It may naturally be thought that I was a constant source of anxiety to my parents, and no doubt so I should have been, had not, at about the time I had attained the second year of my life, a sudden squall caught my father's fishing smack, and, capsizing it before he could luff, sent him and his two companions into eternity. The smack was found by some fishermen much damaged, quite empty, every vestige of tackle gone, its sails rent, and my father and the others nowhere. My mother took this so much to heart that she scarcely survived her husband's death a week, and by joining him left me an orphan on my own hands. I say "my own," though only two years old, for I had already displayed my wandering propensities by toddling and scrambling alone among the rocks; and, notwithstanding the few pounds my parents left would have procured me the protection of many an honest, good-hearted fisherwife, I scorned all such control, and resisted every effort to prevent my perambulations among the rocks and pools, where, not unfrequently when older, and on warm moonlight evenings, I used to spend even my nights; though, at other times, I condescended to accept the shelter offered me in Jack Brunscombe's cottage, for whose little blue-eyed daughter I had early shown a marked liking, and would speedily have talked her into being the companion of my idle hours, but for the vigilance of her mother, who valued her darling's tender little form far too highly to trust it with so wild, daring, idle a scapegrace as I. Idleness, however, I soon proved they had no right to lay to my charge. Hardly had I acquired the great age of five, than the fishermen began to accept very willingly little Dick Galbraith's services in hanging out their nets to dry, in swabbing the boats, or in any other minor capacity to which they found me ever ready to lend a hand, though a baby one. It is a true saying that "let an energetic nature once get his foot on the world's ladder, he will never lose it again." So with me. The willing child was found the willing boy, which soon raised me to the dignity of going on fishing expeditions with the fishermen, who out of the great kindliness of heart to be found with these people, seemed each to adopt me--an orphan and a waif--for his own. The old men, some of whom had been sailors, were never tired of talking and telling yarns, while I--as if conscious of the future before me, and of what importance the information I was drinking in would hereafter be--was never tired of listening and asking questions. So had years passed over my head, when, on my eighteenth birthday, as Jack Brunscombe with his family and I were seated in the little cabin-like parlour, after a long and thoughtful pause, I suddenly broke silence upon a subject which for months I had been turning over in my mind. "Brunscombe," I said, "you have frequently told me that there is a bit of money I can lay claim to, when old enough to know what to do with it."