“You may go to your room, Lulu,” the captain said, in a quiet aside; “but you need not say good-night to me now:  I shall step in to look at you before I go to mine.”

“Yes, papa,” she returned, with a glad look, and followed Grace’s example.

“Max, what do you say to a promenade on the veranda with your father?” Capt.  Raymond asked, with a smiling glance at his son.

Max jumped up with alacrity.  “That I’d like nothing better, sir,” he said; and they went out together.

“You are pleased with your pony, Max?” the captain said inquiringly, striking a match and lighting a cigar as he spoke.

“Yes, indeed, papa!” was the enthusiastic reply.  “I feel very rich owning him.”

“And mean to be a kind master to him, I trust?”

“Yes, sir; oh, yes, indeed!  I don’t intend ever to speak a cross word to him, much less give him a blow.”

“He has always been used to kind treatment, I was told, and has nothing vicious in his disposition,” the captain continued, puffing at his cigar, and pacing the veranda with measured tread, Max keeping close at his side:  “so I think he will always give you satisfaction, if you are gentle and kind, never ill-treating him in any way.”

“I mean to make quite a pet of him, sir,” Max said.

Then, with an arch look up into his father’s face,—­a full moon making it light enough for each to see the other’s countenance quite distinctly,—­“Papa, you are very generous to me, but you never offer me a cigar.”

The captain stopped short in his walk, and faced his son with some sternness of look and tone.  “Max, you haven’t learned to smoke? tell me:  have you ever smoked a cigar? or tobacco in any shape?”

“Yes, sir; but”—­

“Don’t do it again:  I utterly and positively forbid it.”

“Yes, sir:  I’ll obey; and, in fact, I have no desire to smoke again:  it was just one cigar I tried; and it made me so deathly sick, that I’ve never wanted another.  I wouldn’t have done it, papa, if you had ever forbidden me; but—­but you had never said any thing to me on the subject, and I’d seen”—­Max hesitated, and left his sentence unfinished.

“You had seen your father smoke, and naturally thought you might follow his example?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, my son, I can hardly blame you for that; but there are some things a man may do with impunity, that a boy may not.  Tobacco is said to be far more injurious to one who has not attained his growth, than to an adult.  But it is not seldom injurious to the latter also:  some seem to use it with no bad effect, but it has wrought horrible suffering for many.  I am sorry I ever formed the habit, and I would save you from the same regret, or something worse:  indeed, so anxious am I to do so, that I would much rather hand you a thousand dollars than a cigar, if I thought you would smoke it.”

“Papa, I promise you I will never try the thing again; never touch tobacco in any shape,” Max said earnestly.