"Don't you think you have wasted about time enough?" The voice was high-wrought and nervous in the extreme. He, poor man, had been that afternoon thinking the matter over in a convalescent's weak manner of looking upon the act of another man. David Bushnell, smiling still, and taking out a large silver watch from his waistcoat pocket, and looking at it, replied: "I haven't wasted one moment, father. The tide was against me, but I've rowed around from Pautapoug ship-yard to the sycamore tree out here since two o'clock." "_You_ row a boat!" cried Mr. Bushnell, with lofty disdain. "Why, father, you have not a very good opinion of your son, have you?" questioned the son. "Come, though, and see what he has been doing. Come, mother," as Mrs. Bushnell entered, bearing David's supper in her hands. She put it down. Mr. Bushnell pulled himself upright with a groan or two, and suffered David to assist him by the support of his arm as they went out. "Why, you tremble as though you had the palsy," said the father. "It's nothing. I'm not used to pulling so long at the oar," said the son. When they came to the bank, the full moon shone athwart the little boat rocking on the stream. "What's that?" exclaimed both parents. "That is the Lady Fenwick. I've been building the boat myself. You advised me, father, to go to ship-building one morning--do you remember? I took your advice, and began at the bottom of the ladder." "_You_ built that boat with your own hands, you say?" "With my own hands, sir." "In two weeks' time?" "Yes, sir." "And rowed it all the way down the river, and up the Pochaug?" "Yes, sir." "Good boy! You may go in and have your supper," said Mr. Bushnell, patting him on the back, just as he had done when he returned from college with his first award. As for Madam Bushnell, she smiled down upon Lady Fenwick and did her great reverence in her heart, while she said to the boat-builder: "David, dear, wait a few minutes, and I'll give you something nice and warm for your supper. Your father, Ezra and I had ours long ago." That night Mr. Bushnell did not lie awake to listen for the stealthy stepping in the upper room. He slept all the sounder, because he had at last seen one stroke of honest work, as he called it, as the result of his endeavors to help David on in life. As for David himself, he went to sleep, saying in his heart: "It is a good stepping-stone at least;" which conclusion grew into form in sleep, and shaped itself into a mighty monster, that bored itself under mountains, and, after taking a nap, roused and shook itself so mightily that the mountain flew into fragments high in air. If you go, to-day, into the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, you will see on its left bank the old town of Saybrook, on its right the slightly younger town of Lyme, and you will have passed by, without having been very much interested in it, an island lying just within the shelter of either bank.