The captain sat down again on the foot of the bed, and the young man
opened the folded paper with a trembling hand, and spread it on the
table. The ragged paper, evidently creased and torn both before and
after being written on, was much blotted and stained, and the ink had
faded and run, and many words were wanting. What the captain and the
young fisherman made out together, after much re-reading and much
humouring of the folds of the paper, is given on the next page.

The young fisherman had become more and more agitated, as the writing had
become clearer to him. He now left it lying before the captain, over
whose shoulder he had been reading it, and dropping into his former seat,
leaned forward on the table and laid his face in his hands.

"What, man," urged the captain, "don't give in! Be up and doing _like_ a
man!"

"It is selfish, I know,--but doing what, doing what?" cried the young
fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the ground.

"Doing what?" returned the captain. "Something! I'd go down to the
little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the
salt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or
wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I'd do nothing. Nothing!"
ejaculated the captain. "Any fool or fainting heart can do _that_, and
nothing can come of nothing,--which was pretended to be found out, I
believe, by one of them Latin critters," said the captain with the
deepest disdain; "as if Adam hadn't found it out, afore ever he so much
as named the beasts!"

Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was some
greater reason than he yet understood for the young man's distress. And
he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity.

"Come, come!" continued the captain, "Speak out. What is it, boy!"

"You have seen how beautiful she is, sir," said the young man, looking up
for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled hair.

"Did any man ever say she warn't beautiful?" retorted the captain. "If
so, go and lick him."

The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said--

"It's not that, it's not that."

"Wa'al, then, what is it?" said the captain in a more soothing tone.

The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the captain what
it was, and began: "We were to have been married next Monday week--"

"Were to have been!" interrupted Captain Jorgan. "And are to be? Hey?"

Young Raybrock shook his