ounding friends understand.

A shrewd observer has significantly characterized the period as the time
when the boy wishes he were dead, and everybody else wishes so too. The
wretched, half-fledged, half-conscious, anomalous creature has all the
desires of the man, and none of the rights; has a double and triple
share of nervous edge and intensity in every part of his nature, and no
definitely perceived objects on which to bestow it,--and, of course, all
sorts of unreasonable moods and phases are the result.

One of the most common signs of this period, in some natures, is the
love of contradiction and opposition,--a blind desire to go contrary to
everything that is commonly received among the older people. The boy
disparages the minister, quizzes the deacon, thinks the school-master an
ass, and doesn't believe in the Bible, and seems to be rather pleased
than otherwise with the shock and flutter that all these announcements
create among peaceably disposed grown people. No respectable hen that
ever hatched out a brood of ducks was more puzzled what to do with them
than was poor Mrs. Pennel when her adopted nursling came into this
state. Was he a boy? an immortal soul? a reasonable human being? or only
a handsome goblin sent to torment her?

"What shall we do with him, father?" said she, one Sunday, to Zephaniah,
as he stood shaving before the little looking-glass in their bedroom.
"He can't be governed like a child, and he won't govern himself like a
man."

Zephaniah stopped and strapped his razor reflectively.

"We must cast out anchor and wait for day," he answered. "Prayer is a
long rope with a strong hold."

It was just at this critical period of life that Moses Pennel was drawn
into associations which awoke the alarm of all his friends, and from
which the characteristic willfulness of his nature made it difficult to
attempt to extricate him.

In order that our readers may fully understand this part of our history,
we must give some few particulars as to the peculiar scenery of Orr's
Island and the state of the country at this time.

The coast of Maine, as we have elsewhere said, is remarkable for a
singular interpenetration of the sea with the land, forming amid its
dense primeval forests secluded bays, narrow and deep, into which
vessels might float with the tide, and where they might nestle unseen
and unsuspected amid the dense shadows of the overhanging forest.

At this time there was a very brisk busin