“His name is Oloff, or Oliver,” interrupted the old woman easerly “I named him after my own father, and had him duly christened, before he was entrusted to the nurse, in the hope it might soften his grandfather’s heart, when he came to know of my marriage.  Oloff Van Duzer Wetmore is his real name.”

I smiled to think of Marble’s sailing under such an appellation, and was about to suggest a compromise, when the subject of our discourse returned.  The mate had regained his composure during the half-hour he had been absent; and I saw by the kind glance he threw on his mother, whose look answered his own more naturally than I could have hoped, that things were getting right; and, by way of removing the awkwardness of excessive sensibility, I pursued the discourse.

“We were talking of your true name, Moses, as you came in,” I said.  “It will never do for you to hail by one name, while your mother hails by another.  You’ll have to cut adrift from Moses Marble altogether.”

“If I do, may I be——­”

“Hush, hush—­you forget where you are, and in whose presence you stand.”

“I hope my son will soon learn that he is always in the presence of his God,” observed the mother, plaintively.

“Ay, ay—­that’s all right, mother, and you shall do with me just what you please in any of them matters; but as for not being Moses Marble, you might as well ask me not to be myself.  I should be another man, to change my name.  A fellow might as well go without clothes, as go without a name; and mine came so hard, I don’t like to part with it.  No, no—­had it come to pass, now, that my parents had been a king and a queen, and that I was to succeed ’em on the throne, I should reign as King Moses Marble, or not reign at all.”

“You’ll think better of this, and take out a new register under your lawful designation.”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, mother, and that will satisfy all parties.  I’ll bend on the old name to the new one, and sail under both.”

“I care not how you are called, my son, so long as no one has need to blush for the name you bear.  This gentleman tells me you are an honest and true-hearted man; and those are blessings for which I shall never cease to thank God.”

“Miles has been singing my praises, has he!  I can tell you, mother, you had need look out for Miles’s tongue Natur’ intended him for a lawyer, and it’s mere accident his being a sailor, though a capital one he is.  But what may be my name, according to law?”

“Oloff Van Duser Wetmore Moses Marble, according to your own expedient of sailing under all your titles.  You can ring the changes, however, and call yourself Moses Oloff Marble Van Duser Wetmore, if you like that better.”

Moses laughed, and as I saw that both he and his new-found mother were in a fit state to be left together, and that the sun now wanted but an hour or two of setting, I rose to take my leave.