ill Hen had gone for the
doctor. In fact, when John ran out of the door, he had found Mr. Bill
Hen leaning up against it, as speechless, with amazement and confusion,
as Mr. Scraper himself! The good man, wholly unable to restrain his
curiosity, had followed the Skipper and the boy, unbeknown to them, and
posting himself in a convenient angle of the porch, had heard every word
of the conversation. The Skipper, perceiving the facts, managed to rouse
him with a few sharp words, and sent him off in hot haste to the
village; and had then proceeded to make the old gentleman comfortable,
and to set things shipshape, so far as might be.

"Do you think he will die?" asked John, peeping over the bed at the
sunken features of the old man.

"I do not!" was the reply.

"I think this my revered uncle has yet many years to live--and repent,
if so he be minded. He is a very bad old man, Colorado, this my revered
uncle! Ah, thou ancient fish, thou art finally landed!"

"Are you sorry for a person when he is so bad as that?" asked the boy,
as he had asked once before.

"Do you think a person could make him better, if he tried very hard
indeed?"

"I have no knowledge!" said the Skipper, rather shortly. "I am a human
person altogether, my son! and I concern myself not greatly with the
improvement of this my revered uncle. Behold it, the will, made by my
grandfather, the father of my poor mother, whose soul, with his, rest in
eternal glory! By this, my mother, and I after her, inherit this house,
this garden, these possessions such as they are. If I desire, son of
mine, I may come here to-day to live, sell the 'Nautilus,' or cut her
cable and let her drift down the river, with Rento and Franci, and all
the shells; and I may live here in my house, to--what do you say?
cultivate my lands, eat grass and give it to the cattle? What think you,
Colorado? Is that a life? Shall I lead it, as is my right? Have I not
had enough, think you, of roving over the sea, with no place where I may
rest, save the heaving ocean, that rests never beneath the foot? Shall
we turn out this old wicked man, who did to death his old father, who
made my mother go sad of heart to her grave, who has done of all his
life no kind act to any person--shall we turn him out, and live in peace
here, you and I?"

The child came near to him, and laid his hand on his friend's knee, and
looked up in his face with troubled eyes.

"I am not very bright," he said, "and you