“I shall not sleep a wink for thinking of it.  No, no—­I’ll make the old lady pack up before breakfast, and we’ll sail in the sloop.  I’ll take her aboard the Dawn with me in town, and a comfortable time we’ll have of it in her cabins.  She has as good state-rooms as a yacht.”

There were no liners in those days; but a ship with two cabins was a miracle of convenience.

“Your mother will hardly suit a ship, Moses; and a ship will hardly suit your mother.”

“How can any of us know that till we try?  If I’m a chip of the old block, they’ll take to each other like rum and water.  If I’m to go out in the ship, I’m far from certain I’ll not take the old woman to sea with me.”

“You’ll probably remain at home, now that you have a home, and a mother, and other duties to attend to.  I and my concerns will be but secondary objects with you hereafter, Mr. Wetmore.”

“Wetmore be d——­d!  D’ye mean, Miles, that I’m to give up my calling, give up the sea, give up you?”

“You wished to be a hermit once, and found it a little too solitary; had you a companion or two, you would have been satisfied, you said.  Well, here is everything you can wish; a mother, a niece, a house, a farm, barns, out-houses, garden and orchard; and, seated on that porch, you can smoke segars, take your grog, look at the craft going up and down the Hudson——­”

“Nothing but so many bloody sloops,” growled the mate.  “Such in-and-in fore-and-afters that their booms won’t stay guyed-out, even after you’ve been at the pains to use a hawser.”

“Well, a sloop is a pleasant object to a sailor, when he can set nothing better.  Then there is this Mr. Van Tassel to settle with—­you may have a ten years’ law-suit on your hands, to amuse you.”

“I’ll make short work with that scamp, when I fall in with him.  You’re right enough, Miles; that affair must be settled before I can lift an anchor.  My mother tells me he lives hard by, and can be seen, at any moment, in a quarter of an hour.  I’ll pay him a visit this very night.”

This declaration caused me to pause.  I knew Marble too well, not to foresee trouble if he were left to himself in a matter of this nature, and thought it might be well to inquire further into the affair.  Sailors do everything off-hand.  Mrs. Wetmore telling me that her son’s statement was true, on my going back to the house to question her in the matter, and offering us the use of an old-fashioned one-horse chaise, that the only farm-labourer she employed was just then getting ready to go in, in quest of Kitty, I availed myself of the opportunity, took the printed advertisement of the sale to read as we went along, obtained our directions, and off Marble and I went in quest of the usurer.

There would be sufficient time for all our purposes.  It is true that the horse, like the house, its owner, the labourer, the chaise, and all we had yet seen about Willow Cove, as we had learned the place was called, was old; but he was the more safe and sure.  The road led up the ascent by a ravine, through which it wound its way very prettily; the labourer walking by our side to point out the route, after we should reach the elevation of the country that stretched inland.