red some platitudes, stolen from D'Ar-genton, on the rights of
labor.

"Listen!" they said to each other; "it is easy to see that the boy comes
from Paris."

Jack, excited by this applause and sympathy, talked fast and freely.
Suddenly the room swam around--all grew dark. A fresh breeze restored
him to consciousness. He was seated on the bank of the river, and a
sailor was bathing his forehead.

"Are you better?" said the man.

"Yes, much better," answered Jack, his teeth chattering.

"Then go on board."

"Go where?" said the apprentice, in amazement.

"Why, have you forgotten that you hired a boat, and sent for provisions?
And here comes the man with them."

Jack was stupefied with amazement, but he was too weak to argue any
point; he embarked without remonstrance. He had a little money left,
with which he could buy some little souvenir for Zenaide, so that his
trip to Nantes would not be thrown away absolutely. He breakfasted
with a poor enough appetite, and sat at the end of the boat, wrapped in
thought. He dreamily recalled books that he had read--tales of strange
adventures on the sea; but why did a certain old volume of Robinson
Crusoe persistently come before him? He saw the rubbed and yellowed
page, the vignette of Robinson in his hammock surrounded by drunken
sailors, and above it the inscription, "And in a night of debauch I
forgot all my good resolutions."

He was brought back to real life by the songs of his companions, and
by a pair of keen bright eyes that were fixed upon his own. Jack was
annoyed by this gaze, and leaned forward with a bottle in his hand.

"Drink with me, captain!" he said.

The man declined abruptly. The younger sailor whispered to Jack, "Let
him alone; he did not wish to take you on board; his wife settled things
for him; he thought you had more money than you ought to have!"

Jack was indignant at being treated like a thief. He exclaimed that his
money was his own, that it had been given him by------. Here he stopped,
remembering that his mother had forbidden him to mention her name.
"But," he continued, "I can have more money when I wish it, and I am
going to buy a wedding present for Zenaide."

He talked on, but no one listened, for a grand dispute between the two
men was well under way as to the place where they should land.

At last they entered the harbor of Nantes. Old houses, with carved
fronts and stone balconies, met his eyes, crowded as it were among the
shi