"She is, however, my aunt; and when one is ninety years old it is a good excuse for many faults." Matilda's utter refusal of his kin or kindness threw him more exclusively upon Nanna and her child. And as all his efforts to discover any other family connections were quite futile, he finally came to believe that they three were the last of a family that had once filled the lands of the Norsemen with the fame of their great deeds. Insensibly this thought drew the bond tighter and closer, though an instinct as pure as it was conventional taught him a scrupulous delicacy with regard to this friendship. Fortunately, in Shetland the blood-tie was regarded as a strong enough motive for all David's attentions to a woman and child so desolate and helpless. People said simply, "It is a good thing for Nanna Sinclair that her cousin has come to Shetland." And it did not enter their hearts to imagine an evil motive for kind deeds when there was one so natural and obligatory. So Shetland became dear and pleasant to David, and he gradually grew into great favor. The minister made much of the young man, for he respected his integrity and earnest piety, and loved him for that tenderness and clearness of conscience which was sensitive to the first approaches of wrong. The fishers and sailors of the town gave him a warm admiration for his seamanship, and the praise David had looked for at the beginning, and felt disappointed in not receiving, was now given him by a kind of acclamation. Old sailors, telling yarns of their ships and the queer, bold things their ships had done, generally in some way climaxed their narratives by an allusion to David Borson. Thus, Peter Redlands, talking to a group of fishers one day, said: "Where that lad learned the sea, and who taught him all the ways of it, is beyond me; but say as you will, he can make harbor when none of us could look at it. It is my belief David Borson can stick to anything that can float." "And to see how he humors a boat," continued Jan Wyck, "you would think she was made out of flesh instead of out of three-inch planks. I was out with him near the Old Man's Rocks last week, and he was watching the water; and I said, 'What is it, David?' 'The sea,' he said. 'It will be at its old tricks again in an hour or less.' And the 'less' was right, for in fifteen minutes the word was, 'Reef, and quick about it!' and then you know what--the rip and the roar, and the boat leaping her full length. But David did not worry a jot. He coaxed her beautifully, and kept her well in hand; and she shook herself a little, and then away like a gull before the wind."