"Sandy, you may think as how tain't none o' my affair, an' that I'd look a heap better to keep my lip out o' it. Maybe as how that's a fact, but God knows when I'll ever get another chance to rub it in hard on the likes o' you. I've heard, year after year, that you was still at the old tricks--too lazy to work, with your eye always turned to the sea hoping that some poor devil would misread his reckonin' an' put his ship where you can ransack its vitals fer an easy livin' fer you and yours. I'll lay my all agin a two pence that that wife o' your'n has wished many's the time that she had married an honest man an' not a thief. Judging from what I knew o' her years ago, I'll allow that it mighty nigh breaks her heart to see the man that infatuated her as a gal a-takin' her child an' a-bringin' him up in the ways o' a thief. Shame on ye, Sandy Mason! I'm goin' to ask the boys to turn ye loose, an' I hope to God that this will be a lesson that ye'll not soon forget, an' that ye'll straighten up an' be a man afore it's too late. If so be you an' the woman are past redemption, quit your thievin' an' beach-combin' for the sake o' the boy." Ichabod then turned to the lad, and addressed him in a kindly voice. "Young man, I'm sorry to have had to hurt your feelin's with the truth, an' I hope ye'll forgive me. Take this experience of to-day as a warnin'. Don't be a beach-comber. For when you are, to my mind, you are what folks call a grave-robber--a ghoul. Now go home to your mammy, who used to have some good thoughts. Unless they're all gone through livin' with that no-'count daddy o' your'n, she'll tell you that Captain Ichabod is right fer once. Yes, I say, quit it all! Be a man, an' show folks, that, after all, it _is_ possible to make a silk purse out o' a sow's ear." After this parting thrust, Ichabod turned on his heel without another word, and walked swiftly away down the shore. The men from the station added a few phrases of very trenchant advice to Sandy and his son. They waited until the beach-combers had entered the sharpie and set sail due north toward the hamlet of Portsmouth. When the coast guard came up again with Captain Ichabod, they found him seated on the sand hard by the noisy breakers. Three Dominick hens clucked about him. The old fisherman was throwing them kernels of corn, which he took from his pocket. The men gazed somewhat somberly at the fowls. It was plain that these were the only creatures that had escaped alive from the three-master whose bones littered the beach. Ichabod looked up at his friends with a wry smile, that was touched with grimness. "Boys," he remarked whimsically, "it seems to me as if Icky had had about enough reminders fer one day without these pesky Dominick pullets a-buttin' in." CHAPTER XI THE AWAKENING OF ICHABOD