nly that since his
first love was lost he could not bring himself to ship on any other
vessel.

Accordingly he took to the shore and for a time a very strange misfit
he was there. How he fumed and fidgeted and roamed from one place to
another, searching for some spot in which his restless spirit would
find peace! And then one day he had wandered into Lovell's Harbor and
there he had stayed ever since. For several seasons he had taken out
sailing parties of summer boarders or piloted amateur fishermen out to
the Ledges; but the timidity and lack of sophistication of these city
patrons at length so rasped his nerves that he gave up the task and
was about to betake himself to pastures new when he fell beneath the
eye of Mr. Glenmore Archibald Crowninshield, a New York banker, who
had bought the strip of land forming one arm of the bay and was on the
point of erecting there a diminutive summer palace.

From that instant Jerry's fortune was made. Mr. Crowninshield was a
keen student of human nature and was immediately attracted to the
sailor with his ambling gait and twinkling blue eyes. Moreover, the
New Yorker happened to be in search of just such a man to look out for
his interests when he was not at Lovell's Harbor. Hence Jerry was
elevated to the post of caretaker and delegated to keep guard over the
edifice that was about to be erected.

In view of the fact that up to the moment Jerry had been the most
care-free mortal alive and had never from day to day been able to
remember the whereabouts of his sou'wester or his rubber boots, his
ensuing transformation was nothing short of a miracle. Promptly
settling down with doglike fidelity he began mildly to urge on the
lagging carpenters; but presently, magnificent in his wrath, he rose
above them, whiplash in hand, and drove them forward. His watery blue
eyes followed every stick of timber, every foot of piping, every nail
that was placed. There was no escaping his watchfulness. If corners
were not true or moldings did not meet he saw and called attention to
it. Many a time a slipshod workman was ready to throw him over the
cliff into the sea and perhaps might have done so had he not been
conscious of the justice of the criticism.

In consequence the Crowninshield house was built on honor; and when
the bills began to come in and showed a marked falling off in
magnitude the owner of the mansion could not but express gratitude.
Jerry, however, did not covet thanks. Instea