I called the nurse to bring me a small basket of oranges I had sent out in the morning, expressly for this patient, and squeezing the juice from one of them on a little bit of ice, I held it to his lips, and he drank eagerly. "That's better for you than water, Jackson," said I. "I dunno but 'tis, Doctor; I dunno but 'tis; but there a'n't nothin' goes to the spot like that Simsbury water. You ha'n't never v'yaged to them parts, have ye?" "Bless you, yes, man! I was born and brought up in Hartford, just over the mountain, and I've been to Simsbury, fishing, many a time." "Good Lord! _You_ don't never desert a feller, ef the ship _is_ a-goin' down!" fervently ejaculated Eben, looking up as he did sometimes in his brief delirium, when he said the Lord's Prayer, and thought his mother held his folded hands; but this was no delirious aspiration. He went on:-- "You see, Doctor, I've had somethin' in the hold a good spell't I wanted to break bulk on, but I didn't know as I ever was goin' to see a shipmet agin; and now you've jined convoy jist in time, for Davy Jones's a'n't fur off. Are you calculatin' to go North afore long?" "Yes, I mean to go next spring," said I. Jackson began to fumble with weak and trembling hands about his throat, to undo his shirt-collar,--he would not let me help him,--and presently, flushed and panting from the effort, he drew out a length of delicate Panama chain fastened rudely together by a link of copper wire, and suspended on it a little old-fashioned ring of reddish gold, twisted of two wires, and holding a very small dark garnet. Jackson looked at it as I have seen many a Catholic look at his reliquary in mortal sickness. "Well," said he, "I've carried that 'are gimcrack nigh twenty long year round my old scrag, and when I'm sunk I want you to take it off, Doctor. Keep it safe till you go to Connecticut, and then some day take a tack over to Simsbury. Don't ye go through the Gap, but go 'long out on the turnpike over the mountain, and down t'other side to Avon, and so nor'ard till jist arter you git into Simsbury town you see an old red house 'longside o' the mountain, with a big ellum-tree afore the door, and a stone well to the side on't. Go 'long in and ask for Hetty Buel, and give her that 'are thing, and tell her where you got it, and that I ha'n't never forgot to wish her well allus, though I couldn't write to her." There was Eben Jackson's romance! It piqued my curiosity. The poor fellow was wakeful and restless,--I knew he would not sleep, if I left him,--and I encouraged him to go on talking. "I will, Jackson, I promise you. But wouldn't it be better for you to tell me something about where you have been all these long years? Your friends will like to know." His eye brightened; he was like all the rest of us, pleased with any interest taken in him and his; he turned over on his pillow, and I lifted him into a half-sitting position.