rying into Ellanory's poverty.' He was right down mad, but he couldn't
find nothing out. So I think it may be the ghost of father, drowned at
sea, bringing tea and coffee, and sometimes a dress, and a pair of
shoes, too, to keep mother warm."

Levin Dennis, standing against the tiller, seemed to Jack Wonnell to be
fair and spiritual as a woman, as his comely brow and large eyes grew
serious with this relation of his father's mysterious fate. His dark
auburn hair, in short ringlets parted in the middle, gave his sunburnt
countenance a likeness to some of the old gentle families with which he
was allied, his father having been a son of younger sons, in a date when
primogeniture prevailed in all this bay region; and therefore,
possessing nothing, he went into the war against England as a sailor,
and his family influence obtained for him command of the new privateer
launched on the Manokin, the _Ida_, which set sail with a good crew and
superior armament, amid the acclaims of all Somerset, and, sailing past
the Capes into the ocean with all her bunting flying, slid down the
farther world to everlasting silence and the vapors of mystery.

His widow waited long and patiently with this only boy, Levin, a
scarcely lisping child, and stories of every kind were current; that the
captain had been captured and hanged by the enemy, and the ship burned
or condemned; that he had hoisted the black flag and become a pirate and
quit the western world for the East India waters; and finally, that the
_Ida_ foundered off Guiana and every soul was drowned.

The widow, a beautiful woman, neglected by her husband's connection, who
were sullen at the loss of their investment and their expected profits
from the vessel, lived in the little house she had owned before her
marriage, and sank into the plainer class of people, almost losing her
identity with the ruling families to which her son was kin, but in her
humbler class highly respected and solicited in marriage.

She was still young and fair, and Jimmy Phoebus, a hale bachelor, and
captain of a trading schooner, had endeavored to marry her for years,
and held on to his hope patiently, exercising many kind offices for her,
though his means were limited, and he had poor kin looking to him for
help. She feared the absent lover might be alive and return to find her
another's wife.

So her son, growing up without a father's discipline, and being too
respectable, it was supposed, to put to a tr