ou'll always find Boyd
Connoway in the company of his betters whenever so be he can!

"But Dick Wilkes had our 'ben' room, and there were a little, light,
active man that came to see him--not that I know much of him, save from
the sound of voices and my wife Bridget on the watch to keep me in the
kitchen, and all that.

"But Old Israel would never give up Dick Wilkes. He kept coming and
coming to our house, and what he called 'wrestling for Dick's soul.'
Sometimes he went away pleased, thinking he had gotten the upper hand.
Then the little light man would come again, and there was Dick just as
bad as ever. 'Backsliding' was what Israel called it, and a good name, I
say, for then the job was all to do over again from the beginning. But
it was the Adversary that carried off Dick Wilkes at the long and last."

"Ah!" came a subdued groan from all the kitchen. Boyd gloomily nodded
his head.

"Yes," he said, "'tis a great and terrible warning to Bridget, and so I
tell her. 'Twas the night of the big meeting at the Tabernacle, when
Israel kept it up for six hours, one lot coming and another going--the
Isle o' Man fleet being in--that was the night of all nights in the year
that Dick Wilkes must choose for to die in. Aught more contrary than
that man can't be thought of.

"It happened just so, as I say. About four o'clock we were all of us
shut up in the kitchen, and by that we knew (Jerry and I, at least) that
Dick Wilkes had company--also that so far as repentance went, old
Israel's goose was cooked till he had another turn at his man. And then
after six we heard him shouting that he was going to die--which seemed
strange to us. For we could hear him tearing at his sea-chest and
stamping about his room, which is not what is expected of a dying man.

"But Dick knew better. For when we went down and peeped at the keyhole,
he heard us, and called on us all to come our ways in. And--you will
never guess in a thousand years--he had routed a flag out of his
sea-chest. The 'Wicked Flag' it was,--the pirates' flag--black, with the
Death's Head and cross-bones done in white upon it, the same that he had
hoisted on seas where no questions were asked, when he commanded the
old _Golden Hind_. And wrapping himself in that, he said, 'Tell old
Israel that I died _so_!' And we, thinking it was, as one might say,
braving the Almighty and his poor old servant, kept silence. And then he
shouted, 'Promise, ye white-livered rascals, or I've