No longer conscious of his body, he laughed while great tears rolled down his cheeks and lost themselves in his beard. Suddenly, however, he looked at the ways covered with tallow which lay in folds now,--wrinkled like the flesh of the very old,--at the stocks lifting empty arms to the sky; and a change came over him. The sparkles died in his eyes, the eyes themselves seemed to sink back in his head. He lifted his hand. Then, after a wavering second, the hand fell. "Ships," he quavered, speaking half to himself, half, it would seem, to the deserted stocks, "ships is like sons. There's no use clutchin' 'em or hangin' on to 'em. It's their nature to go exploitin' over the world. All we can say is, the Lord bless 'em, the Lord reveal his mighty wonders to 'em. Amen." After this quaint speech, his spirit, which was the eternal youth within him, revived. Chuckling to himself, old David Beckett started on his homeward journey to Pemoquod Point on the Maine coast, a day's and a night's travel, by water and rail. His pilgrimage to Philadelphia, from every point of view but his own, had proved unsuccessful. Five months before, David's son, Thomas Beckett, had disappeared from the Point and had gone to Philadelphia to work in the shipyards. Beyond the bald statement of this fact, which he left scrawled on the back of an envelope, young Thomas had never written a word home, though once he had sent a draft for a small sum of money. His was an impatient, gloomy spirit, easily depressed and easily excited. Life, indeed, either blazed in him like a devouring flame, or died down to a flicker which left him frozen and taciturn, with never a word on his thick, handsome lips, and no feeling in his heart, save, apparently, that of a fierce caged thing. In this mood when at home he had been wont to go about for weeks, leaving the care of the lobster pots entirely to his father, while he nursed his insensate wrath. Then, suddenly, the light would come. He would set about his work with savage joy, and with painful eagerness would read every book that came to his hand, from the Bible to a ten cent translation of a French novel. He would sing, he would lay plans. It was in this mood that he had gone to Philadelphia. When, however, his father followed him, bearing urgent news concerning the young fellow's wife, Thomas had again disappeared. Two weeks before, so old David learned, he had shipped as a sailor on an out-going vessel he had helped to build. But the father understood.