human lumber, a jack-at-all-trades. He profited more by his limited
winter's schooling than his brothers and fellows, and was always
respected by the old man as "a boy that took naterally to book-larnin',
and would _be_ suthin' some day." Of course he went to the Banks, and
acquitted himself there with honor,--no man fishing more zealously or
having better luck. But all the time he was dreaming of his future,
counting this present as nothing, and ready, as soon as Fortune should
make him an opening, to cast away this life, and grasp--he had not
settled what.

"_I_ dun know what ails him," said his father; "but he don't take
kindly to the Banks. Seems to me he kinder despises the work, though he
_does_ it well enough. And then he makes the best shoes on the Cape;
but he a'n't content, somehow."

And that was just it. He was not contented. He had seen men--"no better
than I," thought he, poor fool!--in Boston, living in big houses,
wearing fine clothes, putting fair, soft hands into smooth-fitting
kid-gloves; "and why not I?" he cried to himself continually. Year by
year, from his seventeenth to his twenty-first, he was pursued by this
demon of "ambition," which so took possession of his heart as to crowd
out nearly everything else,--father, mother, work,--even pretty
Hepzibah Nickerson, almost, who loved him, and whom he also loved
truly. They had almost grown up together, had long loved each other,
and had been now two years betrothed. When Elkanah was out of his time
and able to buy a share in a vessel, and had made a voyage to the Banks
as captain, they were to be married.

The summer before this spring in which our story opens, Elkanah had
stayed at home for two months, because of a rheumatism contracted by