a foundation; then he saved enough to build the main
part of the cottage and to finish the front room, lending his own hand
to the work. Then he used to get letters at every port, telling of
progress--how Lizzie, his wife, had adorned the front room with a
bright nine-penny paper, of which a little piece was inclosed, which
he kept as a sort of charm about him and exhibited to his friends; how
she and her little brother had lathed the entry and the kitchen, and
how they had set out blackberry vines from the woods. Then another
letter told of a surprise awaiting him on his return; and, in due
time, coming home as third mate from Hong Kong to a seaman's
tumultuous welcome, he had found that a great, good-natured mason,
with whose sick child his wife had watched, night after night, had
appeared one day with lime and hair and sand, and in white raiment,
and had plastered the entry and the kitchen, and finished a room
upstairs.

And so, for years, at home and on the sea, at New York, and at
Valparaiso, and in the Straits of Malacca, the little house and the
little family within it had grown into the fibre of Eli's heart.
Nothing had given him more delight than to meet, in the strange
streets of Calcutta or before the Mosque of Omar, some practical
Yankee from Stonington or Machias, and, whittling, to discuss with
him, among the turbans of the Orient, the comparative value of shaved
and of sawed shingles, or the economy of "Swedes-iron" nails, and to
go over with him the estimates and plans which he had worked out in
his head under all the constellations of the skies.

* * * * *

The supper things were cleared away. The children had said good-night
and gone to bed, and Eli had been sitting for an hour by his wife's
bedside. He had had to tax his patience and ingenuity heavily during
the long months that she had lain there to entertain her for a little
while in the evening, after his hard, wet day's work. He had been
talking now of the coming week, when he was to serve upon the jury in
the adjoining county-town.

"I cal'late I can come home about every night," he said, "and it'll be
quite a change, at any rate."

"But you don't seem so cheerful about it as I counted you would be,"
said his wife. "Are you afraid you'll have to be on the bank-case?"

"Not much!" he answered. "No trouble 'n that case! Jury won't leave
their seats. These city fellers'll find they've bit off more'n they
can c