world a'n't worth mentionin', any on us; but we'll all have one try for
our lives. Boys, I've tried to do my duty by you and the ship,--but
God's will be done! All I have to ask now is, that, if any of you git to
shore, you'll find my mother and tell her I died thinkin' of her and
father and my dear friends.' That was the last Jeduthun saw of him; for
in a few minutes more the ship struck, and then it was every man for
himself. Laws! Jeduthun says there couldn't nobody have stood beatin'
agin them rocks, unless they was all leather and inger-rubber like him.
Why, he says the waves would take strong men and jest crush 'em against
the rocks like smashin' a pie-plate!"

Here Mary's paleness became livid; she made a hasty motion to rise from
the table, and Solomon trod on the foot of the narrator.

"You seem to forget that friends and relations has feelin's," he said,
as Mary hastily went into her own room.

Amaziah, suddenly awakened to the fact that he had been trespassing, sat
with mouth half open and a stupefied look of perplexity on his face for
a moment, and then, rising hastily, said, "Well, Sol, I guess I'll go
an' yoke up the steers."

At eight o'clock all the morning toils were over, the wide kitchen cool
and still, and the one-horse wagon standing at the door, into which
climbed Mary, her mother, and the Doctor; for, though invested with no
spiritual authority, and charged with no ritual or form for hours of
affliction, the religion of New England always expects her minister as a
first visitor in every house of mourning.

The ride was a sorrowful and silent one. The Doctor, propped upon his