expression of his face was superbly ludicrous. To say that he shot to the
subterranean regions of the kitchen like a flash of lightning, does not
border on fiction.

The man laughed--it was a low, peculiar laugh, sadder than some men's
tears.

"Flint!"

"Well."

"Are you glad to see me?" and the man repeated his laugh.

"No: you are a devil!"

"I have been away three years, as I promised you."

"Well, what do you want?"

"Money."

"Have I ever seen you when you did not?"

"No, Flint, you never did. But you saw me once when I had an unstained
soul--when I could have looked up to Heaven and said, 'I am poor, Father,
but I am honest.' Have you enough money to pay for a lost soul? Oh Flint,
I am a wrecked man! If it had only been murder--if I had killed _a man_ in
the heat of passion--but a poor innocent babe in the cold snow! The child!
the little babe! Ah, Flint, I never see the white snow coming down but I
think of it. Those eyes are always with me. They follow me out to sea. They
haunt me in the long watches. One night, when a storm had torn our rigging
to tatters, and we heard the breakers on the lee-shore, I saw her standing
by the binnacle light, and, so help me Heaven! she had grown to be a woman.
I fainted at the wheel. You heard of the shipwreck. How could a ship keep
clear of the rocks and the helmsman in a trance? Forty souls went down,
down! Hist! who said that? Not I. No, not I! I am a maniac!"

"Don't go on that way," pleaded Flint, giving uneasy looks toward the door,
which he regretted having locked.

"Why?"

"It is not pleasant."

"What isn't?"

"Your eyes--your words. What can I do for you?"

The man's excitement lulled for a moment. He replied, carelessly:

"I am not a chameleon; I cannot live on air; I can earn no money. The
elements are against me--storms and shipwrecks follow me.... I have not
found him yet," he said, abruptly.

"Who?"

"My boy."

Flint turned aside his head, and laughed quietly.

"I am tired of searching for him," said the man, sorrowfully. "I am not
going to sea any more." After a pause--"I wish to live among the fishermen
off Nantucket. You ask me what I want?"

"Yes."

"I want two or three hundred dollars to fit up a fishing-smack. Give me
this, and I will not trouble you again. God knows I don't want to look on
your face!"

"And the letter--will you give me the letter?"

"Yes; when I take the money."

The man drew from his bosom several lett