skippers ain't
born ev'ry minute--and they knowed it. I've been turnin' 'em in ten
per cent. on her, and that's good property. I've got an eighth into
her myself, and with a man as good as I am to run her, I shouldn't
need to worry about doin' anything else all my life--me a single man
with no one dependent. I reckon I'll sell. Shipmasters ain't what
they used to be."

"Better leave it where it is," counselled Jerry, his cautious thrift
dominating even in that hour of death. "Land-sharks is allus lookin'
out sharp for sailormen that git on shore."

"It's why I don't dast to go into business--me that's follered the
sea so long," returned the skipper, nursing his aching leg.

"Then do as I tell ye to do," said the old man on the bed. "It may
be a come-down for a man that's had men under him all his life, but
it amounts to more'n five hundred a year, sure and stiddy. It's
something to do, and you couldn't stand it to loaf--you that's always
been so active. It ain't reskin' anything, and with all the passin'
and the meetin' folks, and the gossipin' and the chattin', and all
that, all your time is took up. It's honer'ble, it's stiddy. Leave
your money where it is, take my place, and keep this job in the
family."

The two men were talking in a little cottage at the end of a long
covered bridge. A painted board above the door heralded the fact that
the cottage was the toll-house, and gave the rates of toll.

"It's Providence that has sent you here jest as I was bein' took out
of the world," went on Uncle Jerry. "You're my only rel'tive. I'm
leavin' you the three thousand I've accumulated. I want to leave you
the job, too. I--"

A hoarse hail outside interrupted. The Cap'n, scowling, shuffled out
and came in, jingling some pennies in his brown hand.

"I feel like a hand-organ monkey every time I go out there," he
muttered.

"I tell ye," protested the old man, as earnestly as his feebleness
would permit, "there's lots of big business in this world that don't
need so long a head as this one does--bein' as how you're goin' to
run it shipshape. You need brains; that you do, nephy. It'll keep
you studyin' all the time. When you git interested in it you ain't
never goin' to have time to be lonesome. There's the plain hello folks
to be treated one way, the good-day folks, the pass-the-time-o'-day
folks, the folks that need the tip o' the hat--jest for politeness,
and not because you're beneath 'em," he hastened to add, noti