yed with a marline-spike, in splicing an eye to a rope's-end.

The elder fisherman, now looking up at his sails, now stooping down to
get a glance beneath them at the shore, and then turning his head
towards the south-west, where heavy clouds were gathering fast,
meanwhile cast an approving look at the boy.

"Ye are turning in that eye smartly and well, Michael," he said.
"Whatever you do, try and do it in that fashion. It has been my wish to
teach you what is right as well as I know it. Try not only to please
man, my boy, but to love and serve God, whose eye is always on you.
Don't forget the golden rule either: `Do to others as you would they
should do to you.'"

"I have always wished to understand what you have told me, and tried to
obey you, father," said the boy.

"You have been a good lad, Michael, and have more than repaid me for any
trouble you may have caused me. You are getting a big boy now, though,
and it's time that you should know certain matters about yourself which
no one else is so well able to tell you as I am."

The boy looked up from his work, wondering what Paul Trefusis was going
to say.

"You know, lad, that you are called Michael Penguyne, and that my name
is Paul Trefusis. Has it never crossed your mind that though I have
always treated you as a son--and you have ever behaved towards me as a
good and dutiful son should behave--that you were not really my own
child?"

"To say the truth, I have never thought about it, father," answered the
boy, looking up frankly in the old man's face. "I am oftener called
Trefusis than Penguyne, so I fancied that Penguyne was another name
tacked on to Michael, and that Trefusis was just as much my name as
yours. And oh! father, I would rather be your child than the son of
anybody else."

"There is no harm in wishing that, Michael; but it's as well that you
should know the real state of the case, and as I cannot say what may
happen to me, I do not wish to put off telling you any longer. I am not
as strong and young as I once was, and maybe God will think fit to take
me away before I have reached the threescore years and ten which He
allows some to live. We should not put off doing to another time what
can be done now, and so you see I wish to say what has been on my mind
to tell you for many a day past, though I have not liked to say it, lest
it should in any way grieve you. You promise me, Michael, you won't let
it do that? You know how much I