ntly was not his
native language, there had yet apparently been some effort to teach it
to him, although the terror and confusion of the shipwreck seemed at
first to have washed every former impression from his mind.

But whenever any attempt was made to draw him to speak of the past, of
his mother, or of where he came from, his brow lowered gloomily, and he
assumed that kind of moody, impenetrable gravity, which children at
times will so strangely put on, and which baffle all attempts to look
within them. Zephaniah Pennel used to call it putting up his
dead-lights. Perhaps it was the dreadful association of agony and terror
connected with the shipwreck, that thus confused and darkened the mirror
of his mind the moment it was turned backward; but it was thought wisest
by his new friends to avoid that class of subjects altogether--indeed,
it was their wish that he might forget the past entirely, and remember
them as his only parents.

Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey came duly, as appointed, to initiate the young
pilgrim into the habiliments of a Yankee boy, endeavoring, at the same
time, to drop into his mind such seeds of moral wisdom as might make the
internal economy in time correspond to the exterior. But Miss Roxy
declared that "of all the children that ever she see, he beat all for
finding out new mischief,--the moment you'd make him understand he
mustn't do one thing, he was right at another."

One of his exploits, however, had very nearly been the means of cutting
short the materials of our story in the outset.

It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the three women, being busy together
with their stitching, had tied a sun-bonnet on little Mara, and turned
the two loose upon the beach to pick up shells. All was serene, and
quiet, and retired, and no possible danger could be apprehended. So up
and down they trotted, till the spirit of adventure which ever burned in
the breast of little Moses caught sight of a small canoe which had been
moored just under the shadow of a cedar-covered rock. Forthwith he
persuaded his little neighbor to go into it, and for a while they made
themselves very gay, rocking it from side to side.

The tide was going out, and each retreating wave washed the boat up and
down, till it came into the boy's curly head how beautiful it would be
to sail out as he had seen men do,--and so, with much puffing and
earnest tugging of his little brown hands, the boat at last was loosed
from her moorings and p