ary, that's just it!" exclaimed the deacon. "It's that
awful ice. If 'twasn't for the ice, sealin' would be as pleasant a calling
as preachin' the gospel! It is possible that this ice has turned Gar'ner
back, when he has been on his way home, and that he has been waiting for a
better time to come north. There's one good p'int in this news--they tell
me that when the ice is seen drifting about in low latitudes, it's a sign
there's less of it in the higher."

"The Cape of Good Hope is certainly, in one sense, in a low latitude,
uncle; if I remember right, it is not as far south as we are north; and,
as you say, it _is_ a good sign if the ice has come anywhere near it."

"I don't say it has, child; I don't say it has. But it may have come to
the northward of Cape Horn, and that will be a great matter; for all the
ice that is drifting about there comes from the polar seas, and is so much
taken out of Gardner's track."

"Still he must come _through_ it to get home," returned Mary, in her
sweet, melancholy tones. "Ah! why cannot men be content with the blessings
that Providence places within our immediate reach, that they must make
distant voyages to accumulate others!"

"You like your tea, I fancy, Mary Pratt--and the sugar in it, and your
silks and ribbons that I've seen you wear; how are you to get such matters
if there's to be no going on v'y'ges? Tea and sugar, and silks and satins
don't grow along with the clams on 'Yster Pond'"--for so the deacon
uniformly pronounced the word 'oyster.'

Mary acknowledged the truth of what was said, but changed the subject.
The journal contained no more that related to sealing or sealers, and it
was soon laid aside.

"It may be that Gar'ner is digging for the buried treasure all this time,"
the deacon at length resumed. "That may be the reason he is so late. If
so, he has nothing to dread from ice."

"I understand you, sir, that this money is supposed to be buried on a
key--in the West Indies, of course."

"Don't speak so loud, Mary--there's no need of letting all 'Yster Pond
know where the treasure is. It may be in the West Ingees, or it may not;
there's keys all over the 'arth, I take it."

"Do you not think, uncle, that Roswell would write, if detained long among
those keys?"

"You wouldn't hear to post-offices in the antarctic ocean, and now you
want to put them on the sand-keys of the West Ingees! Woman's always a
sailin' ag'in wind and tide."

"I do not think so, sir,