erman, to give up this mode of
earning a livelihood and retire into private life, when I promised to
make them a handsome allowance. But they would not consent to abandon
their independence.

"I am not an old man, Peter," said my father, when I spoke to him on
the subject, "and I have, I hope, still many useful years' work in me.
I have always been a fisherman. My father was a fisherman, and so was
his father before him. Fishing is the only work I understand. It is
honest work. Why then should I live in idleness upon thy bounty, when I
can still play my part in the world?"

I could not but see the force of his argument, so I contented myself
with making my parents comfortable in the old home by adding many
improvements which my mother desired but could not afford, while I
presented my father with a new fishing-boat fitted with all the latest
improvements.

It is wonderful, the power of money. It brought a new happiness into
the lives of my parents, and it made my mother look ten years younger.
My father also, and my two brothers, who were all fishermen, had now
come to regard me as the flower of the flock. Yet they had not scrupled
to knock me about, with little ceremony, in the days of my boyhood; nor
do I think they would have been behindhand in finding fault with me for
my folly, had I returned from my second voyage as poor and needy as
from the first. But such is life, and a man must take what comes, and
make the best of it and not the worst; so I accepted my new role as the
patron saint of my family with philosophy and content.

Anna approved my parents' decision not to give up their independence.
She came with me to see my mother, and I soon found that, as true
women, there was no inequality between them. Anna had lost her own
mother when she was too young to remember, and she clung to her new
mother that was to be with an affection born of her loving nature.

In a word, my jewels had brought me the only true happiness which
wealth can give--the power of making others happy.

CHAPTER XXVI

HAPPILY MARRIED

I now resolved to bring Count Hendrick Luitken to account for his
treatment of Anna, though I did not desire that Anna's name should
appear in the matter, so that gossip might be avoided. I therefore
bided my time, and waited an opportunity which soon came.

The Count of Holstein had resigned the governorship of Urk, and now
kept a fine establishment at Amsterdam, to which he frequently invited