e
last, she found him and her uncle examining one or two dirty and well-worn
charts of the ocean. As she entered, the conversation invariably was
changed; nor was Mrs. White ever permitted to be present at one of these
secret conferences.

Not only was the schooner purchased, and coppered, and launched, and
preparations made to fit her for sea, but "Young Gar'ner" was appointed to
command her! As respects Roswell Gardiner, or "Gar'ner," as it would be
almost thought a breach of decorum, in Suffolk, not to call him, there was
no mystery. Six-and-twenty years before the opening of our legend, he had
been born on Oyster Pond itself, and of one of its best families. Indeed,
he was known to be a descendant of Lyon Gardiner, that engineer who had
been sent to the settlement of the lords Saye and Seal, and Brook, since
called Saybrook, near two centuries before, to lay out a town and a fort.
This Lyon Gardiner had purchased of the Indians the island in that
neighbourhood, which still bears his name. This establishment on the
island was made in 1639; and now, at an interval of two hundred and nine
years, it is in possession of its ninth owner, all having been of the name
and blood of its original patentee. This is great antiquity for America,
which, while it has produced many families of greater wealth, and renown,
and importance, than that of the Gardiners, has seldom produced any of
more permanent local respectability. This is a feature in society that we
so much love to see, and which is so much endangered by the uncertain and
migratory habits of the people, that we pause a moment to record this
instance of stability, so pleasing and so commendable, in an age and
country of changes.

The descendants of any family of two centuries standing, will, as a matter
of course, be numerous. There are exceptions, certainly; but such is the
rule. Thus is it with Lyon Gardiner, and his progeny, who are now to be
numbered in scores, including persons in all classes of life, though it
carries with it a stamp of caste to be known in Suffolk as having come
direct from the loins of old Lyon Gardiner. Roswell, of that name, if not
of that Ilk, the island then being the sole property of David Johnson
Gardiner, the predecessor and brother of its present proprietor, was
allowed to have this claim, though it would exceed our genealogical
knowledge to point out the precise line by which this descent was claimed.
Young Roswell was of respectable bl