heard of. It was
+soon afterward that I turned into other ways and lost sight of my old
+mates. But I always have remembered the friendly haven of Killykinick. It
+was a wild place,--only a few deserted fishermen's huts on the rocky
+shore, where we lived on fish and clams until taken off by a passing ship.
+But that same rocky shore meant safety, shelter, life. And so in the after
+years I have always blessed Killykinick. And you are going there
+to-morrow! You will find it all changed,--all changed, I am sure," said
+Father Mack, as he slowly rose to his feet, for the sunset was fading now.
+"But I will think of you there, Dan,--think of you frolicking over the
+rocks and sands where I wandered so long ago a shipwrecked boy. Now it is
+time for me to go in, for my old blood chills in the twilight; so I must
+say good-bye,--good-bye and God bless you, my boy!"
+
+And, laying his hand for a moment on the boyish head, the old priest
+turned away into the deepening shadow of the pines, leaving Dan, who was
+beginning to feel vividly conscious that he had missed his supper, to make
+a rapid foray into the refectory, where Brother James could always be
+beguiled into furnishing bread and jam in and out of time,--having been,
+as he assured the belated ones, a boy himself.
+
+There was another belated one this evening. Seated before a tempting
+spread of milk toast, demanded by his recent convalescence, was Freddy
+Neville, a little pale and peaked perhaps, but doing full justice to a
+third creamy slice, and ready for more.
+
+"Why, hello, Fred!" greeted Dan, dropping into the chair beside him. "You
+down?"
+
+"Yes," said Fred, spooning his dish vigorously. "I'm well, all right now.
+Temperature gone, Brother Tim says. Can't I have a little more toast,
+Brother James, please? I'm not half filled up yet. Supper tastes twice as
+good down here. I've been out with Brother Bart buying shoes and things to
+go to Killykinick, and I'm hungry as a bear."
+
+"Wait a bit then, and I'll bring ye both in some strawberry jam and
+biscuits," said Brother James, good-humoredly. "It's the black fast
+Brother Tim puts on sick boys, I know. When they came down after the
+measles I couldn't get them enough to eat for a month. There now!" And the
+good man set forth supplies liberally. "I know what it is. I've been a
+hungry boy myself."
+
+"Jing, it's good to be up and out again!" said Freddy, as both boys
+pitched into biscuits and jam. "I felt down and out this morning sure,
+Dan, and now everything is working fine. We're going to have the time of
+our lives this summer, after all. Even Dud Fielding is cooling off, Jim
+Norris says, now that his nose has gone down, and he has heard about
+Killykinick."
+
+"Who told him?" asked Dan, who did not feel particularly cheered at these
+tidings; for Dud's "cooling off" was by no means to be trusted, as he
+knew.
+
+"Father Regan, of course. He couldn't send the boys unless they wanted to
+go. But when they heard about the old house uncle made out of his ship,
+and the row-boats and the sailboat, and the bathing and fishing, they just
+jumped at the chance to go. And Jim says there is a fine place not far
+off, where Dud spent the season two years ago with some tip toppers, and
+he's counting on getting in with them again. So he is tickled all around.
+But I'm not caring about Dud or what he likes, so long as I've got you,
+Dan, I wouldn't want to go without you."
+
+"Wouldn't you, kid?" asked Dan, softly, for, after all the troubles and
+perplexities of the day, his little chum's trusting friendship seemed very
+sweet to him.
+
+"N-o-o-o!" answered Freddy, most decidedly. "But I sort of wish Brother
+Bart was not going. He'll keep me such a baby!"
+
+"No, he won't. I'll see to that," said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye. "If
+there's any way of giving you a good time, I'll do it. And I won't let you
+get hurt again either,--no sir! I've had my scare about that. I'm going to
+look out for you right. It may be for the last time, but--"
+
+"The last time," interrupted Freddy quickly. "Why will it be the last
+time?"
+
+"I mean I may never have a chance at such a jolly holiday again," answered
+Dan, suddenly remembering his promise to Father Mack. "But we'll make this
+one a hummer. If Killykinick is half what I think it is, we'll make this
+chance a hummer you'll never forget."
+
+
+
+
+VII.--A HOLIDAY START.
+
+
+And the holiday proved to be a "hummer" from the very start. Everybody was
+in high spirits. Even Dud Fielding, with his nose happily reduced to its
+normal color and size, had lost his "grouch," and was quite himself again,
+in a sporting suit of English tweed, ordered from his tailors for
+"roughing it." Easy-going Jim was in comfortable khaki; so was little
+Fred; while Dan had been privately presented by the Brother wardrobian
+with two suits of the same,--"left by boys for the poor," good Brother
+Francis had whispered confidentially.
+
+"I fill the bill then, sure," said Dan, with a cheerful grin.
+
+"You do, but many a fine man has done the same before you," answered
+Brother Francis, nodding. "I've put a few more things in your trunk, Dan;
+take them and God bless you! I've cut off the marks so nobody'll be the
+wiser."
+
+Brother Bart's wrinkled face wore a glow of pleasurable excitement as,
+after seeing the baggage off, he marshalled his holiday force on the
+college porch for the last words of command from his reverend chief.
+
+"Give your orders now, Father; though God knows how I'll be able to keep
+this lot up to them. They are not to be killing and drowning themselves
+against my will and word."
+
+"Certainly not," said Father Regan, with a smile. "Brother Bart is to be
+obeyed, boys, or you'll promptly be ordered home."
+
+"And there is to be no roving off wid pirates and smugglers that may be
+doing their devilment along the shore," continued Brother Bart,
+anxiously.
+
+"The government looks out for all that now," laughed Father Regan.
+
+"I'm not so sure," said Brother Bart, who had grown up in a wild stretch
+of the Irish coast. "It's a wicked world, and we're going beyant the
+Lord's light that shines on us here."
+
+"Not at all," was the cheering assurance. "Beach Cliff is only six miles
+away, and it has a little church where there is a Mass every Sunday."
+
+"The Lord be praised for that anyhow!" said the good man, with a sigh of
+relief. "It's a great burthen that ye've put on my body and soul, Father.
+But I'll do me best, and, with God's help, I'll bring the four of them
+back safe and sound to ye. Now give us your blessing and we'll be off."
+
+And very soon they were off indeed, speeding on to the busy wharf, scene
+of many a "lark" in Dan's boyish past. Here the great steamboat was
+awaiting them: for, although the route was longer and more circuitous,
+Father Regan had decided it best for his young travellers to make their
+journey by sea.
+
+To Jim and Dud such a trip was no novelty; even Freddy had taken more than
+one holiday outing with Uncle Tom; but to Dan--Dan whose busy, workaday
+childhood had excluded even the delights of a cheap excursion--everything
+was wonderfully and deliciously new. He felt like one in a bewildering
+dream. As the great floating palace, all aglitter and aglow with splendors
+of paint and upholstery hitherto unknown, swung from her moorings out into
+the stream, Dan quite forgot the gentility of his surroundings and the
+elegant Dud Fielding at his elbow, and waved his hat with a wild "Hurrah"
+to half a dozen Wharf Rats who were fishing off the pier.
+
+"Dan Dolan!" rose the shrill-voiced chorus, and six pairs of bare legs
+dangling over the water scrambled up to a stand. "Jing! if it ain't Dan
+Dolan,--Dan Dolan all diked up like a swell! Hi-yi-yi-yi, Dan! Where are
+you going, Dan?"
+
+"Seashore, New England, Killykinick!" Dan shouted back, quite unconscious
+of the smiles and stares of the passengers. "Off for the summer! Hooray!"
+
+"Hooray--hooray!" with a series of whoops and catcalls came back the Wharf
+Rat's farewells, echoing with such friendly memories of a rough past that
+Dan was struck speechless by the fierce contrasting voice in his ear.
+
+"You darned dunderhead!" whispered Dud Fielding. "Can't you keep quiet in
+a decent crowd?"
+
+"Eh?" said Dan in bewilderment.
+
+"Don't you see everybody staring at us?" continued Dud, wrathfully. "To be
+shouting at dirty little beggars like those and disgracing us all!"
+
+"Disgracing you?" echoed Dan.
+
+"Yes," said Dud, still hot with pride and rage. "And there are the Fosters
+on the upper deck,--people I know. Come, Jim, let's cut off before they
+see us with this low-down chump."
+
+And Dud led easy-going Jim to the other side of the boat.
+
+"Low-down chump!" Unconscious as he was of any offense, Dan felt the
+scornful sting of the words, and his hot blood began to boil; but he
+remembered the "pricks and goads" he had resolved to bear bravely, and
+shut his lips tight together as Freddy stole a small hand into his own.
+
+With the last "Hi-yi" the Wharf Rats had settled back to their occupation,
+and Freddy eyed them from the growing distance most favorably.
+
+"Did you ever fish like that, Dan?" he asked with interest.
+
+"Often," was the brief reply; for Dan was still hot and sore.
+
+"Golly, it must be fun! And did you catch anything, Dan?"
+
+"My dinner," answered Dan, grimly.
+
+"Jing!" exclaimed Freddy, breathlessly. "That was great! When we get to
+Killykinick let us go out like those bare legged boys and catch our
+dinner, too."
+
+And Dan laughed and forgot he was a "low-down chump" as he agreed they
+would catch dinners whenever possible. Then he and Freddy proceeded to
+explore the big boat high and low, decks, cabins, saloons, machinery
+wherever visible. Freddy, who had made similar explorations with Uncle Tom
+as guide, was quite posted in steamboat workings; but it was all new and
+wonderful to Dan, who had only dry book-knowledge of levers and cogs and
+wheels; and to watch them in action, to gaze down into the fiery depths of
+the furnace, to hear the mighty throb of the giant engine,--to see all
+these fierce forces mastered by rules and laws into the benignant power
+that was bearing him so gently over summer seas, held him breathless with
+interest and delight. Even the clang of the first dinner gong could not
+distract him from his study of cylinder and piston and shaft and
+driving-rod, and all shining mechanism working without pause or jar at
+man's command.
+
+"Just as if they had sense," said Dan, thoughtfully,--"a heap more sense
+than lots of living folk I know."
+
+"That's what Uncle Tom says," replied Freddy, to whom, in their brief
+holidays together, Uncle Tom, cheery and loving, was an authority beyond
+question. "He says they work by strict law and rule, and people won't.
+They shirk and kick. Jing! if these here engines took to shirking and
+kicking where would we be? But they don't shirk and kick against law.
+Uncle Tom says they obey, and that's what boys ought to do--obey. Gee!
+it's good we're not engines, isn't it, Dan? We'd blow things sky
+high.--Here's the second call for dinner," said Freddy, roused from these
+serious reflections by the sound of the gong. "We'd better move quick,
+Dan, or the ice-cream may give out."
+
+"Can you have ice-cream,--all you want?" asked Dan.
+
+"Well, no," hesitated Freddy, who knew what Dan could do in that
+line,--"not like we have at college. They dish it out other places a
+little skimp, but they'll give you a good supply of other things to make
+up."
+
+Which information Dan soon found to be most pleasantly correct; and,
+though the glories of the long dining room, with its corps of low-voiced
+waiters, were at first a trifle embarrassing, and Brother Bart's grace,
+loudly defying all human respect, attracted some attention to his table,
+the boys did full justice to the good things set so deftly before them,
+and went through the bill of fare most successfully.
+
+The black waiters grinned as the young travellers proceeded to top off
+with apple pie and ice-cream, combined in such generous proportions that
+Brother Bart warned them that the sin of gluttony would be on their souls
+if they ate another mouthful.
+
+Then Freddy, sorely against his will, was borne off by his good old friend
+to rest, according to Brother Tim's last order; while Dan was left to
+himself to watch the boat turning into the shore, where a wharf loaded
+with truck for shipping jutted out into the stream; and one passenger--a
+sturdy, grizzled man in rough, brown hunting corduroy--leaped aboard
+followed by two fine dogs. Then the laboring engines, with puff and
+shriek, kept on their way; while Dan continued his investigations, and
+made friendly overtures to a big deck hand who volunteered to show the
+eager young questioner "below."
+
+And "below" they went, down steep, crooked steps that led away from all
+the glitter and splendor above, into black depths, lit only by fierce glow
+of undying fires. Brawny, half-naked figures fed and stirred the roaring
+flames; the huge boilers hissed, the engines panted; but through all the
+darkness and discord came the measured beat of the ship's pulse that told
+there was no shirk or kick,--that all this mighty mechanism was
+"obeying."
+
+And then, this dark sight-seeing over, Dan came up again into the bright,
+sunlit deck crowded with gay passengers chatting and laughing. Brother
+Bart was making efforts at conversation with an old French priest
+returning to his mission in the Canadian forests; Dud had introduced Jim
+to his fashionable friends, and both boys were enjoying a box of
+chocolates with pretty little Minnie Foster; Freddy was still "resting" in
+his stateroom.
+
+All were unmindful of the dark, fiery depths below, where fierce powers
+were working so obediently to bear them on their happy, sunlit way, that
+was widening each moment now. The smiling shores, dotted with farms and
+villages, were stretching away into hazy distance; there was a new swell
+in the waves as they felt the heart-beat of the sea. It was all new and
+wonderful to Dan; and he stood leaning on the deck rail of a secluded
+corner made by a projecting cabin, watching the sunset glory pale over the
+swift vanishing shore, when he was suddenly startled by a deep voice near
+him that questioned:
+
+"Worth seeing, isn't it?"
+
+Dan looked up and saw the big grizzled stranger in corduroy gazing at the
+splendor of the western sky.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Dan. "It's great! Are we out at sea now?"
+
+"Almost," was the reply. "Not in the full swell yet, but this is our last
+sight of land." He nodded to a promontory where the delicate lines of a
+lighthouse were faintly pencilled against the sunset.
+
+"Jing!" said Dan, drawing a long breath, "it feels queer to be leaving
+earth and sun and everything behind us."
+
+His companion laughed a little harshly. "I suppose it does at your age,"
+he said. "Afterwards" (he stopped to light a cigar and puff it into
+glow),--"afterwards we get used to it."
+
+"Of course," assented Dan, "because we know we are coming back."
+
+"Coming back!" repeated the other slowly. "We are not always sure of that.
+Sometimes we leave the land, the light, behind us forever."
+
+"Oh, not forever!" said Dan. "We would have to strike light and land
+somewhere unless we drowned."
+
+"We don't drown," continued the stranger. "We do worse: we drift,--drift
+in darkness and night."
+
+Dan stared. His companion had taken his cigar from his lips and was
+letting its glow die into ashes.
+
+"Folks do drown sometimes," said Dan. "I tell you if you go round the
+bottom of this boat you'd see how we could drown mighty easily. Just a
+wheel or crank or a valve a mite wrong,--whewy! we'd all be done for. But
+they don't go wrong; that's the wonder of it, isn't it?" said Dan,
+cheerfully. "If everybody kept steady and straight as a steam-engine, this
+would be a mighty good world."
+
+"No doubt it would," was the reply. "Are you not rather young to be facing
+it alone?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not alone!" said Dan, hastily. "I'm off with a lot of other
+fellows for the seashore. We are college boys from Saint Andrew's."
+
+"Saint Andrew's?" The stranger started so violently that the dying cigar
+dropped from his hold. "Saint Andrew's College, you say, boy! Not Saint
+Andrew's in--"
+
+But a clear young voice broke in upon the excited question.
+
+"Dan Dolan! Where are you, Dan? Oh, I've been looking everywhere for
+you!"
+
+And, fresh and rosy from his long rest, Freddy Neville bounded out
+gleefully to Dan's side.
+
+A low cry burst from the stranger's lips, and he stood staring at the boys
+as if turned into stone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.--A NEW FRIEND.
+
+
+"Jing, you gave me a scare, Dan!" said Freddy, drawing a long breath of
+relief. "I thought you had dropped overboard."
+
+"Overboard!" scoffed Dan. "You must think I'm a ninny. And you have been
+sleeping sure! Got to keep this sort of thing up all summer?"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" said Freddy; "only for a few days,--until I get real well
+and strong; though Brother Bart will keep fussing over me, I know. Golly,
+I wish we had Uncle Tom along with us!"
+
+"All right, is he?" asked Dan.
+
+"Great!" replied Freddy, emphatically. "Doesn't baby you a bit; lets you
+row and swim and dive when you go off with him. Most as good as a real
+father."
+
+"_Just_ as good, I guess," amended Dan.
+
+"No," said Freddy, shaking his head. "You see, he has other
+work--preaching and saying Mass and giving missions--where I don't come
+in. He has to leave me at Saint Andrew's because he hasn't any home. It
+must be just fine to have a home that isn't a school,--a sort of cosy
+little place, with cushioned chairs, and curtains, and a fire that you can
+see, and a kitchen where you can roast nuts and apples and smell
+gingerbread baking, and a big dog that would be your very own. But you
+can't have a home like that when you have a priest uncle like mine."
+
+"No, you can't," agreed Dan, his thoughts turning to Aunt Winnie and her
+blue teapot, and the little rooms that, despite all the pinch and poverty,
+she had made home.
+
+"And Christmas," went on Freddy, both young speakers being quite oblivious
+of the big stranger who had seated himself on a camp stool in the shelter
+of the projecting cabin, and, with folded arms resting on the deck rail,
+was apparently studying the distant horizon,--"I'd like to have one real
+right Christmas before I get too big for it."
+
+"Seems to me you have a pretty good time as it is," remarked Dan: "new
+skates and sled, and five dollars pocket money. There wasn't a fellow at
+the school of your age had any more."
+
+"That's so," said Freddy; "but they went _home_. A fellow doesn't want
+pocket money when he goes home. Dick Fenton had only sixty cents; I lent
+him fifteen more to get a card-case for his mother. But he had Christmas
+all right, you bet: a tree that went to the ceiling (he helped to cut it
+down himself); all the house 'woodsy' with wreaths and berries and
+fires,--real fires where you could pop corn and roast apples. He lives in
+the country, you see, where money doesn't count; for you can't buy a real
+Christmas; it has to be homemade," said Freddy, with a little sigh. "So
+I'll never have one, I know."
+
+Then the great gong sounded again to announce supper; and both boys
+bounded away to find the rest of their crowd, leaving the big stranger
+still seated in the gathering darkness, looking out to sea. As the boyish
+footsteps died into silence, he bowed his head upon his hands, and his
+breast heaved with a long, shuddering breath as if some dull, slumbering
+pain had wakened into life again. Then, in fierce self-mastery, he rose,
+stretched his tall form to its full height, and, ascending to the upper
+deck, began to pace its dimming length with the stern, swift tread of one
+whose life is a restless, joyless march through a desert land.
+
+Meanwhile Brother Bart and his boys had begun to feel the roll of the sea,
+and to realize that supper had been a mistake. Jim and Dud had retired to
+their staterooms, with unpleasant memories of Minnie Foster's chocolates,
+and the firm conviction that they never wanted to see a candy box again.
+Brother Bart was ministering to a very white-faced "laddie," and thanking
+Heaven he was in the state of grace and prepared for the worst.
+
+"The Lord's will be done, but I don't think any of us will live to see the
+morning. There must have been some poison in the food, to take us all
+suddint like this."
+
+"Oh, no, Brother Bart!" gasped Freddy, faintly. "I've been this way
+before. We're all just--just seasick, Brother Bart--dead seasick."
+
+Even Dan had a few qualms,--just enough to send him, with the sturdy sense
+of his rough kind, out into the widest sweep of briny air within his
+reach. He made for a flight of stairs that led up into some swaying,
+starlit region where there were no other sufferers, and flung himself upon
+a pile of life-preservers that served as a pillow for his dizzy head.
+Sickness of any sort was altogether new to Dan, and he felt it would be
+some relief to groan out his present misery unheard. But the glow of a
+cigar, whose owner was pacing the deck, suddenly glimmered above his head,
+and the big man in corduroy nearly stumbled over him.
+
+"Hello!" he said. "Down and out, my boy? Here, take a swig of this!" and
+he handed out a silver-mounted flask.
+
+"No," said Dan, faintly, "--can't. I've taken the pledge."
+
+"Pooh! Don't be a fool, boy, when you're sick!"
+
+"Wouldn't touch it if I were dying," said Dan. "I'm getting better now,
+anyhow. My, but I felt queer for a while! It is so hot and stuffy below.
+No more packing in on a shelf for me. I'll stick it out here until
+morning."
+
+"And the others,--the little chap who was with you?" the stranger asked
+hastily. "Is he--he sick, too?"
+
+"Freddy Neville? Yes, dead sick; but Brother Bart is looking out for him.
+Brother Bart is a regular old softy about Freddy. He took him when he was
+a little kid and keeps babying him yet."
+
+"He is good to him, you mean?" asked the other, eagerly.
+
+"Good? Well, I suppose you'd call it good. I couldn't stand any such
+fussing. Why, when Fred got a tumble in the gym the other day the old man
+almost had a fit!"
+
+"A tumble,--a fall; did it hurt him much?" There was a strange sharpness
+in the questioner's voice.
+
+"Pooh, no!" said Dan. "Just knocked him out a little. But we were all
+getting into trouble at Saint Andrew's, for vacation there is pretty slow;
+so Father Regan has sent us off to the seashore for the summer?"
+
+"The seashore? Where?"
+
+"Some queer place called Killykinick," answered Dan, who was now able to
+sit up and be sociable.
+
+"Killykinick?" repeated his companion, in a startled tone. "Did you say
+you were going to Killykinick?"
+
+"Yes," answered Dan. "Freddy's uncle or cousin or somebody died a while
+ago and left him a place there. Freddy has a lot of houses and money and
+things all his own. It's lucky he has. He isn't the kind to rough it and
+tough it for himself. Not that he hasn't plenty of grit," went on Freddy's
+chum, hastily. "He's as plucky a little chap as I ever saw. But he's been
+used to having life soft and easy. He is the 'big bug' sort. (I ain't.) So
+I'm glad he has money enough to make things smooth at the start, though
+his no-'count father did skip off and leave him when he was only five
+years old."
+
+"His father left him?" repeated Dan's companion. "Why?"
+
+"Don't know," answered Dan. "Just naturally a 'quitter,' I guess. Lots of
+menfolks are. Want a free foot and no bother. But to shake a nice little
+chap like Freddy I call a dirty, mean trick, don't you?"
+
+"There might be reasons," was the hesitating rejoinder.
+
+"What reason?" asked Dan, gruffly. "There ain't any sort of reason why a
+father shouldn't stick to his job. I hate a 'quitter,' anyhow," concluded
+Dan, decisively.
+
+"Wait until you are twenty years older before you say that, my boy!" was
+the answer. "Perhaps then you will know what quitting costs and means. But
+you're an old chum for that little boy. I saw him with you down below. How
+is it that you're such friends?"
+
+And then Dan, being of a communicative nature, and seeing no cause for
+reserve, told his new acquaintance all about the scholarship that had
+introduced him into spheres of birth and breeding to which he frankly
+confessed he could make no claim.
+
+"I'm not Freddy's sort, I know; but he took to me somehow,--I can't tell
+why."
+
+Yet as Dan went on with his simple, honest story, his listener, who,
+world-wise and world-weary as he was, knew something of the boyish nature
+that turns instinctively to what is strong and true and good, felt he
+could tell why Freddy took to this rough diamond of a chum.
+
+Dan, in his turn, learned that his new acquaintance was called John Wirt;
+that he was off on a vacation trip, hunting and fishing wherever there was
+promise of good sport; that he had travelled abroad for several
+years,--had been to China, Japan, India, Egypt; had hunted lions and
+elephants, seen the midnight sun, crossed Siberian steppes and African
+deserts. From a geographical standpoint, Mr. Wirt's story seemed an open
+and extensive map, but biographically it was a blank. Of his personal
+history, past, present or future, he said nothing. Altogether, Dan and his
+new acquaintance had a pleasant hour on the open deck beneath the stars,
+and made friends rapidly.
+
+"I wish you were going our way," said Dan, regretfully, as his companion
+announced that he was to get off at the first point they touched. "Brother
+Bart is going to granny us all, I know. If we had a real strong man like
+you around, he wouldn't scare so easily. And there is fine fishing about
+Killykinick, they say."
+
+"So I have heard." The stranger had risen now, and stood, a tall shadow
+dimly outlined above Dan. "I--I--perhaps I'll drop in upon you. Isn't it
+time for you to turn in now?"
+
+"No," answered Dan,--"not into that packing box below. I'm up here for the
+night."
+
+"And I'm off before morning, so it's good-bye and good luck to you!"
+
+And, with a friendly nod, Mr. John Wirt strode away down the darkened
+deck, leaving Dan to fling himself back upon his life-preservers, and
+wonder how, when, or where he had seen their new acquaintance before,--not
+at Saint Andrew's; for Mr. Wirt had been abroad, as he had said, ever
+since Dan entered the college; not at Milligans' or Pete Patterson's, or
+anywhere about his old home. Perhaps he had blacked his shoes or sold him
+a newspaper in some half-forgotten past; for surely there was something in
+his tone, his glance, his friendly smile that Dan knew.
+
+He felt quite well now. All the dizziness and nausea had vanished, and he
+was his own strong, sturdy self again. The roll and swap of the boat were
+only the rock of a giant cradle; the surge of the sea, a deep-toned
+lullaby soothing him to pleasant dreams; and the sky! Dan had never seen
+such a midnight sky. He lay, with his head pillowed in his clasped hands,
+looking up at the starry splendor above him with a wonder akin to awe. The
+great, blue vault arching above him blazed with light from a myriad stars,
+that his books had told him were worlds greater than this on whose wide
+waters he was tossing now,--worlds whose history the wisest of men could
+never know,--worlds, thousands and millions of them, moving in shining
+order by "rule and law."
+
+"Rule and law,"--it was the lesson that seemed to face Dan
+everywhere,--down in those black depths he had penetrated to-day, where
+valve and lever and gauge held roaring fire and hissing steam, with all
+their fierce force, to submission and service; in the polished mechanism
+whose steady throb he could feel pulsing beneath him like a giant heart;
+in the radiant sky where worlds beyond worlds swept on their mysterious
+way--obeying.
+
+With half-formed thoughts like these stirring vaguely in his mind, Dan was
+dropping off into pleasant sleep, when he was roused by the sound of
+voices and the glimmering of a ship's lantern.
+
+"I think you will find your boy here, sir."
+
+It was Mr. John Wirt, who, with the aid of a friendly deck hand, was
+guiding a pale, tottering, very sick Brother Bart to Dan's side.
+
+"Who wants me?" asked the half-wakened Dan, springing to his feet.
+
+"Dan Dolan! Ye young rapscallion!" burst out Brother Bart, almost sobbing
+in his relief. "It's down at the bottom of the black sea I thought ye
+were. I've been tramping this boat, with this good man holding me up (for
+I'm too sick to stand), this half hour. Down wid ye now below stairs with
+the rest, where I can keep an eye on ye. Come down, I say!"
+
+
+
+
+IX.--OBEYING ORDERS.
+
+
+"Down below!" the words struck harshly on Dan's ear for good old Brother
+Bart was more used to obedience than command, and he was sick and shaken
+and doing his guardian duty under sore stress and strain to-night.
+
+"Go below! What for?" asked Dan, shortly. "I'm all right up here, Brother
+Bart. I can't stand being packed in downstairs."
+
+"Stand it or not, I'll not have ye up here," said Brother Bart,
+resolutely. "Down with ye, Dan Dolan! Ye were put under my orders, and
+ye'll have to mind my words."
+
+"Not when it means being sick as a dog all night," answered Dan,
+rebelliously. "I tell you I can't stand it down in that stuffy place
+below, and I won't, I am going to stay up here."
+
+"And is that the way ye talk?" said Brother Bart, who had a spirit of his
+own. "And it's only what I might look for, ye graceless young reprobate!
+God knows it was sore against my will that I brought ye with me, Dan
+Dolan; for I knew ye'd be a sore trial first to last. But I had to obey
+them that are above me. Stay, then, if you will against my word; for it's
+all I have to hold ye, since ye are beyant any rule or law.--We'll go
+back, my man," continued Brother Bart to the burly deck hand who had been
+supporting his swaying form. "Help me to get down to my bed, in God's
+name; for I am that sick I can scarcely see."
+
+And Brother Bart tottered away, leaving Dan standing hot and defiant by
+his new friend, Mr. Wirt.
+
+"Sorry to have made trouble for you," said that gentleman; "but when I
+found that good old man wandering sick and distracted over the boat,
+stirring up everyone in search of a lost boy, there was nothing to do but
+give him the tip."
+
+"Freddy may stand it," said Dan, fiercely; "but I won't be grannied. What
+harm is there in staying up here?"
+
+"None at all from our standpoint," was the reply; "but the good old
+gentleman looks at things in another light. You're under his orders," he
+said; and there was a faint, mocking note in the words, that Dan was keen
+enough to hear. He was hearing other things too,--the pant of the engines,
+the throb of the pulsing mechanism that was bearing him on through
+darkness lit only by the radiance of those sweeping worlds above; but that
+mocking note in his new friend's voice rose over all.
+
+"Orders!" he repeated angrily. "I bet _you_ wouldn't take any such orders
+if you were a boy."
+
+"No, I wouldn't, and I didn't" (there was a slight change in the speaker's
+voice as he paused to light a cigar), "and you see where it left me."
+
+"Where?" asked Dan, curiously.
+
+"Adrift," was the answer,--"like this big boat would be if there was no
+one to command: beyond rule and law, as that good old friend of yours said
+just now,--beyond rule and law."
+
+"Beyond rule and law,--rule and law." The words began to hammer somehow on
+Dan's head and heart as he recalled with waking remorse poor Brother Bart
+tottering away in the darkness,--Brother Bart, who, as Dan knew, was only
+doing his duty faithfully, to the boy under his care,--Brother Bart, who,
+like the steamboat, like the stars, was _obeying_.
+
+For a moment or two Mr. Wirt puffed at his cigar silently, while the
+fierce fire that had blazed up in Dan's breast sank into bounds, mastered
+by the boy's better self, even as he had seen Nature's fierce forces of
+flame and steam mastered by higher powers to-day.
+
+"In short," said Mr. Wirt at last, as if he had been having thoughts of
+his own, "I am a derelict, my boy."
+
+"What's that?" asked Dan, who had never heard the word before.
+
+"A ship adrift, abandoned by captain and crew,--a wreck that tosses on the
+sea, a peril to all that come near it. There is nothing a good sailor
+dreads more than a derelict, and he makes it his business to sink it
+promptly whenever he can."
+
+"Couldn't he tow it into port?" asked Dan, with interest.
+
+"Not worth the trouble," was the grim answer.
+
+"Jing!" said Dan. "I'd try it, sure."
+
+"Would you?" asked Mr. Wirt.
+
+"Yes," replied Dan, decidedly. "If a ship can float, it must be worth
+something. I'd try to fling a hawser about it somewhere, and haul it in
+and dry-dock it to find out what was wrong. I've seen an oyster boat, that
+was leaking at every seam, calked and patched and painted to be good as
+new."
+
+"Perhaps," said Mr. Wirt, with a short laugh; "but the oyster boats don't
+go very far a-sea, and derelicts drift beyond hope or help. I am that
+kind, and if--if" (the speaker hesitated for a moment),--"if I had a boy
+like you, I wouldn't take any chances with him: I'd keep him off my deck;
+I'd put him on a sound ship with a wise captain and a steady crew, and he
+should be under orders until--well, until he had learned to sail midnight
+seas like this by the light of the stars." And, tossing his half-smoked
+cigar into the water, Mr. Wirt turned abruptly away without any further
+"goodnight."
+
+"He's a queer one," said Dan to himself, as he stared after the tall
+figure disappearing in the darkness. "I don't know what he means by his
+drifting and derelicts, but I guess it's a sort of talk about breaking
+laws and rules like I am doing here to-night. Gee! but Brother Bart is an
+old granny; stirring up all this fuss about nothing; and I'll be dead
+sick, I know. But I'm under orders" (Dan stretched his arms over his head,
+and, drawing a long, reluctant sigh, took a last look at the stars), "and
+I guess I'll have to go."
+
+And he went, making his way with some difficulty over the swaying decks
+and down deep stairs where the footing was more perilous than the heights
+of Old Top; through long stretches of gorgeous saloons whence all the life
+and gayety had departed; for, despite the stars, the sea was rough
+to-night, and old Neptune under a friendly smile was doing his worst.
+
+Jim and Dud, sturdy fellows that they were, had somewhat recovered their
+equilibrium and were dozing fitfully; but little Freddy was still white
+and wretched; and poor Brother Bart, all the ruddy glow gone from his
+face, lay with his hands clasping his Rosary, very sick indeed.
+
+"Say your prayers as well as ye can, laddie," he moaned to that small
+sufferer. "The Lord be merciful to us both if we're not to see the morning
+light!--Ah, are ye back, Dan Dolan?" as his eyes fell upon the wandering
+sheep of his flock standing beside him. "May God forgive ye for this
+night's work! It was the looking for ye that killed me entirely."
+
+"O Brother Bart, no, you're not as bad as that!" said Dan, remorsefully;
+"but I'm down here now to take care of you and Freddy, and you see if I
+don't do it right."
+
+And Dan, who in the old days of Tabby and the blue teapot had watched with
+and waited on Aunt Winnie through many a night of pain, proved as good as
+his word. It was as close and hot and stuffy as he had foreseen; the big
+boat plunged and rolled so that it was hard to keep his footing; at times
+he himself grew so sick that he could scarcely steady his helping hand,
+but he never gave up his job. He bathed poor Brother Bart's aching head
+with all a woman's tenderness; bandaged Freddy's throbbing temples with
+the cold compress that sent him off to sleep; made dizzy forays into
+unknown domestic departments for cracked ice and soda water; shocked
+Brother Bart out of what he believed his last agony by reporting everyone
+on the boat in "the same fix."
+
+"We'll be in smooth water, the men say, by morning; and then you'll be all
+right, Brother Bart. Let me bathe your head some more, and try to go to
+sleep."
+
+And when at last Brother Bart did fall asleep in the grey glimmer of the
+early dawn, it was a very pale, shaking, dizzy Dan that crept out on the
+open deck beyond the staterooms for a breath of fresh air. He could not
+have climbed to forbidden heights now even if he would. But they were in
+smooth waters, and the boat was pushing onto a sandy point, where a branch
+railroad came down to the shore. A dozen or more passengers were preparing
+to land; among them was Mr. Wirt, with a gun slung to his shoulder, a
+knapsack on his back, and his two great tawny dogs pulling in their
+leashes impatiently,--all evidently ready for a summer in the wilds.
+
+Dan felt too weak and sick for conversation until Mr. Wirt's eye fell upon
+the pale, trembling boy, who, with head bared to the morning breeze, was
+clinging weakly to an awning post.
+
+"Why, hello, my lad!" said the gentleman. "What's the matter. I thought
+you were all right when I saw you last up above."
+
+"I was," answered Dan, grimly. "But I came down, and, jing! I've had a
+night of it, with Brother Bart and Freddy both dead sick on my hands."
+
+"And you nursed them all night?" (There was an odd tremor in the speaker's
+voice.) "Are they better this morning?"
+
+"Yes," answered Dan. "They are all right now, sleeping like tops; but they
+had a tough time. It was lucky I gave up and came down to look after
+them."
+
+"So you obeyed orders, after all. And now you're all broken up yourself?"
+said the gentleman, compassionately.
+
+"Pooh, no!" was the sturdy answer. "I don't break up so easily. I'll be
+all right, too, in a little while,--after I've had more of this fresh air.
+Going to get off here?--" as the boat pushed up to the wharf.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Wirt. "I'm off to the woods for a few weeks; but--but
+maybe you will see me again later. Meanwhile what did the little fellow
+call you?"
+
+"Dan,--my name is Dan Dolan," was the answer.
+
+"Then good-bye, Dan!" Mr. Wirt's shapely hand closed over the boy's in a
+strong pressure. "You've given me a lesson, Dan,--I won't forget you." And
+he was off with his dogs across the gangway to the shore just flushing
+with the morning light.
+
+The worst was over; and Dan, worn out with his night of watching, was glad
+to creep into his "packing box" of a stateroom, and, flinging himself in
+his berth, dropped off to sleep,--a sleep full of strange dreams. They
+were wild and troubled dreams at first. He was down in black depths where,
+stripped to the waist, he was working amid roaring fires and hissing
+steam; he was out on a dark wide ocean, striving to fling a rope to a
+wreck drifting helplessly amid thundering breakers; he was up on a
+wind-swept deck, with Brother Bart's shaking grasp dragging him down
+below. Then suddenly the picture changed: it was not Brother Bart but old
+Father Mack whose trembling hand was upon his arm, guiding him through the
+leafy shadows of the college walk where they had last talked together.
+Beyond and above them was the dazzling glory of the stars, those sweeping
+worlds on which the young dreamer had looked last night. But as he walked
+on now, the leafy shadows seemed to grow into arched and pillared aisles
+rising far, far above him, and the stars were but the countless tapers on
+a mighty altar reaching to heights he could not see; and Aunt Winnie, was
+kneeling on the steps,--old Aunt Winnie, with clasped hands and uplifted
+eyes. Then the guiding hand seemed to tighten on his arm, and it was
+Brother Bart again beside him,--Brother Bart, his sturdy, ruddy self
+again, shaking him awake.
+
+"I hate to rouse ye, Danny lad" (there was a new friendliness in the old
+man's tone), "for it was the long, hard night ye had with us; but we're to
+get off here. Praise be to God, our killing journey is nearly done!"
+
+And Dan stumbled out hurriedly to the deck, to find the boat pushing into
+the harbor of a quaint old town, whose roofs and spires were glittering in
+the noonday sunshine. Pretty sailboats were flitting hither and thither on
+sunny wings; the white stretch of beach was gay with bathers; the full
+notes of an orchestra came from the band stand on the jutting pier.
+
+"Jing!" exclaimed Dan, in amazement at such a festive scene. "Is this
+Killykinick?"
+
+"No," was Dud Fielding's surly answer. "I wish it was. But I mean to cut
+over here to the Fosters whenever I can. This is Beach Cliff, where we
+have to take a sailboat to Killykinick. And," Dud went on, with deepening
+disgust, "I bet it's that old tub that is signalling to us now."
+
+Dan's eyes, following Dud's sullen gaze, saw, among the gaily painted
+pleasure craft moored at the wharfs, a clumsy little boat with rusty sides
+and dingy sail. An old man stood in the stern waving a tattered flag that,
+caught out by the breeze, showed in large faded letters--Killykinick.
+
+
+
+
+X.--ON THE "SARY ANN."
+
+
+"It's the sign," said Brother Bart gratefully, as he caught sight of the
+fluttering pennant. "He was to wave the flag to us so we would know the
+boat. Keep together now, boys," continued their anxious guardian, who was
+a little bewildered by a rush and struggle to which he was not accustomed.
+"Ah, God help them that have to push their way in a world like this! Hold
+to my hand, laddie, or ye'll be tramped down. Straight behind me now, the
+rest of ye, so ye won't be lost."
+
+And, marshalling his boyish force, Brother Bart pressed on through the
+hurrying throngs that surged over gangway (for it was the height of the
+holiday season) until he reached the shabby little boat whose occupant was
+a very old man with a face brown and wrinkled as tanned leather. A long
+scar across his cheek had twisted his mouth into a crooked smile. He spat
+a large quid of tobacco into the water, and greeted his passengers with an
+old sea dog's growl:
+
+"Been waitin' more than an hour for ye, but that consarned boat ain't
+never on time! Hit some pretty rough weather, I reckon, out at sea?"
+
+"We did," answered Brother Bart, with feeling. "It's the mercy of God
+we're alive to tell the tale. In with ye, boys, and sit steady. Take the
+middle of the boat, laddie, and hold to Dan. Give me a hand to help me in;
+for I'm weak and shaking yet. The Lord's will be done, but I never thought
+to be sailing the seas in a cockleshell like this," added the good man, as
+the boat rocked under his sturdy weight when he sank heavily into his
+place.
+
+"I say so, too. Let's hire something better," replied Dud Fielding,
+eagerly.
+
+"Thar ain't nothing better or safer than this here 'Sary Ann' along the
+shore," said the boat's master, grimly. "I sot every timber in her myself.
+She ain't got a crack or a creak in her. I keeled her and calked her, and
+I'll lay her agin any of them painted and gilded play-toys to weather the
+toughest gale on this here coast. You're as safe in the 'Sary Ann,' Padre,
+as if you were in church saying your prayers."
+
+"I'm no Padre," disclaimed Brother Bart, hastily. "I'm only an humble
+lay-brother, my good man, that has come to take care of these boys."
+
+"Brother or Father, it's all the same to me," was the gruff answer. "I'm a
+hardshell Baptist myself, but I've only good feelings to your kind. My old
+captain was one of you, and never a better man walked the deck. Now, duck,
+my lads, while I swing out the sail and we'll be off."
+
+The passengers ducked their heads hurriedly while the 'Sary Ann's' boom
+swung around. Her tawny sail caught the wind, and she was off with a
+light, swift grace that her looks belied.
+
+"Golly, she can clip it!" exclaimed Jim Norris, who had a home on the
+Chesapeake and knew all about a boat. "What sort of a rig is she,
+anyhow?"
+
+"Mixed like good terbacker," briefly answered the owner, as he leaned back
+comfortably at the helm and bit off another chew. "Sloop, skiff,
+outrigger, lugger,--she's got the good points of all and none of their
+kicks. Not that she ain't got a spirit of her own. Every boat worth
+anything hez. Thar's days when she takes the wind and thar's no holdin'
+her. You jest have to let her spread her wings to it and go. But, Lord,
+let that same wind begin to growl and mutter, let them waves begin to cap
+and swell, and the 'Sary Ann' is ready for them, you bet. She will drop
+all her fun and frolic, and scud along brave and bare agin the wildest
+gale that ever leashed a coast. And them young bloods over yon laugh at
+her," continued the 'Sary Ann's' owner, glowering at the gay buildings of
+the fashionable "boat club" they were just now passing. "They call her the
+Corsair,' which is no Christian name to give an honest boat."
+
+"You're right," said Brother Bart: "And, though you haven't the true
+faith, you seem to be a Christian yourself. What is your name, my good
+man?"
+
+"Jeroboam Jimson," was the answer. "Leastways that was what I was
+christened, my mother going in heavy for Scripture names. I had a twin
+brother Nebuchanezzar. Sort of mouth-filling for general use, so we was
+naturally shortened down to Neb and Jeb. Most folks call me Jeb yet."
+
+"It comes easier," said Brother Bart; "though I'd never think of giving it
+to a man of your years. It seems a pity, with the Litany of the Saints
+convenient, to have to go back so far for a name. But that is no fault of
+yours, as God knows. Have you been living long in this place we are going
+to?"
+
+"More than five and forty years," was the answer,--"since the 'Lady Jane'
+struck the rocks off Killykinick, November 27, 1865. I was second mate to
+old Captain Kane; and I stood by him until last May, when he took the
+cruise that every man has to make by himself. And I'm standing by his ship
+'cording to orders yet. 'Blood is thicker than water, mate,' he says to
+me; 'I've got to leave all that I have to little Polly Raynor's boy, but
+you're to stick to the ship as long as you live. I've hed that put down in
+the log with my name to it, and priest and lawyer and doctor as witness.
+You're Captain Jeroboam Jimson of the "Lady Jane," in my place, and thar
+ain't no land sharks nor water sharks can bother ye.' I lay that's the
+chap he called Polly's boy," said Captain Jeb, turning his eyes on Freddy,
+who, seated at Brother Bart's side, had been listening, with flattering
+interest, to the old sailor's conversation.
+
+"Yes," he spoke up eagerly, "my mother was Polly. Did you know her?"
+
+"I did," said Captain Jeb, nodding. "She came down here once as a bit of a
+girl, dancing over the sands like a water kelpie. The old Captain didn't
+care much for women folks, but he was sot on her sure. Then she come down
+agin as a bride, purty and shy and sweet; but the old man warn't so
+pleased then,--growled he didn't know what girls wanted to get married
+for, nohow. So you're her boy!" The old man's eyes softened as they rested
+on Freddy. "You've got a sort of look of her, though you ain't as
+pretty,--not nigh."
+
+Meanwhile the "Sary Ann," her tawny sail swelling in the wind, had left
+the gay beach and bathers and boat club of Beach Cliff, and was making the
+swell of the waves like a sea bird on the wing.
+
+"Easy now, lass!" cautioned Captain Jeb, as they neared a white line of
+breakers, and he stood up firm and strong at the helm. "Steady, all of you
+younkers; for we're crossing the bar. Many a good ship has left her bones
+on this same reef. Easy, 'Sary Ann'! It's no place for fooling round
+here."
+
+And, as if to emphasize his words, the black shadows of a wrecked ship
+rose gaunt and grim before them.
+
+"Struck the reef two months ago," explained the Captain, with eye and hand
+still steady on his helm. "Can't get her off. Captain fool enough to try
+Beach Cliff Harbor without a native pilot! Why, thar ain't no books nor
+charts can tell you nothing 'bout navigating round these here islands: you
+have to larn it yourself. It's the deceivingest stretch along the whole
+Atlantic coast. Thar's times when this here bar, that is biling deep with
+water now, is bare enough for one of you chaps to walk across without
+wetting your knees. Easy now, 'Sary Ann'! Ketch hold of that rope,
+younker, and steady the sail a bit. So thar, we're over the shoals. Now
+clip it, my lass" (and the old man swung the sail free),--"clip it fast as
+you like for Killykinick."
+
+And, almost as if she could hear the "Sary Ann" leaped forward with the
+bulging sail, and was off at the word; while Captain Jeb, the harbor reef
+safely passed, leaned back in his boat and pointed out to his young
+passengers (for even the elegant Dud was roused into eager curiosity) the
+various things of interest on their way: the light ship, the lighthouses,
+the fishing fleet stretching dim and hazy on the far horizon, the great
+ocean liner only a faint shadow trailing a cloud of smoke in the blue
+distance.
+
+"Them big fellows give us the go by now, though time was when they used to
+come from far and near; all kinds--Spanish, Portugee, East Indian. Them
+was the whaling days, when Beach Cliff was one of the greatest places on
+the coast. She stands out so far she hed the first bite at things. All the
+sailing ships made for snug harbor here. But, betwixt the steamboats and
+the railroads gobbling up everything, and the earth itself taking to
+spouting oil, things are pretty dead and gone here now."
+
+"But lots of fine folks come in the summer time," said Dud.
+
+"And there's a church!" exclaimed Brother Bart, who had caught a passing
+glimpse of a cross-crowned spire. "Thank God we'll not be beyond the light
+and truth entirely! You're to take us to Mass every Sunday, my good man;
+and we are to give you a dollar for the trouble of it, to say nothing of
+the blessing upon your own soul. Were you ever at Mass?"
+
+"Never," answered Captain Jeb.
+
+"Ah, God help you, poor man!" said Brother Bart. "Sure we never know our
+own blessings till we talk with them that's left in the darkness. But it's
+not too late for the grace of Heaven to reach you yet. Never been to Mass!
+Well, well, well!" Brother Bart shook his head, and, as if unable to cope
+with such hopeless religious dearth, relapsed into silence.
+
+"Is it much further to Killykinick?" asked Dan, who, with shining eyes had
+been taking in all this novel experience. "Looks like we're heading out to
+nowhere."
+
+The "Sary Ann," with the wind full in her sail, seemed bearing off into
+sunlit distance, where sky and sea met. There was a faint, shadowy line to
+the left; and just beyond, a dim pencil point pierced the cloudless blue.
+
+"That's a lighthouse, isn't it?" asked Jim, who had a sailor's eye.
+
+"Yes," growled Captain Jeb, his leathery face darkening. "Why they wanted
+to set up that consarned thing just across from Killykinick, I don't know.
+Hedn't we been showing a light thar for nigh onto fifty years? But some of
+these know-alls come along and said it wasn't the right kind; it oughter
+blink. And they made the old captain pull down the light that he had been
+burning steady and true, and the Government sot up that thar newfangled
+thing a flashing by clockwork on Numbskull Nob. It did make the old man
+hot, sure. 'Shet the window, mate,' he said to me when he was dying and
+wanted air badly. 'I can't go off in peace with that devilish thing of
+Numbskull Nob a winking at me.' Duck Agin, all hands! 'Sary Ann' swings
+around here. Thar's Killykinick to starboard!"
+
+And all hands "ducked" as rope and canvas rattled under Captain Jeb's
+guiding hand; and the "Sary Ann" swept from her dancing course to the
+boundless blue towards the shadowy line and dim pencil point now growing
+into graceful lighthouse and rocky shore. Numbskull Nob, jutting up from a
+hidden reef, over which a line of white-capped breakers was booming
+thunderously, seemed to justify the presence of the modern light that
+warned off closer approach to the island; for the stretch of water that
+lay between was a treacherous shoal where many a good ship had stranded in
+years gone by, when Killykinick was only a jagged ledge of rock where the
+sea birds nested and man had no place. But things had changed now. A rude
+but sturdy breakwater made a miniature harbor in which several small boats
+floated at their moorings; a whitewashed wharf jutted out into the waves;
+the stretch of rocky shore beyond had been roughly terraced into easy
+approach.
+
+"Easy now, boys,--easy!" warned Brother Bart anxiously, as the "Sary Ann"
+grated against her home pier, and Captain Jeroboam proceeded to make fast.
+"Don't be leaping off till you know the way."
+
+But Brother Bart might have called to the dashing waves. This Killykinick
+was very different from the desert they had expected; and, with shouts of
+delight from Jim, Dud and Dan, even little Freddy sprang ashore. Shrubs
+and trees of strange growth nodded and waved amid the rocks; here and
+there in sheltered crannies were beds of blooming flowers; and in the lee
+of a towering rock that kept off the fury of storm and wind stood the very
+queerest house the young explorers had ever seen.
+
+
+
+
+XI.--AT KILLYKINICK.
+
+
+It was a ship,--a ship with its keel settled deep in the sand, and held
+immovable against wind and storm by a rudely built foundation wall of
+broken rock. The sunlight blinked cheerfully from the dozen portholes; the
+jutting prow bore the weather-worn figurehead of the "Lady Jane,"--minus a
+nose and arm, it is true, but holding her post bravely still. Stout
+canvas, that could be pegged down or lifted into breezy shelter, roofed
+the deck, from which arose the "lookout," a sort of light tower built
+around a mast that upheld a big ship lantern; while the Stars and Stripes
+floated in glory over all.
+
+For a moment the four young travellers stared breathless at this
+remarkable edifice, while Freddy eagerly explained:
+
+"It's my Great-uncle Joe's ship that was wrecked here on Killykinick. He
+had sailed in her for years and loved her, and he didn't want to leave her
+to fall to pieces on the rocks; and so he got a lot of men, with chains
+and ropes and things, and moved her up here and made her into a house."
+
+And a first-class house the "Lady Jane" made, as all the boys agreed when
+they proceeded to investigate Great-uncle Joe's legacy. True, there was a
+lack of modern conveniences. The sea lapping the sands to the right was
+the only bath-room, but what finer one could a boy ask? There was neither
+dining room nor kitchen; only the "galley," as Captain Jeb, who came up
+shortly to do the honors of this establishment, explained to his guests.
+The "galley" was a queer little narrow place in the stern, lined with pots
+and pans and dishes scoured to a shine, and presided over by another old
+man more crooked and leathery-visaged than Captain Jeb, and who seemed too
+deep in the concoction of some savory mixture simmering on his charcoal
+stove to give look or word to the newcomers who crowded around him.
+
+"That is Neb," said his brother, in brief introduction. "He don't hev much
+to say, but you mustn't mind that. It ain't been altogether clear weather
+in his upper deck since he shipped with a durned pirate of a captain that
+laid his head open with a marline spike; but for a cook, he can't be beat
+by any steward afloat or ashore. Jest you wait till he doses out that
+clam-chowder he's making now!"
+
+Then there was the long, low cabin that stretched the full length of the
+"Lady Jane," and that--with its four cosy bunks made up shipshape, its big
+table, its swinging lamp, its soft bulging chairs (for Great-uncle Joe had
+been a man of solid weight as well as worth)--was just the place for boys
+to disport themselves in without fear of doing damage. All about were most
+interesting things for curious young eyes to see and busy fingers to
+handle: telescope, compass, speaking trumpet, log and lead and line that
+had done duty in many a distant sea; spears, bows and arrowheads traded
+for on savage islands; Chinese ivories and lacquered boxes from Japan. A
+white bearskin and walrus tusk told of an early venture into the frozen
+North, when bold men were first drawn to its darkness and mystery; while
+the Buddha from an Eastern temple, squatting shut-eyed on a shelf, roused
+good old Brother Bart into holy horror.
+
+"I never thought to be under the same roof with a haythen idol. Put it
+away, my man,--put it out of sight while I'm in yer house; for I can't
+stand the looks of it. I'll be after smashing it into bits if ye lave it
+under me eyes."
+
+And his indignation was appeased only by the sight of the Captain's room,
+which had been respectfully assigned to the "Padre," as Captain Jeb
+persisted in calling his older guest.
+
+Here Great-uncle Joe had treasures rare indeed in the good Brother's eye:
+a wonderful crucifix of ivory and ebony; the silver altar lamp of an old
+Spanish monastery; a Madonna in dull tints that still bore traces of a
+master hand; a rosary, whose well-worn beads made Brother Bart's pious
+heart warm.
+
+"Indeed he was a God-fearing man, I'm sure, this uncle of laddie's."
+
+"He was," agreed Captain Jeb; "a little rough-talking sometimes, but all
+sailors are."
+
+"Well, it's a rough life," said Brother Bart, recalling his own late
+experience. "It's little chance it gives you to think or pray. But the old
+man ye talk of prayed; I am sure of that. The beads here bear token of
+it."
+
+"Aye," answered Captain Jeb. "He held to them to the last as tight as if
+they was an anchor chain,--why I don't know."
+
+"That's yer ignorance, poor man!" said Brother Bart, compassionately. "Ye
+should pray morning and evening for light, and perhaps ye'll be given the
+grace to know what the hould of blessed beads is to a dying hand. Now, if
+ye don't mind, I'll rest a bit in this quiet place, and try to say me own
+prayers that I missed last night; for it was a sore trying time to me,
+both body and soul. There's no harm can come to the boys, now that they
+are safe here."
+
+"I wouldn't swear to four younkers like them anywhere," was the grim
+answer. "But ye can rest easy, Padre: I'll keep an eye on them, never
+fear." And, closing the old Captain's door on his anxious guest, Captain
+Jeb proceeded to "keep an eye" on the boys who were exploring Killykinick
+in every direction.
+
+As it had little more than half a mile of visible surface, the exploration
+was naturally limited; but there was a "deal more below," as Captain Jeb
+assured them,--reefs and shoals stretching out in every direction, and
+widening every year with the silt carried down from the shore. There were
+one or two wide hollows between the rocks, where that same silt,
+top-dressed with richer earth imported from more favored spots by Captain
+Jeb, served as kitchen garden, in which beans, cabbages and potatoes made
+a promising show. On another sheltered slope, green with coarse grass,
+brown Betty was pasturing peacefully; while in a henhouse beyond there was
+clucking and cackling, cheerfully suggestive of chickens and eggs.
+
+"We used to hev mostly ship rations," said Captain Jeb. "But the old man
+got sort of picky and choosy these last years, and turned agin the
+hard-tack and old hoss meat that had been good enough for him before. So I
+got a few boat-loads of good earth and took to growing things. And things
+do grow here for sure, if you only give them a chance. All they want is
+root hold; the sun and the air and the soft mists do the rest."
+
+Then there was the pump house; for even the toughest of old "salts" must
+have fresh water. And it had cost many a dollar to strike it in these
+rocks; but strike it at last the well-borers did, and the pump was roofed
+and walled in as Killykinick's greatest treasure.
+
+"Stick round here, younkers, along by the 'Lady Jane' and the wharf and
+the garden beds, and down by the 'Sary Ann' and the boats to the south
+beach, and you'll be pretty safe. But I'm going to show you a place whar
+you can't do no monkey shining, for it ain't safe at all."
+
+And as Captain Jeb spoke he turned to the high wall of rock that had
+backed and sheltered the "Lady Jane" for nearly fifty years; and, bending
+his thin form, he pushed through a low, narrow opening, with, it is
+needless to say, four wide-eyed boys scrambling breathlessly behind
+him,--Dan, as usual, in the lead, pulling Freddy on.
+
+For a moment they stumbled in darkness, through which came a thunderous
+sound like the swell of some mighty organ under a master hand; and then
+they were out in light and space again, with the ocean cliff of
+Killykinick arching above and around them in a great cave hollowed by the
+beating waves out of solid rock. Wall and roof were rough and jagged,
+broken into points and ledges; but the floor was smoothed by the tide into
+a shining, glittering surface, that widened out to meet the line of
+breakers thundering white-foamed beyond, their sprays scattering in light
+showers far and near.
+
+"Jing! Golly! Hooray!" burst from the young explorers; and they would have
+dashed off into bolder investigation of this new discovery, but Captain
+Jeb's sudden trumpet tone withheld them.
+
+"Stop,--stop thar, younkers! Didn't I tell you this warn't no play-place?
+How far and how deep these caves stretch only the Lord knows; for the sea
+is knawing them deeper and wider every year. And thar's holes and
+quicksands that would suck you down quicker than that whale in the Good
+Book swallowed Jonah. And more than that: in three hours from now these
+here rocks whar we are standing will be biling with high tide. This ain't
+no play-place! I'm showing it to you so you'll know; for thar ain't no
+reefs and shoals to easy things here. It's deep sea soundings that no line
+can reach, this nor'east shore. Them waves hev a clean sweep of three
+thousand miles before they break here. And thar ain't to be no ducking nor
+swimming nor monkey shining around here unless me or Neb is on watch. Neb
+ain't much good for navigating since he got that hit with the marline
+spike, but for a watch on ship or shore he is all right. So them 'orders'
+is all I hev to give: the Padre, being a bit nervous, may hev some of his
+own; but thar ain't nothing to hurt four strapping younkers round
+Killykinick except right _here_. And now, I reckon, it's about time for
+dinner. I'm ready for some of Neb's clam-chowder, I know; and I guess you
+are, too."
+
+"Jing! but this is a great place of yours, Freddy!" said Dan, as they
+turned back to the ship house. "We could not have found a better."
+
+"That's all you know," scoffed the lordly Dud. "I mean to keep on the
+right side of the old duffer," he added _sotto voce_, "and get over to
+Beach Cliff in that tub of his whenever I can. Minnie Foster asked me to
+come; they've taken a fine house down on the shore, and have all sorts of
+fun--dances, picnics, boat races. I'll get sick of things here pretty
+soon; won't you, Jim?"
+
+"I don't know about that," was the lazy answer. "About as good a place to
+loaf as you'll find."
+
+"Loaf?" put in Dan. "There isn't going to be any loafing at Killykinick
+for me. I'm for boating and fishing and clamming and digging up those
+garden beds. I don't know what those others are paying," said Dan, who had
+fallen behind with Captain Jeb; "but I've got no money, and am ready to
+earn my board and keep."
+
+"You are?" said the Captain, in surprise. "As I took it, the Padre bunched
+you all together for as fair a figure as I could ask."
+
+"Not me," replied Dan. "These other chaps are plutes, and can pay their
+own way; so cut me out of your figures and let me work for myself."
+
+"Well, that's sort of curious talk for a younker with a high-class
+schooling," said Captain Jeb, dubiously. "You mean you want to hire out?"
+
+"Yes," said Dan, remembering Aunt Winnie and how doubtful his claim was
+upon St. Andrew's.
+
+"Thar will be considerable stirring round, I'll allow," was the reflective
+answer. "I was thinking of getting Billy Benson to lend a hand, but if
+you'd like the job of sort of second mate--"
+
+"I would," said Dan. "What is a second mate's work?"
+
+"Obeying orders," answered Captain Jeb, briefly.
+
+"That's dead easy," said Dan, with a grin.
+
+"Oh, is it?" was the grim rejoinder. "Jest you wait, younker, till you've
+stood on a toppling deck in the teeth of a nor'easter, with some
+dunderhead of a captain roaring cuss words at you to cut away the mast
+that you know is all that's keeping you out of Davy Jones' Locker, and
+then you'll find what obeying orders means. But if you want the job here,
+it's yours. What will you take?"
+
+"My board and keep," answered Dan.
+
+"That ain't no sort of pay," said the other, gruffly.
+
+"Wait till you see me eat," laughed Dan; "besides, I was never a second
+mate before. Maybe I won't make good at it."
+
+"Mebbe you won't," said Captain Jeb, his mouth stretching into its crooked
+smile. "You're ruther young for it, I must admit. Still, I like your grit
+and pluck, younker. Most chaps like you are ready to suck at anything in
+reach. What's your name?"
+
+"Dan--Dan Dolan," was the answer.
+
+"Good!" said Captain Jeb. "It's a square, honest name. You're shipped, Dan
+Dolan. I guess thar ain't no need for signing papers. This little chap
+will bear witness. You're shipped as second mate in the 'Lady Jane' now
+and here."
+
+
+
+
+XII.--THE SECOND MATE.--A CONFAB.
+
+
+Then Neb's bell clanged out for dinner, that was served on the long table
+in the cabin, shipshape, but without any of the frills used on land. There
+was a deep earthen dish brimming with chowder, a wonderful concoction that
+only old salts like Neb can make. It had a bit of everything within
+Killykinick reach--clams and fish and pork and potatoes, onions and
+peppers and hard-tack,--all simmering together, piping hot, in a most
+appetizing way, even though it had to be "doused" out with a tin ladle
+into yellow bowls. There was plenty of good bread, thick and "filling"; a
+platter of bacon and greens, and a dish of rice curried after a fashion
+Neb had learned cruising in the China Sea. Last of all, and borne in
+triumphantly by the cook himself, was a big smoking "plum duff" with cream
+sauce. There is a base imitation of "duff" known to landsmen as batter
+pudding; but the real plum duff of shining golden yellow, stuffed full of
+plums like Jack Horner's pie, is all the sailor's own.
+
+Dan plunged at once into his new duties of second mate. Both Jeb and Neb
+were well past seventy, and, while still hale and hearty, were not so
+nimble as they had been forty years ago; so a second mate, with light feet
+and deft hands, proved most helpful, now that the "Lady Jane" had taken in
+a double crew.
+
+Dan cleared the table and washed the dishes with a celerity bewildering to
+the slow brain dulled by the marline spike. He swabbed up the galley under
+Neb's gruff direction; he fed the chickens and milked the cow. For a brief
+space in two summers of his early life, Dan had been borne off by an Angel
+Guardian Society to its Fresh Air Home, a plain, old-fashioned farmhouse
+some miles from his native city; and, being a keen-eyed youngster even
+then, he had left swings and seesaws to less interested observers, and
+trudged around the fields, the henhouse, the dairies, the barns, watching
+the digging and the planting, the feeding and the milking; so that the
+ways of cows and chickens were not altogether beyond his ken.
+
+"Sure and yer board and keep was to be paid for with the rest, lad," said
+Brother Bart, kindly.
+
+"I don't want it paid, Brother," replied Dan. "St. Andrew's does enough
+for me. I'd a heap rather work for myself out here."
+
+"Whether that is decent spirit or sinful pride I'm not scholar enough to
+tell," said the good Brother in perplexity. "It takes a wise man sometimes
+to know the differ; but I'm thinking" (and there was a friendly gleam in
+the old man's eyes) "if I was a strapping lad like you, I would feel the
+same. So work your own way if you will, Danny lad, and God bless you at
+it!"
+
+Even heartier was the well-wishing of Captain Jeb after his first day's
+experience with his second officer.
+
+"You're all right, matie!" he said, slapping Dan-on the shoulder. "There
+will be no loafing on your watch, I kin see. You're the clipper build I
+like. Them others ain't made to stand rough weather; but as I take it,
+you're a sort of Mother Carey chicken that's been nested in the storm. And
+I don't think you'll care to be boxed up below with them fair-weather
+chaps. Suppose, being second mate, you swing a hammock up on the deck with
+Jeb and me?"
+
+"Jing! I'd like that first rate," was the delighted answer.
+
+And, as Brother Bart had no fear of danger on the "Lady Jane," Dan entered
+on all the privileges of his position. While Freddy and Dud and Jim took
+possession of the sheltered cabin, and the dignity of the Padre (so it
+seemed to Captain Jeb) demanded the state and privacy of the Captain's
+room, Dan swung his hammock up on deck, where it swayed delightfully in
+the wind, while the stout awnings close-reefed in fair weather gave full
+view of the sea and the stars.
+
+He slept like a child cradled in its mother's arms, and was up betimes to
+plunge into a stretch of sheltered waves, still rosy with the sunrise, for
+a morning bath such as no porcelain tub could offer; and then to start off
+with old Neb, who, like other wise householders, began the day's work
+early. Neb might be deaf and dull, and, in boyish parlance, a trifle
+"dippy"; but he knew the ways of fish, from whales to minnows. He had a
+boat of his own, with its nets and seines and lines, that not even the
+sturdy old Captain in the days of his command dared touch.
+
+That Dan was allowed to handle the oars this first morning proved that the
+second mate had already established himself firmly in Neb's favor. But, as
+Wharf Rat, Dan had gained some knowledge of boats and oars; and he was
+able to do his part under the old salt's gruff direction. They went far
+out beyond shoal and reef; beyond Numskull Nob (whose light was still
+blinking faintly in the glow of the sunrise), into deep waters, where the
+fishing fleet could be seen already at work in the blue distance hauling
+up big catches of cod, halibut, and other game.
+
+"That ain't fishing!" growled old Neb. "It's durned mean killing."
+
+"And isn't all fishing killing?" asked Dan, as they flung out their own
+lines.
+
+"No," said Neb. "When you cast a line, or a harpoon even, you give
+critters a chance; but them durned pirates thar don't give a fish no
+chance at all."
+
+"Did you ever cast a harpoon?" asked Dan, with interest.
+
+For a moment the dull eyes kindled, the dull face brightened, as some
+deadened memory seemed to stir and waken into life; then the shadow fell
+heavy and hopeless again.
+
+"Mebbe I did, sonny; I don't know. It's so far back I've most forgot."
+
+But old Neb's wits worked in their own way still. It took less than an
+hour to catch dinners for the whole Killykinick crew; and the fishermen
+came home to find that Captain Jeb had been doing duty during their
+absence, and breakfast was ready on the long table in the cabin,--a
+breakfast such as none of the white-coated waiters in their late journey
+could beat.
+
+Captain Jeb knew nothing of cereals, but he had a big bowl of mush and a
+pitcher of golden cream; he had bacon and eggs frizzled to a charm; he had
+corndodgers and coffee that filled the air with fragrance,--such coffee as
+old sailors look for about break of day after a middle watch. Altogether,
+the crew of the "Lady Jane" found things very pleasant, and the first week
+at Killykinick had all the interest of life in a newly discovered land.
+Even Brother Bart was argued by the two old salts out of his
+"nervousness," and laddie was allowed to boat and fish and swim in safe
+waters under Dan's care; while Jim and Dud looked out for themselves, as
+such big fellows should.
+
+"Thar's nothing to hurt them off thar," said Captain Jeb, as Brother Bart
+watched his navigators with anxious eyes pushing out over a stretch of
+dancing waves. "'Twixt here and Numskull Nob you could 'most walk ashore.
+Jest keep them out of the Devil's Jaw, that's all."
+
+"The Lord between us and harm!" ejaculated Brother Bart, in pious horror.
+"Where is that at all?"
+
+"The stretch of rock yonder," replied Captain Jeb, nodding to the
+northeast.
+
+"And isn't that an awful name to give to a Christian shore?" asked Brother
+Bart.
+
+"No worse than them ar suck-holes of waves deserves," was the grim answer.
+"When the high tide sweeps in thar, it kerries everything with it, and
+them caves guzzle it all down, nobody knows whar."
+
+"Ah, God save us!" said Brother Bart. "It's the quare place to choose
+aither for life or death. I wonder at the laddie's uncle, and ye too, for
+staying all these years. Wouldn't it be better now, at yer time of life,
+for ye to be saving yer soul in quiet and peace, away from the winds and
+the storms and the roaring seas that are beating around ye here?"
+
+"No," was the gruff answer,--"no, Padre. I couldn't live away from the
+winds and the storms and the waves. I couldn't die away from them either.
+I'd be like a deep sea-fish washed clean ashore. How them landlubbers live
+with everything dead and dull around them, I don't see. I ain't been out
+of sight of deep water since I shipped as cabin boy in the 'Lady Jane'
+nigh onto sixty years ago. I've been aloft in her rigging with the sea
+beating over the deck and the wind whistling so loud ye couldn't hear the
+cuss words the old man was a-roaring through his trumpet below. I've held
+her wheel through many a black night when no mortal man could tell shore
+from sea. I stood by her when she struck on this here reef, ripped open
+from stem to stern; and I'm standing by her now, 'cording to the old
+Captain's orders, yet."
+
+"Ye may be right," said Brother Bart, reflectively. "It's not for me to
+judge ye, Jeroboam." (Brother Bart never shortened that Scriptural title.)
+"But I bless the Lord day and night that I was not called to the
+sea.--What is it the boys are after now!" he added, with an anxious glance
+at the boat in which laddie and Dan had ventured out beyond his call.
+
+"Lobsters," replied Captain Jeb. "Them's Neb's lobster pots bobbing up
+thar, and they've got a catch that will give us a dinner fit for a king."
+
+"It's all to your taste," said Brother Bart. "Barrin' fast days, of which
+I say nothing, I wouldn't give a good Irish stew for all the fish that
+ever swam the seas. But laddie is thrivin' on the food here, I must say.
+There's a red in his cheeks I haven't seen for months; but what with the
+rocks and the seas and the Devil's Jaw foreninst them, it will be the
+mercy of God if I get the four boys safe home."
+
+"You needn't fear," was the cheering assurance. "They are fine, strapping
+fellows, and a touch of sailor life won't harm them; though it's plain
+them two big chaps and little Polly's boys are used to softer quarters.
+But for a long voyage I'd ship Mate Danny before any of them."
+
+"Ye would?" asked Brother Bart.
+
+"Aye," answered Captain Jeb, decisively. "Don't fly no false colors,
+sticks to his job, ready to take hold of anything from a lobster pot to a
+sheet anchor,--honest grit straight through. Lord, what a ship captain he
+would make! But they don't teach navigation at your school."
+
+"I don't know," answered Brother Bart. "I'm not book-learned, as I've told
+ye; but there's little that isn't taught at St. Andrew's that Christian
+lads ought to know; to say nothing of God's holy law, which is best of
+all; but of navigation I never hear tell. I'm thinking it can't be much
+good."
+
+"No good!" repeated the Captain, staring. "Navigation no good! Lord!
+You're off your reckoning thar sure, Padre. Do you know what navigation
+means? It means standing on your quarter-deck and making your ship take
+its way over three thousand miles of ocean straight as a bird flies to its
+nest; it means holding her in that ar way with the waves a-swelling
+mountain high and the wind a-bellowing in your rigging, and a rocky shore
+with all its teeth set to grind her in your lee; it means knowing how to
+look to the sun and the stars when they're shining, and how to steer
+without, them when the night is too black to see. Where would you and I be
+now, Padre, if a navigator that no landlubbers could down had not struck
+out without map or chart to find this here America of ours hundreds of
+years ago?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," answered Brother Bart. "But there seems to be
+sense and truth in what you say. It's a pity you haven't the light of
+Faith."
+
+"What would it do for me!" asked Captain Jeb, briefly.
+
+"What would it do for you?" repeated Brother Bart. "Sure it's in the black
+darkness you are, my man, or ye wouldn't ask. It's sailing on the sea of
+life ye are without sun or stars, and how ye are to find the way to heaven
+I don't know. Do ye ever say a prayer, Jeroboam?"
+
+"No," was the gruff answer. "That's your business, Padre. The Lord don't
+expect no praying from rough old salts like me."
+
+"Sure and He does,--He does," said Brother Bart, roused into simple
+earnestness. "What is high or low to Him? Isn't He the Lord and Maker of
+the land and sea? Doesn't He give ye life and breath and strength and
+health and all that ye have? And to stand up like a dumb brute under His
+eye and never give Him a word of praise or thanks! I wonder at ye,
+Jeroboam,--I do indeed! Sure ye'd be more dacent to any mortal man that
+gave ye a bit and sup; but what ye're not taught, poor man, ye can't know.
+Listen now: ye're to take us to church to-morrow according to your
+bargain."
+
+"Yes," said the Captain, gruffly; "but thar warn't no bargain about
+preaching and praying and singing."
+
+"Sure I don't ask it," said Brother Bart, sadly. "You're in haythen
+darkness, Jeroboam, and I haven't the wisdom or the knowledge or the
+holiness to lade ye out; but there's one prayer can be said in darkness as
+well as in light. All I ask ye to do is to stand for a moment within the
+church and turn your eyes to the lamp that swings like a beacon light
+before the altar and whisper the words of that honest man in the Bible
+that didn't dare to go beyant the holy door, 'O God, be merciful to me a
+sinner!' Will ye do that?"
+
+"Wal, since that's all ye ask of me, Padre," said Captain Jeb,
+reflectively, "I can't say no. I've thought them words many a time when
+the winds was a-howling and the seas a-raging, and it looked as if I was
+bound for Davy Jones' Locker before day; but I never knew that was a
+fair-weather prayer. But I'll say it as you ask; and I'll avow, Padre,
+that, for talking and praying straight to the point, you beat any preacher
+or parson I ever heard yet."
+
+"Preach, is it!" exclaimed Brother Bart. "Sure I never preached in my
+life, and never will. But I'll hold ye to your word, Jeroboam; and, with
+God's blessing, we'll be off betimes to-morrow morning.--Here come the
+boys: and, Holy Mother, look at the boatful of clawing craythurs they have
+with them!"
+
+"Lobsters, Brother Bart!" shouted Freddy, triumphantly. "Lobsters, Captain
+Jeb! Fine big fellows. I'm hungry as three bears."
+
+
+
+
+XIII.--AT BEACH CLIFF.
+
+
+Brother Bart and his boys were up betimes for their Sunday journey.
+Breakfast was soon dispatched, and four sunburned youngsters were ready
+for their trip to town. Dud and Jim, who had been lounging around
+Killykinick in sweaters and middies, were spruced up into young gentlemen
+again. Freddy's rosy cheeks were set off by a natty little sailor suit and
+cap; while Dan scarcely recognized himself in one of the rigs presented by
+Brother Francis, that bore the stamp of a stylish tailor, and that had
+been sponged and pressed and mended by the kind old wardrobian until it
+was quite as good as new.
+
+The day was bright and beautiful, sky and sea seemed smiling on each other
+most amicably. The "Sary Ann" was in the best of spirits, and the wind in
+the friendliest of moods.
+
+"Sit steady, boys, and don't be philandering!" warned Brother Bart,
+anxiously. "It looks fair and aisy enough, but you can drown in sun as
+well as storm. Keep still there, laddie, or ye'll be over the edge of the
+boat. Sure it's an awful thing to think that there's only a board between
+ye and the judgment-seat of God."
+
+And Brother Bart shook his head, and relapsed into meditation befitting
+the peril of his way; while the "Sary Ann" swept on, past rock and reef
+and shoal, out into the wide blue open, where the sunlit waves were
+swelling in joyous freedom, until the rocks and spires of Beech Cliff rose
+dimly on the horizon; white-winged sails began to flutter into sight;
+wharves and boat-houses came into view, and the travellers were back in
+the busy world of men again.
+
+"It feels good to be on God's own earth again," said Brother Bart, as he
+set foot on the solid pier, gay just now with a holiday crowd; for the
+morning boat was in, and the "Cliff Dwellers," as the residents of the old
+town were called at livelier seaside resorts, were out in force to welcome
+the new arrivals.
+
+"This is something fine!" said Dud to Jim, as they made their way through
+the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the
+beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were
+disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like
+this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I
+say, Jim, let's look up the Fosters after Mass, and see if we can't get a
+bid to their house for a day or two. We'll have some fun there."
+
+"I don't know," answered easy Jim. "Killykinick is good enough for me. You
+have to do so much fussing and fixing when you are with girls. Still, now
+we are here, we might as well look around us."
+
+So when Mass in the pretty little church was over, and Brother Bart, glad
+to be back under his well-loved altar light, lingered at his prayers, the
+boys, who had learned from Captain Jeb that they had a couple of hours
+still on their hands, proceeded to explore the quaint old town, with its
+steep, narrow streets, where no traffic policemen were needed; for neither
+street cars nor automobiles were allowed to intrude.
+
+In the far long ago, Beach Cliff had been a busy and prosperous seaport
+town. The great sailing vessels of those days, after long and perilous
+voyage, made harbor there; the old shipmasters built solid homes on the
+island shores; its merchants grew rich on the whaling vessels, that went
+forth to hunt for these monsters of the great deep, and came back laden
+with oil and blubber and whalebone and ambergris. But all this was changed
+now. Steam had come to supplant the white wings that had borne the old
+ships on their wide ocean ways. As Captain Jeb said, "the airth had taken
+to spouting up ile," and made the long whale hunts needless and
+unprofitable. But, though it had died to the busy world of commerce and
+trade, the quaint old island town had kept a charm all its own, that drew
+summer guests from far and near.
+
+Dud and Jim made for the resident streets, where old Colonial mansions
+stood amid velvety lawns, and queer little low-roofed houses were buried
+in vines and flowers. But Dan and Freddy kept to the shore and the cliff,
+where the old fishermen had their homes, and things were rough and
+interesting. They stopped at an old weather-beaten house that had in its
+low windows all sorts of curious things--models of ships and boats, odd
+bits of pottery, rude carvings, old brasses and mirrors,--the flotsam and
+jetsam from broken homes and broken lives that had drifted into this
+little eddy.
+
+The proprietor, a bent and grizzled old man, who stood smoking at the
+door, noticed the young strangers.
+
+"Don't do business on Sundays; but you can step in, young gentlemen, and
+look about you. 'Twon't cost you a cent: and I've things you won't see
+any-whar else on this Atlantic coast,--brass, pottery, old silver, old
+books, old papers, prints of rare value and interest. A Harvard professor
+spent two hours the other day looking over my collection."
+
+"Is it a museum?" asked Freddy politely, as he and Dan peered doubtful
+over the dusky threshold.
+
+"Wal, no, not exactly; though it's equal to that, sonny. Folks call this
+here Jonah's junk-shop,--Jonah being my Christian name. (I ain't never had
+much use for any other.) I've been here forty years, and my father was
+here before me,--buying and selling whatever comes to us. And things do
+come to us sure, from copper kettles that would serve a mess of sixty men,
+down to babies' bonnets."
+
+"Babies' bonnets!" laughed Dan, who, with Freddy close behind him, had
+pushed curiously but cautiously into the low, dark room, from which opened
+another and another, crowded with strangely assorted merchandise.
+
+"You may laugh," said the proprietor, "but we've had more than a dozen
+trunks and boxes filled with such like folderols. Some of 'em been here
+twenty years or more,--shawls and bonnets and ball dresses, all frills and
+laces and ribbons; baby bonnets, too, all held for duty and storage or
+wreckage and land knows what. Flung the whole lot out for auction last
+year, and the women swarmed like bees from the big hotels and the
+cottages. Got bits of yellow lace, they said, for ten cents that was worth
+many dollars. The men folks tried to 'kick' about fever and small-pox in
+the old stuff, but not a woman would listen. Look at that now!" And the
+speaker paused under a chandelier that, even in the dusky dimness,
+glittered with crystal pendants. "Set that ablaze with the fifty candles
+it was made to hold, and I bet a hundred dollars wouldn't have touched it
+forty years ago. Ye can buy it to-morrow for three and a quarter. That's
+the way things go in Jonah's junk-shop."
+
+"And do you ever really sell anything?" asked Dan, whose keen business
+eye, being trained by early bargaining for the sharp needs of life, could
+see nothing in Jonah's collection worth a hard-earned dollar. Mirrors with
+dingy and broken frames loomed ghost-like up in the dusky corners;
+tarnished epaulets and sword hilts told pathetically of forgotten honors;
+there were clocks, tall and stately, without works or pendulum.
+
+"Sell?" echoed the proprietor. "Of course, sonny, we sell considerable,
+specially this time of year when the rich folks come around,--folks that
+ain't looking for stuff that's whole or shiny. And they do bite curious,
+sure. Why, there was some sort of a big man come up here in his yacht a
+couple of years ago that gave me twenty-five dollars for a furrin
+medal,--twenty-five dollars cash down. And it wasn't gold or silver
+neither. Said he knew what it was worth, and I didn't."
+
+"Twenty-five dollars!" exclaimed the astonished Freddy,--"twenty-five
+dollars for a medal! O Dan, then maybe yours is worth something, too."
+
+"Pooh, no!" said Dan, "what would poor old Nutty be doing with a
+twenty-five dollar medal?"
+
+The dull eyes of the old junk dealer kindled with quick interest.
+
+"Hev you got a medal?" he asked. "Where did you get it?"
+
+"From a batty old sailor man who thought I had done him some good turns,"
+answered Dan. "Where he got it he didn't say. I don't think he could
+remember."
+
+And Dan, whose only safe deposit for boyish treasures was his jacket
+pocket, pulled out the gift that Freddy had refused, and showed it to this
+new acquaintance, who, holding it off in his horny hand, blinked at it
+with practised eye.
+
+"Portugee or Spanish, I don't know which it says on that thar rim. Thar
+ain't much of it silver. I'd have to rub it up to be sure of the rest.
+Date, well as I can make out, it's 1850."
+
+"It is," said Dan. "I made that much out myself."
+
+Old Jonah shook his head.
+
+"Ain't far enough back. Takes a good hundred years to make an antique.
+Still, you can't tell. The ways of these great folks are queer. Last week
+I sold for five dollars a bureau that I was thinking of splitting up into
+firewood; and the woman was as tickled as if she had found a purse of
+money. Said it was Louey Kans. Who or what she was I don't know; mebbe
+some kin of hers. I showed her the break plain, for I ain't no robber; but
+she said that didn't count a mite,--that she could have a new glass put in
+for ten dollars. Ten dollars! Wal, thar ain't no telling about rich folks'
+freaks and foolishness; so I can't say nothing about that thar medal. It
+ain't the kind of thing I'd want to gamble on. But if you'd like to leave
+it here on show. I'll take care of it, I promise you; and mebbe some one
+may come along and take a notion to it."
+
+"Oh, what's the good?" said Dan, hesitating.
+
+"Dan, do--do!" pleaded Freddy, who saw a chance for the vacation pocket
+money his chum so sorely lacked. "You might get twenty-five dollars for
+it, Dan."
+
+"He might," said old Jonah; "and then again he mightn't, sonny. I ain't
+promising any more big deals like them I told you about. But you can't
+ever tell in this here junk business whar or when luck will strike you. It
+goes hard agin my old woman to hev all this here dust and cobwebs. She has
+got as tidy a house as you'd ask to see just around the corner,--flower
+garden in front, and everything shiny. But if I'd let her in here with a
+bucket and broom she'd ruin my business forever. It's the dust and the
+rust and the cobwebs that runs Jonah's junk-shop. But it's fair and
+square. I put down in writing all folks give me to sell, and sign my name
+to it. If you don't gain nothing, you don't lose nothing."
+
+Dan was thinking fast. Twenty-five dollars,--twenty-five dollars! There
+was only a chance, it is true; and a very slim chance at that. But what
+would twenty-five dollars mean to him, to Aunt Winnie? For surely and
+steadily, in the long, pleasant summer days, in the starlit watches of the
+night, his resolution was growing: he must live and work for Aunt Winnie;
+he could not leave her gentle heart to break in its loneliness, while he
+climbed to heights beyond her reach; he could not let her die, while he
+dreamed of a future she would never see. Being only a boy, Dan did not put
+the case in just such words. He only felt with a fierce determination
+that, in spite of the dull pain in his heart at the thought, he must give
+up St. Andrew's when this brief seaside holiday was past, and work for
+Aunt Winnie. And a little ready cash to make a new start in Mulligan's
+upper rooms would help matters immensely. Just now he had not money enough
+for a fire in the rusty little stove, or to move Aunt Winnie and her old
+horsehair trunk from the Little Sisters.
+
+"All right!" he said, with sudden resolve. "Take the medal and try it."
+
+And old Jonah, who was not half so dull as, for commercial purposes, he
+looked, turned to an old mahogany desk propped up on three legs, and gave
+the young owner a duly signed receipt for one silver-rimmed bronze medal,
+date 1850, and the business was concluded.
+
+"Suppose you really get twenty-five dollars, Dan," said Freddy, as they
+bade old Jonah good-bye and kept on their way. "What will you do with
+it?"
+
+"I'm not saying," replied Dan, mindful of his promise to Father Mack. "But
+I'll start something, you can bet, Freddy!"
+
+And then they went on down to the wharf, where the "Sary Ann" lay at her
+moorings, and Brother Bart was seated on a bench in pleasant converse with
+the Irish sexton of the little church, who had been showing the friendly
+old Brother some of the sights of the town.
+
+"Here come my boys now. This is Dan Dolan, and this is my own laddie that
+I've been telling ye about, Mr. McNally. And where--where are the others?"
+questioned Brother Bart, anxiously.
+
+"I don't know," answered Dan, after he had reciprocated Mr. McNally's
+hearty hand-shake. "Dud said something about going to the Fosters."
+
+"Sure and that isn't hard to find," said Mr. McNally. "It's one of the
+biggest places on Main Street, with hydrangeas growing like posies all
+around the door. Any one will show ye."
+
+"Go back for them, Danny lad. Ye can leave laddie here with me while ye
+bring the others back; for the day is passing, and we must be sailing
+home."
+
+
+
+
+XIV.--POLLY.
+
+
+Main Street was not hard to find, neither seemed the Fosters. A corner
+druggist directed Dan without hesitation to a wide, old-fashioned house,
+surrounded by lawns and gardens, in which the hydrangeas--blue, pink,
+purple--were in gorgeous summer bloom. But, though the broad porch was gay
+with cushions and hammocks, no boys were in sight; and, lifting the latch
+of the iron gate, Dan was proceeding up the flower-girdled path to the
+house, when the hall door burst open and a pretty little girl came flying
+down the steps in wild alarm.
+
+"Bobby!" she cried. "My Bobby is out! Bobby is gone! Oh, somebody catch
+Bobby, please,--somebody catch my Bobby!"
+
+A gush of song answered the wail. Perched upon the biggest and pinkest of
+the hydrangeas was a naughty little canary, its head on one side warbling
+defiantly in the first thrill of joyous freedom. Its deserted mistress
+paused breathlessly. A touch, a movement, she knew would send him off into
+sunlit space beyond her reach forever.
+
+Quick-witted Dan caught on to the situation. A well-aimed toss of his cap,
+and the hydrangea blooms were quivering under the beat of the captive's
+fluttering wings. Dan sprang forward and with a gentle, cautious hand
+grasped his prisoner.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh!" was all the little lady could cry, clasping her hands
+rapturously. "Don't--don't hurt him, please!"
+
+"I won't," was the answer. "But get his cage quick; for he's scared to
+death at my holding him."
+
+Bobby's mistress darted into the house at the word, and reappeared again
+in a moment with a gilded palace that was surely all a bird could ask
+for.
+
+"O Bobby, Bobby!" she murmured reproachfully, as Dan deposited his subdued
+and trembling captive behind the glittering bars. "When you had this
+lovely new cage and everything you wanted!"
+
+"No, he hadn't," said Dan, conscious of a sudden sympathy with his
+feathered prisoner. "He has wings and wants to use them."
+
+"But he couldn't find seed or chickweed for himself, and the cats and
+hawks would have had him before morning. Oh, I'm so glad to get him back
+safe I don't know how to thank you for catching him for me!" And the
+little lady lifted a pair of violet eyes, that were still sparkling with
+tears, to her benefactor's face.
+
+"Pooh! It wasn't anything," said Dan, shyly.
+
+"Yes, it was. You threw your cap fine. My brothers couldn't have done it,
+I know. They would have just laughed and teased, and let Bobby fly away
+forever. You are the nicest boy I ever saw," continued Bobby's mistress,
+who was at the age when young ladies speak their mind frankly. "What is
+your name?"
+
+"Dan Dolan," was the reply, with the smile that showed Aunt Winnie's boy
+at his best. "Let me carry your bird cage to the house for you. It is too
+heavy for a little girl."
+
+"Oh, thank you! But I'm not such a little girl as you think: I am nearly
+ten years old," said the young lady, as Dan took up Bobby and his cage,
+and they proceeded up the broad gravelled path to the house; "and my name
+is Polly Forester, and--"
+
+"Forester!" blurted out Dan. "Then I'm on the wrong track. They told me
+this was the Foster house."
+
+"Oh, no!" Miss Polly shook her head, that, with its golden brown ringlets,
+looked very much like a flower itself. "This has been our house for more
+than a hundred years. My grandfather lived here, and my great-grandfather
+and all my grandfathers. One of them fought with George Washington; we've
+got his sword. Would you like to see it?" asked Miss Polly, becoming
+graciously hospitable as they approached the porch.
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't time," answered Dan. "You see, I'm looking for two
+of our fellows. We're a lot of St. Andrew's boys off for the summer, and
+the boat is waiting to take us back to Killykinick."
+
+"Oh, are you staying there?" asked the young lady, with wide-eyed
+interest. "I've passed it often in dad's yacht."
+
+"Polly dear!" called a sweet voice, and a grown-up image of that young
+person came hurriedly out on the porch,--a lovely lady, all in soft
+trailing white and blue ribbons. "What is the matter? Your cry woke me out
+of a sound sleep and put me all in a flutter."
+
+"O mamma dear, I'm sorry! But it was Bobby. He flew out of his cage when I
+was trying to teach him to perch on my hand, and got away. He would have
+gone forever if this nice boy had not caught him for me! His name is Dan
+Dolan, mamma, and he is staying at Killykinick with a lot of college boys.
+Dan is looking for the other boys, who are at the Fosters; and some one
+told him this was the house, and he came just in time to catch my Bobby
+under his cap, and--"
+
+"The Fosters?" interrupted mamma, who was used to clearing up things for
+Polly. "Probably you are looking for Colonel Foster, who came down last
+week," she continued, turning a smiling face to Dan. "They have rented the
+Pelham cottage for the summer. You know where that is, Polly?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" answered the little lady, cheerfully. "You take care of Bobby,
+mamma, and I'll show Dan the short cut through our garden."
+
+And she darted ahead through an old-fashioned maze, where tall box hedges
+were clipped into queer shapes around beds of gay blooming flowers. Then,
+swinging open a vine-wreathed gate, Dan's little guide led into a steep
+narrow way paved with cobblestones.
+
+"Pelham cottage is just up there," she said, "at the top of Larboard
+Lane."
+
+"And here the boys come now!" exclaimed Dan, as the sound of familiar
+voices reached his ear, and down the lane came a laughing, chattering
+group,--Minna Foster, and her sister Madge and brother Jack gleefully
+escorting Jim and Dud back to the boat, and claiming the promises of
+speedy return to Beach Cliff.
+
+Dan hailed his schoolmates, explained his search and his mistake, and they
+were all taking their way down the stony path together,--Polly being of
+the sort to make friends at once with every nice boy or girl within
+reach.
+
+"Isn't she the cutest thing?" said Minna Foster, who had fallen behind
+with Dud. "We have just been dying to know them; but her mother is an
+invalid, and doesn't go out much, though they are the finest people in
+Beach Cliff, mamma says. They have lots of money, and the loveliest old
+home filled with all sorts of beautiful things, and horses and carriages
+and a big yacht."
+
+"And Dan Dolan has struck it with them," said Dud, watching Miss Polly's
+dancing along loyally by her nice boy's side. "Dan Dolan! Can't you give
+them a tip about him."
+
+"A tip?" echoed Minna, puzzled.
+
+"Yes," said Dud, his brow darkening. "People like that don't want to know
+such low-down chumps as Dan Dolan. Why, he's in St. Andrew's on charity;
+hasn't got a decent rag to his back except what we give him there; used to
+shine shoes and sell papers on the streets. His aunt is in the poorhouse
+or something next to it; he's just a common tough, without a cent to call
+his own."
+
+"Goodness!" gasped Miss Minna. "Then what is he doing up here with boys
+like you?"
+
+"Pushed in," answered Dud, hotly. "He has enough nerve to push anywhere.
+St. Andrew's gives a scholarship at the parochial school, and he won it;
+and, as he hadn't any place to go this summer, they bunched him in with
+us. But you can see what he is at one look."
+
+"Oh, I did,--I did!" murmured Miss Minna. "I saw at the very first that he
+was not our sort; but, being with nice boys like you, I thought he must be
+all right. He isn't bad-looking, and such nerve for a bootblack! Just look
+how he is making up to little Polly Forester!"
+
+To an impartial observer it would have really seemed the other way. Polly
+herself was "making up" most openly to this nicest boy she ever saw.
+Tripping along by Dan's side, she was extending a general invitation, in
+which Dan was specialized above all others.
+
+"I am going to have a birthday party next week, and I want you to come,
+and bring all the other boys from Killykinick. It's the first party I've
+ever had; but mamma is feeling better this year, and I'll be ten years
+old, and she's going to have things just lovely for me,--music and
+dancing, and ice-cream made into flowers and birds, and a Jack Horner pie
+with fine presents in it. Wouldn't you like to come, Dan?"
+
+"You bet!" was the ready answer; for a party of young persons like Miss
+Polly was, from his outlook, a very simple affair. "When is it coming
+off?"
+
+"Thursday," said Polly,--"Thursday evening at six, in our garden. And you
+needn't dress up. Boys hate to dress up, I know; Tom and Jack won't go any
+place where they have to wear stiff collars."
+
+"I'm with them there," rejoined Dan. "Had to get into one on Commencement
+Day, and never want to try another."
+
+"You see, I don't care for some boys," said the expectant hostess,
+confidentially. "All Tom's and Jack's friends are in long trousers. Some
+girls like that, but I don't: they look too grown up, and they stand
+around and tease, and won't play games, and are just horrid. You would
+play games, I'm sure."
+
+"Just try me at them," answered Dan, grinning.
+
+"Oh, I know you would! So I want you all to come," said Miss Polly, who,
+having reached her own gateway, paused for a general good-bye. "I don't
+know your names, but I want you all to come with Dan to my party."
+
+"If we can get here," replied Dan. "Captain Jeb wouldn't trust us to sail
+his boat, and I don't know that he could come with us."
+
+"Oh, he will,--he must!" persisted Polly.
+
+"He ain't the will-and-must kind," said Dan, nodding.
+
+"Then maybe I can send for you," the little lady went on eagerly. "My
+cousins are coming over from Rock-haven on dad's yacht, and I'll make them
+stop at Killykinick and bring you all with them to my party."
+
+And, with a gay little nod that included all her nice boys, little Miss
+Polly disappeared among the hydrangeas; while the others kept on down to
+the wharf, where the "Sary Ann" was already swinging out her dingy sail,
+and Brother Bart was growing anxious and nervous.
+
+Merry good-byes were spoken, and very soon the boys were on their homeward
+way, with Beach Cliff vanishing in the distance. There had been no bids to
+the Fosters' cottage, which was already filled with grown-up guests. Dud
+was sullen and disappointed; lazy Jim a little tired; while Freddy, seated
+in the bottom of the boat, dropped his curly head on Brother Bart's knee
+and went off to sleep. But to Dan the day had been a most pleasant
+experience, a glimpse of a friendly, beautiful world whose gates he had
+never thought to pass; and Aunt Winnie's Dan was very happy as he steered
+the "Sary Ann" over a smiling summer sea without a clouding shadow.
+
+"How did you push in so quick to the Foresters?" sneered Dud.
+
+"Looking for two lost donkeys," retorted Dan, who was learning to give Dud
+as good as he sent.
+
+"Maybe you think you'll get there again," said Dud. "Well you won't, I can
+tell you that. It was all very well to make up so strong to a little fool
+girl; but they are the tiptoppers of Beach Cliff, and you won't hear any
+more of Miss Polly's yacht or her party."
+
+"I'm not worrying over that, are you?" said Dan, philosophically. "You
+look as if you had a grouch on about something."
+
+"I have," blurted out Dud fiercely. "I hate this horrid Killykinick and
+everything on it; and I'm not going to be mixed up before decent people
+with roughs and toughs that are fit only to black my boots--like you, Dan
+Dolan!"
+
+
+
+
+XV.--A RESCUE.
+
+
+For a moment Dan's blue eyes flashed, his strong arm quivered. Every hardy
+nerve was tingling to strike out at the insolent speaker who lost no
+opportunity to fling a scornful word. But this beautiful day had left holy
+as well as happy memories. Dan had knelt at Brother Bart's side before the
+altar light, that through all his hard rough young life had been Aunt
+Winnie's boy's beacon,--a beacon that had grown clearer and brighter with
+his advancing years, until it seemed to rise above earth into the dazzling
+radiance of the stars. Its steady light fell upon his rising passion now,
+and his fury broke as the swelling surf breaks upon the beacon rock--into
+foam and spray.
+
+"It _is_ a sort of mix up, I must say," he answered. "But I'm out of the
+bootblack business for good and all; so what are you going to do about
+it?"
+
+"Cut the whole lot," said Dud, "just as soon as I can get money enough to
+do it."
+
+"Well, I won't cry after you, I'm sure," retorted Dan, good-humoredly;
+though there was a spark in his eye that told the fire was smoldering
+still, as even under the beacon light such fires sometimes do.
+
+But a stentorian shout from Captain Jeb put an end to the altercation.
+
+"Wind's a-veering! Swing round that ar boom, matey Dan! Duck, the rest of
+you boys,--duck--quick!"
+
+Freddy was asleep, with his head pillowed safely on Brother Bart's knee.
+Jim was dozing in the stern, out of harm's reach; but on Dud, seated at
+the edge of the boat and fuming with rage and pride, the warning fell
+unheeded. As the sail swung round there was s splash, a shriek.
+
+"He's overboard! God have mercy on us!" cried Brother Bart, roused from
+his third Glorious Mystery of the Rosary.
+
+"Didn't I tell you to duck, ye rascal?" roared Captain Jeb, to whom a
+tumble like this seemed only a boy's fool trick. "Back aboard with ye, ye
+young fool! Back--aboard! Don't ye know there's sharks about in these
+waters? Lord, ef he ain't gone down!"
+
+"He can't--can't swim!" And Jim, who had started up half awake and who
+could swim like a duck, was just about to plunge after Dud, when he caught
+the word that chilled even his young blood to ice--_sharks_! Jim knew what
+sharks meant. He had seen a big colored man in his own Southern waters do
+battle with one, and had sickened at the memory ever since.
+
+"A rope,--a rope!" thundered Captain Jeb, whose right leg had been
+stiffened for all swimming in deep waters ten years ago. "If he goes down
+again, it's forever."
+
+"O God have mercy! God have mercy!" prayed Brother Bart, helplessly; while
+Freddy shrieked in shrill alarm.
+
+In that first wild moment of outcry Dan had stood breathless while a tide
+of feeling swept over him that held him mute, motionless. Dud! It was Dud
+who had been swept over into those foaming, seething depths. Dud, whose
+stinging words were still rankling in his thoughts and heart; Dud, who
+hated, scorned, despised him; Dud who could not swim, and--and there were
+sharks,--sharks!
+
+Dan was trembling now in every strong limb,--trembling, it seemed to him,
+in body and soul. Sharks! Sharks! And it was Dud.--Dud who had said Dan
+was fit only to black his boots!
+
+"O God have mercy! Mother Mary--Mother Mary save him!" prayed Brother
+Bart.
+
+At the words Dan steadied,--steadied to the beacon light,--steadied into
+Aunt Winnie's boy again.
+
+"Don't scare, Brother Bart!" rang out his clear young voice. "I'll get
+him."
+
+"Dan! Dan!" shrieked Freddy, as, with the practised dive of the Wharf
+Rats, the lithe young form plunged into the water. "O Dan,--my Dan, the
+sharks will get you, too! Come back! Come back, Dan!"
+
+Dan caught the words as he struck out blindly, desperately, almost
+hopelessly, through depths such as he had never braved before. For this
+was not the safe land-bound harbor; this was not the calm lap of the river
+around the sheltering wharf; this was a world of waters, seething, surging
+roaring around him, peopled with hunting creatures hungry for prey.
+
+"Dan, Dan!" came his little chum's piercing cry as he rose for breath.
+
+"Come back, ye fool!" thundered Captain Jeb. "He's gone, I tell ye,--the
+boy is gone down!"
+
+But even at the shout something dark swept within touch of Dan's
+outstretched arm; he made a clutch at it and grasped Dud,--Dud choking,
+gasping, struggling,--Dud, who sinking for the last time, caught Dan in a
+grip that meant death for both of them.
+
+"Let go!" spluttered Dan, fiercely,--"let go! Let go or we'll drown
+together!" And then, as the deadly clutch only tightened, Dan did what all
+Wharf Rats knew they must do in such cases--struck out with the full
+strength of his hardy young fist, and, knocking the clinging Dud's
+fast-failing wits completely out of him, swam back with his helpless
+burden to the "Sary Ann."
+
+"The Lord, matey, but you are a game un!" said Captain Jeb, as he and Jim
+dragged Dud aboard.
+
+"Ah, God have mercy upon the poor lad's soul! It's dead entirely he is!"
+sobbed Brother Bart.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" said Dan, scrambling up the side of the "Sary Ann."
+"He's just knocked out. I had to knock him out, or he would have pulled me
+down with him. Roll him over a little, so he can spit out the water, and
+he'll be all right."
+
+"Sure he is,--he is!" murmured Brother Bart, as Dud began to cough and
+splutter encouragingly. "It's gone forever I thought he was, poor lad! Oh,
+God bless you for this day's work, Dan Dolan,--bless you and keep you His
+forever!"
+
+"It was a close shave for all hands," said Captain Jeb, permitting himself
+a long-drawn sigh of relief, as Dan, after shaking himself like a
+water-dog, sank down, a little pale and breathless, at his side. "And you
+were what most folk would call a consarned fool, matey. Didn't you hear me
+say these 'ere waters had sharks in 'em?"
+
+"Yes," said Dan, whose eyes were fixed upon a drift of sunlit cloud in the
+distance.
+
+"Then what the deuce did you do it for?" said Captain Jeb, severely.
+
+"Couldn't let a fellow drown," was the brief answer.
+
+"Warn't nothing special to you, was he?" growled the old sailor, who was
+still fiercely resentful of his "scare." "Ain't ever been perticular nice
+or soft spoken as I ever heard to you. And you jumping in to be gobbled by
+sharks, for him, like he was your own twin brother! You're a fool,
+matey,--a durn young fool!"
+
+And Dan, who understood his old sailor friend, only laughed,--laughed
+while his eyes still followed the drift of swinging cloud fringing the
+deep blue of the sky. They were like the robe of the only Mother he had
+ever known,--the sweet Mother on whom Brother Bart had called to save Dud.
+And Dan had heard and obeyed and he felt with a happy heart his Mother was
+smiling on him now.
+
+But to Dud this thrilling adventure left no pleasant memories. He was sick
+for several days from his overdose of salt water, weak and nervous from
+fright and shock: there was a bruise over his eye from the saving impact
+of Dan's sturdy fist, which he resented unreasonably. More than all, he
+resented the chorus that went up from all at Killykinick in praise of
+Dan's heroism.
+
+Jim testified openly and honestly that the cry of "Sharks" got him, and he
+couldn't have dared a plunge in those waters to save his own brother.
+
+"I saw a nigger cut in half by one of those man-eaters once, and it makes
+my flesh creep to think of it."
+
+Even dull-witted old Neb rose to show appreciation of Dan's bold plunge,
+and said he "reckoned all boys wuth anything did sech fool tricks some
+times."
+
+Good old Brother Bart felt it was a time for warning and exhortation,
+which Dud found altogether exasperating.
+
+"Sure it's on your knees you ought to go morning and evening to thank God
+for bold, brave Dan Dolan. If it hadn't been for him, it's food for the
+fishes ye'd be now. The Lord was merciful to ye, lad; for I'm misdoubting
+if ye were fit for heaven. Though it's not for me to judge, ye have a
+black look betimes, as if God's grace wasn't in yer heart. This ought to
+be a lesson to ye, a lesson that ye should never forget."
+
+"I'm not likely to forget it," was the grim answer. "I couldn't if I
+tried."
+
+"And I'm glad to hear ye say so," said the simple-minded old Brother. "I'm
+thinking sometimes ye're not over friendly with Dan. It was a rough bating
+he gave ye before we left the college." (Dud's black looks grew blacker at
+the memory.) "But he has more than made it up to ye now, for he has given
+ye back yer life."
+
+"And what are you going to give him for it, Dud?" questioned Freddy
+confidentially, as the good Brother moved away.
+
+"Give who?" growled Dud, who was sick and sore and savage over the whole
+experience, and, strange to say--but such are the peculiarities of some
+natures,--felt as if he hated his preserver more than ever.
+
+"Why, Dud!" continued Freddy. "You always give a person something when he
+saves your life. Dick Walton told me that a man saved him when he was
+carried out in the surf last summer, and his father gave the man a gold
+watch."
+
+"So Dan Dolan wants a gold watch, does he?" said Dud.
+
+"Oh, no!" answered Freddy, quite unconscious of the sneer in the question.
+"I don't think Dan wants a gold watch at all. He would not know what to do
+with one. But if I were you," continued Dan's little chum, his eyes
+kindling with loyal interest, "I'd make it a pocket-book,--a nice leather
+pocket-book, with a place for stamps and car tickets and money, and I'd
+just fill it _chock_ full. You see, Dan hasn't much pocket money. He
+pulled out his purse the other day at Beach Cliff to get a medal that was
+in it, and he had only a nickel and two stamps to write to his aunt."
+
+"So your brave Dan is striking for ready cash, is he?" said Dud, in a tone
+that even innocent Freddy could not mistake, and that Dan coming up the
+beach with a net full of kicking lobsters, caught in all its sting.
+
+"Ready cash," he asked, looking from one to the other. "For what?"
+
+"Pulling me out of the water the other day," answered Dud. "Freddy says
+you're expecting pay for it."
+
+"Well, I'm _not_," said Dan, the spark flashing into his blue eyes.
+"You're 'way off there, Freddy, sure."
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean,--I didn't say," began poor little Freddy, desperately.
+"I only thought people always got medals or watches or something when they
+saved other people, and I told Dud--"
+
+"Never mind what you told him, kid" (Dan laid a kind hand on his little
+chum's shoulder); "you mean it all right, I know. But Dud" (the spark in
+the speaker's eye flashed brighter,)--"Dud didn't."
+
+"I did," said Dud. "My father will pay you all you want."
+
+Then Dan blazed up indeed into Irish fire.
+
+"I don't want his pay: I wouldn't touch it. You ain't worth it, Dud
+Fielding."
+
+"Ain't worth what? My father is worth a million," said Dud quickly.
+
+"_That_ for his million!" and Dan snapped his two fishy fingers under
+Dud's Grecian nose. "You ain't worth a buffalo nickel, Dud Fielding; and I
+wouldn't ask one for saving your measly little life."
+
+And Dan went off with his lobsters, in a wrath almost fiery enough to boil
+them alive. Pay!--pay for that wild plunge into watery depths--the doubt,
+the fear, the icy terror of hungry monsters around him! Dud Fielding was
+offering him pay for this, very much as he might fling pay to him for
+blacking his boots. Ah, it was a fierce, bad moment for Dan! His beacon
+light vanished; murky clouds of passion were blackening dream and vision;
+he felt he could cheerfully pitch Dud back to the sharks again. And then,
+as still hot and furious, he strode back with his lobsters to old Ned,
+Freddy, who was remorsefully following him--remorseful at having stirred
+up a row,--piped up in sudden excitement:
+
+"O Dan, look--look what's coming here to Killykinick! Dan, just look!"
+
+Dan turned at the cry. Past Numskull Nob, making her cautious, graceful
+way through rocks and shoals, was a beautiful white-winged yacht, her mast
+gay with pennants. One, fluttering wide to the breeze, showed her name,
+"The Polly."
+
+
+
+
+XVI.--A NEW EXPERIENCE
+
+
+Dan stood staring in blank amazement, while Freddy's voice rose into
+shriller triumph:
+
+"Jim, Dud, Brother Bart, look,--look what is coming here!"
+
+She was coming indeed, this white-winged stranger, swaying to the right
+and left under skilful guidance as she made her way to the Killykinick
+wharf; for her rugged old Captain knew the perils of the shore. And under
+the gay awnings that shaded the deck was a merry group of young people,
+waving their handkerchiefs to the rocky island they were approaching;
+while Polly's big handsome "dad," in white linen yachting togs, pointed
+out the ship house and the wharf, the tower and garden patch,--all the
+improvements that queer old Great-uncle Joe had made on these once barren
+rocks. Polly's dad had known about the old captain and his oddities all
+his life. Indeed, once in his very early years as he now told his young
+listeners, he had made a boyish foray in Great-uncle Joe's domain, and had
+been repelled by the old sailor with a vigor never to be forgotten.
+
+"I never had such a scientific thrashing in my life," laughed dad, as if
+he rather enjoyed the remembrance. "We were playing pirate that summer. I
+had a new boat that we christened the 'Red Rover,' after Cooper's story;
+and we rigged her up with a pirate flag, and proceeded to harry the coast
+and do all the mischief that naughty twelve-year-olds can do. Finally, I
+proposed, as a crowning adventure, a descent upon Killykinick, pulling
+down old Joey Kane's masthead and smashing his lantern. Well, we caught a
+Tartar there, I can tell you! The old captain never had any use for boys.
+And to think of the place being full of them now!"
+
+"Oh, no, dad! There are only four," said Polly,--"four real nice boys from
+St. Andrew's College, and just the right size to come to my party. O Nell,
+Gracie, look! There they come!"
+
+And the handkerchiefs fluttered again gleefully as "The Polly" made up to
+the wharf, and the whole population of Killykinick turned out to greet
+her,--even to Brother Bart, who had been reading his well-worn "Imitation"
+on the beach; and Neb, who, with the bag of potatoes he had just dug up,
+stood staring dumbly in the distance.
+
+"Killykinick ahoy!" shouted dad, making a speaking trumpet of his hands.
+
+"_Aye, aye_!" answered Captain Jeb, with his crooked smile. "You're 'The
+Polly' of Beach Cliff. What's wanted, Mr. Forester? Clams or
+lobsters?"--for in these latter days Killykinick did something of a trade
+in both with the pleasure boats and cottages along the coast.
+
+"Well, we don't like to call them either; do we, Polly?" laughed dad, as
+he stepped ashore, while the little girls crowded to the deck rail. "'The
+Polly' is sailing under petticoat orders to-day and is scouring the waters
+in search of four boys that, we understand, you have here at
+Killykinick."
+
+"We have," answered Captain Jeb,--"or at least the Padre here has. They're
+none of mine."
+
+"I am no Padre, as I've told ye again and again, Jeroboam," interposed
+Brother Bart. "I am only Brother Bartholomew from St. Andrew's College.
+And I have four boys here, but they've been under my eye day and night,"
+he continued anxiously; "so, in God's name, what are ye after them for,
+sir? They have done ye nor yours no harm, I am sure."
+
+"None in the world," said Mr. Forester quickly, as he saw his light speech
+was not understood. "I was only joking with Captain Jeb. My mission here,
+I assure you, is most friendly. Permit me to introduce myself, Brother
+Bar--Bar--Bartholomew--"
+
+"Ye can make it Bart, sir, for short; 'most everyone does," said the good
+Brother, nodding.
+
+"Then, Brother Bart, I am Mr. Pemberton Forester, of Beach Cliff. I am
+also known by the briefer and pleasanter name of this little lady's 'dad,'
+and it is in that official capacity I am here to-day. It seems this little
+girl of mine met your boys a few days ago at Beach Cliff, where they
+rendered her most valuable service."
+
+"One--it was only one of them, dad!" corrected Miss Polly's silvery voice.
+"It was only Dan Dolan who caught my bird and--and--"
+
+"Well, at all events, the acquaintance progressed most pleasantly and
+rapidly, as my daughter's acquaintance is apt to progress; and it resulted
+in an equally pleasant understanding that the four young gentlemen were to
+come to a little festivity we are giving in honor of Polly's birthday,--a
+garden party in our grounds, between the hours of six and nine. This is
+the occasion of our present visit, Brother Bart. Fearing that travelling
+facilities might not be at the young gentlemen's disposal, we have come to
+take them to Beach Cliff. If you would like to accompany them--"
+
+"To a party, is it?" exclaimed Brother Bart, in dismay. "Me at a party!
+Sure I'd look and feel queer indeed in such a place." Brother Bart's
+glance turned from the fine boat to the gentleman before him; he felt the
+responsibilities of his position were growing perplexing. "It will be
+great sport for the boys, I am sure," he added; "and I don't like to say
+'No,' after all yer kindness in coming for them. But how are they to get
+back?"
+
+"Oh, we'll see to that!" answered Mr. Forester, cheerfully. "They will be
+home and safe in your care, by half-past ten,--I promise you that."
+
+"Hooray!--hooray!" rose the shout, that the boys who had been listening
+breathlessly to this discussion could no longer repress.
+
+There was a wild rush to the shining decks of "The Polly," and soon all
+her pretty passengers were helped ashore, to scramble and climb as well as
+their dainty little feet could over the rocks and steeps of Killykinick,
+to wonder at the gardens and flowers blooming in its nooks and crannies,
+to peep into cow house and chicken house, and even old Neb's galley,--to
+explore the "Lady Jane" from stem to stern in delighted amazement.
+
+Nell and Gracie, who were a little older than their cousin, took
+possession of Jim and Dud; their small brother Tad attached himself to
+Freddy, who was about his own age; while Polly claimed her own especial
+find, Dan, for escort and guide.
+
+"Oh, what a queer, queer place!" she prattled, as, after peering
+cautiously into the depths of the Devil's Jaw, they wended their way to
+safer slopes, where the rocks were wreathed with hardy vines, and the sea
+stretched smiling into the sunlit distance. "Do you like it here, Dan?"
+
+"Yes: I'm having a fine time," was the cheery answer, for the moment all
+the pricks and goads forgotten.
+
+"Are you going to stay long?" asked Miss Polly.
+
+"Until September," answered Dan.
+
+"Oh, that's fine!" said his small companion, happily. "Then I'll get dad
+to bring me down here to see you again, Dan; and you can come up in your
+boat to see me, and we'll be friends,--real true friends. I haven't had a
+real true friend," said Miss Polly, perching herself on a ledge of rock,
+where, in her pink dress and flower-trimmed hat, she looked like a bright
+winged butterfly,--"not since I lost Meg Murray."
+
+"Lost her? Did she die?"
+
+"No," was the soft sighing answer. "It was much worse than that. You see"
+(Miss Polly's tone became confidential), "it was last summer, when I had
+the whooping cough. Did you ever have the whooping cough?"
+
+"I believe I did," replied Dan, whose memory of such minor ills was by no
+means clear.
+
+"Then you know how awful it is. You can't go to school or out to play, or
+anywhere. I had to stay in our own garden and grounds by myself, because
+all the girls' mothers were afraid of me. The doctor said I must be out of
+doors, so I had a play house away down by the high box hedge in the maze;
+and took my dolls and things out there, and made the best of it. And then
+Meg found me. She was coming down the lane one day, and heard me talking
+to my dolls. I had to talk to them because there was no one else. And she
+peeped through the hedge and asked if she could come in and see them. I
+told her about the whooping cough, but she said she wasn't afraid: that
+she had had it three times already, and her mother was dead and wouldn't
+mind if she took it again. So she came in, and we played all the morning;
+and she came the next day and the next for weeks and weeks. Oh, we did
+have the grandest times together! You see, dad was away, and mamma was
+sick, and there was no one to bother us. I used to bring out apples and
+cookies and chocolate drops, and we had parties under the trees, and we
+promised to be real true friends forever. I gave her my pearl ring so she
+would always remember. It was that pearl ring that made all the trouble."
+And Miss Polly's voice trembled.
+
+"How?" asked Dan very gently. He never had a sister or a girl cousin or
+any one to soften his ways or speech; and little Polly's friendly trust
+was something altogether new and strangely sweet to him.
+
+"Oh, it broke up everything!" faltered Miss Polly. "That evening an old
+woman came to the house and asked to see mamma,--oh, such a dreadful old
+woman! She hadn't any bonnet or coat or gloves,--just a red shawl on her
+head, and an old patched dress, and a gingham apron. And when James and
+Elise and everybody told her mamma was sick, she said she would see her
+anyhow. And she did. She pushed her way upstairs to mamma, and talked
+awfully,--said she was a poor honest woman, if she did sell apples on the
+corner; and she was raising her grandchild honest; and she asked how her
+Meg came by that ring, and where she got it. And then mamma, who had
+turned pale and fluttery, sent for me; and I had to tell her all, and she
+nearly fainted."
+
+"Why?" asked Dan.
+
+"Oh, because--because--I had Meg in the garden and played with her, and
+took her for a real true friend. You see, she wasn't a nice little girl at
+all," said Miss Polly, impressively. "Her grandmother had an apple stand
+at the street corner, and her brother cleaned fish on the wharf, and they
+lived in an awful place over a butcher's shop; and mamma said she must not
+come into our garden again, and I mustn't play with her or talk to her
+ever, ever again."
+
+There was no answer for a moment. Dan was thinking--thinking fast. It
+seemed time for him to say something,--to speak up in his own blunt
+way,--to put himself in his own honest place. But, with the new charm of
+this little lady's flattering fancy on him, Dan's courage failed. He felt
+that to acknowledge a bootblack past and a sausage shop future would be a
+shock to Miss Polly that would break off friendly relations forever.
+
+"So you gave up your real true friend?" he said a little reproachfully,
+and Miss Polly hopped down from her rock perch and proceeded to make her
+way back to the yacht.
+
+"Yes, I had to, you see. Even dad, who lets me do anything I please, said
+I must remember I was a Forester, and make friends that fitted my name.
+And so--so" (Miss Polly looked up, smiling into Dan's face) "I am going to
+make friends with you. Dad says he knows all about St. Andrew's College,
+and you must be first-class boys if you belong there; and he is glad of a
+chance to give you a little fun. There he is calling us now!"--as a deep
+voice shouted:
+
+"All aboard, boys and girls! We're off in an hour! All aboard!"
+
+"Dan--Dan," piped Freddy's small voice. "Jim and Dud are dressing for the
+party, Dan. Come, we must dress, too."
+
+And Dan, feeling like one venturing into unknown waters, proceeded to make
+the best of the things Good Brother Francis had packed in his small shabby
+trunk. There was the suit that bore the stamp of the English tailor; there
+was a pair of low shoes, that pinched a little in the toes; there was a
+spotless shirt and collar outgrown by some mother's darling, and a blue
+necktie that was all a necktie should be when, with Freddy's assistance,
+it was put properly in place. Really, it was not a bad-looking boy at all
+that faced Dan in the "Lady Jane's" swinging mirror when this party
+toilette was complete.
+
+"You look fine, Dan!" said his little chum, as they took their way down to
+the wharf where "The Polly" was awaiting them,--"so big and
+strong--and--and--"
+
+"Tough," said Dan, concluding the sentence with a forced laugh. "Well,
+that's what I am, kid,--big and strong and tough."
+
+"Oh, no,--Dan, no!" said Freddy. "You're not tough at all, and you mustn't
+say so when you go to a girl's party, Dan."
+
+"Well, I won't," said Dan, as he thought of the violet eyes that would
+open in dismay at such a confession. "I'll play the highflier to-night if
+I can, kid; though it's a new game with Dan Dolan, I must say."
+
+And, with a queer sense of shamming that he had never felt before, Aunt
+Winnie's boy started off for Miss Polly's party.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.--POLLY'S PARTY.
+
+
+To all Miss Polly's guests, that evening was a wonderful experience; but
+to Dan it was an entrance into a fairy realm that his fancy had never
+pictured; for in the hard, rough ways his childish feet had walked neither
+fairies nor fancies had place. He had found sailing over sunlit seas in
+Killykinick's dingy boats a very pleasant pastime; but the "Sary Ann"
+seemed to sink into a drifting tub when he stood on the spotless deck of
+"The Polly" as she spread her snowy wings for her homeward flight.
+
+Dad, who, though very rich and great now, still remembered those "pirate
+days" when he was young himself, proved the most charming of hosts. He
+took the boys over his beautiful boat, where every bit of shining brass
+and chain and rope and bit of rigging was in perfect shipshape; and an
+artful little motor was hidden away for emergencies of wind and tide.
+There was a lovely little cabin, all in white and gold, with pale blue
+draperies; and two tiny staterooms dainty enough for the slumbers of a
+fairy queen. There were books and games, and a victrola that sang
+full-toned boating songs as they glided onward.
+
+Even Dud was properly impressed by the charms of "The Polly"; and Jim was
+outspoken in his admiration. Freddy was wide-eyed with delight; and Dan
+was swept quite away from his usual moorings into another world,--a world
+where Aunt Winnie's boy seemed altogether lost. For, with Miss Polly
+slipping her little hand in his and guiding him over her namesake, and
+Freddy telling Tad the story of Dan's dive among the sharks, to which even
+the man at "The Polly's" wheel listened with interest, with dad so jolly
+and friendly, and everything so gay and beautiful around him, it was no
+wonder that Dan's head, accustomed to sober prosy ways, began to turn.
+
+"Dolan,--Dolan? I ought to know that name," said dad, as, with Polly and
+her "nice" boy at his side, he stood watching the roofs and spires of
+Beach Cliff come into view. "There was a Phil Dolan in my class at
+Harvard,--one of the finest fellows I ever knew; rolling in money, but it
+didn't hurt him. He is a judge now, and I think he had a brother at West
+Point. Are you related to them?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Dan, who at another time would have blurted out that
+he was not of the Harvard or West Point kind. "I--I am from Maryland."
+
+"Oh, Maryland!" said dad, approvingly. "I see,--I see! The Dolans of
+Maryland. I've heard of them,--one of the old Catholic families, I
+think."
+
+"Yes, we're--we're Catholics all right," said Dan, catching to this saving
+spar of truth, in his doubt and uncertainty. "We--we wouldn't be anything
+else if we were killed for it."
+
+"Of course you wouldn't. That is your heritage, my boy! Hold fast to it,"
+said dad, heartily. Then he turned about to see that "The Polly" made the
+way safely to her private wharf, feeling that he left his little girl with
+the scion of a family quite equal to the Foresters.
+
+With the strange sense of treading in an unreal world, Dan passed on with
+the rest of the chattering, laughing crowd to the pretty, rustic wharf
+jutting out into the waters, and up to the steep, narrow street where
+carriages were waiting to take them to the Forester home. The wide grounds
+and gardens were already gay with the gathering guests. Pretty,
+flower-decked tables were set in the maze. The trees were hung with
+Japanese lanterns, that a little later would glow into jewelled lights.
+There was a group of "grown-ups" on the porch,--mamma, beautiful in cloudy
+white; sisters and cousins and aunts,--for the Forester family was a large
+one. There were two grandmothers--one fat and one thin,--very elegant old
+ladies, with white hair rolled high upon their heads. They looked upon the
+youthful guests, through gold lorgnettes, and were really most
+awe-inspiring.
+
+The St. Andrew's boys were brought up and "presented" in due form. It was
+an ordeal. How Dan got through with it he didn't know. He had never before
+been "presented" to any one but Polly. But dad managed it somehow, and on
+the porch friendly shadows were gathering that concealed any social
+discrepancies. Then Polly flitted off to don her party dress, and Dan
+found himself stranded on the danger reefs of this strange world, with dad
+giving the fat grandmother his family history.
+
+"Dolan?" repeated the old lady, who was a little deaf. "One of the Dolans
+of Maryland, you say, Pemberton? Dear me! I used to visit Dolan Hall when
+I was a girl. Such a beautiful old Colonial home! Is it still standing?"
+she said, turning to Dan.
+
+"I--I don't know, ma'am," stammered Dan, who found the gleam of the gold
+lorgnettes most confusing.
+
+"What does he say?" asked the old lady sharply.
+
+"That he does not know, mother dear!" answered dad.
+
+"He should know," said the old lady, severely. "The young people are
+growing up in these careless days without any proper sentiment to the
+past. A home like Dolan Hall, with its memories and traditions, should
+be a pride to all of the Dolan blood. The name is really
+French--D'Olane,--but most unfortunately, as I consider, was
+anglicized. The family was originally from Touraine, and dates back to
+the Crusaders, and is most aristocratic."
+
+"He looks it," murmured the thin grandmother, fixing her lorgnettes on
+Dan's broad shoulders as he moved away to join Tad and Freddy, who were
+making friends with Polly's poodle. "I have never seen a boy carry himself
+better. Blood will tell, as I have always insisted, Stella."
+
+The lady at her side laughed. She, too, had been regarding Dan with
+curious interest.
+
+"What does it tell, Aunt Lena?" she asked.
+
+"The lady and the gentleman," answered Polly's grandmother.
+
+"Oh, does it?" said the other, softly. "I suppose I am not very wise in
+such matters, but one of the nicest ladies I ever knew was a little Irish
+sewing woman who made buttonholes. It was one summer when I went South,
+more years ago than I care to count; and Winnie--her name was Winnie--came
+to the house to renovate my riding habit for me."
+
+The speaker paused as if she did not care to say more. She was a slender
+little person, not awe-inspiring at all. She had just driven up in a
+pretty, light carriage, and was still muffled in a soft fleecy wrap that
+fell around her like a cloud. The face that looked out from it was sweet
+and pale as a star. It brightened into radiance as Polly, a veritable
+fairy now in her party fluffs and ruffs and ribbons, sprang out on the
+porch and flung herself into Miss Stella's arms.
+
+"Marraine! Marraine!" she cried rapturously,--"my own darling Marraine!"
+
+"Why will you let the child give you that ridiculous name, my dear?"
+protested grandmamma, disapprovingly.
+
+"Because--because I have the right to it," laughed the lady, as Polly
+nestled close to her side. "I am her godmother real and true,--am I not,
+Polykins? And we like the pretty French name for it better."
+
+"Oh, much better!" assented Polly. "'Godmother' is too old and solemn to
+suit Marraine. Oh!" (with another rapturous hug) "it was so good of you to
+come all the way from Newport just for my party, dear, dear Marraine!"
+
+"All the way from Newport!" answered the lady. "Why, that dear letter you
+sent would have brought me from the moon. You will be ten years old
+to-night, it said,--ten years old! O Pollykins! Pollykins!" (There was a
+little tremor in the voice.) "And you asked if I could come and help you
+with your party. I could and I would, so here I am! And here is your
+birthday present."
+
+Marraine flung a slender golden chain around Polly's neck.
+
+"Oh, you darling,--you darling!" murmured Polly. "But _you_ are the best
+of all birthday presents, Marraine,--the very best of all!"
+
+"Now, really we must stop all this 'spooning,' Pollykins, and start
+things," said Marraine, dropping her, and emerging in a shining silvery
+robe, with a big bunch of starry jessamine pinned on her breast.
+
+"You are not going to bother with the children, surely, Stella?" said dad,
+who had drawn near the speaker.
+
+"I am," said the lady, flashing him a laughing look. "That's what I came
+for. I am going to forget the years (don't be cruel enough to count them,
+Cousin Pen), and for two hours (is it only two hours we have, Pollykins?)
+be a little girl again to-night."
+
+And, taking Polly's hand, she tripped away from the grown-ups on the
+porch, and things were started indeed.
+
+Grove and garden, maze and lawn, suddenly sparkled with jewelled lights;
+the stringed band in the pagoda burst into gay music. Led by a silvery
+vision, Polly's guests formed a great ring-around-a-rosy for an opening
+measure, and the party began. And, with a fairy godmother like Miss Stella
+leading the fun, it was a party to be remembered. There were marches and
+games, there was blind man's buff through the jewel-lit maze, there was a
+Virginia reel to music gay enough to make a hundred-year-old tortoise
+dance. There was the Jack Horner pie, fully six feet round, and fringed
+with gay ribbons to pull out the plums. Wonderful plums they were. Minna
+Foster drew a silver belt buckle; her little sister, a blue locket; Dud, a
+scarf-pin; Jim, a pocketknife with enough blades and "fixings" to fill a
+miniature tool chest; and Freddy, a paint box quite as complete; while Dan
+pulled out the biggest plum of all--a round white box with a silver cord.
+
+As it came out at the end of his red ribbon, there was a moment's
+breathless hush, broken by Polly's glad cry:
+
+"The prize,--the prize, Marraine! Dan has drawn my birthday prize!" And,
+under a battery of curious and envious eyes, Dan opened the box to find
+within a pretty gold watch, ticking a most cheering greeting to its new
+owner.
+
+"Dan,--Dan!" Polly's jubilant voice rose over all the chorus around him.
+"Oh, I'm so glad you got it, Dan!"
+
+And Marraine's eyes followed Polly's delighted glance with the same look
+of curious interest that she had bent upon Dan a while ago on the porch.
+
+"Do you mean that this is for me?" he blurted out, in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, for you,--for _you_," repeated Polly in high glee. "It's real gold
+and keeps real time, and it's yours forever!"
+
+"It's too--too much--I mean it's--it's too fine for a fellow like me,"
+stammered Dan. "What will I do with it?"
+
+"Wear it," chirped Miss Polly, throwing the silken guard around his neck,
+"so you will never forget my birthday, Dan."
+
+And then a big Japanese gong sounded the call to the flower-decked tables,
+where busy waiters were soon serving a veritable fairy feast. There were
+cakes of table-size and shape and color; little baskets and boxes full of
+wonderful bonbons; nuts sugared and glazed until they did not seem nuts at
+all; ice-cream birds in nests of spun sugar; "kisses" that snapped into
+hats and wreaths and caps. And all the while the band played, and the
+jewelled lights twinkled, and the stars shone far away above the arching
+trees. And Dan, with his watch around his neck, held his place as the
+winner of the prize at Miss Polly's side, feeling as if he were in some
+dizzy dream. Then there were more games, and a grand hide-and-seek, in
+which dad and some of the grown-ups joined.
+
+Dan had found an especially fine place under the gnarled boughs of an old
+cedar tree, that would have held its head high in the starlight if some of
+dad's gardeners had not twisted it out of growth and shape. Hiding under
+the crooked shadows, Dan was listening to the merry shouts through maze
+and garden, when he became suddenly conscious of a change in their tone.
+The voices grew sharp, shrill, excited, and then little Polly burst
+impetuously into his hiding place,--a sobbing, trembling, indignant little
+Polly, followed by a score of breathless young guests.
+
+"I don't believe it!" she was crying tempestuously. "I _won't_ believe it!
+You're just telling horrid stories on Dan, because I like him and he got
+the prize."
+
+"O Pollykins! Pollykins!" came Miss Stella's low, chiding voice.
+
+"Halloo! halloo! What's the trouble?" rose dad's deep tones above the
+clamor. "My little girl crying,--crying?"
+
+"Yes, I am!" was the sobbing answer. "I can't help it, dad. The girls are
+all whispering mean, horrid stories about Dan, and I made them tell me all
+they said they had heard. I don't believe them, and I _won't_ believe
+them! I told them I wouldn't believe them,--that I would come right to Dan
+and let him speak for himself.--Were you ever a newsboy and a beggar boy,
+Dan? Did--did you ever black boots? Have you an aunt in the poorhouse, as
+Minna Foster says?"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.--BACK INTO LINE.
+
+
+There was a moment's pause. Dan was really too bewildered to speak. He
+felt he was reeling down from the rainbow heights to which Miss Polly had
+led him, and the shock took away his breath.
+
+"It's all--all a horrid story; I'm sure it is,--isn't it, Dan?" pleaded
+his little friend, tremulously.
+
+"Why, no!" said Dan, rallying to his simple, honest self again. "It isn't
+a story at all. I _was_ a newsboy, I _did_ shine boots at the street
+corner, and Aunt Winnie _is_ with the Little Sisters of the Poor now."
+
+"Bravo!--bravo!" came a low silvery voice from the shadows, and Miss
+Stella clapped her slender hands.
+
+"O Dan, Dan!" cried poor little Miss Polly, sobbing outright. "A newsboy
+and bootblack! Oh, how could you fool me so, Dan?"
+
+"With your infernal lies about your home and family!" burst forth dad, in
+sudden wrath at Polly's tears.
+
+"I didn't fool,--I didn't lie, sir!" blurted out Dan, fiercely. "I did
+nothing of the kind!"
+
+"If you will kindly do the boy justice to remember, he did _not_, Cousin
+Pem!" and Miss Stella's clear, sweet voice rose in witness. "You gave his
+family history yourself. He did not know what you were talking about, with
+your Crusading ancestors and the D'Olanes. I could see it in his face. You
+are all blood-blind up here, Cousin Pem. I was laughing to myself all the
+time, for I guessed who Dan Dolan was. I knew he was at St. Andrew's. His
+dear old Aunt Winnie is one of my truest friends."
+
+"O Marraine, Marraine!" murmured Polly, eagerly. "And--and you don't mind
+it if--"
+
+"If she is with the Little Sisters of the Poor, Pollykins? Not a bit! Some
+day I may be there myself. Now that this tempest in a teapot is over, you
+can all go off and finish your games. I am going to sit under this nice
+old tree and talk to Miss Winnie's boy."
+
+And while dad, still a little hot at the trouble that had marred Polly's
+party, started the fun in another direction, Miss Stella gathered her
+silvery gown around her and sat down on the rustic bench beneath the old
+cedar, and talked to Dan. He learned how Aunt Winnie had sewed patiently
+and skilfully for this lovely lady a dozen years ago, when she was
+spending a gay season in his own town; and how the gentle old seamstress,
+with her simple faith and tender sympathy, her wise warnings to the gay,
+motherless girl, had won a place in her heart.
+
+"I tried to coax her home with me," said Miss Stella, "to make it 'home,'
+as I felt she could; but Baby Danny was in the way,--the little Danny that
+she could not leave."
+
+Then Dan, in his turn, told about Killykinick, and how he had been sent
+there for the summer and had met little Polly.
+
+"I should have told," he said, lifting Aunt Winnie's own blue Irish eyes
+to Miss Stella's face,--"I should have said right out straight and square
+that I wasn't Polly's kind, and had no right to push in here with grand
+folks like hers. But it was all so fine it sort of turned my head."
+
+"It will do that," replied Miss Stella, softly. "It has turned mine often,
+Danny. But now we both see straight and clear again, and I am going to
+make things straight and clear with all the others."
+
+"You can't," said Dan,--"not with those grand ladies in gold spectacles;
+not with Polly's dad; maybe not with Polly herself. I'm all mixed up, and
+out of line with them. And--and--" (Dan took the silken guard from his
+neck) "I want you to give them back this gold watch, and tell them so."
+(He slipped the Jack Horner prize into Miss Stella's hand.) "I'm not
+asking anything and I'm not taking anything that comes to me like this.
+And--and--" (he rose and stood under the crooked tree in all his straight,
+sturdy strength) "Neb is down at the wharf with a load of clams. We passed
+him as we came up. I'm not pushing in among the silk cushions any more.
+I'm going home with him."
+
+Which, with Miss Stella's sympathetic approval, he did at once.
+
+When a little later the guests had all gone, and "The Polly" was taking
+her white-winged way back to Killykinick with Dud, Jim, and Freddy; when
+the jewelled lights had gone out, and the party was over, and all was
+quiet on the starlit porch, Miss Stella returned Dan's watch and gave his
+message. Even the two grandmammas, being really grandmammas at heart,
+softened to it, and dad declared gruffly it had been a fool business
+altogether, while Polly flung herself sobbing into her godmother's arms.
+
+"O Dan,--poor Dan! He is the nicest boy I ever saw,--the nicest and the
+kindest, Marraine! And now--now he will never come back here any more!"
+
+"I don't think he will, Pollykins," was the low answer. "You see"
+(Marraine dropped a light kiss on the nestling curls), "he was a newsboy
+and a bootblack, and he does not deny it; while you--you, Pollykins--"
+
+"Oh, I don't care, what he was!" interrupted Miss Polly,
+tempestuously,--"I don't care what he was. I took him for my real true
+friend, and I am not going to give up Dan as I gave up Meg Murray,
+Marraine." Polly tightened her clasp around Miss Stella's neck so she
+could whisper softly in her ear: "If he won't come back, you and I will
+go after him; won't we, Marraine?"
+
+Meanwhile, with his head pillowed on a pile of fish nets--very different,
+we must confess, from the silken cushions of dad's pretty yacht,--and with
+old Neb drowsily watching her ragged sail, Dan was back again in his own
+line, beneath the guiding stars. It was a calm, beautiful night, and those
+stars were at their brightest. Even Neb's dull wits seemed to kindle under
+their radiance.
+
+"You can steer 'most anywhere when they shine like that. Don't want none
+of these 'ere winking, blinking lights to show you the way," he said.
+
+"But the trouble is they don't always shine," answered Dan.
+
+"No," said Neb, slowly, "they don't; that's a fact. But they ain't ever
+really out, like menfolk's lights. The stars is always thar."
+
+"Always there,"--yes, Dan realized, as, with his head on the dank, fishy
+pillow, he looked up in the glory above him, the stars were always there.
+Blurred sometimes by earthly mists and vapors, lost in the dazzling gleam
+of jewelled lights, darkened by the shadows of crooked trees, they shone
+with pure, steadfast, guiding rays,--the stars that were always there. A
+witching little Will-o'-the-wisp had bewildered Dan into strange ways this
+evening; but he was back again in his own straight honest line beneath the
+stars.
+
+On "The Polly," making her way over the starlit water to Killykinick,
+things were not so pleasant.
+
+"It was a mean, dirty trick to give Dan away. I don't care who did it!"
+said big-hearted Jim, roused into spirit and speech.
+
+"It wasn't I,--oh, indeed it wasn't I!" declared Freddy. "I told Tad Dan
+was the biggest, strongest, finest fellow in the whole bunch. I never said
+a word about his being a newsboy or a bootblack, though I don't think it
+hurts him a bit."
+
+"And it doesn't," said Jim, whose blood had been a "true blue" stream
+before the Stars and Stripes began to wave. "But there are some folks that
+think so."
+
+"Calling me fool, are you?" said Dud, fiercely.
+
+"No, I didn't," retorted Jim. "But if the name fits you, take it. I don't
+object." And he turned away, with a flash in his eyes most unusual for
+Sunny Jim,--a flash that Dud did not venture to kindle into angry fire.
+
+But, though the storm blew over, as such springtime storms will, Dan had
+learned a lesson, and felt that he never again wished to venture on the
+dizzy heights where wise heads turn and strong feet falter. Though Dud and
+Jim, who both had pocket money in plenty, made arrangements at the Boat
+Club for the use of a little motor boat several times a week, Dan held his
+own line as second mate at Killykinick, and was contented to share old
+Neb's voyaging. They went out often now; for, under the old sailor's
+guidance, Dan was becoming an expert fisherman. And soon the dingy boat,
+loaded with its silvery spoil, became known to camps and cottages along
+the other shores. Poor old Neb was too dull-witted for business; but
+customers far from markets watched eagerly for the merry blue-eyed boy who
+brought fish, "still kicking," for their early breakfast,--clams, chaps,
+and lobsters, whose freshness was beyond dispute. Neb's old leather wallet
+began to fill up as it had never been filled before. And the dinners that
+were served on the "Lady Jane," the broiled, the baked, the fried fish
+dished up in rich plenty every day, shook Brother Bart's allegiance to
+Irish stews, and, as he declared, "would make it aisy for a heretic to
+keep the Friday fast forever."
+
+Then, Dan had the garden to dig and weed, the cow to milk, the chickens to
+feed,--altogether, the days were most busy and pleasant; and it was a
+happy, if tired, boy that tumbled at night into his hammock swung beneath
+the stars, while old Jeb and Neb smoked their pipes on the deck beside
+him.
+
+Three letters had come from Aunt Winnie,--a Government boat brought weekly
+mail to the lighthouse on Numskull Nob. They were prim little letters,
+carefully margined and written, and spelled as the good Sisters had taught
+her in early youth. She took her pen in hand--so letters had always begun
+in Aunt Winnie's schooldays--to write him a few lines. She was in good
+health and hoped he was the same, though many were sick at the Home, and
+Mrs. McGraw (whom Dan recalled as the dozing lady of his visit) had died
+very sudden on Tuesday; but she had a priest at the last, and a Requiem
+Mass in the chapel, with the altar in black, and everything most
+beautiful. Poor Miss Flannery's cough was bad, and she wouldn't be long
+here, either; but, as the good Mother says, we are blessed in having a
+holy place where we can die in peace and quiet. And Aunt Winnie's own leg
+was bad still, but she thanked God she could get around a bit and help the
+others. And, though she might never see him again--for she would be turned
+on seventy next Thursday,--she prayed for her dear boy nights, and dreamed
+of him constant. And, begging God to bless him and keep him from harm, she
+was his affectionate aunt, Winnie Curley.'
+
+The other letters were very much in the same tone: some other old lady was
+dying or failing fast; for, with all its twilight peace, Aunt Winnie was
+in a valley of the shadow, where the light of youth and hope and cheer
+that whistling, laughing Dan brought into Mulligans' attic could not
+shine.
+
+"I've got to get her home," resolved Dan, who was keen enough to read this
+loss and longing between the old-fashioned neatly-written lines. "It's
+Pete Patterson and the meat shop for me in the fall and good-bye to St.
+Andrew's and 'pipe dreams' forever! Aunt Winnie has to come back, with her
+blue teapot on her own stove and Tabby purring at her feet again or--or"
+(Dan choked at the thought) "they'll be having a funeral Mass at the
+Little Sisters for her."
+
+And Dan lay awake a long time that night looking at the stars, and
+stifling a dull pang in his young heart that the heights of which he had
+dreamed were not for him. But he was up betimes next morning, his own
+sturdy self again. Old Neb had a bad attack of rheumatism that made his
+usual early trip impossible.
+
+"They will be looking for us," said Dan. "I promised those college girls
+camping at Shelter Cove to bring them fresh fish for breakfast."
+
+"Let them catch for themselves!" growled old Neb, who was rubbing his
+stiffened arm with whale oil.
+
+"Girls," said Dan in boyish scorn. "What do girls know about fishing? They
+squeal every time they get a bite. I'll take Freddy to watch the lines
+(Brother Bart isn't so scary about him now), and go myself."
+
+
+
+
+XIX.--A MORNING VENTURE.
+
+
+After some persuasion from Captain Jeb, who declared he could trust matey
+Dan's navigation now against any wind and tide, Brother Bart consented to
+Freddy's morning sail with his sturdy chum.
+
+"Sure I know Dan loves laddie better than his own life," said the good old
+man anxiously, as he watched Neb's ragged sail flitting off with the two
+young fishermen. "But it's only a boy he is, after all."
+
+"Mebby," said Captain Jeb, briefly. "But thar's boys wuth half a dozen
+good-sized men, and matey is that kind. You needn't scare about any little
+chap that ships with him. And what's to hurt him, anyhow, Padre? You've
+got to let all young critters try their legs and wings."
+
+And Freddy was trying his triumphantly this morning. It was one of Dan's
+lucky days, and the lines were drawn in again and again, until the college
+girls' breakfast and many more silvery shiners were fluttering and gasping
+in old Neb's fish basket. Then Dan proceeded to deliver his wares at
+neighborly island shores, where summer campers were taking brief holidays.
+Some of these islands, more sheltered than Killykinick, were fringed with
+a thick growth of hardy evergreens, hollowed into coves and inlets, where
+the waves, broken in their wild, free sweep, lapped low-shelving shores
+and invited gentle adventure.
+
+On one of these pleasant outposts was the college camp; and half a dozen
+pretty girl graduates, in "middies" and khaki skirts, came down to meet
+Dan. One of them led a big, tawny dog, who made a sudden break for the
+boat, nearly overturning Freddy in his leap, and crouching by Dan's side,
+whining and shivering.
+
+"Oh, he's yours! We said he was yours!" went up the girlish chorus. "Then
+take him away, please. And don't let him come back; for he howled all
+night, and nearly set us crazy. Nellie Morris says dogs never howl that
+way unless somebody is dead or dying; and she left her mother sick, and is
+almost frantic. Please take him away, and don't ever bring him near us
+again!"
+
+"But--but he isn't mine at all," replied Dan, staring at the big dog, who,
+shivering and wretched as he seemed, awoke some vague memory.
+
+"Then whose is he?" asked a pretty spokesman, severely. "He could not have
+dropped from the clouds, and yours was the only boat that came here
+yesterday."
+
+"Oh, I know,--I know, Dan!" broke in Freddy, eagerly. "He belongs to that
+big man who came with us on the steamboat. He had two dogs in leashes, and
+this is one of them, I know, because I saw his brown spot on his head when
+I gave him a cracker."
+
+"Mr. Wirt?" Dan's vague memory leaped into vivid light: Mr. John Wirt's
+big, tawny dog indeed, who perhaps, with some dim dog-sense, remembered
+Freddy. "I do know him now," said Dan. "He belongs to a gentleman named
+Wirt--"
+
+"Well, take him where he belongs," interrupted the young lady. "We don't
+care where it is. We simply can't have him howling here."
+
+"Oh, take him, Dan!" said Freddy. "Let us take him home with us."
+
+"Mr. Wirt must be around somewhere," reflected Dan. "He said perhaps he
+would come to Killykinick. We'll take him," he agreed cheerfully, as he
+handed out his basket of fish to the pretty, young campers. "And I think
+his master will come along to look him up."
+
+And the boys started on their homeward way, with Rex (which was the name
+on their new companion's collar) seated between them, still restless and
+quivering, in spite of all Freddy's efforts to make friends.
+
+"He wasn't this way on the boat," said Freddy as, after all his stroking
+and soothing, Rex only lifted his head and emitted a long, mournful howl.
+"I went down on the lower deck where the big man had left his dogs, and
+they played with me fine,--shook paws and wagged their tails and were real
+nice."
+
+"I guess he knows he is lost and wants to get back to his master," said
+Dan. "Dogs have a lot of sense generally, so what took him over to that
+girls' camp puzzles me."
+
+"He didn't like the girls,--did you, Rex?" asked Freddy, as he patted his
+new friend's nose. "My, he is a beauty,--isn't he, Dan? Just the kind of a
+dog I'd like to have; and, if nobody comes for him, he will be ours for
+keeps. Do you think Brother Andrew will let us have him out in the stable
+at St. Andrew's? Dick Walton kept his rabbits there--"
+
+"Until a weasel came and gobbled them up," laughed Dan, as he steered away
+from a line of rocks that jutted out like sharp teeth from a low-lying,
+heavily wooded shore.
+
+"They couldn't gobble Rex,--could they, old fellow!" said Freddy, with
+another friendly pat.
+
+But, regardless of all these kindly overtures, Rex sprang to his feet,
+barked in wild excitement for a moment, made a plunge from the boat and
+struck out for shore.
+
+"Oh, he's gone,--he's gone!" cried Freddy, desperately.
+
+"Rex! Rex!" called Dan. "There's nothing or nobody there. Come back,--come
+back! Well, he must be a durned fool of a dog to be jumping off at every
+island he sees.--Rex! Rex!--He'll starve to death if we leave him here."
+
+"Oh, he will,--he will!" said Freddy, wofully. "Come back, Rex, old
+fellow, nice dog,--come back!"
+
+Freddy whistled and called in vain: Rex had vanished into the thick
+undergrowth.
+
+"Oh, let's go for him,--let's go for him, Dan!" pleaded Freddy. "Maybe he
+is after a wild duck or something. We ought not to let a fine dog like
+that get lost and starve to death. One of the deck hands on the steamboat
+told me those dogs were worth a hundred dollars a piece, and that they had
+more sense than some humans."
+
+"Well, he isn't showing it this morning, sure; and he didn't yesterday
+either," said Dan, gruffly. "He isn't the kind of dog to leave around here
+for any tramp to pick up, I'll agree; but how are we to haul him back,
+unless he chooses to come? And I know nothing about this shore, anyhow.
+Neb told me they called it Last Island, and there was once a light here
+that the old whalers could see fifty miles out--why, halloo!" Dan paused
+in his survey of the doubtful situation. "He's coming back!"
+
+"Rex! Rex!" shouted Freddy, gleefully; for it was Rex indeed,--Rex coming
+through the dense low growth, in long leaps, with quick, sharp barks that
+were like calls; Rex plunging into the water and swimming with swift
+strokes to the waiting boat; but Rex refusing absolutely to be pulled
+aboard. He only splashed and shook himself, scattering a very geyser of
+salt water on the tugging boys, and barked louder and sharper still as if
+he were doing his best to talk.
+
+"Jing!" exclaimed Dan, giving up all efforts to manage him. "I never saw
+such a durned chump of a dog! I'm wet to the skin."
+
+"Oh, he wants something!" said softer-hearted Freddy. "He is trying to
+tell us something, Dan."
+
+Rex barked again, as if he had heard the words; and, leaping on the edge
+of the boat, he caught Freddy's khaki sleeve.
+
+"Lookout there, or he'll pull you overboard!" shouted Dan in fierce alarm,
+as Rex pulled still harder. "Golly! I believe he wants us to come ashore
+with him."
+
+"Oh, he does,--he does!" said Freddy, eagerly. "He has hunted something
+down and wants us to get it, Dan. Let us see what it is."
+
+It was a temptation that two live boys could not resist. Mooring Neb's old
+fishing boat to a sharp projecting rock, they proceeded to wade where it
+would have been impossible to navigate; Rex leaping before them, barking
+jubilantly now, as if he had won his point.
+
+"You stand back, kid!" (Through all the excitement of a discoverer, Dan
+did not lose sight of his responsibilities.) "Let me go ahead, so if there
+is anything to hurt I'll strike it first. Straight behind in my steps, and
+lookout for suck-holes!"
+
+And, with Rex leading, they proceeded Indian file over the narrow strip of
+sand that shelved to the sea, and then on through thicket and branches
+that hedged the shore in wild, luxuriant growth, until suddenly the ruins
+of the old lighthouse rose out of the tangle before them. The shaft that
+had upheld the beacon light was all gone save the iron framework, which
+rose bare and rusted above the little stone cabin that had sheltered the
+keeper of long ago, and that still stood amid crumbling stones and fallen
+timbers.
+
+"Back, Freddy,--back!" shouted Dan, as something big and fierce bolted out
+of the ruins. "Why, it's the other dog!" he added in relief. "Mr. Wirt
+_must_ be somewhere around."
+
+And, peering into the open door of the cabin, he stood dumb with dismay;
+for there indeed, stretched upon the rotten floor under the broken roof,
+was his friend of the steamboat. His gun was beside him, his head pillowed
+on his knapsack, his eyes closed, all his pride and strength and manly
+bearing gone; only the short, hard breathing showed that he was still
+alive.
+
+"Golly!" gasped Freddy, who had crept in behind his chum. "Is--is he dead,
+Dan?"
+
+"Not--not--yet, but he looks mighty close to it. Mr. Wirt--" he faltered,
+bending over the prostrate form; "Mr. Wirt!" he repeated louder. There was
+no answer. "I'm afraid he's gone," said Dan, in an awe-struck voice; and
+Freddy burst into boyish tears.
+
+"What are you crying about?" asked Dan, gruffly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know,--I don't know!" was the trembling answer. "I--I never
+saw anybody dead before. What--what do you think killed him, Dan?"
+
+"Nothing. He isn't killed," replied Dan, who had been taking close
+observations. "He is still breathing. I guess he came here to hunt and got
+sick, and that's what the dog was trying to tell people. Gosh, it's a pity
+dogs like that can't talk!"
+
+"Oh, it is,--it is!" murmured Freddy, putting his arm around Rex, who, his
+duty done, was seated on his hind legs, gravely surveying his master.
+
+The sick man moved a little, and groaned feebly: "Water!" the word came
+faintly through parched lips. "Water,--a little--Water!"
+
+Dan picked up a can that had evidently done duty before.
+
+"Stay by him, Freddy, so he'll know there is something here. I'll go to
+get some water. They must have had a pump or well around a place like
+this,"
+
+And while Dan discovered the broken, half-choked cistern at the back of
+the Old Light, Freddy watched the sick man. He had never before seen any
+one very sick, and it took some pluck to keep his post especially when Mr.
+Wirt suddenly opened his eyes and looked at him. It was such a strange,
+wild, questioning look that Freddy felt his heart nearly leap into his
+throat.
+
+Then Dan came back with the can full of water, and together they did their
+best for their patient,--bathing his head, wetting his parched lips,
+laving the helpless hands that were burning with fever, until the bright,
+sunken eyes closed and the sick man sank into a fitful sleep.
+
+"He is pretty badly off," said Dan, who had seen pain and sickness and
+death, and knew. "He ought to have a doctor right away, and it's for us to
+get one quick as we can. But it will be a good three hour's job; and"
+(Aunt Winnie's boy's voice softened) "I hate to leave the poor fellow here
+without any one to give him a drop of water, when he's burning up like
+this. But you can't sail the boat alone, kid."
+
+"No, I can't," faltered Freddy,--"I can't sail the boat, Dan; but--but"
+(the young voice steadied bravely) "I can stay here with him."
+
+"You can!" echoed Dan, staring at his little chum in amazement. "You'd
+scare to death, kid, here all alone with a dying man. He is likely to go
+off any minute."
+
+"Maybe," faltered Freddy. "But--but I'd stay by him all the same, Dan. I
+can bathe his head and his hands, and give him water to drink, and say
+prayers like Brother Bart says we must when people are dying. O Dan, we
+can't leave him here to die alone!"
+
+"No, we can't," said Dan, heartily. "I'd never think of asking a kid like
+you to stay. But, with the two dogs on the watch, there's nothing to fear.
+And you are doing the real right and plucky thing, for sure. I'll sail
+over to Killykinick and see if I can get Jim or Dud off for the nearest
+doctor, and be back here as quick as I can. And you, kid" (Dan's tone
+softened tenderly to his little chum), "don't scare more than you can
+help. Stick it out here as best you can."
+
+Dan was off at the words, and for a moment Freddy felt his heart sink
+within him. He looked at the broken walls, the gaping roof, the dying man,
+and his blood chilled at the thought of the long hours before any one
+could return to him. Standing at the door of the Old Light, his eyes
+followed Dan's sturdy figure leaping swiftly through the bramble bush, and
+now he had reached the boat and put off.
+
+Freddy was left indeed. He gulped down a big lump that rose in his throat,
+and, with the can of water Dan had freshly filled for him, took his seat
+at his patient's side. Rex came up and put a cold nose on his knee, and
+Freddy's watch began.
+
+
+
+
+XX.--LITTLE BOY BLUE.
+
+
+Mr. Wirt lay very still. Freddy never remembered seeing any one quite so
+still before. Even his breathing had grown quiet, and the rise and fall of
+the broad breast was the only sign of life in the otherwise motionless
+figure. All around him was very still, too. Freddy could hear the plash of
+the waves on the beach, the rustle of the wind through the dwarf trees,
+the whir of wings as some sea bird took its swift flight above the broken
+roof. But within there was a solemn hush, that to the small watcher seemed
+quite appalling.
+
+Roy, as the other dog was named on his collar, dozed at his master's feet.
+Rex kept his place at Freddy's side, as if conscious of his
+responsibilities; and for a time that seemed quite interminable, all were
+silent. Freddy found himself studying the big man's pale face with
+fearsome interest. How very pale it was! And the rough growth of beard
+that hid mouth and chin made it seem paler still. But the nose was
+straight and smooth as Freddy's own. The silver-streaked hair fell in soft
+waves over a broad handsome brow. And there was a white scar on the left
+temple, that throbbed with the low breathing. Somehow, that scar held
+Freddy's eye. Surely he had seen a V shaped scar like it before, where or
+when he could not think; perhaps on one of the big football players at St.
+Andrew's.
+
+"Ah, if good Brother Tim were only here now!" thought Freddy hopelessly,
+as the picture of the spotless stretch of infirmary arose before him. The
+rows of white beds so safe and soft; the kind old face bending over the
+fevered pillows; Old Top waving his friendly shadow in the sunlit window;
+the Angelus chiming from the great bell tower; the merry shouts of the
+ball players on the green below,--all these memories were in dire contrast
+indeed to the present scene.
+
+If Dan would only come back! But he wouldn't--he couldn't--for hours. And
+maybe this big, strange man might die while he was gone,--die with only a
+little boy beside him,--a little boy to help him, to pray for him.
+Freddy's thoughts grew more and more solemn and awesome. People always
+prayed by dying beds, he knew. Oh, if Dan would only come with a doctor
+and perhaps a priest! For Freddy felt that big men who wandered around the
+world with dogs and guns were likely to need higher spiritual
+ministrations than a small boy could give. In the meanwhile he would do
+his best; and, drawing out his silver-mounted rosary, he began to say his
+beads.
+
+And perhaps, as the young watcher had been an early riser this morning, he
+was nodding a little over his decades when a sudden movement of his
+patient roused him. Mr. Wirt was awake, his eyes fixed steadily on
+Freddy's face.
+
+"Still here," he murmured,--"still here? Boy,--little boy! Are you real or
+a death dream?"
+
+It was a startling question; but Freddy had learned something of fever
+vagaries during the measles, when even some of the Seniors had lost their
+heads.
+
+"Oh, I'm real!" he answered cheerfully. "I'm a real boy all right. I'm
+Freddy Neville, from St. Andrew's College--"
+
+"My God!" burst in a low cry from the pale lips.
+
+"Yes," said Freddy. "It's time for you to say that,--to say your prayers,
+I mean; because--because--you're very sick, and when people are very sick,
+you know, they--sometimes they die."
+
+"Die!" was the hoarse echo. "Aye, die as I have lived,--in darkness,
+despair! Lost--lost--lost!"
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" Boy as he was, Freddy felt his young heart thrill at the
+cry. "You're not lost yet. You're never lost while you live. You can
+always say an act of contrition, you know, and--and--" Freddy's voice
+faltered, for the role of spiritual adviser was a new one; but he had not
+gone through the big Catechism last year without learning a young Catholic
+Christian's obligations. "Would--would you like me to say an act of
+contrition for you?" he asked.
+
+There was no answer save in the strange softening of the eyes fixed upon
+the boyish face. And, feeling that his patient was too far gone for
+speech, Freddy dropped on his knees, and in a sweet, trembling tone
+repeated the brief, blessed words of sorrow for sin, the plea for pardon,
+the promise of amendment. It had been a long, long time since those
+familiar words had fallen on his listener's ears; a longer time since they
+had reached his heart. For years he had believed nothing, hoped nothing,
+feared nothing. Life had been to him a dull blank, broken only by reckless
+adventure; death, the end of all. But for three days and nights he had
+lain helpless, fever-smitten, stricken down in all his proud strength in
+this wilderness, with no friends but his dogs, no home but the ruined hut
+into which he had crawled for shelter, no human aid within reach or call.
+The derelict, as he had called himself to Dan, had drifted on the rocks
+beyond hope and help, as derelicts must. And in those three days and
+nights he had realized that for him there was no light in sea or
+sky,--that all was darkness forever.
+
+And then young voices had broken in upon the black silence; and, opening
+his eyes, closed on hideous fever dreams, he had seen Freddy,--Freddy, who
+was not a dream; Freddy, who was kneeling by his side, whispering sweet,
+forgotten words of peace and hope and pardon; Freddy--Freddy--he could not
+speak, there was such a stirring in the depths of his heart and soul. He
+could only stretch out his weak, trembling hand, that Freddy met with a
+warm, boyish grip.
+
+"Oh, I'm here yet!" he said, thinking his patient needed the
+reassurance. "I'm staying here right by you, to say prayers, or get water
+or anything you want. Dan left me here to take care of you. He has gone
+for the doctor; and if you just hold on till they get here, why,
+maybe--maybe--they'll pull you through all right. Gee whilikins!"
+exclaimed Freddy, as the sick man suddenly started up from his rude
+pillow. "You mustn't do that!"
+
+"I must--I must!" was the hoarse reply; and Freddy was caught in a wild,
+passionate clasp to his patient's heart. "Dying or living, I must claim
+you, hold you, my boy,--my own little son,--little Boy Blue!" The voice
+sank to a low, trembling whisper. "Little Boy Blue, don't you know your
+own daddy?"
+
+And Freddy, who had been struggling wildly in what he believed to be a
+delirious grasp, suddenly grew still. "Little Boy Blue,"--it was the
+nursery name of long ago,--the name that only the dad of those days
+knew,--the name that even Brother Bart had never heard. It brought back
+blazing fire, and cushioned rocker, and the clasp of strong arms around
+his little white-robed form, and a deep, merry voice in his baby ear:
+"Little Boy Blue."
+
+Freddy lifted a frightened, bewildered little face. The eyes,--softened
+now with brimming tears; the straight nose like his own, the waving hair,
+the scar he had so often pressed with baby fingers,--ah, he
+remembered,--little Boy Blue remembered! It was as if a curtain were
+snatched from a far past that had been only dimly outlined until now.
+
+"My daddy,--my daddy,--my own dear daddy!" he cried, flinging his arms
+about the sick man's neck. "Oh, don't die,--don't die!"
+
+For, weak and exhausted by his outburst of emotion, the father had fallen
+back upon his pillow, gasping for breath, the sweat standing out in great
+beads on his brow, his hand clutching Freddy's own in what seemed a death
+clasp.
+
+And now Freddy prayed indeed,--prayed as never in all his young life he
+had prayed before,--prayed from the depths of his tender, innocent heart,
+in words all his own.
+
+"O God, Father in heaven, spare my dear daddy! He has been lost so long!
+Oh, do not let me lose him again! Save him for his little boy,--save him,
+spare him!"
+
+Without, the sky had darkened, the wind moaned, the waves swelled
+white-capped against the low shore. The August storm was rising against
+Last Island in swift wrath; but, wrestling in passionate fervor for the
+life that had suddenly become so precious to him, Freddy did not hear or
+heed. The dogs started out into the open. Father and son were alone in the
+gathering gloom.
+
+Through what he believed the throes of his death agony, the sick man
+caught the sweet, faltering words: "O dear Lord, have mercy on my dear
+father! Let him live, and we will bless and thank You all the rest of our
+lives. He has been lost so long, but now he has come back. Oh, try to say
+it with me, daddy: you have come back to be good,--to live good and live
+right forever!"
+
+And then, even while Freddy prayed, the storm burst upon Last Island. And
+such a storm! It seemed as if the derelict lying there had roused wind and
+wave into destructive fury against the friendly outpost that sheltered
+him. Last Island had been abandoned on account of its perilous exposure;
+and its beacon light, shattered again and again by fierce ocean gales, was
+transferred to a safer shore.
+
+"It's a-washing away fast," old Neb had informed Dan when they had drifted
+by the low-lying shore. "Some of these days a big storm will gulp it down
+for good."
+
+And truly the roaring sea seemed to rush upon it in hungry rage to-day.
+The dogs came in crouching and whining to their master; while the wind
+shrieked and whistled, and the foaming breakers thundered higher and
+higher upon the unprotected shore.
+
+"O Dan, Dan!" thought Freddy hopelessly, as the storm beat through the
+broken walls and roof. "Dan will never get here now,--never!"
+
+But, though his heart was quailing within him, Brother Bart's laddie was
+no weakling: he stood bravely to his post, bathing his father's head and
+hands, wetting the dry, muttering lips, soothing him with tender words and
+soft caresses,--"daddy, my own dear daddy, it is your little boy that is
+with you,--your own little Boy Blue! You will be better soon, daddy." And
+then through the roar and rage of the storm would rise the boyish voice
+pleading to God for help and mercy.
+
+And the innocent prayer seemed to prevail. The sick man's labored
+breathing grew easier, the drawn features relaxed, the blood came into the
+livid lips; and, with the long-drawn sigh of one exhausted by his struggle
+for life, Freddy's patient sank into a heavy sleep; while his little Boy
+Blue watched on, through terrors that would have tried stronger souls than
+Brother Bart's laddie. For all the powers of earth and air and sea seemed
+loosened for battle. The winds rose into madder fury; the rain swept down
+in blinding floods; forked tongues of fire leaped from the black clouds
+that thundered back to the rolling waves.
+
+The dogs crouched, whimpering and shivering, at Freddy's side. Whether
+daddy was alive or dead he could not tell. He could only keep close to
+him, trembling and praying, and feeling that all this horror of darkness
+could not be real: that he would waken in a moment,--waken as he had
+sometimes wakened in St. Andrew's, with Brother Bart's kind voice in his
+ear telling him it was all a dream,--an awful dream.
+
+And then blaze and crash and roar would send poor little Boy Blue
+shivering to his knees, realizing that it was all true: that he was indeed
+here on this far-off ocean isle, beyond all help and reach of man, with
+daddy dying,--dead beside him. He had closed the door as best he could
+with its rusted bolt; but the wind kept tearing at it madly, shaking the
+rotten timbers until they suddenly gave way, with rattle and crash that
+were too much for the brave little watcher's nerves. He flung his arms
+about his father in horror he could no longer control.
+
+"Daddy, daddy!" he cried desperately. "Wake up,--wake up! Daddy, speak to
+me and tell me you're not dead!"
+
+And daddy started into consciousness at the piteous cry, to find his
+little Boy Blue clinging to him in wild affright, while wind and wave
+burst into their wretched shelter,--wind and wave! Surging, foaming,
+sweeping over beach and bramble and briar growth that guarded the low
+shore, rising higher and higher each moment before the furious goad of the
+gale, came the white-capped breakers!
+
+"Oh, the water is coming in on us! Poor daddy, poor daddy, you'll get
+wet!"
+
+And then daddy, wild wanderer that he had been over sea and land, roused
+to the peril, his dulled brain quickening into life.
+
+"The gun,--my gun!" he said hoarsely. "It is loaded, Freddy. Lift it up
+here within reach of my hand."
+
+"O daddy, daddy, what are you going to do?" cried Freddy in new alarm.
+
+"Shoot,--shoot! Signal for help. There is a life-saving station not far
+away. There, hold the gun closer now,--closer!"
+
+And the trembling hand pulled the trigger, and its sharp call for help
+went out again and again into the storm.
+
+
+
+
+XXI.--A DARK HOUR.
+
+
+Meantime Dan had set his dingy sail to what he felt was a changing wind,
+and started Neb's fishing boat on the straightest line he could make for
+Killykinick. But it had taken a great deal of tacking and beating to keep
+to his course. He was not yet sailor enough to know that the bank of
+clouds lying low in the far horizon meant a storm; but the breeze that now
+filled and now flapped his sail was as full of pranks as a naughty boy. In
+all his experience as second mate, Dan had never before met so trying a
+breeze; and it was growing fresher and stronger and more trying every
+minute. To beat back to Beach Cliff against its vagaries, our young
+navigator felt would be beyond his skill. The only thing he could do was
+to take the shorter course of about three miles to Killykinick, and send
+off Jim and Dud in their rented boat (which had a motor) for a doctor.
+Then he could explain Freddy's absence to Brother Bart, and hurry back to
+his little chum.
+
+Wind and tide, however, were both against these well-laid plans to-day.
+The wind was bad enough, but now even the waves seemed to have a strange
+swell, different from the measured rise and fall he knew. It was as if
+their far-off depths were rising, stirring out of their usual calm. They
+no longer tossed their snowy crests in the summer sunlight, but surged and
+swayed in low, broken lines, white-capped with fitful foam. And the
+voice--the song of the sea--that had been a very lullaby to Dan as he
+swung every night in his hammock beneath the stars, had a hoarse, fierce
+tone, like a sob of passion or pain. Altogether, Dan and his boat had a
+very hard pull over the three miles to Killykinick.
+
+"Thar they come!" said Captain Jeb, who, with Brother Bart, was watching
+from the beach. "I told you you could count on Mate Dan, Padre. Thar the
+lads come, safe and sound; though they hed a pull against the wind, I bet.
+But here they come all right."
+
+"God be thanked for that same!" said Brother Bart, reverently. "My heart
+has been nearly leaping out of my breast this last half hour. And you
+weren't over-easy about them yourself, as I could see, Jeroboam."
+
+"Wall, I'm glad to see the younkers safe back, I must say," agreed Captain
+Jeb, in frank relief. "Thar was nothing to skeer about when they started
+this morning, but that bank of cloud wasn't in sight then. My but it come
+up sudden! It fairly took my breath when Neb pointed it out to me. That ar
+marline spike didn't hurt his weather eye. 'Hurricane,' he says to me;
+'straight up from the West Indies, and them boys is out!' I tell you it
+did give me a turn--aye, aye matey!" as Dan came hurrying up the beach.
+"Ye made it all right again wind an' tide--but where's the other?"
+
+"Laddie,--my laddie!" cried Brother Bart, his ruddy face paling. "Speak
+up, Dan Dolan! Has harm come to him?"
+
+"No, no, no!" answered Dan eagerly, "no harm at all, Brother Bart. He is
+safe and sound. Don't scare, Brother Bart." And then as briefly as he
+could Dan told the adventure of the morning.
+
+"And you left laddie, that lone innocent, with a dying man?" said Brother
+Bart. "Sure it will frighten the life out of him!"
+
+"No, it won't," replied Dan. "Freddy isn't the baby you think, Brother
+Bart. He's got lots of sand. He was ready and willing to stay. We couldn't
+leave the poor man there alone with the dogs."
+
+"Sure you couldn't,--you couldn't," said the good Brother, his tone
+softening. "But laddie--little laddie,--that never saw sickness or death!
+Send off the other boys for the doctor, Jeroboam, and the priest as well,
+while Dan and I go back for laddie."
+
+But Captain Jeroboam, who was watching the horizon with a wide-awake
+weather eye, shook his head.
+
+"You can't, Padre,--you can't. Not even the 'Lady Jane' could make it agin
+what's coming on now. If the boy is on dry land, you'll have to trust him
+to the Lord."
+
+"Oh, no, no!" answered the good Brother, forgetting what he said, in his
+solicitude. "I'll go for him myself. Give us your boat, man, and Dan and I
+will go for laddie."
+
+"Ye can't, I tell ye!" and the old sailor's voice took a sudden tone of
+command. "I'm captain of this here Killykinick, Padre; and no boat leaves
+this shore in the face of such a storm, for it would mean death to every
+man aboard her,--sure and certain death."
+
+"The Lord have mercy,--the Lord have mercy!" cried Brother Bart. "My
+laddie,--my poor little laddie! The fright of this will kill him entirely.
+Oh, but you're the hard man, Jeroboam! You have no heart!"
+
+"Back!" shouted Captain Jeb, heedless of the good old man's reproaches, as
+a whistling sound came over the white-capped waves. "Back, under cover,
+all of ye. The storm is on us now!"
+
+And, fairly dragging Brother Bart, while Neb and Dan hurried behind them,
+the Captain made for shelter in the old ship under the cliffs, where Dud
+and Jim had already found refuge.
+
+"Down with the hatches! Brace everything!" came the trumpet tones of
+command of the old sailor over the roar of the wind. And doors and
+portholes shut, the heavy bolts of iron and timber fell into place, and
+everything was made tight and fast against the storm that now burst in all
+its fury on Killykinick,--a storm that sent Brother Bart down on his knees
+in prayer, and held the boys speechless and almost breathless with terror.
+In the awful blackness that fell upon them they could scarcely see one
+another. The "Lady Jane" shook from stem to stern as if she were being
+torn from her fifty years' mooring. The stout awnings were ripped from the
+upper deck; their posts snapped like reeds in the gale; the great hollows
+of the Devil's Jaw thundered back the roar of the breakers that filled
+their cavernous depths with mad turmoil. On land, on sea, in sky, all was
+battle,--such battle as even Captain Jeb agreed he had never seen on
+Killykinick before.
+
+"I've faced many a hurricane, but never nothing as bad as this. If it
+wasn't for them cliffs behind us and the stretch of reef before, durned if
+we wouldn't be washed clean off the face of the earth!"
+
+"Laddie, laddie!" was the cry that blended with Brother Bart's prayers for
+mercy. "God in heaven, take care of my poor laddie through this! I ought
+not to have let him out of my sight."
+
+"But he's safe, Brother Bart," said Dan, striving to comfort himself with
+the thought. "He is on land, you know, just as we are; and the old
+lighthouse is as strong as the 'Lady Jane'; and God can take care of him
+anywhere."
+
+"Sure He can, lad,--He can. I'm the weak old sinner to doubt and fear,"
+was the broken answer. "But he's only a bit of a boy, my own little
+laddie,--only a wee bit of a boy, that never saw trouble or danger in his
+life. To be facing this beside a dying man,--ah, God have mercy on him,
+poor laddie!"
+
+So, amid fears and doubts and prayers, the wild hours of the storm and
+darkness passed; the fierce hurricane, somewhat shorn of its first tropic
+strength, swept on its northward way; the shriek of the wind sank into
+moan and murmur; the sea fell back, like a passion-weary giant; the clouds
+broke and scattered, and a glorious rainbow arched the clearing sky.
+
+The bolts and bars that had done such good duty were lifted, and the crew
+of the "Lady Jane" went out to reconnoitre a very damaged domain.
+Cow-house and chicken-house were roofless. Brown Betty lay crouching
+fearful in the ruins while her feathered neighbors fluttered homeless in
+the hollows of the rocks. The beans and peas and corn,--all things that
+had lifted their green growth too proudly, were crushed to the earth. But
+far worse than this was the havoc wrought on the beach. One half of the
+wharf was down. The small boats, torn from their moorings, had disappeared
+entirely. The motor boat Jim and Dud had hired for the season was stove in
+upon the rocks. The "Sary Ann," stranded upon the shoals of Numskull Nob,
+to which she had been swept by the gale, lay without mast or rudder,
+leaking at every joint.
+
+The two old salts surveyed the scene for a moment in stoic silence,
+realizing all it meant to them. But Brother Bart, with the sunlight
+dancing on the waves, the rainbow arching the sky, broke into eager,
+hopeful speech.
+
+"God be thanked it's over and we're all alive to tell it; for Noah's
+deluge itself couldn't have been worse. And now, Jeroboam, we'll be going
+over after laddie; and the Lord grant that we may find him safe as the
+rest!"
+
+"We'll be going after him!" repeated Captain Jeb, grimly. "How and whar!"
+
+"Sure--can't we right one of the boats?" asked the old man, anxiously.
+
+"Which boat," was the gruff question. "That thar play toy" (surveying the
+motor boat) "is smashed in like an eggshell. Whar the other has been swept
+to nobody knows. And the 'Sary Ann' has done her best, as we all can see;
+but no boat could hold her own agin that storm. Do you think she will
+stand till morning, Neb?"
+
+Neb rolled his dull eyes over reef and shoal.
+
+"She moight," he replied briefly. "Struck pretty bad thar in the bow; but
+the wind is down now and the tide is low."
+
+"And she is oak-keeled and copper-braced from stem to stern," continued
+Captain Jeb. "She may stick it out until we can get thar and tow her in.
+As for the boy, Padre, we can't reach him no more'n we can reach the 'Sary
+Ann' without a boat; and thar's nothing left that will float around this
+Killykinick."
+
+"Ah, the Lord have mercy! And are we to leave laddie in that wild place
+beyond all night?" cried Brother Bart. "Scatter, boys,--scatter all over
+the place, and maybe you can find a boat caught in the rocks and sands;
+for we must get to the laddie afore the night comes on, cost what it may.
+Scatter and strive to find a boat!"
+
+While the boys scattered eagerly enough Captain Jeb, making a spyglass of
+his hands, was scanning the horizon with a sailor's practised eye.
+
+"What is it you see?" asked Brother Bart, anxiously. "Don't tell me it's
+another storm!"
+
+"No," answered Captain Jeb, slowly, "it ain't another storm. Neb" (his
+tone grew suddenly sharper and quicker), "step up to the ship and get the
+old man's glass,--the glass we keep shut up in the case."
+
+Neb, who never shirked an order, obeyed. In a moment he returned with one
+of the greatest treasures of the "Lady Jane"--Great-uncle Joe's ship-glass
+that was always kept safe from profaning touch; its clear lenses, that had
+looked out on sea and sky through many a long voyage, polished to a shine.
+Captain Jeb adjusted them to his own failing eyes, and gazed seaward for a
+few moments in silence. Then he said:
+
+"'Pears as if I couldn't see clarly after that tarnation blow. You look
+out, Neb. And, Padre, you'd better step back thar and keep a weather eye
+on them younkers. It doesn't do to turn them out too free, with things all
+broke up."
+
+"You're right, man,--you're right, Jeroboam," said the good Brother
+tremulously. "I'll keep an eye on them, as you say."
+
+"Thar,--I've got him out of the way!" said Captain Neb, as Brother Bart
+hurried back to watch over his scattered flock. "Now look, Neb,--look
+steady and straight! Three points to the south of Numskull Nob,--what d'ye
+see?"
+
+"Nothing at all," answered Neb.
+
+"Look again!" His brother adjusted the old shipmaster's glass with a hand
+that trembled strangely. "Another point to the south. Look steady as ye
+can, Neb. Yer weather eye was always clarer than mine. What d'ye see
+now?"
+
+"Nothing," came the answer again; and then the dull tone quickened: "Aye I
+do,--I do! Thar's suthing sticking out of the waves like a broken mast."
+
+"The Old Light," said Captain Jeb, hoarsely,--"all that's left of it. Last
+Island has gone under, as you said it would, Neb,--clean swallowed up. And
+the boy--" (the speaker gulped down something like a sob). "Looks as if
+the Padre will never see his little lad agin."
+
+
+
+
+XXII.--THE LOST AND FOUND.
+
+
+There had been an extra Mass at the little church at Beach Cliff on the
+morning of the storm. Father Tom Rayburn, an old classmate of the
+pastor's, had arrived, and been welcomed most cordially.
+
+"I'm off to an old camping ground of mine--Killykinick," he had explained
+to his host as they sat together at breakfast. "One of our Brothers is
+there with some of St. Andrew's boys, and my own little nephew is among
+them."
+
+"Ah, yes, I know!" was the reply. "They come every Sunday to the late
+Mass. And, by the way, if you are going out into those ocean 'wilds,' you
+could save a busy man some trouble by stopping at the Life-Saving Station
+(it's not far out of the way, as I suppose you'll take a sail or a motor
+boat); and I promised two of those sturdy fellows who are groping for the
+Truth some reading matter. I thought a friendly talk at the same time
+would not be amiss. They have little chance for such things in their
+lonely lives. But my duties are quadrupled at this season, as you know."
+
+"And the 'wilderness' is in my line," said Father Tom. "Of course I'll be
+glad to stop. I used to haunt the Life-Saving Station when I was a boy;
+and I should like to see it again, especially when I can do a little
+missionary work on the side," he laughed cheerily.
+
+And so it had happened that while Dan and Freddy were hauling in their
+lines and delivering breakfasts along the shore, one of the trig motors
+from the Boat Club was bearing a tall, broad-shouldered passenger, bronzed
+by sun and storm, to the Life-Saving Station, whose long, low buildings
+stood on a desolate spit of sand that jutted out into the sea beyond
+Shelter Cove. It was Uncle Sam's farthest outpost. The Stars and Stripes
+floating from its flagstaff told of his watchful care of this perilous
+stretch of shore that his sturdy sons paced by day and night, alert to any
+cry for help, any sign of danger.
+
+Father Tom, whose own life work lay in some such lines, met the
+Life-Savers with a warm, cordial sympathy that made his visit a most
+pleasant one. He was ready to listen as well as talk. But Blake and Ford,
+whom he had come especially to see, were on duty up the shore, and would
+not be back for more than two hours.
+
+"I'll wait for them," said Father Tom, who never let a wandering sheep,
+that hook or crook could hold, escape his shepherd's care; and he settled
+down for a longer chat of his own wild and woolly West, which his hearers
+watching with trained eyes the black line in the horizon, were too polite
+in their own simple way to interrupt. Their guest was in the midst of a
+description of the Mohave Desert, where he had nearly left his bones to
+bleach two years ago, when his boatman came hurriedly up with a request of
+speedy shelter for his little craft.
+
+"There's a storm coming up I daren't face, sir," he said. "We can't make
+Killykinick until it blows over. You'll have to stay another hour or two
+here."
+
+"All right, if our good friends will keep us," was the cheery response.
+"We are not travelling on schedule time."
+
+And then Father Tom looked on with keen interest as the sturdy life-savers
+made ready for the swift-coming tempest that was very soon upon them,
+bringing Blake and Ford back, breathless and drenched, to report their
+observations along the beach,--that there was nothing in sight: everything
+had scudded to shelter. So all gathered in the lookout, whose heavy leaded
+glass, set in a stone frame, defied the fury of the elements. And, thus
+sheltered, the group in Uncle Sam's outpost watched the sweep of the
+storm.
+
+"It's a ripper!" said Blake, translating the more professional opinion of
+his mates to Father Tom. "But we ain't getting the worst of it here. These
+West Indianers travel narrow gauge tracks, and we're out of line.
+Killykinick is catching it bad. Shouldn't wonder if that stranded tub of
+the old Captain's would keel over altogether."
+
+"You think they are in danger there?" asked Father Tom, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, no! Thar's plenty of other shelter. Killykinick is rock-ribbed to
+stand till the day of doom. George! I believe Last Island is going clean
+under!"
+
+"Let her go!" came the keeper's bluff response. "Been nothing but a
+bramble bed these twenty years."
+
+"Bramble bed or not, some fools are camping there," said Blake. "I've seen
+their dogs on the beach for the last three days; and there was a boat
+moored to the rocks this morning, and boys scrambling along the shore. The
+folks that are boxed up in town all winter run wild when they break loose
+here, and don't care where they go--"
+
+"Hush!" broke in the keeper, suddenly. "Push open the glass there, men,
+and listen! I think I heard a gun!"
+
+They flung open the window at his word. Borne upon the wild sweep of the
+wind that rushed in upon them, there came again a sound they all
+knew,--the signal of distress, the sharp call for help. It was their
+business to hear and heed.
+
+"A gun sure, and from Last Island!" said the keeper, briefly. "There are
+fools there, as you say, Blake. Run out the lifeboat, my men! We must get
+them off. Both boats, for we don't know how many we have to care for."
+
+"Both boats, sir?" hesitated Blake. "We're short-handed to-day, for Ford
+has a crippled arm that would be no good in this surf."
+
+"I'll take his place," said Father Tom, eagerly. "I've shot the rapids
+with my Indian guides many a time. I'll take Ford's place."
+
+"Think twice of it, sir," was Blake's warning. "You are risking your
+life."
+
+"I know," was the brief answer. "That's my business as well as yours, my
+friends; so I'll take my chance."
+
+"There talks a man!" said the keeper, heartily. "Give him a sou'wester,
+and let him take his chances, as he asks, in Ford's place."
+
+And, in briefer time than we can picture, the two lifeboats were swung out
+of their shelter in the very teeth of the driving gale, and manned by
+their fearless crews, including Father Tom Rayburn, who, muffled in a huge
+sou'wester, took his place with the rest; and all pushed into the storm.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Last Island all hope seemed gone.
+
+"One last shot, my boy!" daddy had said, as the gun dropped from his
+shaking hand. "And no one has heard,--no one could hear in the roar of the
+storm."
+
+"Oh, they could,--they could!" murmured Freddy. "God could make them hear,
+daddy,--make them hear and come to help us. And I think He will. I have
+prayed so hard that we might not be drowned here all alone in the storm.
+You pray, too, daddy,--oh, please pray!"
+
+"I can not,--I _dare_ not," was the hoarse answer.
+
+"O daddy, yes you can,--you must! The waters are coming on us so fast,
+daddy,--so fast! Please try to pray with me. Our Lord made the winds and
+waves go down when He lived here on earth; He walked on the waters and
+they did not hurt Him. Oh, they are coming higher and higher on us, daddy!
+What shall we do?"
+
+"Die," was the hoarse, fierce answer; "die here together, my boy,--my
+little boy! For me it is justice, judgment; but, O my God, why should Thy
+curse fall on my boy,--my innocent boy?"
+
+"O daddy, no! That isn't the way to pray. You mustn't say 'curse,' daddy.
+You must say: 'Have mercy, dear Lord; have mercy! Save me and my little
+boy. Send some one to help us.' Oh, I am trying not to be afraid, but I
+can't help it, daddy!"
+
+"My boy,--my poor little boy! Climb, Freddy! Try to climb up on the
+roof--the broken shaft! Leave me here, and try to climb, my boy! You may
+be safe for a while."
+
+"O daddy, no, I can't climb and leave you," and Freddy clung piteously to
+his father's breast. "I'd rather die here with you, and God will take us
+both to heaven together. I haven't been a very good boy, I know; and maybe
+you haven't either; but if we are sorry He will let us come to Him in
+heaven--O dad, what is that?" Freddy's low tone changed to one of wild
+alarm. "What is it now,--what is it now?"
+
+For the dogs, that had been crouching and cowering beside their master,
+suddenly started up, barking wildly, and dashed out into the rising
+waters; new sounds blended with the roar of the storm,--shouts, cries,
+voices.
+
+"Here,--_here_!" daddy feebly essayed to answer. "Call to them, Freddy! It
+is help. God has heard your prayers. Call--call--call--loud as you can, my
+boy!"
+
+But there was no need. Rex and Roy had already done the calling, the
+guiding. On they came, the sturdy rescuers, plunging waist-deep through
+the waters that were already breaking high on the beach and bramble
+growth, surging and swelling across the broken wall that had once guarded
+the Old Light, and lapping the low cabin floor. On the brave life-savers
+came, while Rex and Roy barked in mad welcome; and Freddy's clear, boyish
+cry, "Here,--here! Daddy and I are here!" pierced through the darkness and
+turmoil of the storm. On they came, strong and fearless,--God's angels
+surely, thought Freddy, though in strange mortal guise. And one, whose
+muffling sou'wester had been flung loose in his eager haste, led all the
+rest.
+
+"Here, my men,--here!" he cried, bursting into the ruined hut, where a
+little figure stood, white-faced, breathless, bewildered with the joy of
+his answered prayer. "They are here! God have mercy!" broke in reverent
+awe from his lips. "Freddy, Freddy,--my own little Freddy here!"
+
+"Uncle Tom,--Uncle Tom!" And Freddy sobbed outright as he was clasped in
+those dear, strong arms, held tight to the loving heart. "How did God tell
+you where to come for me, dear Uncle Tom?--Daddy, daddy look up,--look up!
+It's Uncle Tom!"
+
+And what daddy felt as he looked up into that old friend's face, what
+Uncle Tom felt as he looked down on the "derelict" that had drifted so far
+from him, no one can say; for there was no time for words or wonderment.
+Life-savers can not stop to think, much less to talk. Daddy was caught up
+by two or three big fellows, without any question, while Uncle Tom looked
+out for Freddy.
+
+It was a fierce struggle, through surging waves and battering wind and
+beating rain, to the waiting lifeboats; but, held tight in those strong
+arms, pressed close to the true heart whose every pulse was a prayer,
+Freddy felt no fear. Even when the stout boat, fighting its way back to
+the other shore, tossed like a cork in the breakers, when the oar snapped
+in Blake's hand, when all around was foam and spray, in which earth and
+heaven seemed lost, Freddy, nestling in Uncle Tom's sou'wester, felt as if
+its rough, tarry folds were angel wings.
+
+And so safety and shelter were reached at last. Father Tom gave his little
+drenched, shivering, white-faced boy into Ford's friendly care.
+
+"Put him to bed somewhere, to get dry and warm."
+
+"But daddy,--my own dear, lost daddy?"
+
+"Leave him to me, my boy," said Uncle Tom, softly. "I'll take care of
+daddy. Leave him to me."
+
+And then Ford, who, somewhere back of Cape Cod, had a small boy of his
+own, proceeded to do his rough best for the little stranger. Freddy was
+dried, rubbed, and put into a flannel shirt some ten sizes too big for
+him, and given something hot and spicy to drink, and finally tumbled into
+a bunk with coarse but spotless sheets, and very rough but comfortable
+blankets, where in less than four minutes he was sound asleep, worn out,
+as even the pluckiest eleven-year-old boy would be, with the strain on his
+small body and brave young soul.
+
+How long he slept, Freddy did not know; but it was long enough for the
+wind to lull, the skies to brighten, the black clouds to break and scatter
+before the golden glory of the summer sun. The wide lookout window had
+been thrown open, and showed a glorious rainbow spanning the western sky.
+And there, on a pallet thrown hastily on the floor, lay daddy, very still
+and pale, with Uncle Tom kneeling beside him, holding his hand. An icy
+fear now clutched Freddy's heart at the sight. Reckless of the
+ten-sizes-too-big shirt trailing around him, he was out of his bunk with a
+jump to his father's side.
+
+"Daddy, daddy!--O Uncle Tom, is daddy dead?"
+
+And daddy's eyes opened at the words,--eyes that were no longer burning,
+but soft and dim with tears.
+
+"Not dead, little Boy Blue! Daddy is alive again,--alive as he has not
+been for long, long years.--Tell him all, Tom. I am too weak. Tell him
+all. He'll be glad to hear it, I know."
+
+But Father Tom only put his arm around the boy and drew him close to his
+side.
+
+"Why should I?" he said, smiling into the upturned face. "We know quite
+enough for a little boy; don't we, Freddy,--that, like another wanderer
+from his Father's house, daddy was dead and is alive again, was lost and
+is found. And now get into some short clothes, if you can find them, and
+we'll go over to Killykinick in my little motor boat; for poor Brother
+Bart is in sad terror about you, I am sure."
+
+Ah, in sad terror, indeed! It was a pale, shaken old man that stood on the
+beach at Killykinick, looking over the sea, and listening to the Captain,
+who was striving to find hope where he felt there was none.
+
+"Looks as if the old cabin on Last Island might be holding together still.
+Dan and Neb are knocking a raft together, and if they can make it float
+they'll go over there and get the little lad off. And if they don't Padre"
+(the rough old voice trembled),--"if they don't, wal, you are sky pilot
+enough to know that the little chap has reached a better shore than
+this."
+
+"Aye, aye, I know, Jeroboam!" was the hoarse, shaken answer. "God knows
+what is best for His little lamb. His holy will be done. But, O my laddie,
+my little laddie, why did I let you go from me into the darkness and
+storm, my little boy, my little boy?"
+
+"Hooray! Hooray!" Wild shouts broke in upon the broken-hearted prayer, as
+Jim and Dud and Dan burst round the bend of the rocks. "Brother Bart,
+Brother Bart! Look what's coming, Brother Bart!"
+
+And, turning his dim eyes where the boys pointed, Brother Bart saw a
+little motor boat making its swift way over the still swelling waves. On
+it came, dancing in the sunlight arched by the rainbow, tossing and
+swaying to the pulse of the sea; and in the stern, enthusiastically waving
+the little signal flag that Ford had put into his hand to remember the
+life-savers, sat--
+
+"Laddie!" burst from Brother Bart's lips, and he fell upon his knees in
+thanksgiving. "O God be praised and blessed for the sight! My laddie,--my
+own little laddie safe, safe,--my laddie coming back to me again!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.--DAN'S MEDAL.
+
+
+It was the day after the big storm that had made havoc even in the
+sheltered harbor of Beach Cliff, and so damaged "The Polly" in her safe
+moorings that six men were busy putting her into shipshape again. And
+dad's other Polly was in an equally doleful mood.
+
+It was to have been a day of jollification with Marraine. They were to
+have gone voyaging together over the summer seas, that were smiling as
+joyously to-day as if they had never known a storm. They were to have
+stopped at the college camp in Shelter Cove, where Marraine had some girl
+friends; they were to have kept on their sunlit way to Killykinick, for so
+dad had agreed; they were to have looked in on the Life-Saving Station,
+which Marraine had never seen; in fact, they were to have done more
+pleasant things than Polly could count,--and now the storm had fallen on
+her namesake and spoiled all.
+
+"Never mind, Pollykins!" comforted Marraine, who could find stars in the
+darkest sky. "We'll each take a dollar and go shopping."
+
+"Only a dollar, Marraine? That won't buy much," said Polly, who had walked
+in ways where dollars seem very small indeed.
+
+"Oh, yes, it will! There's no telling what it can buy in Jonah's junk
+shop," laughed Marraine. "I got a rusted tea tray that polished into
+silver plate, a blackened vase that rubbed into burnished copper. I should
+not wonder if he had an Aladdin's lamp hidden somewhere in his dusty
+shelves."
+
+"Let us go look for it," said Polly, roused into gleeful interest. "Oh,
+I'd love to have Aladdin's lamp! Wouldn't you, Marraine?"
+
+"What would you wish for, Pollykins?" asked Marraine, softly.
+
+"Oh, lots of things!" said Polly, perching in her lap. "First--first of
+all, I wish that I could keep you here forever and forever, darling
+Marraine!"
+
+"Well, you have me for six weeks every summer," laughed Marraine.
+
+"But that isn't forever and forever," sighed Polly. "And mamma and dad and
+grandmamma and everybody else want you, too."
+
+"Are you sure of that?" asked the lady, kissing the upturned face.
+
+"Oh, very sure!" replied Polly, positively. "They say it's all nonsense
+for you to go to the hospital and take care of sick people. It's--it's
+something--I don't remember what."
+
+"Stubborn pride?" suggested Marraine, with a merry sparkle in her eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Polly, "that's just what grandmamma said. And stubborn pride
+is something bad; isn't it, Marraine?"
+
+"Well, yes, it is," agreed Marraine,--"when it _is_ stubborn pride,
+Pollykins. But when one has empty hands and empty purse and--well, an
+empty life, too, Pollykins, it is not stubborn pride to try to fill them
+with work and care and pity and help."
+
+"And that is what you do at the hospital, Marraine?"
+
+"It is what I try to do, Pollykins. When my dear father died, and I found
+all his money gone, this beautiful home of yours opened its doors wide for
+me; dad, mamma, grandma, everybody begged me to come here. But--but it
+wasn't my real home or my real place."
+
+"Oh, wasn't it, Marraine?" said Polly, sadly.
+
+"No, dear. In our real home, our real place, God gives us work to
+do,--some work, even though it be only to bless and love. But there was no
+work for me here; and so I looked around, Pollykins, for my work and my
+place. If I had been very, _very_ good, I might have folded my butterfly
+wings under a veil and habit, and been a nice little nun, like Sister
+Claudine."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't have liked that at all!" said Polly, with a shiver.
+
+"I'm afraid I wouldn't either," was the laughing answer. "Still, it's a
+lovely, useful, beautiful life, little girl. And the next--the very
+next--best place and best work seemed to me the hospital, with the white
+gown and cap I can put off when I please; with sickness and sorrow and
+suffering to soothe and help; with little children holding out their arms
+to me, and old people calling to me in their pain, and dying eyes turning
+to me for hope and help. So I am nurse in a hospital, and out of it, too,
+when there is need. And it's not for stubborn pride, as grandma says, and
+no doubt thinks; but because I believe it to be my real work and my real
+place. Now get your dollar, and we'll be off to Jonah's junk shop to look
+for Aladdin's lamp."
+
+And Polly danced off for her flower-wreathed hat, and the two were soon on
+their way down the narrow streets to the dull, dingy little shop near the
+water, where several customers were already looking over the curiously
+assorted stock, that on weekdays was spread far out on the sidewalk to
+attract passers-by. Among these was a big, burly grey-haired man, whose
+bronzed face and easy-fitting clothes proclaimed the sailor.
+
+"Why, Captain Carleton!" greeted Miss Stella, in some surprise.
+
+"God bless my heart and soul!" was the hearty response, and the Captain
+held out both hands to the speaker. "This is sailor's luck, indeed! From
+what star of hope did you drop, Miss Stella?"
+
+"Oh, I drop here for a holiday every summer!" she answered gaily. "I am
+glad to see you looking so well and strong again, Captain."
+
+"Thanks to you, my dear lady! Under the great Master of life and death,
+thanks to you! I was about as far on the rocks as an old craft could be
+without going to pieces entirely. How that soft little hand of yours
+steered me into safe water I'll never forget, dear lady,--never forget.
+And I was a tough patient, too; wasn't I?"
+
+"Well, you did say things sometimes that were not--prayers," was the
+laughing answer.
+
+And, chatting on pleasantly of the Captain's last winter in the hospital,
+they glanced over old Jonah's stock until something of interest caught the
+sailor's eye.
+
+"By George! How in thunder did this get here?"
+
+"A find,--a real find, Captain?" asked Miss Stella. "What is it?"
+
+"A medal," he answered,--"a medal awarded for 'Brave and faithful service
+on the "Reina Maria" sixty years ago.'" (He was scanning the bronze disc
+as he spoke),--"'Juan Farley.' Good Lord! Yes, poor old Jack! I wonder how
+he lived and died? And what in Heaven's name is his medal doing here?"
+
+"Perhaps Jonah can tell you," suggested Miss Stella; while Polly, whose
+bright eyes were searching for Aladdin's lamp, paused to listen.
+
+"That ar medal?" said Jonah in answer to the Captain's questioning. "Let
+me think now! That ar medal--ticketed nineteen, isn't it?--was left here
+by a youngster. Now, what in thunder was his name? I'll have to look in my
+books to see."
+
+And while he looked Captain Carleton explained his interest in his find.
+
+"You see, my father was master and half owner of the 'Reina Maria,' though
+she was Spanish built and manned. But, luckily, Jack Farley, a first-class
+sailor, was second mate. There was a mutiny aboard, and it would have been
+all up with my father and his chief officer if brave Jack had not smelled
+mischief in time, and put down the hatches on the scoundrels at the risk
+of his own life. Ship and cargo (it was a pretty valuable ship) were
+saved; and this medal, that bears the stamp of her then Spanish Majesty,
+was Jack's reward. My father always felt that he ought to have had
+something more; but the Spanish owners were close-fisted, so my old man
+had to content himself with helping Jack (who was a rather reckless sort
+of chap ashore) in his own way. He got him out of many a tight place on
+the strength of that medal; and he would have looked out for him until the
+last, but he shipped on an East Indian, and drifted out of our reach. And
+this medal was left here by a boy, you say, my man?"
+
+"Yes, sir" (Jonah had found his entry now),--"by a boy who said it was
+his: that it had been given him by an old sailor man who was dead; and
+he'd like to sell the medal now, for he wanted some money bad."
+
+"Good!" said the old Captain, eagerly. "I'll give him his price. Who and
+where is the boy?"
+
+"His name is Dan Dolan and he lives at Killykinick."
+
+"Dan Dolan!" exclaimed Miss Stella.
+
+"Oh, does he mean my--_my_ Dan, Marraine?" chirped Polly, breathlessly.
+
+"What! You know the boy?" cried the old sailor, in amazement. "God bless
+me,--you!"
+
+"Why, yes, we know him,--don't we, Pollykins?" said Miss Stella. "But what
+he is doing with the medal we can't say. We're certain he has it
+rightfully and honestly; and as soon as 'The Polly' (my cousin's yacht)
+can spread her broken wings, we are going to Killykinick. Suppose you come
+with us, and see the owner of the medal, and strike a bargain yourself?"
+
+"By George, I will,--I will! A sail with you, Miss Stella, is a temptation
+I can not resist. And I must have the medal. I must see the boy, and hear
+how he got it. I'll buy it from him at his own price; and you shall
+negotiate the sale, dear lady!"
+
+"Take care," said Miss Stella, with a merry sparkle in her eyes,--"take
+care how you do business with me, Captain! Remember how I drew upon you
+for the babies' ward last winter! I can fleece without mercy, as you
+know."
+
+"Fleece as you please," was the hearty answer. "I can stand it, for that
+soft little hand of yours did work for this old man that he can never
+repay."
+
+So the agreement was made; and Miss Stella, having invested in a queer,
+twisted candlestick, which she declared was quite equal to Aladdin's lamp,
+and Polly having decided to reserve her dollar for a neighboring candy
+store, the party at Jonah's junk shop separated, with the promise of
+meeting as soon as "The Polly" should be ready for a flight to
+Killykinick.
+
+But that pleasant excursion was indefinitely postponed; for when Miss
+Stella reached Polly's home it was to find two priestly visitors awaiting
+her. One was an old friend, the present pastor of St. Mary's Church, near
+the Foresters' home; the other, tall, pale even through his bronze,
+anxious-eyed, she had never met.
+
+"Father Rayburn, Miss Allen," was the pastor's brief introduction. "We
+have come to throw ourselves on your mercy, my dear young lady. You are
+here for your summer holiday, I know; and I hesitate to interrupt it. But
+Father Rayburn is in sore need of experienced service that you alone can
+give."
+
+"You need a nurse?" asked Miss Stella.
+
+"Yes." (It was Father Rayburn who answered.) "My brother--or perhaps I
+should say my brother-in-law, as that is really our relationship,--is
+lying very ill at Killykinick. While still prostrated with fever, he was
+exposed to the storm of yesterday, in which he nearly lost his life.
+Between the shock, the excitement of his rescue by the life-savers, he is
+very, very ill,--too ill to be removed to a hospital; and he is at
+Killykinick with only boys and men to care for him," continued Father
+Rayburn. "The doctors tell me an experienced nurse is necessary, and we
+can find none willing to take so serious a case in such a rude, remote
+place. But my good friend Father John seems to think that you would take
+pity on our great need."
+
+"Oh, I will,--I will!" was the eager answer. "I already have friends at
+Killykinick among those fine boys from St. Andrew's. My little goddaughter
+and I were to make an excursion there to-day, but the storm disabled Mr.
+Forester's yacht. I am so glad to be of service to you, Father! I will get
+ready at once."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of the joyful return of laddie yesterday, there was gloom this
+morning at Killykinick. Daddy, who had been brought over at his own
+request from the Life-Saving Station, lay in the old Captain's room, which
+Brother Bart had resigned to him, very, very sick indeed.
+
+"Sinking fast, I'm afraid," the doctor said. "The fever has broken, but
+the shock of yesterday's danger and rescue has been too much for a man in
+his weakened state. Still there's a chance for him--a fighting chance. But
+it will take very careful and experienced nursing to pull him through."
+
+So Father Tom had gone in search of a nurse, leaving Freddy and Brother
+Bart watching by the sick bed; while Dan, who as second mate was assisting
+his chief officers to right and repair the "Sary Ann," listened with a
+heavy heart to the old salt's prognostications.
+
+"He won't last the day out," declared Captain Jeb. "Blue about the gills
+already! But, Lord, what could you expect, doused and drenched and shaken
+up like he was yesterday? It will be hard on the little chap, who was so
+glad to get his father back. It's sort of a pity, 'cording to my notion,
+that, being adrift so long, he didn't go down in deep-sea soundings, and
+not come ashore to break up like this."
+
+"O Captain Jeb, no, no!" Dan looked up from his hammering on the "Sary
+Ann" in quick protest against such false doctrine. "A man isn't like a
+ship: he has a soul. And that's the main thing, after all. If you save
+your soul, it doesn't make much difference about your body. And drifting
+ashore right here has saved the soul of Mr. Wirt (or Mr. Neville, as we
+must call him now); for he was lying over on Last Island, feeling that
+there was no hope for him in heaven or on earth. And then Freddy came to
+him, and Father Tom, and he turned to God for pardon and mercy; and now
+his dying is all right,--though I haven't given him up yet," concluded
+Dan, more cheerfully. "Poor little Freddy has been praying so hard all
+night, I feel he is going to be heard somehow. And I've seen Mick
+Mulligan, that had typhoid last summer, looking a great deal worse than
+Mr. Neville, and before Thanksgiving there wasn't a boy on the hill he
+couldn't throw. Here comes Father Tom back with--with--" Dan dropped his
+hammer entirely, and stood up to stare in amazement at the little motor
+boat making its way to the broken wharf. "Jing! Jerusalem! if--if it isn't
+that pretty lady from Beach Cliff that Polly calls Marraine!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.--A STAR IN THE DARKNESS.
+
+
+Marraine,--Polly's Marraine,--Aunt Winnie's old friend,--the lovely,
+silver-robed lady of the party who had stood by Dan in his trouble!--it
+was she, indeed, all dressed in white, with a pretty little cap on her
+soft, wavy hair, and her hands full of flowers. Miss Stella always made a
+first appearance at a patient's bedside with flowers. She said they were a
+friendly introduction that never failed.
+
+"It's the nurse woman they went for," gasped Captain Jeb, as the new
+arrival proceeded to step from boat to wharf with a light grace that
+scarcely needed Father Tom's assisting hand. "Well, I'll be tee-totally
+jiggered! Who ever saw a nurse woman pretty as that?"
+
+But Dan did not hear. He had dropped nails, hammer, and all present
+interest in the recuperation of the "Sary Ann," and was off down the beach
+to meet the fair visitor, whose coming he could not understand.
+
+"Danny," she said, holding out her empty hand to him,--"Miss Winnie's
+Danny!--I told you I had friends here, Father Rayburn; and this is one
+that I expect to find my right-hand man. What a queer, quaint, wonderful
+place this Killykinick is! I am so glad you brought me here to help you!"
+
+Help them! Help them! Dan caught the world in breathless amazement. Then
+Miss Stella, Polly's Marraine, was the nurse! It seemed altogether
+astounding; for sick nurses, in Dan's experience, had always been fat old
+ladies who had out-lived all other duties, and appeared only on important
+occasions, to gossip in solemn whispers, and to drink unlimited tea. And
+now Polly's Marraine was a _nurse_! It was impossible to doubt the fact;
+for Father Tom was leading her straight to Mr. Neville's side, Dan
+following in dumb bewilderment.
+
+The sick man lay in the old Captain's room, whither, at his own request,
+the life-savers had borne him the previous evening. His eyes, deep-sunken
+in their sockets, were closed, his features rigid. Poor little Freddy,
+tearful and trembling, knelt by Brother Bart, who paused in his murmured
+prayers to shake his head hopelessly at the newcomer's approach.
+
+"I'm glad ye're here before he goes entirely, Father. It's time, I think,
+for the last blessing. I am afraid he can neither hear nor see."
+
+But Miss Stella had stepped forward, put her soft hand on the patient's
+pulse; and then, with a quick whisper to Father Tom, she had dropped her
+flowers, opened the little wrist-bag they had concealed, and proceeded to
+"do things,"--just what sort of things Dan did not know. He could only see
+the soft hands moving swiftly, deftly; baring the patient's arm to the
+shoulder and flashing something sharp and shining into the pale flesh;
+holding the fluttering pulse until, with a long, deep sigh, the sick man
+opened his eyes and stared dully at the white-robed figure bending over
+him.
+
+"Who--what are you?" he said faintly.
+
+Miss Stella smiled. It was the question that many a patient, struggling
+out of the Dark Valley, had asked before, when his waking eyes had fallen
+upon her fair, sweet face, her white-robed form.
+
+"Only your nurse," she answered softly,--"your nurse who has come to help
+you, to take care of you. You feel better already?"
+
+"Yes, better, better!" was the faint reply. "My boy,--where is my boy?
+Freddy! Freddy!" He stretched out his feeble hand. But it was met by a
+firm, gentle grasp that was not Freddy's.
+
+"No boys now," said Miss Stella in the soft, steady voice of one used to
+such commands. "There must be no seeing, no talking, even no thinking, my
+patient. You must take this powder I am putting to your lips. Close your
+eyes again and go to sleep.--Now please everybody go away and leave him to
+me," was the whispered ukase, that even Father Tom obeyed without protest;
+and Miss Stella began her reign at Killykinick.
+
+It was a triumphant reign from the very first. Old and young fell at once
+under her gentle sway, and yielded to her command without dispute. The
+cabin of the "Lady Jane" was given to her entirely; even Brother Bart
+taking to the upper deck; while a big, disused awning was stretched into a
+shelter for the morning and the noontime mess.
+
+And, to say nothing of her patient--who lay, as Brother Bart expressed it,
+"like a shorn lamb" under her gentle bidding, gaining health and strength
+each day,--every creature in Killykinick was subservient to Miss Stella's
+sweet will. Freddy was her devoted slave; lazy Jim, ready to move at her
+whisper; even Dud, after learning her father's rank in the army, was ready
+to oblige her as a gentleman should. But it was Dan, as she had foreseen
+from the first, who was her right-hand man, ready to fetch and carry, to
+lift any burden, however heavy, by day and night; Dan who rowed or sailed
+or skimmed to any point in the motor boat Father Tom kept waiting at her
+demand; Dan who, when the patient grew better, and she had an hour or two
+off, was her willing and delighted escort over rocks or sea.
+
+And as they sailed or rowed or loitered by beach and shore, Miss Stella
+drew from Aunt Winnie's boy the hopes and fears he could not altogether
+hide. She learned how Aunt Winnie was "pining" for her home and her boy;
+she read the letters, with their untold love and longing; she saw the look
+on the boyish face when Dan, too mindful of his promise to Father Mack to
+speak plainly, said he 'reckoned she wouldn't be here long if he didn't
+get her somehow _home_.' She learned, too, all Dan could tell about poor
+old Nutty's medal.
+
+"Get it for me the next time you go to town, Danny," she said to him. And
+Danny drew it from old Jonah's junk shop and put it in Miss Stella's
+hand.
+
+And then, when at last her patient was able to sit up in Great-uncle Joe's
+big chair in the cabin doorway and look out at the sea, Miss Stella wrote
+to dad and Polly to come and take her home.
+
+"Lord, but we'll all miss her!" Captain Jeb voiced the general sentiment
+of Killykinick when this decision was made public. "I ain't much sot on
+women folks when you're in deep water, but this one suttenly shone out
+like a star in the dark."
+
+"And kept a-shining," added Neb,--"a-shining and a-smiling straight
+through."
+
+"She's a good girl," said Brother Bart. "And I'm thinking--well, it
+doesn't matter what I'm thinking. But it's a lonely time laddie's poor
+father will be having, after all his wild wanderings; and it will be hard
+for him to keep house and home. But the Lord is good. Maybe it was His
+hand that led Miss Stella here."
+
+"Oh, what will we do when she is gone, daddy?" mourned Freddy. "Of course
+you are getting well now, and Dan and I can wait on you and get you broth
+and jelly; but it won't be like having dear Miss Stella. Oh, I just love
+her! Don't you, daddy? She is almost as good as a real mother."
+
+And daddy's pale cheek had flushed as he answered:
+
+"Almost, little Boy Blue!"
+
+"Well, we're all going home in a week," said Dan, as he stood out under
+the stars that night. "But I'll miss you sure, Miss Stella; for you don't
+mind being friends with a rough sort of a boy like me, and you know Aunt
+Winnie; and if I give up and--and go down you'll--you'll understand."
+
+"Give up and go down!" repeated Miss Stella. "You give up and go down,
+Danny? Never,--never! You're the sort of boy to climb, however steep and
+rough and sharp the way,--to climb to the stars."
+
+"That's what Aunt Winnie dreams," was the answer. "That's what I dream,
+too, sometimes. Miss Stella. But it isn't for me to dream: I have to wake
+up and hustle. I can't stay dreaming and let Aunt Winnie die. So if I have
+to give up and go down, Miss Stella, you'll--you'll understand."
+
+And Miss Stella steadied her voice to answer:
+
+"Yes, Danny, I'll understand."
+
+But, in spite of this, Miss Stella's parting from Killykinick was not
+altogether a sad one; for "The Polly" came down next morning, with flying
+colors, to bear her away. Dad was aboard; also Polly, jubilant at
+recovering her dear Marraine after three weeks of desertion; and Captain
+Carleton, and Miss Stella's girl friends who had been picked up from the
+camp at Shelter Cove. It was such a picnic party altogether that sighs and
+tears seemed quite out of place; for, after all, things had turned out
+most cheerfully, as everybody agreed.
+
+So, with "The Polly" glittering in new paint and gilding necessitated by
+the storm, with all her pennants flying in the wind, with the victrola
+singing its merriest boat song, and snowy handkerchiefs fluttering gay
+farewells, Miss Stella was borne triumphantly away. It was to be an
+all-day cruise. Great hampers, packed with everything good to eat and
+drink, were stored below; and "The Polly" spread her wings and took a wide
+flight to sea, turning back only when the shadows began to deepen over the
+water, and the stars to peep from the violet sky. The young people were a
+trifle tired; Polly had fallen asleep on a pile of cushions, while the
+girls from Shelter Cove sang college songs.
+
+In the stern, Captain Carleton had found his way to Miss Stella's side.
+She was leaning on the taffrail, listening to the singing, her white
+fleecy wrap falling around her like a cloud.
+
+"You look your name to-night," said the Captain: "Stella,--a star. By
+George, you were a star to me when the sky looked pretty black! I was
+thinking of that yesterday when some Eastern chap came along with a lot of
+diamonds for sale. I don't know much about such folderols, but there was
+one piece--a star--that I'd like to give you, if you would take it and
+wear it in remembrance of a rough old fellow who can't speak all he
+feels."
+
+"Ah, Captain Carleton,--Captain Carleton!" laughed the lady softly. "Take
+care! That Eastern chap was fooling you, I'm sure."
+
+"Not at all,--not at all!" was the quick reply. "I got an expert's
+opinion. The star is worth the thousand dollars he asked."
+
+"A thousand dollars,--a thousand dollars!" repeated Miss Stella, in
+dismay. "And you would give me a thousand dollar star? Why, you must have
+money to burn, indeed!"
+
+"Well, I suppose I have," was the answer,--"much more than a lonely old
+fellow of sixty odd, without chick or child will ever need. Will you take
+the star, dear lady nurse?"
+
+"No," said Miss Stella, gently; "though I thank you for your generous
+thought of me, my good friend. But I have a better and a wiser investment
+for you. Have you forgotten this?" She took Dan's medal from the bag on
+her wrist.
+
+"By George, I _did_ forget it!" said the old man. "Somehow, it slipped my
+memory completely in our pleasant hurry. Poor Jack Farley's medal! You've
+found the chap that owns it, you say?"
+
+"Yes," was the answer--"a brave, sturdy, honest little chap, who stood by
+your poor old friend in his last lonely days, and helped him in his last
+lonely cruise, and took the medal from his dying hands as the last and
+only legacy he had to give. Would you consider him Jack Farley's heir,
+Captain Carleton?"
+
+"Most certainly I would," was the rejoinder.
+
+"Then make him his heir," she said softly.
+
+"Eh!--what? I don't understand," muttered the old gentleman.
+
+Then Miss Stella explained. It was such an explanation as only gentle
+speakers like Miss Stella can make. She told about bright, brave, plucky
+Dan and Aunt Winnie, of the scholarship at St. Andrew's and of the Little
+Sisters of the Poor. She told of the attic home over the Mulligans' for
+which Aunt Winnie was "pining," and of the dreams that Dan dreamed.
+
+"It would seem a pity," Miss Stella said, "for him to give up and go
+down."
+
+"By George, he must not,--he shall not!" said the old sailor. "You want me
+to do something for him? Out with it, my lady!"
+
+"Yes. I want you to invest, not in diamond stars, Captain, but in Jack
+Farley's medal. I was to negotiate the sale, you know."
+
+"Yes, yes! And you warned me you were going to fleece me; so go on,--go
+on! What is the boy's--what is your price?" asked the Captain.
+
+"A pension," said Miss Stella, softly, "the pension you would give Jack
+Farley--if he were here to claim it,--just the little pension an old
+sailor would ask for his last watch below. It will hold the little nest
+under the eaves that Danny calls home for the old aunt that he loves; it
+will steady the young wings for their flight to the stars; it will keep
+the young heart brave and pure and warm as only love and home can."
+
+"You're right,--you're right,--you're always right, dear lady! If old Jack
+were here, I'd pension him, as you say, and fling in a little extra for
+his grog and his pipe. Old Jack could have counted on me for four or five
+hundred a year. But a sturdy, strapping young chap like yours is worth a
+dozen groggy old salts. So name your figure, my lady. I have money to
+burn, as you say. Name your figure, dear lady, and I'll invest in your
+boy."
+
+"Old Jack's pension, then, Captain Carleton,--old Jack's pension for Aunt
+Winnie and Dan,--old Jack's pension, and nothing more."
+
+"It's theirs," was the hearty answer,--"or, rather, it's yours, my dear
+lady!"
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" she disclaimed. "The generous gift is all your own, dear
+friend,--all your own. And it will be repaid. Dan and his good old aunt
+may have no words to thank you, to bless you; but some day" (and the glad
+voice grew softer, sweeter),--"some day when life's long voyage is over
+for you, Captain, and the log-book is open to the Master's gaze--"
+
+"It will be a tough showing," interrupted the old man, gruffly,--"a tough
+showing through and through."
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" she said gently. "One entry, I am sure, will clear many
+a page, dear friend. One entry will give you safe anchorage--harbor
+rights; for has not the Master Himself said, 'As long as you did it to one
+of these My least brethren, you did it to Me'?"
+
+
+
+
+XXV.--GOING HOME.
+
+
+"We're to be off to-morrow," said Brother Bart, a little sadly. "And,
+though it will be a blessed thing to get back in the holy peace of St.
+Andrew's, with the boys all safe and sound--which is a mercy I couldn't
+expect,--to say nothing of laddie's father being drawn out of his
+wanderings into the grace of God, I'm sore-hearted at leaving Killykinick.
+You've been very good to us, Jeroboam,--both you and your brother, who is
+a deal wiser than at first sight you'd think. You've been true friends
+both in light and darkness; and may God reward you and bring you to the
+true faith! That will be my prayer for you night and day.--And now you're
+to pack up, boys, and get all your things together; for it's Father
+Regan's orders that we are to come back home."
+
+"Where is _our_ home, daddy?" asked Freddy, with lively interest. "For we
+can have a real true home now, can't we?"
+
+"I hope so, my boy." They were out on the smooth stretch of beach, where
+daddy, growing strong and well fast, spent most of his time, stretched out
+in one of Great-uncle Joe's cushiony chairs; while Roy and Rex crouched
+contentedly at his feet, or broke into wild frolic with Freddy on the
+rocks or in the sea. "I hope so; though I'm afraid I don't know much about
+making a home, my little Boy Blue!"
+
+"Oh, don't you, daddy?" said Freddy, ruefully. "I have always wanted a
+home so much,--a real true home, with curtains and carpets, and pictures
+on the walls, and a real fire that snaps and blazes."
+
+"Yes, I heard you say that before," answered his father, softly. "I think
+it was that little talk on the boat that brought me down, where I could
+take a peep at my homeless little boy again; though I was afraid Captain
+Jeb would find me out if I ventured to Killykinick. I was just making up
+my mind to risk it and go over, when this fever caught me."
+
+"But why--were you hiding, daddy? Why did you stay away so long?"
+
+"Life had grown very black for me; and I didn't want to make it black for
+you, Freddy. I lost faith and hope and love when I lost your mother. I
+couldn't settle down to a bare, lonely life without her. I felt I must be
+free,--free to wander where I willed. It was all wrong,--all wrong,
+Freddy. But daddy was in darkness, without any guiding star. So I left you
+to Uncle Tom, gave up my name, my home, and broke loose like a ship
+without rudder or sail. And where it led me, where you found me, you
+know."
+
+"Ah, yes!" Freddy laid his soft young cheek against his father's. "It was
+all wrong. But now you have come back; and everything is right again,
+Uncle Tom says; and we'll have a real home together. He said that, too,
+before he went away,--you and I would have a home, daddy."
+
+"We'll try," replied daddy, cheerfully. "With you and the dogs together,
+Freddy, we'll try. We'll get the house and the cushions and the carpets,
+and do our best."
+
+Going home! Dan was thinking of it, too, a little sadly, as somewhat later
+he stood on the stretch of rocks, looking out at the fading west. He was
+going home to "give up." Only yesterday morning a brief scrawl from Pete
+Patterson had informed him he would be ready for business next week, and
+Dan must come back with an answer--"Yes" or "No." So it was good-bye to
+St. Andrew's for Dan to-night; good-bye to all his hopes and dreams
+to-morrow. Something seemed to rise in Dan's throat at the thought.
+To-morrow he must go back, a college boy no longer, but to Pete
+Patterson's wagon and Pete Patterson's shop.
+
+And while he stood there alone, watching the deepening shadows gather over
+rock and reef and shoal where he had spent such happy days, there came a
+sudden burst of glad music over the waters, and around the bending shore
+of Killykinick came a fairy vision: "The Polly," fluttering with gay
+pennants, jewelled in colored light from stem to stern; "The Polly," laden
+with a crowd of merrymakers in most hilarious mood, coming on a farewell
+feast in charge of three white-capped and white-coated waiters; "The
+Polly," that swept triumphantly to the mended wharf (where the "Sary Ann"
+was slowly recuperating from her damages, in a fresh coat of paint and
+brand-new mainsail), and took undisputed possession of Killykinick.
+
+"I just had to come and say good-bye," declared Miss Polly; "and dad said
+I could make a party of it, if Marraine would take us in charge. And so
+we're to have a real, _real_ last good time."
+
+Then all sat down on the moonlit sands; and the victrola played its gayest
+tunes, and the white-capped waiters served good things that quite equalled
+Polly's last party. And when that was nearly over, and the guests were
+still snapping the French "kisses" and cracking sugar-shelled nuts, Dan
+found Miss Stella, who had been chatting with her late patient most of the
+evening, standing at his side. Perhaps it was the moonlight, but he
+thought he had never seen her look so lovely. Her eyes were like stars,
+and there was a soft rose-flush on her cheek, and the smile on her sweet
+lips seemed to kindle her whole face into radiance.
+
+"Come sit down on the rocks beside me, Danny,--Miss Winnie's Danny. I've
+got some news for you."
+
+"News for me?" Danny lifted his eyes; and Miss Stella saw that, in spite
+of all the fun and frolic around him, they looked strangely sad and dull.
+
+"You're not having a good time to-night, are you?" she asked softly.
+
+"Yes, I am--or at least I'm trying," said Dan, stoutly. "It was surely
+nice of you all to give us this send off. But--but, you see, I can't help
+feeling a little bad, because--because--" and he had to stop to clear the
+lump from his throat. "It seems to sort of end things for me."
+
+"O Danny, Danny, no it doesn't!" And now Miss Stella's eyes were stars
+indeed. "It's the beginning of things bright and beautiful for you."
+
+And then, in sweet, trembling, joyful tones, she told him all,--told him
+of Captain Carleton and the medal; of the pension that was to be his and
+Aunt Winnie's; of the kind, strong hand that had been stretched out to
+help him, that he might keep on without hindrance,--keep on his upward
+way.
+
+"To the stars, Danny," concluded the gentle speaker softly. "We must take
+the highest aim, even if we fail to reach it,--to the stars."
+
+"O Miss Stella,--dear, dear Miss Stella!" and the sob came surely now, in
+Dan's bewildered joy, his gratitude, his relief. "How good you are,--how
+good you are! Oh, I will try to deserve it all, Miss Stella! A home for
+Aunt Winnie, and St. Andrew's,--_St. Andrew's_ again!" And Dan sprang to
+his feet, and the college cry went ringing over the moonlit rocks. "It's
+St. Andrew's for Dan Dolan, now forever!"
+
+The rest of that evening seemed a bewildering dream to Dan,--more
+bewildering even than Miss Polly's party. The story of his medal and his
+luck went flying around Killykinick, with most dazzling additions. Before
+the guests departed, Dan was a hero indeed, adopted by a millionaire whose
+life his father or uncle or somebody had saved from sharks and whales
+fifty or seventy-five years ago.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" said Polly, as she shook hands for good-bye. "I always
+did say you were the nicest boy in the world. And now you needn't ever be
+a newsboy or bootblack again, Dan."
+
+"I'll see you again before very long," said Miss Stella, as he helped her
+on the boat, and she slipped a gold piece in his hand. "Here is the price
+of Jack Farley's medal. You must take Aunt Winnie home right away."
+
+"Oh, I will,--I will, indeed!" said Dan joyfully. "She will be back in
+Mulligan's as soon as I can get her there, you bet, Miss Stella!"
+
+"I'm durn sorry to see you go, matey!" said Captain Jeb next morning, as
+they pulled out the new sails of the "Sary Ann" for a start. "But whenever
+you want a whiff of salt air and a plunge in salt water, why, Killykinick
+is here and your job of second mate open to you."
+
+"Shake on that!" said Dan, gripping his old friend's hand. "If I know
+myself, I'll be down every summer."
+
+"Looks as if I owed you something for all that fishing," remarked old Neb,
+pulling out his leather wallet.
+
+"Not a cent!" said Dan, briskly. "I'm a monied man now, Neb,--a regular
+up-and-down plute. Keep the cash for some new nets next summer when we go
+fishing again."
+
+And so, with friendly words and wishes from all, even from Dud, whom
+recent events had quite knocked out of his usual grandeur, the whole party
+bade adieu to Killykinick. Freddy and his father were to remain a while at
+Beach Cliff with Father Tom, who was taking his holiday there.
+
+At Brother Bart's request, the home journey was to be made as much as
+possible by rail, so after the "Sary Ann," still a little stiff and creaky
+in the joints, had borne them to the steamboat, which in a few hours
+touched the mainland and made connections with the train, the travellers'
+route lay along scenes very different from the rugged rocks and sands they
+had left. As they swept by golden harvest fields and ripening orchards and
+vineyards whose rich yield was purpling in the autumn sun, good Brother
+Bart heaved a sigh of deepest content.
+
+"Sure you may say what you please about water, Danny lad, but God's
+blessing is on the good green land. If it be the Lord's will, I'll never
+leave it again; though we might have found worse places than Killykinick
+and those good old men there,--may God lead them to the Light!"
+
+And as the Limited Express made its schedule time, Pete Patterson was just
+closing up as usual at sundown, when a sturdy, brown-cheeked boy burst
+into his store,--a boy that it took Pete's keen eyes full half a minute to
+recognize.
+
+"Dan Dolan!" he cried at last,--"Dan Dolan, grown and fattened and slicked
+up like--like a yearling heifer! Danny boy, I'm glad to see you,--I'm glad
+to see you, sure! You've come to take the job?"
+
+"No, I haven't,--thank you all the same, Pete!" was the quick answer.
+"I've struck luck for sure,--luck with a fine old plute, who is ready to
+stake me for all I could earn here, and keep me at St. Andrew's."
+
+"Stake you for all you could earn here?" echoed Pete, in amazement.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it later," said Dan, breathlessly. "Just now I'm
+dumb struck, Pete. I came flying back to take up my old quarters at the
+Mulligans' and find the house shut up and everybody gone. Land! It did
+give me a turn, sure! I was counting on that little room upstairs, and all
+Aunt Winnie's things she left there, and Tabby and the stove and the blue
+teapot. But they're all gone." And Dan sank down on a big packer's box
+feeling that he was facing a dissolving world in which he had no place.
+
+"Oh, they're not far!" said Pete, a little gruffly; for Dan's tidings had
+been somewhat of a blow. "The old woman's father died and left a little
+bit of money, and they bought a tidy little place out on Cedar Place, not
+far from St. Mary's Church. You'll find them there. You've made up your
+mind for good and all to stick to the highbrows? I'd make it worth your
+while to come here."
+
+Dan rose from the packer's box and looked around at the hams and shoulders
+and lard buckets and answered out of the fulness of his grateful heart:
+
+"Yes, I've made up my mind, Pete. It's St. Andrew's for me,--St. Andrew's
+now and, I hope, forever. But--but if you want any help with writing or
+figuring, I'll come around Saturday nights and give you a lift; for I
+won't be far. I'm sticking to old friends and the old camping ground
+still."
+
+And, with this cheery assurance, Dan was off again to find the vanished
+roof tree that had been all he ever knew of home. He recalled the place.
+It was only a short walk from the college gate. Indeed, the row of cedars
+that fronted the little whitewashed house had been once the boundary of
+the college grounds. There was a bit of a garden in front, and a porch
+with late roses climbing over it, and--and--
+
+Dan stood stock-still for a moment,--then he flung open the little gate,
+and with a regular Sioux war-whoop dashed up the gravelled path; for
+there--there seated in Mrs. Mulligan's best rocker, with Tabby curled up
+at her feet--was Aunt Winnie herself, drinking a cup of tea!
+
+
+
+
+XXVI.--RAINBOWS.
+
+
+"Danny!" cried Aunt Winnie, clutching her teacup with trembling hand. "God
+save us, it's Danny himself!"
+
+"Nobody else," said Dan, as he caught her in a bearish hug and kissed the
+withered cheek again and again. It looked paler than when he had left
+her,--paler and thinner; and there were hollows under the patient eyes.
+
+"But what are you doing here, Aunt Win?" he asked in amazement.
+
+"Just spending the day, Danny. Mrs. Mulligan sent Molly for me this
+morning. She wanted me to see her new place, and to tell her what was to
+be done with my bit of things. She is thinking of renting her rooms, and
+my things are in the way. They are fine rooms, with rosebud paper on the
+walls, and a porch looking out at the church beyant; and she could be
+getting seven dollars a month for them. But she's got the table and stove
+and beds, and all our old furniture that nobody would want; so I've told
+her to send them off to-morrow to sell for what they will bring. Sure"
+(and the old voice trembled) "we'll never have any call for them again,
+Danny lad,--never again."
+
+"Oh, we won't?" said Danny, with another hug that came near doing for
+teacup completely. "Just take back your orders quick as you can, Aunt
+Winnie, I'm renting those rooms right now."
+
+"Sure, Danny,--Danny boy, have ye come back with a fever on ye?"
+
+"Yes," grinned Dan,--"regular gold fever, Aunt Winnie! Look at that!" He
+clapped the twenty dollar gold piece into Aunt Winnie's trembling hand.
+"That's for you, Aunt Winnie,--that's to rent those pink-flowered rooms."
+
+"Sure it's mad the poor boy is entirely!" cried Aunt Winnie, as Mrs.
+Mulligan and Molly came hurrying out on the porch.
+
+"Do I look it?" asked Dan, laughing into their startled faces.
+
+"Ye don't," said Mrs. Mulligan. "But spake out plain, and don't be
+bewildering the poor woman, Danny Dolan."
+
+And then Danny spoke out as plain as his breathless eagerness would
+permit, and told the story of the "pension."
+
+"It will be thirty-five dollars a month, Captain Carleton says; he'd have
+to throw in the five to poor old Nutty for grog and tobacco."
+
+"Ah, God save us,--God save us!" was all Aunt Winnie could murmur,
+tearfully.
+
+"And I guess thirty-five dollars will run those rosebud rooms of yours
+pretty safe and slick; won't they, Mrs. Mulligan? So put Aunt Winnie and
+me down as tenants right off."
+
+"I will,--I will!" answered Mrs. Mulligan, joyfully. "Sure my heart was
+like lead in my breast at the thought of giving up yer bit of things, Miss
+Winnie. But now,--now come along, Molly girl, and we'll be fixing the
+rooms, this minute. What's the good of yer going back to the Sisters at
+all?" And Mrs. Mulligan put a motherly arm around Aunt Winnie's trembling
+form. "Give her another cup of tea, Molly; for she's all done up with joy
+at having her own home and her own boy again, thank God for that same!"
+
+And then, leaving dear Aunt Winnie to this good friend's tender
+ministrations, Dan kept on his way to St. Andrew's, taking a flying leap
+over the college wall to the sunset walk, where perhaps he would find
+Father Mack saying his Office. He was not mistaken: his old friend was
+there, walking slowly under the arching trees. His face kindled into light
+as he stretched out a trembling hand.
+
+"I thought perhaps you would come here, my boy," he said. "I was just
+thanking God, Danny. Brother Bart has told us the good news. It is all
+right, as I hoped and prayed,--all right, as I _knew_ it would be, Danny.
+Now tell me, yourself, all about this wonderful blessing."
+
+And again this father and son sat down upon the broken grave slab, and
+Danny told Father Mack all.
+
+"Ah, it is the good God's hand!" the old priest said softly. "But this is
+only the start, my son. The climb is still before you,--a climb that may
+lead over steeps sharp and rough as the rocks of Killykinick."
+
+But the fading light seemed to aureole Father Mack's silvery head as he
+spoke.
+
+"You will keep on and up,--on and up; for God is calling you, my
+son,--calling you to heights where He leads His own--heights which as yet
+you can not see."
+
+The speaker laid his hand upon Dan's head in benediction that thrilled the
+boy's heart to its deepest depths,--a benediction that he never forgot;
+for it was Father Mack's last. Only a few days later the college bell's
+solemn note, sounding over the merry greetings of the gathering students,
+told that for the good old priest all the lessons of life were over.
+
+And Dan, climbing sturdily up the heights at his saintly guide's bidding,
+has found the way, so far, smoothed and softened beyond his hopes by his
+summer at Killykinick. Even his stumbling-stone Dud was removed to another
+college, his father having been ordered to a Western post. With Jim and
+Freddy as his friends, all the "high-steppers," old and young, of St.
+Andrew's were ready to welcome him into rank and line. And, with Aunt
+Winnie as administratrix of Captain Carleton's pension "there isn't a
+dacinter-looking boy in the college," as Mrs. Mulligan stoutly declares.
+
+How Aunt Winnie stretched out that pension only the Irish fairies, or
+perhaps the Irish angels, know. The little pink-flowered rooms have
+blossomed out into a very bower of comfort and cheer. There are frilly
+curtains at the windows, a rosy-hued lamp, and a stand of growing plants
+always in bloom. There are always bread and cheese and apple sauce, or
+something equally "filling," for hungry boys to eat.
+
+And when Aunt Winnie was fairly settled, who should appear but Miss
+Stella, who had come to nurse a dear old friend near by,--Miss Stella, who
+dropped in most naturally in her off hours to chat with dear old Aunt
+Winnie and take a cup of tea! And Freddy's daddy, who had plunged into
+life and law business with zest, often brought his big automobile round to
+take Freddy for a spin after study hours, and called on the way very
+frequently to take Miss Stella home.
+
+It was on one of those bright afternoons that they all went to look at the
+new house that was going up on a wooded hillside not very far from the
+college--the house that was to be Freddy's long-wished-for home. It had
+been a lot of fun watching it grow. Now it was nearly done,--the big
+pillared porch ready for its climbing roses; the pretty rooms waiting
+their rugs and curtains; the great stone chimney, that was to be the heart
+and life of things, rising in the center of all.
+
+"My! but this in fine!" said Freddy, who had not seen this crowning touch
+before. "Let's light it up, daddy,--let's light it up and see how it
+burns."
+
+And, dashing out for an armful of wood left by the builders, Freddy soon
+had a glorious blaze on the new hearthstone,--a blaze that, blending with
+the sunset streaming through the west windows, made things bright indeed.
+
+"This is great!" said Freddy. "And when we have the chairs and tables and
+cushions and curtains--who is going to pick out the cushions and curtains,
+dad?"
+
+"Oh, I suppose we can have them sent up from the store!" answered dad,
+anticipating such matters by pushing up a big packing box to the fire, to
+serve as a seat for their smiling guest.
+
+"Oh, can't you do it, daddy?"
+
+"George! no! I wouldn't know a curtain from a rug, my boy!"
+
+"And you don't know about dishes or cups, or pans to make gingerbread,"
+continued Freddy, the glow fading from his face as he realized all these
+masculine disabilities.
+
+"Not a thing," was dad's reply.
+
+"Gee!" said Freddy, in a much troubled voice. "We'll be right bad off for
+a real home, after all, daddy."
+
+"Perhaps we can find a nice old black mammy who will take care of us all,"
+observed daddy, his eyes twinkling almost as they used to twinkle in the
+days of little Boy Blue.
+
+"Yes, I suppose we can," said Freddy, with a wistful little sigh, "I
+suppose that is what we will _have_ to do, daddy. But I wish--it's going
+to be such a pretty house every other way,--I wish we could have a pretty
+lady to sit at the head of the table and pour our tea."
+
+"Would _I_ do, Freddy?" asked Miss Stella, stealing a soft little hand
+into his.
+
+"You, Miss Stella,--_you_,--_you_?" gasped Freddy. "Oh, that would be
+rip-roaring, sure enough! But you couldn't,--you wouldn't!"
+
+"I might," was the low answer; and Miss Stella arose and drew little Boy
+Blue to her loving heart. "I might come if you want me very much,
+Freddy,--so I promised daddy last night."
+
+"For there is no real right home without a mother, son," said daddy; and
+his arm went around to meet Miss Stella's until Freddy was locked in their
+double clasp. And, looking from one glad face to the other, a thousand
+rainbows seemed to burst upon his troubled sky, and little Boy Blue
+understood.
+
+So there was a wedding in the little church at Beach Cliff when the
+hydrangeas were in bloom the next summer,--a wedding that drew the
+Forester clan from far and near. Even the two grandmothers, after they had
+inspected the Neville family tree through their lorgnettes, declared their
+satisfaction that Stella was going to do the proper thing at last.
+
+Daddy was the daddy of old times, before the dark clouds of doubt and
+despair had gathered around him and he had drifted about, the derelict Mr.
+Wirt; while Miss Stella, veiled in soft mists of tulle, looked what she
+had been, to him, what she would ever be to him--his guiding star. Polly,
+who was the only bridesmaid (for so Marraine would have it), carried a
+basket of flowers as big as herself; Father Tom said the Nuptial Mass; and
+Freddy stood at daddy's side, the very happiest of "best men." And Dan who
+was off on his summer vacation at Killykinick, came down in the "Sary
+Ann," with Captain Jeb slicked up for the occasion in real "store
+clothes." And there was a wonderful wedding feast at the Forester home,
+with a cake three stories high, and three tables full of wedding presents;
+Captain Carleton's diamond star, that he _would_ send, shining with
+dazzling light among the rest.
+
+And, then, such a house-warming followed as surpassed Freddy's wildest
+dreams with a real fire leaping on the hearth, with the rugs and curtains
+and cushions just right; for Miss Stella (or Marraine as she chose that
+Freddy should call her,--for, as she said, "Your own dear mother is in
+heaven, my boy"),--Miss Stella had picked them all out herself. And Father
+Tom beamed happily on his reconstructed family; and the Fathers and
+Brothers and boys from St. Andrew's dropped in without ceremony; for
+Marraine had welcome for all, now that she was a fixed star in her real
+home and her real place.
+
+Though dear Aunt Winnie has dropped at least ten years of her life, and
+old Neb's whale oil has done more for her rheumatism than all the store
+medicines she ever tried; though more joy and comfort has come into these
+sunset years than she ever dared hope, she still sits on her little porch
+in the evening, with a look in her old eyes that tells she is dreaming.
+
+"What do you see, Aunt Win?" asked Dan one evening as after a tough pull
+up the Hill of Knowledge, he bounded up the Mulligan stairs to drop at her
+feet and lay his head in her lap.
+
+"Sure it's not for an old woman to spake, Danny dear!" she answered again
+as of old. "It's too great, too high. What was it that holy saint, Father
+Mack, said to you, alanna? Sometimes I forget the words."
+
+"That it would be a hard climb for me against winds and storms," said Dan.
+"And, golly, it will! I am finding that out myself, Aunt Win."
+
+"Go on, lad! There was more,--there was more," said the old woman,
+eagerly.
+
+After a moment's pause, Dan added, in a voice that had grown low and
+reverent:
+
+"That God was calling me to His own. And, Aunt Win,--Aunt Win" (there was
+a new light in the blue eyes uplifted to her face), "I am finding that
+out, too."
+
+But it is a long way to the starlit heights of Aunt Winnie's dream,--a
+long, hard way, as Danny knows. We leave him climbing sturdily on over its
+rocky steeps and sunlit stretches, but finding many a sunlit resting place
+on the way. Brightest of all these to Danny is Killykinick, where he goes
+every summer to spend a happy holiday,--to boat, to swim, to fish, to be
+"matey" again with the two old men, who look for his coming as the joy of
+the year.
+
+"It's hurrah! hurrah, Aunt Win!" he wrote jubilantly one glad summer day.
+"Your Danny is at work before time, doing a little missionary business
+already. Two real true converts, Aunt Win,--baptized yesterday! It was the
+'Padre's preaching' that set Jeb thinking first, and then he got hold of
+some of Great-uncle Joe's books. I sort of took a hand, and altogether
+we've got the dear old chaps into the fold. Peter and Andrew,--they chose
+the names themselves, even good old Neb's dull wits seeming to wake at his
+Master's call. Brother Bart's prayers for his old friends have been
+answered. The Light is shining on Killykinick, Aunt Win,--the Light is
+shining on Killykinick!"
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KILLYKINICK ***
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