I was stepping upon the gate-head to walk across it.  It took but an instant, not nearly all the ten seconds, to swing down by my arms into the lock, keeping myself hanging by my hands, to catch with my right foot the bight of the rope and lift it off the treacherous iron, to kick the whole into the water, and then to scramble up the wet lock-side again.  I got a little wet, but that was nothing.  I ran down the tow-path, beckoned to the skipper, who sheered his boat up to the shore, and I jumped on board.

At that moment, reader, Fausta was sitting in a yellow chair on the deck of that musty old boat, crocheting from a pattern in Grodey’s Lady’s Book.  I remember it as I remember my breakfast of this morning.  Not that I fell in love with her, nor did I fall in love with my breakfast; but I knew she was there.  And that was the first time I ever saw her.  It is many years since, and I have seen her every day from that evening to this evening.  But I had then no business with her.  My affair was with him whom I have called the skipper, by way of adapting this fresh-water narrative to ears accustomed to Marryat and Tom Cringle.  I told him that I had to go to New York; that I had not time to walk, and had not money to pay; that I should like to work my passage to Troy, if there were any way in which I could; and to ask him this I had come on board.

“Waal,” said the skipper, “’taint much that is to be done, and Zekiel and I calc’late to do most of that and there’s that blamed boy beside—­”

This adjective “blamed” is the virtuous oath by which simple people, who are improving their habits, cure themselves of a stronger epithet, as men take to flagroot who are abandoning tobacco.

“He ain’t good for nothin’, as you see,” continued the skipper meditatively, “and you air, anybody can see that,” he added.  “Ef you’ve mind to come to Albany, you can have your vittles, poor enough they are too; and ef you are willing to ride sometimes, you can ride.  I guess where there’s room for three in the bunks there’s room for four.  ’Taint everybody would have cast off that blamed hawser-rope as neat as you did.”

From which last remark I inferred, what I learned as a certainty as we travelled farther, that but for the timely assistance I had rendered him I should have plead for my passage in vain.

This was my introduction to Fausta.  That is to say, she heard the whole of the conversation.  The formal introduction, which is omitted in no circle of American life to which I have ever been admitted, took place at tea half an hour after, when Mrs. Grills, who always voyaged with her husband, brought in the flapjacks from the kitchen.  “Miss Jones,” said Grills, as I came into the meal, leaving Zekiel at the tiller,—­“Miss Jones, this is a young man who is going to Albany.  I don’t rightly know how to call your name, sir.”  I said my name was Carter.  Then he said, “Mr. Carter, this is Miss Jones.  Mrs. Grills, Mr. Carter.  Mr. Carter, Mrs. Grills.  She is my wife.”  And so our partie carree was established for the voyage.