After serving many years in this situation, an unexpected turn in the wheel of fortune gave him the means of purchasing a larger vessel of his own, and of extending the area of his trade and the length of his voyages. This was the death of the old ship-owner and captain with whom he had sailed for many years, and who, dying, left him all his moderate possessions on condition of his marrying his only daughter, then a mere child of fifteen years of age, and constituted him her guardian until the marriage. The heart of the brave young sailor had seldom or never turned on love or marriage—it was not the nature of his free, wild, adventurous race. But when he had buried his old captain in Baltimore, where he died, and taken the command of the little schooner to return home to Hutton Town to find his little ward and wife—then—ah! then all sorts of strange, sweet, solemn, and tender thoughts of beauty, and love, and home, and repose swarmed about his heart. It was late in the afternoon of a glorious October day that the schooner, with her crew, put into the harbor of Hutton’s Inlet. In striking contrast to the warm-hued, deep-toned, refulgent natural scenery was the cold, white front of a mansion house standing upon a distant hill against the western horizon, and girt around with its old ancestral trees. This was Mount Calm, the seat of General Aaron Garnet. The little schooner, with its white sail, glided swiftly and smoothly into the inlet, and cast anchor near the hamlet. Leaving the vessel in charge of the mate, Captain Hutton took a boat and went on shore. A crowd of villagers, as usual, thronged the beach, anxious to hear and to tell the news, and hearty greetings and noisy questions met him as he stepped upon the strand, such questions as: “How is the old captain? How is old Seabright? Why don’t he come ashore?—though there is evil news enough to meet him when he does come! Where is the jolly old dog, then? I guess he’s wanting up at home there?” were some of the storm of words hailed upon him. “Friends,” replied the young sailor, shaking hands right and left as he pushed on, “our old captain is outward bound to that distant seaport whence no voyager ever returns. Permit me now to go on and break the sad news to his child.” “Stay! Poor old man, when did he die? What ailed him?” exclaimed two or three of the most persevering, detaining him. “To-night, friends—to-night at the ‘Neptune and Pan,’ I will tell you all about it. Permit me now to pass on and take his last letter to his daughter,” said the skipper good-humoredly, elbowing and pushing his way through the crowd. “Stop! What’s to become of the young girl—pretty Agnes Seabright? How did he leave his bit of property?”