"What, man," urged the captain, "don't give in! Be up and doing _like_ a man!" "It is selfish, I know,--but doing what, doing what?" cried the young fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the ground. "Doing what?" returned the captain. "Something! I'd go down to the little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the salt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I'd do nothing. Nothing!" ejaculated the captain. "Any fool or fainting heart can do _that_, and nothing can come of nothing,--which was pretended to be found out, I believe, by one of them Latin critters," said the captain with the deepest disdain; "as if Adam hadn't found it out, afore ever he so much as named the beasts!" Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was some greater reason than he yet understood for the young man's distress. And he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity. "Come, come!" continued the captain, "Speak out. What is it, boy!" "You have seen how beautiful she is, sir," said the young man, looking up for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled hair. "Did any man ever say she warn't beautiful?" retorted the captain. "If so, go and lick him." The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said-- "It's not that, it's not that." "Wa'al, then, what is it?" said the captain in a more soothing tone. The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the captain what it was, and began: "We were to have been married next Monday week--" "Were to have been!" interrupted Captain Jorgan. "And are to be? Hey?" Young Raybrock shook his head, and traced out with his fore-finger the words, "_poor father's five hundred pounds_," in the written paper. "Go along," said the captain. "Five hundred pounds? Yes?" "That sum of money," pursued the young fisherman, entering with the greatest earnestness on his demonstration, while the captain eyed him with equal earnestness, "was all my late father possessed. When he died, he owed no man more than he left means to pay, but he had been able to lay by only five hundred pounds." "Five hundred pounds," repeated the captain. "Yes?" "In his lifetime, years before, he had expressly laid the money aside to leave to my mother,--like to settle upon her, if I make myself understood." "Yes?" "He had risked it once--my father put down in writing at that time, respecting the money--and was resolved never to risk it again." "Not a spectator," said the captain. "My country wouldn't have suited him. Yes?" "My mother has never touched the money till now. And now it was to have been laid out, this very next week, in buying me a handsome share in our neighbouring fishery here, to settle me in life with Kitty." The captain's face fell, and he passed and repassed his sun-browned right hand over his thin hair, in a discomfited manner.