schooner.

When they were gone, Moses threw himself down and hid his face in his
hands. He knew not what pitying little face was looking down upon him
from the hemlock shadows, what brave little heart was determined to save
him. He was in one of those great crises of agony that boys pass through
when they first awake from the fun and frolic of unlawful enterprises to
find themselves sold under sin, and feel the terrible logic of evil
which constrains them to pass from the less to greater crime. He felt
that he was in the power of bad, unprincipled, heartless men, who, if he
refused to do their bidding, had the power to expose him. All he had
been doing would come out. His kind old foster-parents would know it.
Mara would know it. Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily would know the secrets of
his life that past month. He felt as if they were all looking at him
now. He had disgraced himself,--had sunk below his education,--had been
false to all his better knowledge and the past expectations of his
friends, living a mean, miserable, dishonorable life,--and now the
ground was fast sliding from under him, and the next plunge might be
down a precipice from which there would be no return. What he had done
up to this hour had been done in the roystering, inconsiderate
gamesomeness of boyhood. It had been represented to himself only as
"sowing wild oats," "having steep times," "seeing a little of life," and
so on; but this night he had had propositions of piracy and robbery made
to him, and he had not dared to knock down the man that made them,--had
not dared at once to break away from his company. He must meet him
again,--must go on with him, or--he groaned in agony at the thought.

It was a strong indication of that repressed, considerate habit of mind
which love had wrought in the child, that when Mara heard the boy's sobs
rising in the stillness, she did not, as she wished to, rush out and
throw her arms around his neck and try to comfort him.

But she felt instinctively that she must not do this. She must not let
him know that she had discovered his secret by stealing after him thus
in the night shadows. She knew how nervously he had resented even the
compassionate glances she had cast upon him in his restless, turbid
intervals during the past few weeks, and the fierceness with which he
had replied to a few timid inquiries. No,--though her heart was breaking
for him, it was a shrewd, wise little heart, and resolved not to spoil
all