iterally true. Captain Jim had the
gift of the born storyteller, whereby "unhappy, far-off things" can be
brought vividly before the hearer in all their pristine poignancy.

Anne and Gilbert laughed and shivered over his tales, and once Anne
found herself crying. Captain Jim surveyed her tears with pleasure
shining from his face.

"I like to see folks cry that way," he remarked. "It's a compliment.
But I can't do justice to the things I've seen or helped to do. I've
'em all jotted down in my life-book, but I haven't got the knack of
writing them out properly. If I could hit on jest the right words and
string 'em together proper on paper I could make a great book. It
would beat A Mad Love holler, and I believe Joe'd like it as well as
the pirate yarns. Yes, I've had some adventures in my time; and, do
you know, Mistress Blythe, I still lust after 'em. Yes, old and
useless as I be, there's an awful longing sweeps over me at times to
sail out--out--out there--forever and ever."

"Like Ulysses, you would

'Sail beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars until you die,'"

said Anne dreamily.

"Ulysses? I've read of him. Yes, that's just how I feel--jest how all
us old sailors feel, I reckon. I'll die on land after all, I s'pose.
Well, what is to be will be. There was old William Ford at the Glen
who never went on the water in his life, 'cause he was afraid of being
drowned. A fortune-teller had predicted he would be. And one day he
fainted and fell with his face in the barn trough and was drowned.
Must you go? Well, come soon and come often. The doctor is to do the
talking next time. He knows a heap of things I want to find out. I'm
sorter lonesome here by times. It's been worse since Elizabeth Russell
died. Her and me was such cronies."

Captain Jim spoke with the pathos of the aged, who see their old
friends slipping from them one by one--friends whose place can never be
quite filled by those of a younger generation, even of the race that
knows Joseph. Anne and Gilbert promised to come soon and often.

"He's a rare old fellow, isn't he?" said Gilbert, as they walked home.

"Somehow, I can't reconcile his simple, kindly personality with the
wild, adventurous life he has lived," mused Anne.

"You wouldn't find it so hard if you had seen him the other day down at
the fishing village. One of the men of Peter Gautier's boat made a
nasty remark about some girl along the sh