He was a big, fine man on whose good-looking, tanned face a smile seemed more natural, and, in fact, was more often seen than a frown. “Jack, old man, you can’t imagine how glad I am to run afoul of you. Had the choice been left to me as to whom I would choose to walk up the street just now, I’d have bawled out ‘Good old Jack Dunlap!’ Well, how are you anyway? Where’ve you been? and how are all in Boston? But first let’s have a drink; what shall it be, bully?” All of these questions and ejaculations were made while the naval man still held Jack’s hand and was towing him along like a huge, puffing tug toward the table from which the officer sprang up to welcome his companion. “By Jove, Tom, give me time to breathe; you’ve hurled a regular broadside of questions into my hull. Haul off and hold a minute; cease firing! as you fighters say,” expostulated our old acquaintance, Captain Jack, as he was fairly shoved into a chair at the table and opposite the laughing and red-faced lieutenant. “Come here, waiter,” called Maxon to a passing attendant, in high glee over Jack’s cry for quarter and his own good luck in meeting an old chum when he was especially lonely and eager to have a talk about home and friends. “Bring us a bottle of champagne and let it be as cold as the Admiral’s heart when a poor devil of a lieutenant asks for a few day’s shore leave.” “Now, my water-logged consort, we will first and foremost drink in a brimming bumper of ‘Fizz’ the golden dome in Boston and the bonny-bright eyes of the beauties that beam on it,” exclaimed jolly Tom Maxon, bubbling over with happiness at having just the man he wished to talk about Boston with. “I say! Tom, have you been studying up on alliteration? You rang in all the B’s of the hive in that toast,” said the merchant skipper, emptying his glass in honor of Boston and her fair daughters. “I don’t require thought or study to become eloquent when the ‘Hub’ and her beauties be the theme, but you just up anchor and sail ahead giving an account of yourself, my hearty,” Tom replied with great gusto. “To begin, then, as the typical story writer does, one November day some thirteen months ago, I sailed away (I’ve caught the complaint. I came near making a rhyme) from Boston in the good ship ‘Adams.’ When a week out of harbor as per instructions from the house of Dunlap, I unsealed my papers to find that the ship had been presented to me by my kinsmen, the Dunlap brothers.” “Stop! Hold, my hearty, until we drink the health of the jolly old twins. May their shadows never grow less and may the good Lord send along such kinsmen to poor Tom Maxon,” interrupted the irreverent Tom, filling the glasses and proceeding to honor the toast by promptly draining his.