Captain Fritzinger soon became blind and had to give up the sea. He still however retained marine interests in Philadelphia, to and from which city Mary led him daily. Then came a long illness. The Captain appointed Mary co-guardian to his two sons, and at his death divided his property equally between the three. Captain Davis, a friend of the Fritzingers, had met Mary during Mrs. Fritzinger's lifetime. He was much attracted to her, proposed marriage and was accepted on condition that the wedding should not take place as long as her friends had need of her. But time slipped by; it may be Captain Davis thought their need of her would never end; so, meeting her in Philadelphia one morning, he insisted upon their going to a minister's and becoming man and wife. Mary, thus forcefully pressed, consented, but exacted the promise that he would not tell the Fritzingers until his return from the trip he was on the eve of taking. In a few days he left Camden. His vessel was wrecked off the coast of Maine, and he was buried where he washed ashore. His hasty marriage and unlooked-for death prevented him from making the intended provision for his wife, and as she shrank from any contest with his family, all that was left to her was his name and the cherished memory of her one brief love. During Captain Fritzinger's nine years of blindness, and through all his long sickness, Mary's ingrained habit of devotion to one person made her somewhat forgetful of others; and dearly as she loved the boys who called her mother, their happiness was too often sacrificed to their father's infirmities. Strange--and yet not strange, perhaps--that one whose childhood had been an unbroken martyrdom, should now be not always conscious of the needs of a new generation. The house in which they lived, in a little street running at right angles to Stevens Street, was closed at dusk. Then, when she had read the daily papers, Mary would extinguish the lights, feeling that to read to herself, or for the boys to play games, would be selfish, as the sick man was deprived of such enjoyments. It didn't occur to her that these wide-awake youngsters had nothing of her own childhood spirit of resignation, or that the noise and laughter of other boys frolicking in the streets could have any attraction for them. They were sent early to bed, but time and again made their escape through the window, creeping along the shed, and so to the fence and the street. Both boys had an innate love for the sea, and at the age of fourteen and sixteen respectively had become so restless and urgent for a change, that their father yielded to their wishes and procured berths for them aboard the same ship. In two years they returned to find him dead, and in a short time they embarked again in separate vessels and for longer voyages.