at day. Often and often
have I bethought me of it; and sartain as you sit there, no great luck
has ever been with me, or my craft, since I went off, leaving my wife
ashore. What was made in one v'y'ge, was lost in the next. Up and
down, up and down the whole time, for so many, many long years, that
gray hairs set in, and old age was beginning to get close aboard--and
I as poor as ever. It has been rub and go with me ever since; and I
have had as much as I could do to keep the brig in motion, as the only
means that was left to make the two ends meet."

"And did not all this make you think of your poor wife--she whom you
had so wronged?"

"I thought of little else, until I heard of her death at New
Or_leens_--and then I gave it up as useless. Could I have fallen in
with Molly at any time a'ter the first six months of my desartion, she
and I would have come together again, and every thing would have been
forgotten. I knowed her very nature, which was all forgiveness to me
at the bottom, though seemingly so spiteful and hard."

"Yet you wanted to have this Rose Budd, who is only too young, and
handsome, and good for you."

"I was tired of being a widower, Jack; and Rose _is_ wonderful pretty.
She has money, too, and might make the evening of my days comfortable.
The brig was old, as you must know, and has long been off of all the
Insurance Offices' books; and she couldn't hold together much longer.
But for this sloop-of-war, I should have put her off on the Mexicans;
and they would have lost her to our people in a month."

"And was it an honest thing to sell an old and worn-out craft to any
one, Stephen Spike?"

Spike had a conscience that had become hard as iron by means of trade.
He who traffics much, most especially if his dealings be on so small a
scale as to render constant investigations of the minor qualities of
things necessary, must be a very fortunate man, if he preserve his
conscience in any better condition. When Jack made this allusion,
therefore, the dying man--for death was much nearer to Spike than even
he supposed, though he no longer hoped for his own recovery--when Jack
made this allusion, then, the dying man was a good deal at a loss to
comprehend it. He saw no particular harm in making the best bargain he
could; nor was it easy for him to understand why he might not dispose
of any thing he possessed for the highest price that was to be had.
Still he answered in an apologetic sort of way.

"The