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162 this out of his system," as Phil mentally put it, and his reluctance to throw any more crazy ideas into the boy's head. "However, the old boy was so earnest, and he showed us this painting with the chart on the back—my, how it has faded!—that I got to believe him, and I think Father half believed him, too—that night—in the dark. But in the light of the morning after, when the fellow got down to brass tacks and asked him to fit out a ship, why, that was another story. Your grandfather said it was a 'good enough yarn to spin when there was no work to be done but puffin' on your evening pipe, but to fit out a ship and spend a year cruising and digging for fairy gold, when there were genuine cargoes waiting on the wharves of a thousand ports, why, that was something else again.'

"Apparently, the old man had tried every shipowner in New England. They all listened, but no one would give him even a catboat, let alone the schooner he wanted.

"When he reached us he was in pretty bad shape from exposure, and we were his last chance, I guess. We kept him, of course. It would have been worse than cruel to turn him out. Anyway, one night about a week later, it was mighty warm—the sort of oppressive heat that tells a heavy electrical storm coming. Later it blew great guns and a storm broke—just like tonight. You remember that stump which your mother always kept covered with flowers, near the elm that was struck a few moments ago? Well, that was split the same way that night. Just before the crash, when the storm was at its worst, we heard cries from the sailor's room. We could hear them even above the roar of the wind. We