e captain of the Nancy Jane, who had
sailed to the Potomac for many years, and Sanford Browne. While the two
stood in conversation by the bowl of strong rum punch, little Sanford
strolled about the deck, shyly scrutinizing the faces of the convicts
and being scrutinized by them. The women tried to talk with him, but
their rather battered countenances frightened the boy, and he slipped
away. At last he planted himself before old Cappy, whose bronzed face
under a new powdered wig produced a curious effect.

"Where did you come from?" demanded the child, with awakened curiosity.

The would-be schoolmaster started at this question, gazed a moment at
the child, and said, "God!" between his teeth.

"Lawr! 'e's one uv yer scholars, Cappy," said one of the women, in
derision. "Ye'll be a-l'arnin' 'im lots uv words 'e ain't never 'eerd
uv afore. Yer givin' the young un a prime lesson in swearin' to begin."

But Cappy made no reply. He only looked more eagerly at the child, and
wiped his brow with his sleeve, disarranging his periwig in doing so.
Then, changing the form of his exclamation but not its meaning, he
muttered, "The devil!"

"W'atever's the matter?" said the woman. "You're fetching in God an'
the devil both. Is the young un one uv yer long-lost brothers, Cappy?"

"What's your name?" demanded Cappy of the boy, without heeding the
woman's gabble.

"Sanford Browne."

The perspiration stood in beads on the man's forehead, and the veins
were visibly distended. "Looks like as if he hadn't got any bigger in
more'n twenty years," he soliloquized. Then he said to the boy in an
eager whisper, for his voice was dry and husky, "What's yer pappy's
name, lad?"

"He's Sanford Browne, too. That's him a-talking to Captain Jackson at
t'other end of the ship. He was stole when he was a little boy by a
mean old captain, and brought over here and sold, just like you folks,"
and the lad made the remark general by looking around him. "He's got
rich now, and he's got more'n a thousand acres of land," said the
little Sanford, boastfully, thinking perhaps that his father's success
might encourage the woe-begone set before him. "But I reckon that mean
old captain'll ketch it if pappy ever sets eyes on to him," he added.

"Lawr! now w'atever's the matter uv you, Cappy?" put in the woman
again. "A body'd think you must 'a' been that very cap'n yer own self."

The man turned fiercely upon the garrulous woman and seized her throat
with