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rearranged and decked themselves out to please his fancy. I confess, too, that his enthusiasm rekindled, for a moment, my third-reader interest in "a wet sheet and a flowing sea" and "a wind that follows fast." We have all loved well the sea of our fancy.

"Grand, woman!" he exclaimed, turning to Aunt Amanda, and still a-tremble. "Splendid!"

Aunt Amanda fixed him with her gray eye. "I don't know," she said, softly. "But I know that the say took me father from me when I was a wee maid."

The Scotsman bent his head over his plate, lower and lower still. His fervour departed, and his face, when he looked up, was full of sympathy. Of a sudden my ears hearkened again to the growling breakers, and to the wind, as it ran past, leaping from sea to wilderness; and my spirit felt the coming of the dark.

smiling indulgence with my youth. "They was fish a-plenty when-when-when I were young. 'Tis not what it used t' be -no, no, zur; not at all. Sure, zur, I been goin' t' the grounds off the Mull since I were seven years old. Since I were seven ! I be eighty-three now, zur. Seventy-six

year, zur, I has fished out o' this here harbour."

Uncle Zeb stopped to wheeze a bit. He was out of breath with this long speech. And when he had wheezed a bit, a spasm of hard coughing took him. He was on the verge of the last stage of consumption, was Uncle Zeb.

""Tis a fine harbour t' fish from, zur," he gasped. "They be none better. Leastways, so they tells me-them that's cruised about a deal. Sure, I've never seen another. 'Tis t' Conch' I've wanted t' go since I were a young feller. I'll see un yet, zur—sure, an' I will."

"You are eighty-three?" said I.

1 Some miles distant.

"I be the oldest man t' the harbour, zur. I marries the maids an' the young fellers when they's no parson about."

"You have fished out of this harbour for seventy-six years ?" said I, in vain trying to comprehend the deprivation and dull toil of that long life-trying to account for the childlike smile which had continued to the end of it.

"Ay, zur," said Uncle Zeb. "said Uncle Zeb. "But, sure,

they be plenty o' time t' see Conch yet. Me father were ninety when he died. I be only eighty-three."

Uncle Zeb tottered up the hill. Soon the dusk swallowed his old hulk. I never saw him again.

We were seated on the Head, high above the sea, watching the fleet of punts come from the Mad Mull grounds and from the nets along shore, for it was evening. Jack had told me much of the lore of lobstercatching and squid-jigging. Of winds and tides and long breakers he had given me

solemn warnings-and especially of that little valley down which the gusts came, no man knew from where. He had imparted certain secrets secrets concerning the whereabouts of gulls' nests and juniperberry patches, for I had won his confidence. I had been informed that Uncle Tom Bull's punt was in hourly danger of turning over because her spread of canvas was "scandalous" great, that Bill Bludgell kept the "surliest dog t' the harbour," that the "goaats was wonderful hard t' find" in the fog, that a brass bracelet would cure salt-water sores on the wrists, that I cannot recall it all. He had "mocked" a goat, a squid, a lamb, old George Walker at prayer, and “Uncle" Ruth berating "Aunt" Simon for leaving the splitting-table unclean.

Then he sang this song, in a thin, sweet treble, which was good to hear:

66

“Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,
When daddy comes home from swilin','
1 Sealing.

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