than a king," said he one day. "Think what
you might become."

"Maybe I will."

"Will what?"

"Be some one in the world."

"Sorry a boy you would make to 'stand before kings,' and I don't think
you'll ever be likely to take off the crown from anybody. So your poor
old father might as well leave that text out of the Scriptures. There
are no pebbles in your sling of life. If there were, wonders would never
cease. You are just your Uncle Ben over again. I'm sorry for ye, and for
all."

Little Ben looked sorry too, and he wondered if there really were in the
text something prophetic for him, or if Jamie the Scotchman were the
true seer. But many poor boys had come to stand before kings, and some
such boys had left tyrants without a crown.

Jamie the Scotchman thought that he had the gift of "second sight," as
a consciousness of future events was called, but he usually saw shadows.
He liked to talk to himself, walking with his hands behind him.

After his dire prophecy concerning the future of little Ben he walked
down to Long Wharf with Uncle Benjamin, talking to himself for the
latter to hear.

"Ye can't always tell," said he; "I didn't speak out of the true inward
spirit when I said those things. It hurt the little shaver to tell him
there was no future in him; I could see it did. The boy has a curious
way of saying wise things; such words fly out of his mouth like swallows
from a cave. If I were to take up a dead brand in the blacksmith's shop
and he was around, as he commonly is, he would say, 'The more you handle
a burned stick the smuttier you become'; or if I were to pick up a
horseshoe there, and say, 'For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,' he
would answer, 'And for want of a shoe the horse was lost.' Then, after a
time, he would add, 'For want of a horse the rider was lost,' and so on.
His mind works in that way. Maybe he'll become a philosopher.
Philosophers stand before kings. I now have the true inner sight and
open vision. I can see a streak of light in that curious gift of his.
But blood tells, and his folks on his father's side were blacksmiths
over in England, and philosophers don't come from the forge more'n
eagles do from the hen yard.

"I said what I did to stimulate him. It cut the little shaver to the
quick, didn't it? Now he wouldn't have been so cut if there had been
nothing there. The Lord forgive me if I did wrong!"

He walked down the wharf to the end. Beyond lay the blue harbor a