before?"

CHAPTER VI.

That Saturday morning was a sad one for poor Dick Lee!

His mother carefully locked up his elegant apparel, the gift of Mr.
Dabney Kinzer, the previous night, after Dick was in bed, and, when
daylight came, he found his old clothes by his bedside.

It was a hard thing to bear, no doubt, but Dick had been a bad boy on
Friday. He had sold his fish instead of bringing them home, and then had
gone and squandered the money on a brilliant new red neck-tie.

"Dat's good nuff for me to w'ar to meetin'," said Mrs. Lee, when her
eyes fell on the gorgeous bit of cheap silk. "Reckon it wont be wasted
on any good-for-nuffin boy. I'll show ye wot to do wid yer fish. You's
gettin' too mighty fine, anyhow."

Dick was disconsolate for a while, but his humility took the form of a
determination to go for crabs that day, mainly because his mother had
long since set her face against that tribe of animals.

"Dey's a wasteful, stravagant sort ob fish," remarked Mrs. Lee, in
frequent explanation of her dislike. "Dey's all clo'es and no body, like
some w'ite folks I know on. I don't mean the Kinzers. Dey's all got body
nuff."

And yet that inlet had a name of its own for crabs. There was a wide
reach of shallow water inside the southerly point at the mouth, where,
over several hundred acres of muddy flats, the depth varied from three
and a half to eight feet, with the ebb and flow of the tides. That was a
sort of perpetual crab-pasture, and there it was that Richard Lee
determined to expend his energies that Saturday.

Very likely there would be other crabbers on the flats, but Dick was not
the boy to object to that, provided none of them should notice the
change in his raiment. At an early hour, therefore, Dab and Ford were
preceded by their colored friend, they themselves waiting for later
breakfasts than Mrs. Lee was in the habit of preparing.

Dick's ill fortune did not leave him when he got out of sight of his
mother. It followed him down to the shore of the inlet, and compelled
him to give up all idea, for that day, of borrowing a respectable boat.
There were several belonging to the neighbors, from among which Dick was
accustomed to take his pick, in return for errands run and other
services done for their owners; but, on this particular morning, not one
of them all was available. Some were fastened with ugly chains and
padlocks. Two were hauled away above even high-water mark, and so Dick
could n