t the thought of his poverty. But even in that hour of
temptation he did not repent that he had refused all part and lot in the
ship by which Captain Blatherem's money was made, for he knew every
timber of it to be seasoned by the groans and saturated with the sweat
of human agony. True love is a natural sacrament; and if ever a young
man thanks God for having saved what is noble and manly in his soul, it
is when he thinks of offering it to the woman he loves. Nevertheless,
the India-shawl story cost him a night's rest; nor was it till Miss
Persimmon had ascertained, by a private confabulation with Katy's
mother, that she had indignantly rejected it, and that she treated the
Captain "real ridiculous," that he began to take heart. "He ought not,"
he said, "to stand in her way now, when he had nothing to offer. No, he
would leave Katy free to do better, if she could; he would try his luck,
and if, when he came home from the next voyage, Katy was disengaged,
why, then he would lay all at her feet."

And so George was going to sea with a secret shrine in his soul, at
which he was to burn unsuspected incense.

But, after all, the mortal maiden whom he adored suspected this private
arrangement, and contrived--as women will--to get her own key into the
lock of his secret temple; because, as girls say, "she was _determined_
to know what was there." So, one night, she met him quite accidentally
on the sea-sands, struck up a little conversation, and begged him in
such a pretty way to bring her a spotted shell from the South Sea like
the one on his mother's mantel-piece, and looked so simple and childlike
in saying it, that our young man very imprudently committed himself by
remarking, that, "When people had rich friends to bring them all the
world from foreign parts, he never dreamed of her wanting so trivial a
thing."

Of course Katy "didn't know what he meant,--she hadn't heard of any rich
friends." And then came something about Captain Blatherem; and Katy
tossed her head, and said, "If anybody wanted to insult her, they might
talk to her about Captain Blatherem,"--and then followed this, that, and
the other till finally, as you might expect, out came all that never was
to have been said; and Katy was almost frightened at the terrible
earnestness of the spirit she had evoked. She tried to laugh, and ended
by crying, and saying she hardly knew what; but when she came to herself
in her own room at home, she found on her finger