y like the life that his great-grandfather, Samuel Cutts, led at the
old farm in old Newbury after the old war. Tom lost his place when he
went to the front, and he could not find it again.

Laura, sweet girl, never complained. No, nor Moses Marvel. He never
complained, nor would he complain if Tom and his wife and children had
lived with him till doomsday. "Good luck for us," said Moses Marvel, and
those were many words for him to say in one sentence. But Tom was proud,
and it ground him to the dust to be eating Moses Marvel's bread when he
had not earned it, and to have nothing but his major's pension to buy
Laura and the babies their clothes with, and to keep the pot a-boiling.

Of course Jem joined the fleet again. Nor did Jem return again till the
war was over. Then he came, and came with prize-money. He and Tom had
many talks of going into business together, with Tom's brains and Jem's
money. But nothing came of this. The land was no place for Jem. He was a
regular Norse man, as are almost all of the Tripp's Cove boys who have
come from the loins of the "Fighting Twenty-seventh." They sniff the
tempest from afar off; and when they hear of Puget Sound, or of Alaska,
or of Wilkes's Antarctic Continent, they fancy that they hear a voice
from some long-lost home, from which they have strayed away. And so
Laura knew, and Tom knew, that any plans which rested on Jem's staying
ashore were plans which had one false element in them. The raven would
be calling him, and it might be best, once for all, to let him follow
the raven till the raven called no more.

So Jem put his prize-money into a new bark, which he found building at
Bath; and they called the bark the "Laura," and Tom and Laura Cutts went
to the launching, and Jem superintended the rigging of her himself; and
then he took Tom and Laura and the babies with him to New York, and a
high time they had together there. Tom saw many of the old army boys,
and Laura hunted up one or two old school friends; and they saw Booth in
Iago, and screamed themselves hoarse at Niblo's, and heard Rudolphsen
and Johannsen in the German opera; they rode in the Park, and they
walked in the Park; they browsed in the Astor and went shopping at
Stewart's, and saw the people paint porcelain at Haighwout's; and, by
Mr. Alden's kindness, went through the wonders of Harper's. In short,
for three weeks, all of which time they lived on board ship, they saw
the lions of New York as children of