But I won’t go round Robin Hood’s barn to spin out the story. The result was that after about fifteen years of patient, unremittin’ industry, I had somethin’ like $12,000 in the bank, and what was left of my New England conscience shootin’ through me like rheumatism. It didn’t bother me so much at first, but when once Brewster blood begins to boil it don’t slow up in a hurry. Eli Cook didn’t seem to care a continental, but they was a whole lot of Pilgrim Fathers behind me that was bound to testify sooner or later. I tried to settle down and get into some quiet business, where I wouldn’t have no more trickery to do than maybe put a little terra alba in the sugar and peanuts in the coffee. But after lookin’ round I hankered after makin’ money easier, and so I bought minin’ stocks and hung on, assessment after assessment, like grim Death, till, by Jimminy! one day I’ll be durned if I didn’t calculate I had $30,000 to the good, if I sold. I pulled out the day before the slump. I don’t know why Providence favored my fortune, which was so wickedly come by, and I don’t know why, after doin’ so well, I didn’t have spunk enough to pay back the company, but, anyhow, I wa’n’t yet waked up to feel full consciousness of sin, and I shut my ears to the callin’ to repentance. Now, all this time, bein’ of a South Shore family of seafaring men mostly, I had a hankerin’ after the water. So, when the first lots was cut up, out to the Beach, I bought a parcel of land on the shore. I used to go out there all the time to sit on my own sand, and recollect how it used to feel to get a good dry heat on my bare legs when I was a boy down to Duxbury. If they had only been clams there, I’d have been as happy as a pollywog in a hogshead of rain water. One day I was walkin’ out there, and as I passed the company’s stables I see a sign out, “Cars for Sale, Cheap,” and I went in to see ’em. I speered round the yard till what did I see but old 27, my car, settin’ there without wheels, lookin’ as shabby as Job’s cat! I asked the foreman how much they wanted for it, and I got it for ten dollars. I hired a dray and moved the thing out to the Beach that very afternoon. I set it up on two sills on my lot, calculatin’ I could use it for a cabin to hang out in, over Sunday, and it was as steady as Plymouth Rock, and made as cute a little room as you’d want to see. Every time I went I tinkered round and fixed her up more, till I had a good bunk at one end, lockers under the seats, and a trig little cellar beneath, where I kept canned stuff.