of the creed in which he had
rather been speculating than trusting all his life, to render the passing
hour composed and secure. There had always been too much of self in Deacon
Pratt's moral temperament, to render his belief as humble and devout as it
should be. It availed him not a hair, now, that he was a deacon, or that
he had made long prayers in the market-places, where men could see him, or
that he had done so much, as he was wont to proclaim, for example's sake.
All had not sufficed to cleanse his heart of worldly-mindedness, and he
now groped about him, in the darkness of a faith obscured, for the true
light that was to illumine his path to another world.

The doctor had ordered the room cleared of all, but two or three of the
dying man's nearest relatives. Among these last, however, was the gentle
and tender-hearted Mary, who loved to be near her uncle, in this his
greatest need. She no longer thought of his covetousness, of his griping
usury, of his living so much for self and so little for God. While
hovering about the bed, a message reached her that Baiting Joe wished to
see her, in the passage that led to the bed-room. She went to this old
fisherman, and found him standing near a window that looked towards the
east, and which consequently faced the waters of Gardiner's Bay.

"There she is, Miss Mary," said Joe, pointing out of the window, his whole
face in a glow, between joy and whiskey. "It should be told to the deacon
at once, that his last hours might be happier than some that he has passed
lately. That's she--though, at first, I did not know her."

Mary saw a vessel standing in towards Oyster Pond, and her familiarity
with objects of that nature was such, as to tell her at once that it was a
schooner; but so completely had she given up the Sea Lion, that it did not
occur to her that this could be the long-missing craft.

"At what are you pointing, Joe?" the wondering girl asked, with perfect
innocence.

"At that craft--at the Sea Lion of Sterling, which has been so long set
down as missing, but which has turned up, just as her owner is about to
cast off from this 'arth, altogether."

Joe might have talked for an hour: he did chatter away for two or three
minutes, with his head and half his body out of the window, uninterrupted
by Mary, who sank into a chair, to prevent falling on the floor. At length
the dear girl commanded herself, and spoke.

"You cannot possibly be certain, Joe," she said; "t