Call this a long preface, if you please, but it seems to me best to tell this story so that I may explain what manner of people those were and are who lived, live, and will live, at Tripp's Cove,--and why they have been, are, and will be linked together, with a sort of family tie and relationship which one does not often see in the villages self-formed or formed at hap-hazard on the seaside, on the hillside, or in the prairies of America. Tripp's Cove never became "the Great Mercantile City of the Future," nor do I believe it ever will. But there Samuel Cutts lived in a happy life for fifty years,--and there he died, honored, blessed, and loved. By and by there came the second war with England,--the "Endymion" came cruising along upon the coast, and picking up the fishing-boats and the coasters, burning the ships on the stocks, or compelling the owners to ransom them. Old General Cutts was seventy years old then; but he was, as he had always been, the head of the settlement at Tripp's,--and there was no lack of men younger than he, the sergeants or the high-privates of the "Fighting Twenty-seventh," who drilled the boys of the village for whatever service might impend. When the boys went down to Runkin's and sent the "Endymion's" boats back to her with half their crews dead or dying, faster than they came, old General Cutts was with them, and took sight on his rifle as quickly and as bravely as the best of them. And so twenty years more passed on,--and, when he was well nigh ninety, the dear old man died full of years and full of blessings, all because he had launched out for himself, left the life he was not fit for, and undertaken life in which he was at home. Yes! and because of this also, when 1861 came with its terrible alarm to the whole country, and its call to duty, all Tripp's Cove was all right. The girls were eager for service, and the boys were eager for service. The girls stood by the boys, and the boys stood by the girls. The husbands stood by the wives, and the wives stood by the husbands. I do not mean that there was not many another community in which everybody was steadfast and true. But I do mean that here was one great family, although the census rated it as five-and-twenty families,--which had one heart and one soul in the contest, and which went into it with one heart and one soul,--every man and every woman of them all bearing each other's burdens.