r of Old Wives' Cove since my infancy. Whatever the
pretence he made, the labor was planned and undertaken in anxious
haste: there was, indeed, too much pretence--too suave an explanation,
a hand too aimless and unsteady, an eye too blank, too large a flow of
liquor--for a man who suffered no secret perturbation.

"In case o' accident, Dannie," he explained, as though 'twere a thing
of no importance. "Jus' in case o' accident. I wouldn't be upset,"
says he, "an I was you."

"Never you fear," says I.

"No," says he; "you'll stand by, Dannie!"

"That I will," I boasted.

"Ye can't delude _me_," says he. "I knows _you_. I bet ye _you'll_
stand by, whatever comes of it."

'Tis quite beyond me to express my gratification. 'Twas a mysterious
business altogether--this whim to make the _Shining Light_ ready
for sea. I could make nothing of it at all. And why, thinks I, should
the old craft all at once be troubled by all this pother of block and
tackle and hammer and saw? 'Twas beyond me to fathom; but I was
glad to discover, whatever the puzzle, that my uncle's faith in
the lad he had nourished was got real and large. 'Twas not for that
he bred me; but 'twas the only reward--and that a mean, poor one--he
might have. And he was now come near, it seemed, to dependence upon
me; there was that in his voice to show it--a little trembling, a
little hopelessness, a little wistfulness: a little weakening of its
quality of wrathful courage.

"_You'll_ stand by," he had said; and, ay, but it fair saddened me to
feel the appeal of his aging spirit to my growing years! There comes a
time, no doubt, in the relationship of old and young, when the
guardian is all at once changed into the cherished one. 'Tis a
tragical thing--a thing to be resolved, to be made merciful and
benign, only by the acquiescence of the failing spirit. There is then
no interruption--no ripple upon the flowing river of our lives. As for
my uncle, I fancy that he kept watch upon me, in those days, to read
his future, to discover his achievement, in my disposition. Stand by?
Ay, that I would! And being young I sought a deed to do: I wished the
accident might befall to prove me.

"Accident?" cries I. "Never you fear!"

"I'll not fear," says he, "that ye'll not stand by."

"Ay," I complained; "but never you fear at all!"

"I'll not fear," he repeated, with a little twinkle of amusement,
"that ye'll not stand by, as best ye're able."

I felt now my strength-