it to you."

The change from despair to hope brought the captain to his feet.
"Abner, if you'll git me that book, I'll give you twenty-five dollars,"
he promised earnestly. "But mind you don't tell what you want it for."

"I won't tell anybody that don't know about it already," declared
Abner with perfect truthfulness. "I'll have to be awful di-plo-mat-ic,"
he went on, "or Pegleg will be sure to suspect something. And I pity
you an' M'lissy if he got hold of the real reason why you wanted it.
Pegleg can scatter news faster than a pea dropper can drop peas."

With his clam hoe and bucket under his arm, Abner appeared at the
door of Pegleg's shanty the next afternoon.

"Thought I'd dig a mess o' clams for supper," he explained casually,
"an' seeing's I was passin', I dropped in. Some time since you an'
me crossed the line on the old Almeda, ain't it?"

"A matter of twenty year," agreed Pegleg.

"Them was great days," reminiscenced Abner. "Do you remember how we
used to read your 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony'? I was thinkin'
about it only yesterday."

Pegleg grinned. "I paid fifty cents for that book," he remarked.
"An' I ain't never had any real use for it. I've got it now in my
old dunnage bag."

"I'd kind o' like to see it, if it's handy," suggested Abner.
"The tide's risin', but I guess I've got a few minutes to spare."

Pegleg disappeared into the shanty and returned after some time with
a dog-eared volume, minus a portion of its pages, and with the edges
of the remainder strangely scalloped.

"Th' pesky rats has be'n chewin' it," he complained loudly.
"They've clean e't up the first chapter."

Abner drew a secret breath of relief. The "How to Propose" chapter
was not the first one. Eagerly he turned the battered volume over.

"If you 'll sell it, I'd like to have it," he remarked carelessly.
"Half of the pages is e't up, so I s'pose you'll sell it for half
price."

"Make it thirty-five cents an' you can have it," bargained Pegleg.
"The rats ain't gnawed into the readin' so awful bad, only in the
first chapter."

"Wall, thirty-five then, as you're an old shipmate," conceded Abner.

Pegleg looked at him shrewdly, as he laid down three dimes and a
nickel.

"I didn't know but mebbe you was buyin' it for Captain Burgess," he
hazarded. "He's boardin' to your house, an' folks say he's courtin'
M'lissy Macy."

"Folks is always sayin' things," responded Abner. "Mebbe Enoch might
know a 'Guide to C