The ferryman was a poor man, and was likely to remain a poor man to the end of his life. Hardly a day passed in which he did not sigh to be rich, and complain of the unequal and unjust distribution of property. He could point to a score of men who had not worked half so hard as he had, in his own opinion, that had made fortunes, or at least won a competence, while he was as poor as ever, and in danger of having his place taken away from him. People said that John Wilford was lazy; that he did not make the most of his land, and that his ferry, with closer attention to the wants of passengers, might be made to pay double the amount he made from it. He permitted the weeds to grow in his garden, and compelled people to wait by the hour for a passage across the lake. John Wilford wondered that he could not grow rich, that he could not pay off the mortgage on his place. He seldom sat down to dinner without grumbling at his hard lot. His wife was a sensible woman. She did not wonder that he did not grow rich; only that he contrived to keep out of the poorhouse. She was the mother of eight children, and if he had been half as smart as she was, prosperity would have smiled upon the family. As it was, her life was filled up with struggles to make the ends meet; but, though she had the worst of it, she did not complain, and did all she could to comfort and encourage her thriftless husband. The oldest son was as near like his father as one person could be like another. He was eighteen years old, and was an idle and dissolute fellow. Lawrence, the second son, inherited his mother's tack and energy. He was observing and enterprising, and had already made a good reputation as a boatman and pilot. He had worked in various capacities on board of steamers, canal-boats, sloops, and schooners, and in five years had visited every part of the lake from Whitehall to St. Johns. Speaking technically, his bump of locality was large, and he was as familiar with the navigation of the lake as any pilot on its waters. Indeed, he had occasionally served as a pilot on board steamers and other vessels, which had earned for him the name of the Young Pilot, by which he was often called. But his business was not piloting, for there was but little of this work to be done. Unlike his father, he was willing to do anything which would afford him a fair compensation, and in his five years of active life on the lake he had been a pilot, a deck-hand, a waiter, and a kitchen assistant on board steamers, and a sailor, helmsman, and cook on board other craft. He picked up considerable money, for a boy, by his enterprise, which, like a good son with a clear apprehension of domestic circumstances, he gave to his mother. At the time of his introduction to the reader, Lawry had just piloted a canal-boat, with movable masts, from Whitehall to Plattsburg, and was working his passage home on the "_Missisque_.