hanging to rusty big-headed
nails in the wall. I saw some great lumps of coral, and large, rough
shells, a great hornet's nest, and a monstrous lobster-shell. The cap'n
had cobbled and tied up some remarkable old chairs for the accommodation
of himself and his friends.

"What a nice place!" said Kate in a frank, delighted way which could not
have failed to be gratifying.

"Well, no," said the cap'n, with his slow smile, "it ain't what you'd
rightly call 'nice,' as I know of: it ain't never been cleared out all
at once since I began putting in. There's nothing that's worth anything,
either, to anybody but me. Wife, she's said to me a hundred times, 'Why
don't you overhaul them old things and burn 'em?' She's al'ays at me
about letting the property, as if it were a corner-lot in Broadway.
That's all women-folks know about business!" And here the captain caught
himself tripping, and looked uneasy for a minute. "I suppose I might
have let it for a fish-house, but it's most too far from the shore to be
handy--and--well--there are some things here that I set a good deal by."

"Isn't that a sword-fish's sword in that piece of wood?" Kate asked
presently; and was answered that it was found broken off as we saw it,
in the hull of a wreck that went ashore on Blue P'int when the captain
was a young man, and he had sawed it out and kept it ever
since,--fifty-nine years. Of course we went closer to look at it, and we
both felt a great sympathy for this friend of ours, because we have the
same fashion of keeping worthless treasures, and we understood perfectly
how dear such things may be.

"Do you mind if we look round a little?" I asked doubtfully, for I knew
how I should hate having strangers look over my own treasury. But
Captain Sands looked pleased at our interest, and said cheerfully that
we might overhaul as much as we chose. Kate discovered first an old
battered wooden figure-head of a ship,--a woman's head with long curly
hair falling over the shoulders. The paint was almost gone, and the dust
covered most of what was left: still there was a wonderful spirit and
grace, and a wild, weird beauty which attracted us exceedingly; but the
captain could only tell us that it had belonged to the wreck of a Danish
brig which had been driven on the reef where the lighthouse stands now,
and his father had found this on the long sands a day or two afterward.
"That was a dreadful storm," said the captain. "I've heard the old folks
tel