Year after year the captain laid up for repairs, and put up with Mrs. Simmons.  Year after year he was jolly, genial, chivalrous, generous, but—­not what good Mrs. Simmons earnestly wanted him to be.

He would buy tickets to all the church fairs, give free passages to all preachers recommended by Mrs. Simmons, and on Sunday morning he would respectfully escort the old lady as far as the church-door.

On one occasion, when Mrs. Simmons’s church building was struck by lightning, a deacon dropped in with a subscription-paper, while the captain was in.  The generous steamboatman immediately put himself down for fifty dollars; and although he improved the occasion to condemn severely the meanness of certain holy people, and though his language seemed to create an atmosphere which must certainly melt the money—­for those were specie days—­Mrs. Simmons declared to herself that “he couldn’t be fur from the kingdom when his heart was so little set on Mammon as that.”

“He’s too good for Satan—­the Lord must hev him,” thought the good old lady.

Once again the Queen Ann needed repairing, and again the captain found himself at his old boarding-place.

Good Mrs. Simmons surveyed him tenderly through her glasses, and instantly saw there had something unusual happened.  Could it be—­oh! if it only could be—­that he had put off the old man, which is sin!  She longed to ask him, yet, with a woman’s natural delicacy, she determined to find out without direct questioning.

“Good season, cap’en?” she inquired.

“A No. 1, ma’am—­positively first-class,” replied the captain.

“Hed good health—­no ager?” she continued.

“Never was better, my dear woman—­healthy right to the top notch,” he answered.

“It must be,” said good Mrs. Simmons, to herself—­“it can’t be nothin’ else.  Bless the Lord!”

This pious sentiment she followed up by a hymn, whose irregularities of time and tune were fully atoned for by the spirit with which she sung.  A knock at the door interrupted her.

“Come in!” she cried.

Captain Sam entered, and laid a good-sized, flat flask on the table, saying: 

“I’ve just been unpackin’, an’ I found this; p’r’aps you ken use it fur cookin’.  It’s no use to me; I’ve sworn off drinkin’.”

And before the astonished lady could say a word, he was gone.

But the good soul could endure the suspense no longer.  She hurried to the door, and cried: 

“Cap’en!”

“That’s me,” answered Captain Sam, returning.

“Cap’en,” said Mrs. Simmons, in a voice in which solemnity and excitement struggled for the mastery, “hez the Lord sent His angel unto you?”

“He hez,” replied the captain, in a very decided tone, and abruptly turned, and hurried to his own room.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul!” almost shouted Mrs. Simmons, in her ecstacy.  “We musn’t worry them that’s weak in the faith, but I sha’n’t be satisfied till I hear him tell his experience.  Oh, what a blessed thing to relate at prayer-meetin’ to-night!”