of her marine monster. Naturally of a hopeful temperament,
she went about her work singing softly to herself at times, and would
have been very happy that first week if Mr. O'Rourke had known a sober
moment. But Mr. O'Rourke showed an exasperating disposition to keep
up festivities. At the end of ten days, however, he toned down, and
at Margaret's suggestion that he had better be looking about for some
employment he rigged up a fishing-pole, and set out with an injured air
for the wharf at the foot of the street, where he fished for the rest of
the day. To sit for hours blinking in the sun, waiting for a cunner to
come along and take his hook, was as exhaustive a kind of labor as he
cared to engage in. Though Mr. O'Rourke had recently returned from a
long cruise, he had not a cent to show. During his first three days
ashore he had dissipated his three years' pay. The housekeeping expenses
began eating a hole in Margaret's little fund, the existence of which
was no sooner known to Mr. O'Rourke than he stood up his fishing-rod in
one corner of the room, and thenceforth it caught nothing but cobwebs.

"Divil a sthroke o' work I 'll do," said Mr. O'Rourke, "whin we can live
at aise on our earnin's. Who 'd be afther frettin' hisself, wid money in
the bank? How much is it, Peggy darlint?"

And divil a stroke more of work did he do. He lounged down on the
wharves, and, with his short clay pipe stuck between his lips and his
hands in his pockets, stared off at the sail-boats on the river. He sat
on the door-step of the Finnigan domicile, and plentifully chaffed the
passers-by. Now and then, when he could wheedle some fractional currency
out of Margaret, he spent it like a crown-prince at The Wee Drop around
the corner. With that fine magnetism which draws together birds of a
feather, he shortly drew about him all the ne'er-do-weels of Rivermouth.

It was really wonderful what an unsuspected lot of them there was. From
all the frowzy purlieus of the town they crept forth into the sunlight
to array themselves under the banner of the prince of scallawags. It was
edifying of a summer afternoon to see a dozen of them sitting in a row,
like turtles, on the string-piece of Jedediah Rand's wharf, with their
twenty-four feet dangling over the water, assisting Mr. O'Rourke in
contemplating the islands in the harbor, and upholding the scenery, as
it were.

The rascal had one accomplishment, he had a heavenly voice--quite in the
rough,