e had been employed there for three years, or ever since the death of
his father, Captain Sylvester Kent, who had died at sea aboard his ship,
the _Ocean Ranger_, on the voyage home from Java to Philadelphia. George
remained in Bayport to study law with Judge Knowles, who was interested
in the young man and, being a lawyer of prominence on the Cape, was an
influential friend worth having. The law occupied young Kent's attention
in the evenings; he kept Mr. Bassett's books and sold Mr. Bassett's
brown sugar, calico and notions during the days, not because he loved
the work, the place, or its proprietor, but because the twelve dollars
paid him each Saturday enabled him to live. And, in order to live so
cheaply that he might save a bit toward the purchase of clothes, law
books and sundries, he boarded at Joel Macomber's. Sarah Macomber took
him to board, not because she needed company--six children and a husband
supplied a sufficiency of that--but because three dollars more a week
was three dollars more.

Joel and George having tramped off to business and the very last crumb
of the Macomber breakfast having vanished, the Macomber children
proceeded to go through their usual morning routine. Lemuel, who did
chores for grumpy old Captain Elijah Samuels at the latter's big place
on the depot road, departed to rake hay and be sworn at. Sarah-Mary went
upstairs to make beds; when the bed-making was over she and Edgar and
Bemis would go to school. Aldora and Joey, the two youngest, went
outdoors to play. And Captain Sears Kendrick, late master of the ship
_Hawkeye_, and before that of the _Fair Wind_ and the _Far Seas_ and
goodness knows how many others, who ran away to ship as cabin boy when
he was thirteen, who fought the Malay pirates when he was eighteen, and
outwitted Semmes by outmaneuvering the _Alabama_ when he was
twenty-eight, a man once so strong and bronzed and confident, but now so
weak and shaken--Captain Sears Kendrick rose painfully and with effort
from his chair, took his cane from the corner and hobbled to the
kitchen.

"Sarah," he said, "I'm goin' to help you with those dishes this
mornin'."

"Sears," said Mrs. Macomber, taking the kettle of boiling dish-water
from the top of the stove, "you'll do nothin' of the kind. You'll go
outdoors and get a little sunshine this lovely day. It's the first real
good day you've had since you got up from bed, and outdoors 'll help you
more than anything else. Now you go!"