an!" replied the old lady. "And good reason
you have to be free of the house, though you have not been too well used
in it by some who ought to have known better. I ask your pardon."

"No you don't, ma'am," said the captain, "for I won't let you. Wa'al, to
be sure!"

By this time he had taken a chair on the hearth between them.

"Never felt such an evil spirit in the whole course of my life! There! I
tell you! I could a'most have cut my own connection. Like the dealer in
my country, away West, who when he had let himself be outdone in a
bargain, said to himself, 'Now I tell you what! I'll never speak to you
again.' And he never did, but joined a settlement of oysters, and
translated the multiplication table into their language,--which is a fact
that can be proved. If you doubt it, mention it to any oyster you come
across, and see if he'll have the face to contradict it."

He took the child from her mother's lap and set it on his knee.

"Not a bit afraid of me now, you see. Knows I am fond of small people. I
have a child, and she's a girl, and I sing to her sometimes."

"What do you sing?" asked Margaret.

"Not a long song, my dear.

Silas Jorgan
Played the organ.

That's about all. And sometimes I tell her stories,--stories of sailors
supposed to be lost, and recovered after all hope was abandoned." Here
the captain musingly went back to his song,--

Silas Jorgan
Played the organ;

repeating it with his eyes on the fire, as he softly danced the child on
his knee. For he felt that Margaret had stopped working.

"Yes," said the captain, still looking at the fire, "I make up stories
and tell 'em to that child. Stories of shipwreck on desert islands, and
long delay in getting back to civilised lauds. It is to stories the like
of that, mostly, that

Silas Jorgan
Plays the organ."

There was no light in the room but the light of the fire; for the shades
of night were on the village, and the stars had begun to peep out of the
sky one by one, as the houses of the village peeped out from among the
foliage when the night departed. The captain felt that Margaret's eyes
were upon him, and thought it discreetest to keep his own eyes on the
fire.

"Yes; I make 'em up," said the captain. "I make up stories of brothers
brought together by the good providence of GOD,--of sons brought back to
mothers, husbands brought back to wives, fathers raised from the deep,
for little childre