pupil. Even Polly Samson derived benefit from Baldwin's want of
knowledge, for, being remarkably intelligent for her years, and having
been well taught, she took great pleasure in enlightening his darkness.

"How is it," she asked one day, while sitting on the cabin skylight and
looking up in the man's rugged countenance, "how is it that you are so
stupid?"

Burr, who was steering, gave the wheel a turn, looked up at the
mast-head, then round the horizon, then down at his questioner with a
bland smile, and said--

"Well now, Miss Polly, d'ee know, that's wot I can't exactly tell.
P'r'aps it's 'cause of a nat'ral want of brains, or, maybe, 'cause the
brains is too much imbedded in fat--for I'm a fleshy man, as you see--
or, p'r'aps it's 'cause I never went to school, my parients bein' poor,
uncommon poor, though remarkably honest. I've sometimes thought, w'en
meditatin' on the subject, that my havin' bin born of a Friday may have
had somethin' to do with it."

"Oh, Baldwin," said Polly with a little laugh, "surely you can't believe
that. Father says it's all nonsense about Friday being an unlucky day."

"P'r'aps it is, an' p'r'aps it ain't," returned the cautious seaman. "I
regard your father, my dear, as a deeply learned man, and would give in,
if I could, to wotever he says, but facts is facts, and opinions is
opinions, you can't change that, nohow you fix it. Wot's the cap'n's
opinions, now, as to ghosts?"

"He don't believe in 'em at all," was Polly's prompt answer. "No more
do I, for father knows everything, and he's always right."

"He's a lucky man to have you, Polly, and there's a lucky boy knockin'
about the world somewheres lookin' out for you. A good daughter, it's
said, inwariably makes a good wife; which you don't understand just now,
but you'll come to in course of time. Hows'ever, as I wos observin',
I've been of the same opinion as your father till two nights ago, when I
heard a ghost right under the deck, it seemed to me, blow my hammock,
where there's nothin' but ship's stores and rats."

"Heard a ghost!" exclaimed Polly, with opening eyes.

"Ay, an' seed 'im too," said Burr. "Night before yesterday I heer'd 'im
as plain as I hear myself. He wos groanin', an' it's quite impossible
that a tar-barrel, or a cask, or a rat, could groan. The only thing
that puzzled me wos that he seemed to snore; more than that he sneezed
once or twice. Now, I never heard it said that a ghost could slee