ent
over to Pinch-a-Penny's office and allowed he'd pay his father's debt.
Pinch-a-Penny give un a clap on the back, and says: "You is an honest
lad, Tom Lane! I knowed you was. I'm proud t' have your name on my
books!"--and that heartened Tom to continue. And after that Tom kept
hacking away on his father's debt. In good years Pinch-a-Penny would
say: "She's comin' down, Tom. I'll just apply the surplus." And in bad
he'd say: "You isn't quite cotched up with your own self this season,
b'y. A little less pork this season, Tom, an' you'll square this here
little balance afore next. I wisht this whole harbor was as honest as
you. No trouble, then," says he, "t' do business in a business-like
way."

When Tom got over the hill--fifty and more--his father's debt, with
interest, according to Pinch-a-Penny's figures, which Tom had no
learning to dispute, was more than it ever had been; and his own was
as much as he ever could hope to pay. And by that time Pinch-a-Penny
Peter was rich, and Long Tom Lane was gone sour.

* * * * *

In the fall of the year when Tom Lane was fifty-three he went up to
St. John's in Pinch-a-Penny Peter's supply-schooner. Nobody knowed
why. And Tom made a mystery of it. But go he would. And when the
schooner got back 'twas said that Tom Lane had vanished in the city
for a day. Why? Nobody knowed. Where? Nobody could find out. Tom
wouldn't tell, nor could the gossips gain a word from his wife. And,
after that, Tom was a changed man; he mooned a deal, and he would talk
no more of the future, but dwelt upon the shortness of a man's days
and the quantity of his sin, and labored like mad, and read the
Scriptures by candlelight, and sot more store by going to church and
prayer-meeting than ever afore. Labor? Ecod, how that poor man labored
through the winter! While there was light! And until he fair dropped
in his tracks of sheer weariness! 'Twas back in the forest--hauling
fire-wood with the dogs and storing it away back of his little cottage
under Lend-a-Hand Hill.

"Dear man!" says Peter; "you've firewood for half a dozen winters."

"They'll need it," says Tom.

"Ay," says Peter; "but will you lie idle next winter?"

"Next winter?" says Tom. And he laughed. "Oh, next winter," says he,
"I'll have another occupation."

"Movin' away, Tom?"

"Well," says Tom, "I is an' I isn't."

There come a day in March weather of that year when seals was thick on
the floe off G