e for long days
and nights of storm. Donald did not like it. He felt himself lost out in
the wild channel. His love was for the water near shore,--for the bays,
inlets, and river-mouths he had known since he was a child.

He began to think he was not so much of a sailor as he had supposed,--so
great a shrinking grew up in him winter after winter from the perils and
hardships of the mail-steamer's route. But he persevered and bided his
time, and in ten years had the luck to become owner and master of a trim
little coasting-steamer which had been known for years as the "Sally
Wright," making two trips a week from Charlottetown to Orwell
Head,--known as the "Sally Wright" no longer, however; for the first
thing Donald did was to repaint her, from stem to stern, white, with
green and pink stripes, on her prow a cluster of pink heather blossoms,
and "Heather Bell" in big letters on the side.

When he was asked where he got this fancy name, he said, lightly, he
did not know; it was a good Scotch name. This was not true. Donald knew
very well. On the window-sill in his mother's kitchen had stood always a
pot of pink heather. Come summer, come winter, the place was never
without a young heather growing; and the dainty pink bells were still to
Donald the man, as they had been to Donald the child, the loveliest
flowers in the world. But he would not for the profits of many a trip
have told his comrade captains why he had named his boat the "Heather
Bell." He had a sentiment about the name which he himself hardly
understood. It seemed out of all proportion to the occasion; but a day
was coming when it would seem more like a prophecy than a mere
sentiment. He had builded better than he knew when he chose that name
for the thing nearest his heart.

Charlottetown is not a gay place; its standards and methods of amusement
are simple and primitive. Among the summer pleasures of the young people
picnics still rank high, and picnic excursions by steamboat or sloop
highest of all. Through June and July hardly a daily newspaper can be
found which does not contain the advertisement of one or more of these
excursions. After Donald made his little boat so fresh and gay with the
pink and green colors, and gave her the winning new name, she came to be
in great demand for these occasions.

How much the captain's good looks had to do with the "Heather Bell's"
popularity as a pleasure-boat it would not do to ask; but there was
reason enough fo