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single individual, among all those who thronged the dwelling of Deacon
Pratt, that the dying man had ever mustered the self-command necessary to
make such an instrument. He was free to act, but did not choose to avail
himself of his freedom. Had he survived a few years, he would have found
himself in the enjoyment of a liberty so sublimated, that he could not
lease, or rent a farm, or collect a common debt, without coming under the
harrow of the tiller of the political soil.
The season had advanced to the early part of April, and that is usually a
soft and balmy month on the sea-shore, though liable to considerable and
sudden changes of temperature. On the day to which we now desire to
transfer the scene, the windows of the deacon's bed-room were open, and
the soft south wind fanned his hollow and pallid cheek. Death was near,
though the principle of life struggled hard with the King of Terrors. It
was now that that bewildered and Pharasaical faith which had so long held
this professor of religion in a bondage even more oppressive than open and
announced sins, most felt the insufficiency of the creed in which he had
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rather been speculating than trusting all his life, to render the passing
hour composed and secure. There had always been too much of self in Deacon
Pratt's moral temperament, to render his belief as humble and devout as it
should be. It availed him not a hair, now, that he was a deacon, or that
he had made long prayers in the market-places, where men could see him, or
that he had done so much, as he was wont to proclaim, for example's sake.
All had not sufficed to cleanse his heart of worldly-mindedness, and he
now groped about him, in the darkness of a faith obscured, for the true
light that was to illumine his path to another world.
The doctor had ordered the room cleared of all, but two or three of the
dying man's nearest relatives. Among these last, however, was the gentle
and tender-hearted Mary, who loved to be near her uncle, in this his
greatest need. She no longer thought of his covetousness, of his griping
usury, of his living so much for self and so little for God. While
hovering about the bed, a message reached her that Baiting Joe wished to
see her, in the passage that led to the bed-room. She went to this old
fisherman, and found him standing near a window that looked towards the
east, and which consequently faced the waters of Gardiner's Bay.
"There she is, Miss Mary," said Joe, pointing out of the window, his whole
face in a glow, between joy and whiskey. "It should be told to the deacon
at once, that his last hours might be happier than some that he has passed
lately. That's she--though, at first, I did not know her."
Mary saw a vessel standing in towards Oyster Pond, and her familiarity
with objects of that nature was such, as to tell her at once that it was a
schooner; but so completely had she given up the Sea Lion, that it did not
occur to her that this could be the long-missing craft.
"At what are you pointing, Joe?" the wondering girl asked, with perfect
innocence.
"At that craft--at the Sea Lion of Sterling, which has been so long set
down as missing, but which has turned up, just as her owner is about to
cast off from this 'arth, altogether."
Joe might have talked for an hour: he did chatter away for two or three
minutes, with his head and half his body out of the window, uninterrupted
by Mary, who sank into a chair, to prevent falling on the floor. At length
the dear girl commanded herself, and spoke.
"You cannot possibly be certain, Joe," she said; "that schooner does not
look, to me, like the Sea Lion."
"Nor to me, in some things, while in other some she does. Her upper works
seem strangely out of shape, and there's precious little on 'em. But no
other fore-taw-sail schooner ever comes in this-a-way, and I know of none
likely to do it. Ay, by Jupiter, there goes the very blue peter I helped
to make with my own hands, and it was agreed to set it, as the deacon's
signal. There's no mistake, now!"
Joe might have talked half an hour longer without any fear of
interruption, for Mary had vanished to her own room, leaving him with his
head and body still out of the window, making his strictures and
conjectures for some time longer; while the person to whom he fancied he
was speaking, was, in truth, on her knees, rendering thanks to God! An
hour later, all doubt was removed, the schooner coming in between Oyster
Pond and Shelter Island, and making the best of her way to the well-known
wharf.
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"Isn't it wonderful, Mary," exclaimed the deacon, in a hollow voice, it is
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