. They mustn't get
wind of it. They are not fit even to know I have such a child, much less
to see her. Be secret! Can I trust you, my boy?"

"I'll write for you with all my heart," said Blair in astonishment; "and
of course I wont name it if you don't wish me to; no, not to a soul on
board. But I shall have to tell my mother, or she wont know what to do
with the letter."

"Just ask her to mail it for one of your shipmates. That will be
enough," said Derry quickly. "'Least said, soonest mended.' I have my
reasons. I know which way the wind blows, and how to ward off a
sou'-wester."

"What shall I say?" said Blair, taking up the pen, and reaching for the
paper. Derry's hand lay on it, a "paperweight" that did not move itself
off at Blair's motion.

"You see," began the sailor, "you see I've got a little daughter, not
so old as you are by a year or two. I dare say you think she's made of
coarse stuff like me, fit for the rough and tumble of life. No such
thing. Her hand is white as a sail on a summer sea, and her little round
cheek is so soft, Oh, so soft, that when it snugs up to mine it seems as
if an angel was touching me, and I feel as if I wasn't fit for such as
her to love and fondle. Yet she loves me; she loves her old dad. She
don't call me Derry Duck, not she. She don't know any thing about Derry
Duck, and what he does when he 's off on the sea. I don't mean she ever
shall. I'd rather die first, gnawed to pieces by a hungry shark. Her
mother left her to me, a little two-year-old thing, a clinging little
creature that would snug in my arms and go to sleep, whether I was drunk
or sober. I killed her mother--sent her to the better country before
her time. I didn't lay my hand to her; I wasn't bad enough for that.
But my ways took the pink out of her cheeks, and made her pine away and
just go out of my sight like the wake of a passing ship. Where she had
been, there she was not. I loved her, boy, and these eyes cried; these
great hands would have willingly been worn to the bone with hard work,
if that could have restored her life. I don't drink any more. I've quit
that. I haven't touched a drop since she died. I took to the sea. I made
up my mind I wouldn't kill the little tender thing she left me. _She_
should never die for knowing how bad her father was. I took the little
money I had, and bought a real gentleman's suit of clothes. Then I went
to a minister I knew about, in a far away town, where my--never mind