CHAPTER I.

SMALL LEAKS.

"You'll never succeed, Ned!" cried Bessy Peele, with a little laugh, as she stood watching her maimed brother's attempts to write a letter.

Twice, the wind coming through the cottage door had sent his paper fluttering to the ground. Ned had raised it, and then tried to fix it by placing a pebble upon it, but the paper had slipped from under the pebble as soon as the sailor had begun to write.

"It's not much," continued Bessy, "that a one-armed man can do."

"He can polish up your window, Bessy, and carry your basket, and get your garden into trim order," answered the sailor with cheerful good humour.

And leaving the cottage for a few moments, Ned soon returned with a brick, the weight of which as effectually fastened down the sheet as if he had had a left hand to rest upon it.

"Safe at anchor at last!" cried Ned. "But this is a clumsy way of getting over the difficulty. Necessity, folk say, is the mother of invention. I'll get the carpenter, as soon as I have the ready rhino to pay for it, to screw on some bit of timber to this maimed stump of mine, with something like a hook at the end; 'twill serve almost as well as a hand, and save me and my friends no end of trouble."

"Not a bad thought!" cried Bessy, who was apt to grumble at having to give the little assistance which the one-armed sailor required. "You needn't wait, Ned, till you've the money. Bill Jones, who works at the carpenter's, is a handy lad, and owes me a deal of kindness for nursing his mother in sickness. He'll manage to look out a good bit of hard wood and a hook, will make what you want cleverly, and never say a word about payment."

"I'd rather wait till I've shot in my locker," said Ned. "The poor lad's time is his money."

"His master's rather," observed Bessy. "But old Stone is an easy-going man, and does not keep a very sharp look out. Why Bill Jones—a good fellow is he—made a little chest of drawers for his mother, all of mahogany wood, and I don't believe that his master so much as guessed that he had not been working from morning till night every day in the week at the fittings in Sir Lacy Barton's study."

Ned had begun his letter, but he raised his head, and the ink dried on his pen as he inquired, "Do you mean that he helped himself to his master's wood, and used up the time which belonged to his master, to make a chest for his mother? And do you call him 'good' for this?"

"I do call him good, and clever too!" answered Bessy, sharply. "Isn't it right for a lad to care for his mother? And wouldn't it be right for him to do a good turn for a poor maimed sailor, who has lost his arm serving the Queen?"

"Would it be right in Bill Jones to carry off Sir Lacy's purse to give to his mother; or, if I chanced to be in want, to help a poor maimed Jack-tar like me?"

"How can you ask such idle questions?" cried Bessy Peele, in a tone of contempt. "Why, if Bill Jones did a thing like that, he'd be clapped into jail directly."

"Keep to the question, mistress!" said Ned, with a playful twinkle in his bright blue eye. "I didn't ask whether it would be safe for Bill to take Sir Lacy's purse, out of love for his mother, or kindness for me, but whether it would be right for him to be generous at the expense of another man."

"Taking a purse! That would be downright stealing!" cried Bessy.

"And are not the wood and the labour he pays for, as much the carpenter's property, as the purse is Sir Lacy Barton's? Is it not just as wrong to rob the one as the other?"

"I never knew a man with such particular notions as you have!" cried Bessy, tossing her head. "You're always pulling one up sharp with the question whether a thing is right!"

"Because," said Ned Franks, gravely, "we have to do with a righteous God. Mind you, Bessy, the Bible is the only chart as is given us to steer by, and when one sees in that chart, 'provide things honest in the sight of all men,' *—'He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much,' † one learns that the safe channel is a very narrow channel indeed, and that if we don't carefully keep the right course, we shall run the vessel aground."

* Rom. xii. 17. † Luke xvi. 10

"Well," said Bessy, as she laid out some linen to iron, "I for one will never believe that the great God above ever notices such little matters as these you speak of."

"Maybe you'd have thought it a little matter for Eve to pluck a fruit, but 'twas a matter that let in death and misery into a world," said Ned. "The skipper of the first craft as ever I sailed in, thought it a little matter when, one evening, our vessel just touched on a rock, as he fancied; he smoked his pipe, drank his grog, and turned into his cabin, and never dreamed of the small leak down below, till he was wakened in the morning with the cry of 'Three feet water in the hold!' The vessel was as nigh lost as could be, with all the hands on board. And 'tis so with our souls, Bessy Peele. The little sins, as we call them, are the little leaks in the timber, and if one goes to the bottom, 'tis all the same, whether the water came in by a big hole or a small one."

Bessy banged down her hot iron on the shirt before her with a noise and bustle which seemed to say, "I want no more of this preaching."

Ned Franks quietly dipped his pen again and went on with his letter.

Presently Bessy looked towards the door of her cottage.

"I thought Norah would have been here afore this," she observed; "she generally manages to walk over early from the town."

"You said, if I remember right, that her mistress kindly allows her to visit home the first Monday in every month."

"Yes," replied Bessy Peele, "and it's a great pleasure it is for Norah and me to meet. She's a good girl, if ever there was one. I've had a deal more comfort in her than in Dan. She has been in her place now for more than a year, and I don't believe that Mrs. Martin has had ever a fault to find with my girl."

"What sort of a lady is Mrs. Martin?" asked Ned.

"Oh! One of your saintly ones," cried Bessy. "Always has my girl up to read the Bible to her of an evening, and sees that she goes to church once or twice every Sunday. The lady's getting a little old, and a little blind, Norah says, and can't afford to give good wages, but a respectable place like that is a stepping-stone to a better."

"Bessy," cried the sailor, "if your girl is moored in a safe good harbour, don't you be in haste to have her heave anchor and hoist sail; there's more to be thought of in a place than the mere matter of wages."

"Ah! But—" began Mrs. Peele, but she interrupted herself with an exclamation of pleasure—"Here she is!"—as a bright, pretty-looking girl of fourteen ran eagerly into the cottage.

Norah, for it was she, was warmly welcomed by her mother, and then presented to the one-armed sailor.

"Here's your uncle, my dear, whom you never have seen afore, who's been in the storms and the wars."

"And who is heartily glad to see you," cried Ned.