ave no such standards;
it was plain that the captain was his own attentive valet. He sat
looking at me expectantly. I could not help thinking that, with his
queer head and length of thinness, he was made to hop along the road of
life rather than to walk. The captain was very grave indeed, and I bade
my inward spirit keep close to discretion.

"Poor Mrs. Begg has gone," I ventured to say. I still wore my Sunday
gown by way of showing respect.

"She has gone," said the captain,--"very easy at the last, I was
informed; she slipped away as if she were glad of the opportunity."

I thought of the Countess of Carberry, and felt that history repeated
itself.

"She was one of the old stock," continued Captain Littlepage, with
touching sincerity. "She was very much looked up to in this town, and
will be missed."

I wondered, as I looked at him, if he had sprung from a line of
ministers; he had the refinement of look and air of command which are
the heritage of the old ecclesiastical families of New England. But
as Darwin says in his autobiography, "there is no such king as a
sea-captain; he is greater even than a king or a schoolmaster!"

Captain Littlepage moved his chair out of the wake of the sunshine,
and still sat looking at me. I began to be very eager to know upon what
errand he had come.

"It may be found out some o' these days," he said earnestly. "We may
know it all, the next step; where Mrs. Begg is now, for instance.
Certainty, not conjecture, is what we all desire."

"I suppose we shall know it all some day," said I.

"We shall know it while yet below," insisted the captain, with a flush
of impatience on his thin cheeks. "We have not looked for truth in the
right direction. I know what I speak of; those who have laughed at me
little know how much reason my ideas are based upon." He waved his hand
toward the village below. "In that handful of houses they fancy that
they comprehend the universe."

I smiled, and waited for him to go on.

"I am an old man, as you can see," he continued, "and I have been a
shipmaster the greater part of my life,--forty-three years in all. You
may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age."

He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so.

"You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then, Captain
Littlepage?" I said.

"I should have been serviceable at least five or six years more," he
answered. "My acquaintance with certain--my experience upon a certain