the defect was inherited, and the blame of the rupture not
entirely his. He ran away at least to sea; suffered horrible
maltreatment, which seemed to have rather hardened than enlightened him;
ran away again to shore in a South American port; proved his capacity
and made money, although still a child; fell among thieves and was
robbed; worked back a passage to the States, and knocked one morning at
the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The
introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The
sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in
tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the
spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said,
"even when she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake her
thimble and her old curls at me out of the window as I was going by; I
always thought she was a kind of pleasant old girl. Well, when she came
to the door that morning, I told her so, and that I was stone-broke; and
she took me right in, and fetched out the pie." She clothed him, taught
him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him to her
hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died bequeathed him
her possessions. "She was a good old girl," he would say; "I tell you,
Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the old lady talking a
_pasear_ in the garden, and the old man scowling at us over the pickets.
She lived right next door to the old man, and I guess that's just what
took me there. I wanted him to know that I was badly beat, you see, and
would rather go to the devil than to him. What made the dig harder, he
had quarrelled with the old lady about me and the orchard: I guess that
made him rage. Yes, I was a beast when I was young; but I was always
pretty good to the old lady." Since then he had prospered, not
uneventfully, in his profession; the old lady's money had fallen in
during the voyage of the _Gleaner_, and he was now, as soon as the smoke
of that engagement cleared away, secure of his ship. I suppose he was
about thirty: a powerful, active man, with a blue eye, a thick head of
hair, about the colour of oakum and growing low over the brow;
clean-shaved and lean about the jaw; a good singer; a good performer on
that sea-instrument, the accordion; a quick observer, a close reasoner;
when he pleased, of a really elegant address; and when he chose, the
greatest brute upon the seas.

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