over and kissing him.

And so for a time the remembrance of Scootsy's epithet faded out of the
boy's mind.

CHAPTER XIV

HIGH WATER AT YARDLEY

Ten years have passed away.

The sturdy little fellow in knee-trousers is a lad of seventeen, big
and strong for his age; Tod is three years older, and the two are still
inseparable. The brave commander of the pirate ship is now a
full-fledged fisherman and his father's main dependence. Archie is
again his chief henchman, and the two spend many a morning in Tod's
boat when the blue-fish are running. Old Fogarty does not mind it; he
rather likes it, and Mother Fogarty is always happier when the two are
together.

"If one of 'em gits overboard," she said one day to her husband,
"t'other kin save him."

"Save him! Well, I guess!" he replied. "Salt water skims off Archie
same's if he was a white bellied gull; can't drown him no more'n you
kin a can buoy."

The boy has never forgotten Scootsy's epithet, although he has never
spoken of it to his mother--no one knows her now by any other name. She
thought the episode had passed out of his mind, but she did not know
everything that lay in the boy's heart. He and Tod had discussed it
time and again, and had wondered over his own name and that of his
nameless father, as boys wonder, but they had come to no conclusion. No
one in the village could tell them, for no one ever knew. He had asked
the doctor, but had only received a curious answer.

"What difference does it make, son, when you have such a mother? You
have brought her only honor, and the world loves her the better because
of you. Let it rest until she tells you; it will only hurt her heart if
you ask her now."

The doctor had already planned out the boy's future; he was to be sent
to Philadelphia to study medicine when his schooling was over, and was
then to come into his office and later on succeed to his practice.

Captain Holt would have none of it.

"He don't want to saw off no legs," the bluff old man had blurted out
when he heard of it. "He wants to git ready to take a ship 'round Cape
Horn. If I had my way I'd send him some'er's where he could learn
navigation, and that's in the fo'c's'le of a merchantman. Give him a
year or two before the mast. I made that mistake with Bart--he loafed
round here too long and when he did git a chance he was too old."

Report had it that the captain was going to leave the lad his money,
and had therefore a right to