anions Sim Clark and Bowser vanished
from Ashley and doubtless sought congenial surroundings in Wilmington,
where they could pursue their destiny along evil lines until the long
arm of the law reached out and brought them to book.

True to his word, Paul saw to it that Abner Peake was placed in charge
of the big farm he owned, not a great distance away from Ashley, and
here the former life saver and his family have every comfort their
simple hearts could wish for, so that they count it the luckiest day of
their lives when the cabin boy of the lost brigantine, _Falcon_, was
washed up on the beach out by the life-saving station.

About once a year Abner visits his old chums out on the beach, spending
a couple of days in their company and reviving old times, but on such
occasions they often see him sitting by himself under the shelter of
some old remnant of a former wreck, his calm blue eyes fixed in an
absent-minded fashion upon the distant level horizon of Old Ocean, and
at such times no one ventures to disturb him, for well they know that he
is holding silent communion with the spirit of poor little Joe, who went
out with the tide, and was seen no more.

Somewhere upon that broad, lonely ocean his little form has found a
resting place, and so long as he lives must Abner drop a tear in his
memory whenever he sets eyes upon his watery shroud.

But the Peakes are happy, and the twins are growing up to be buxom
children.

There is another little laughing Peake now, a boy at that, and at last
accounts Darry--it is hard to call him by any other name--heard that he
is destined to be christened Joseph Darry Peake.

After all, Paul and Darry did have a chance to spend some part of the
winter cruising together on the sound, although our hero later on
decided that he must start in to make himself worthy of the position
which was from this time to be his lot, and enrolled at an academy where
his fond mother could be near him, and have a home in which he might
find some of the happiness that fate had cheated him out of for so long.

No one who knows the youth doubts that he has a promising future before
him, and many prophesy that he will eventually make a more famous
lawyer than his father was before him.

Often Darry loves, when by himself, to look back to the days that are no
more, and at such times he thinks with gratitude of the friends whom a
kindly Providence raised up for him in his time of need.

Among these he ne