om Bolton, and
my feet are very sore; I don't think I could walk home.
Captain Saul says he will take me by the way of New York. I
can go and see Aunt Mabel. I will tell her you are all well.

"How is Adele and Phil and Rose and, the others? I hope you
won't be very angry. I don't think Mr. Brummem's is much of
a school. I don't learn so much there as I learned at home.
I don't think the boys there are good companions. I think
they are wicked boys sometimes. Mr. Brummem says they are.
And he whips awful hard.

"Yr affect, son,

"REUBEN."

And the skipper, taking the letter ashore to post it, adds upon the
margin,--

"I opened the within to see who the boy was; and this is to
say, I shall take him aboard, and shall be off Chatham Red
Quarries to-morrow night and next day morning, and, if you
signal from the dock, can send him ashore. Or, if this don't
come in time, my berth is Peck Slip, in York.

"JOHN SAUL, Sloop Princess."

Next day they go drifting down the river. A quiet, smoky October day;
the distant hills all softened in the haze; the near shores green with
the fresh-springing aftermath. Reuben lounged upon the sunny side of the
mainsail, thinking, with respectful pity, of the poor fagged fellows in
roundabouts who were seated at that hour before the red desks in Parson
Brummem's school-room. At length he was enjoying a taste of that outside
life of which he had known only from travellers' books, or from such
lucky ones as the accomplished Tavern Boody. Henceforth he, too, would
have his stories to tell. The very rustle of the water around the prow
of the good sloop Princess was full, of Sindbad echoes. Was it not
remotely possible that he, too, like Captain Saul sitting there on the
taffrail smoking his pipe, should have his vessel at command some day,
and sail away wherever Fortune, with her iris-hued streamers, might
beckon? Not much of sentiment in the boy as yet, beyond the taste of
freedom, or--what is equivalent to it in the half-taught--vagabondage.
As for Rose, what does she know of sloops and the world? And Adele?
Well, from this time forth at least, the boy can match her nautical
experience with an experience of his own. Possibly his humiliation and
conscious ignorance at the French girl's story of the sea were, as much
as anything, at the bo