y mother, sir?"

Now, Mrs. James Bowdoin was an august person; and here McMurtagh's
anxiety led him to interfere at any cost. An ill-favored, slight man
was he, stooping of habit; and he came in rubbing his hands and
looking anxiously, one eye on the father, the other on the son, as his
oddly protuberant eyes almost enabled him to do.

"There is a ship coming up the harbor, sir, full-laden, and I think
she flies the signal of James Bowdoin's Sons."

"Damn James Bowdoin's Sons, sir!" says Mr. James Bowdoin. "And as for
you, sir, not a stick or shingle shall you have"--

"If you'll only take the girl, you're welcome to the house, sir," says
Mr. James.

"Oh, I am, am I? Then, by gad, sir, I'll take both houses, and Sam
Dowse's daughter'll live in one, and your mother and I in the other!"

"Sam Dowse's daughter?"

"Yes, sir, Miss Abby Dowse. Have you any objections?"

"Why, she--she's the other arrangement," says Mr. James.

"Oh, she is, is she?"

Mr. James Bowdoin hesitated a moment, as if in search of some
withering reply, but failed to find it.

"Humph! I thought it was time you came to your senses. Now, here's
the keys, d'ye see? And the house was old Judge Allerton's; it's too
large for his daughter, and, now that you'll marry the girl I've got
for you, I'll let you have it."

"I shall marry what girl I like," says Mr. James; "and as for the
house, damme if I'll take it,--not a stick, sir, not a shingle!"

Mr. James Bowdoin looked at his son for one moment, speechless; then
he slammed out of the room. Mr. James put his foot on the desk and
whistled. McMurtagh rubbed his hands.

IV.

The office in which Mr. James found himself was a small, square, sunny
corner room with four windows, in the third story of the upper angle
of the long block of granite warehouses that lined the wharf. Below
him was the then principal commercial street of the city, full of
bustle, noisy with drays; at the side was the slip of the dock itself,
with its warm, green, swaying water, upon which a jostled crowd of
various craft was rocking sleepily in the summer morning. The floor
of the room was bare. Between the windows, on one side, was an open,
empty stove; on the other were two high desks, with stools. An
eight-day clock ticked comfortably upon the wall, and on either side
of it were two pictures, wood-cuts, eked out with rude splashes of red
and blue by some primitive process of lithography: the one represented
t