home-abiding tiller of broad lands.

For five years all went well enough. If, at times, David's
longing for the sea troubled him, he stifled it, and listened not
to its luring voice. He and Isabella were very happy; the only
drawback to their happiness lay in the regretted fact that they
were childless.

Then, in the sixth year, came a crisis and a change. Captain
Barrett, an old crony of David's, wanted him to go with him on a
voyage as mate. At the suggestion all David's long-repressed
craving for the wide blue wastes of the ocean, and the wind
whistling through the spars with the salt foam in its breath,
broke forth with a passion all the more intense for that very
repression. He must go on that voyage with James Barrett--he
MUST! That over, he would be contented again; but go he must.
His soul struggled within him like a fettered thing.

Isabella opposed the scheme vehemently and unwisely, with mordant
sarcasm and unjust reproaches. The latent obstinacy of David's
character came to the support of his longing--a longing which
Isabella, with five generations of land-loving ancestry behind
her, could not understand at all.

He was determined to go, and he told Isabella so.

"I'm sick of plowing and milking cows," he said hotly.

"You mean that you are sick of a respectable life," sneered
Isabella.