may possibly have been moved by
repentance.

As for the third admirer of Mrs. Lunn, Captain Witherspoon, he was an
unencumbered bachelor who had always dreamed of marrying, but had
never wished to marry any one in particular until Maria Lunn had
engaged his late-blossoming affections. He had only a slender estate,
but was sure that if they had been able to get along apart, they could
get on all the better together. His lonely habitation was with a deaf,
widowed cousin; his hopes were great that he was near to having that
happy home of his own of which he had dreamed on land and sea ever
since he was a boy. He was young at heart, and an ardent lover, this
red-faced little old captain, who walked in the Longport streets as if
he were another Lord Nelson, afraid of nobody, and equal to his
fortunes.

To him, who had long admired her in secret, Maria Lunn's confidence in
regard to the renewing of her cedar shingles had been a golden joy. He
could hardly help singing as he walked, at this proof of her
confidence and esteem, and the mellowing effect of an eleven o'clock
glass of refreshment put his willing tongue in daily danger of telling
his hopes to a mixed but assuredly interested company. As he walked by
the Lunn house, on his way to and from the harbor side, he looked at
it with a feeling of relationship and love; he admired the clean white
curtains at the windows, he envied the plump tortoise-shell cat on the
side doorstep; if he saw the composed and pleasant face of Maria
glancing up from her sewing, he swept his hat through the air with as
gallant a bow as Longport had ever seen, and blushed with joy and
pride. Maria Lunn owned to herself that she liked him best, as far as
he himself was concerned; while she invariably settled it with her
judicious affections that she must never think of encouraging the
captain, who, like herself, was too poor already. Put to the final
test, he was found wanting; he was no man of business, and had lost
both his own patrimony and early savings in disastrous shipping
enterprises, and still liked to throw down his money to any one who
was willing to pick it up. But sometimes, when she saw him pass with a
little troop of children at his heels, on their happy way to the
candy-shop at the corner, she could not forbear a sigh, or to say to
herself, with a smile, that the little man was good-hearted, or that
there was nobody who made himself better company; perhaps he would
stop in for a