and overbearing," he thought resentfully, "because she kin do more'n I kin now. If 'twasn't for the pension I I earned for her a-wearin' these things an' this house I've got her the right to live in, where'd she be now? Guess her ol greens and sassafras and mint wouldn't keep her going long." With this incendiary thought came a wild idea into Joe's mind. He drew on his blue overalls over the uniform, squeezed into his everyday coat and crept slowly downstairs. The kitchen was deserted. It did not take him a minute to open the clock, draw out the pocketbook from its hiding place behind the works and extract a shining dollar. ""Tain't stealing," he muttered stoutly to himself, "a man's got a right to use his own pension money if his wife does hide it away from him. I'm a-going out to-day, like a soldier-with money in my pocket, an' maybe--maybe I'll have some 'bacca." a man, Perhaps it was the heat of his extra clothing, or the fatigue from his morning's work, but, at any rate, when Mrs. Joe, having garbed herself, returned to the kitchen, she found her husband soundly sleeping, his head bent over the pan of greens he ought to be cleaning. With a sniff Mrs. Joe ambled across the room. She sniffed again when she saw the miserable collection of herbs in the pan. "He is getting blinder every day," she declared to herself. "He has got to wear spectacles. He ain't no mortal use without them." Then the manager of the Rich household locked the back door and pocketed the key, went out the front door and locked that after her, slid the key under the door-step and sailed majestically down the road. It never entered her head to leave the house open. It was her theory that her husband was about as responsible a caretaker as a child and was not to be trusted with keys. When Joe was awakened an hour later by the sound of wheels crunching the cemetery gravel, he dropped the greens recklessly on the floor, got his army cap from the closet and started to open the front door. It refused to budge. He tried the back door. Then the truth was clear to him. Here he was-heJoe Rich-an ex-soldier-a man who had recently emancipated himself from petticoat control-locked in his own house, and by the petticcat ruler. Forgetting his rheumatism, Joe Rich rushed upstairs. He well knew the downstairs windows were firmly sealed. With a mighty effort he flung up the window in his bedroom, opening on the shed roof, clambered out, slid down the roof, and jumped six feet to the ground. Once down his rheumatic limbs again claimed attention. "O, Lordy," he gasped, "what if I can't walk, after all." But grit and outraged dignity can accomplish much. So it was that old Joe Rich walked decorously through the cemetery gates, at the very end of the procession of mourners. Mrs. Joe. fortunately, was far ahead. The funeral service was all too short, for Joe Rich. He lingered affectionately by the new-filled grave until the cemetery was deserted. His wildest hopes had been realized and he had been privileged to assist in replacing the dirt he had dug out in the morning. He knelt down and laid his gnarled hands lovingly upon the rougn, brown earth of the grave. A poet could not have breathed his swan song more tenderly. "I shan't ever do another, I'm a-feared," he whispered, "but if you are my last one, I've seen that you was done right, straight up to the end." Be Just then a step sounded on the gravel path. Joe looked up. fore him stood Mrs. Joe Rich. Her ample figure seemed, in every line, to demand an explanation. She stared a minute, then without a word, turned and walked away. It was an hour before Joe returned to the house. He had lingered about the graveyard, trimming bushes, snipping grass, and rubbing off bits of mould from the stones. Now, as the season of retribution seemed no longer avoidable, guilty fears oppressed him. When he entered the door his wife was stirring something hot and steaming on the stove. She turned as he entered. "Here, Joe," she said, "you've caught your death of cold, pottering around the graveyard so long in the damp. You drink this if you don't want to keep me awake, nursing your rheumatism all night." Joe drank the draught uncomplainingly, wondering why he was not ordered upstairs to change his best clothes. When he saw the pan of greens, all cleaned, sitting on the pantry shelf he was sure miracles had not yet ceased. That night Joe went to bed before his wife. He discovered why he had not been compelled to doff his untimely finery. He still wore, over his army suit, the blue overalls and old coat. In the excitement of his escape, he had forgotten to remove them. As he folded the garments away in the chest, something hard rolled out of the pocket. It was the silver dollar he had secreted. Joe Rich looked at it longingly. He had missed the chance to show off his uniform, but he might still have the tobacco. There was some comfort in that. However, the mood induced by combined twinges of conscience and rheumatism prevailed. He tossed the dollar over to his wife when she came upstairs. "Here's a dollar I got to-day. You better put it away. Mrs. Joe picked up the dollar. "It is a good thing you earned something," she vouchsafed, "for you've got to buy you some spectacles to-morrow. I never cleaned such a mess of no-count greens as you gathered to-day." Old Joe's conscience suddenly seared over. He had meant to confess the whole thing. But confess to a woman who talked of spectacles to a man whose eyes were sharp as needles-never! He turned over peacefully in bed and slept the sound sleep of the unregenerate, disturbed only by dreams of tobacco "that might have. been." 66 OME," I said to old Uncle sounds on one of the numerous Hiram, who had made "thirty-seven winter trips to Newfoundland after frozen her ring and never lost a man, never so much as started a reef-point, sir;" "tell my friends the story about that pirate crew." I seized the tongs and, extracting a live coal from the glowing maple, placed it in the bowl of the old man's pipe. A few vigorous puffs A few vigorous puffs and Uncle Hiram leaned back with a long inspiration of satisfaction. As my guests drew up about the cheerful winter fire, my little boy Harold pressed my hand with a tighter grasp and bent his earnest face on the weather-beaten visage of his great-great-uncle, one of the few men now living who remember the strange incident in the early annals of the New England fishing fleet. bankers that were fitting away. Wharf after wharf was visited, and skipper after skipper approached, but it was always the same story. Some boy had forestalled me, or the skipper had made up his mind to never again carry a boy over whom he must assume a kind of guardianship with the attendant worry and responsibility. I was about to give up my quest in despair when I ran across old Captain Adoniram Prindall of the schooner 'Watercress.' "I want to say, in order to explain the deception practised on this man, that he was very old and had long passed his period of usefulness. Luck had been running steadily against him for a long time and he had been sinking money every trip. The owners, however, couldn't find it in their hearts to discharge an old servant who had done so much in former days toward building up the firm and so he held on, but the fishermen were not so careful about the old man's feelings, and the consequence was, his crews had steadily deteriorated in skill and experience until at last he found it hard work to get any "Way back in the summer of 18," began Uncle Hiram, "I found myself, a stout lad of fifteen, looking around the wharves for a chance to go fishing. As it was late in the season about all the mackerel fleet had sailed, and so I determined to try a chance to cut out tongues and one to man his vessel. This, then, accounts somewhat for the ready manner in which I was accepted, and the careless scrutiny given to the character of the rest of the crew. "I had shipped at the last moment, and had barely time to run home and get my clothes bag, at the bottom of which my mother had-God bless her memory-carefully placed the things I would need first, when we cast off our moorings and went to sea. We had put the land well behind the horizon, the evening the evening was coming on apace, when Captain Prindall called out: 'Set the watch -all hands aft to thumb the hat!'"' Uncle Hiram glanced quizzically at his audience. "You folks understand about that?" he asked. My guests were as polite a lot of gentlemen as the crowd behind my neighbor, Colonel Higginson, when the door of the Boston Court House with the muskets behind it yielded sufficiently to allow but one man to enter at a time, and so for a space the strenuous yet courteous abolitionists stood waiting one upon the other. So my friends waited, each for the other. "It's like this," I said, coming to the rescue, "the crew, standing in a circle, place their thumbs on the band of the Captain's hat. He counts around to twelve, the man indicated falls out, and so on to the end, just like children at their games. The last two men counted out, constitute the first watch." "Well," continued Uncle Hiram, "as the crew came running aft, I had a chance for the first time to size them up as a whole. Boy though I was, I was at once struck with the foreign aspect of the whole crowd. The long, white thumbs inserted in the hat were not the thumbs of fishermen. The last man counted out, the watch set, Captain Prindall glanced casually at the chart that lay half unrolled on the house and weighted down by two cod leads, picked at the ringlets in his short, close-curling white beard a moment meditatively, and turning. to the man at the wheel said: 'Keep her east half south!" A tall man stepped out from the crew, tapped the skipper on the back and said: 'Excuse me, Captain, but we'll go a little to the south of that this trip;' to the man at the wheel, Keep her east by south three quarters south! The skipper turned around on him like a flash: 'What do you mean, you scoundrel?' "A half dozen men slipped behind the old man, pinioned his arms to his side and in a moment he was bound and helpless. 'What's all this! What's all this!' he cried again and again, struggling with the thongs that held him. The tall man jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the mainrigging. I looked in the direction indicated. One of the crew was bending something to the pennant halliards. The next moment I saw the 'Jolly Roger,' a white skull and crossbones on a black ground, run aloft. "Pirates, by God!' ejaculated the dumbfounded old man. "With the impulsiveness of a boy, I threw myself between the tall man and Captain Prindall. 'Don't you dare to harm the skipper! I cried out. A blow on the side of the head sent me reeling into the lee scuppers. Picking myself up I ran forward, crying and bewildered. Some of the crew were removing the main hatch. next moment five desperate looking The |