the youthful trio digressed into ghost-stories, and so frightened each other with their hobgoblin tales, that, as the candle sputtered and flickered in the socket, they trembled at every rattle of the window-sashes, till sleep put an end to their terrors and their talk.

At length the morning arrived when the younger branches of the Franklin family were to return to their masters and mistresses, and then the dame was in the same flurry as on the day of their arrival with the preparation of the hundred and one things required at her hands.

On the table before her lay a small lot of brown worsted stockings done up into balls that resembled so many unwashed potatoes, and new canvas smocks for the boys to work in (short as babies' shirts), and new shoes too, the soles of which were studded with nails almost as big as those on a church door, as well as mobcaps, and tippets, and aprons for the girls, after the style of our charity children of the present day, and hanks of worsted yarn for knitting, and seed-cakes, and bags of spiced nuts, together with a jar of honey for each of them, besides a packet of dried herbs to be made into tea, to "purify their blood" at the spring and fall of the year.

When, too, the dreaded hour of departure arrived, and the boys' bundles had been made up, and the girls' hand-baskets ready packed for the journey, the tears of the mother and little ones rolled down their cheeks as fast and big as hailstones down a skylight; and, as the weeping children crossed the threshold, the eager dame stood on the door-step, watching them down the narrow street, and calling after them to remind them of an infinity of small things they were to be sure and do directly they reached their destination.

Ben, too, on his part, kept shouting to Jabez not to forget to make him the pigeon-house as soon as he could get the wood," and calling to the young mason to remember to send him some prime" bonces" and "alleys" directly he got back to the stone-yard.

CHAPTER VI.

A TALK ABOUT THE SEA.

On the evening after the Thanksgiving Day Captain Holmes came round, when they had "knocked off work" at the ship, to smoke his pipe with Josiah and Uncle Benjamin-for the father wished the captain to talk with young Ben about his love of the sea; so the dame had made one of her famous bowls of "lambs'-wool" for the occasion.

The captain was a marked contrast, both in form and feature, to Josiah and his brother Benjamin. His frame seemed, indeed, to be of cast iron, his chest being broad as a bison's, and the grip of his big, hard hand like the squeeze of a vice. His face was gipsy-bronze with the weather he had long been exposed to, and set in a horseshoe of immense black whiskers, the hair of which stood out from the cheeks on either side like a couple of sweep's brushes; and between these his white teeth glistened like the pearly lining of an oyster-shell as he laughed, which he did continually, and almost without reason.

The old men, on the other hand, were but the noble ruins of humanity, graced rather than disfigured by age. At the time of the opening of our story Josiah was in his sixty-third year, and Uncle Benjamin some few years his senior; and

yet neither gave signs of the approach of tha second childhood which is but the return of the circle of life into itself, linking the graybeard with the infant, and foreshadowing the Eternal in that mysterious round which brings us back (if the furlough from above be but long enough) to the very babyhood from which we started.

The red Saxon blood, as contradistinguished from the swarthier Norman sap inherent in English veins, was visible in the cheeks of both of the old men; indeed, their complexion was so pinky that one could well understand their boast that "they had never known a day's illness in their lives;"* while their fresh color contrasted as pleasantly with their silver-white hair as the crimson light of a blacksmith's forge glowing amid the snow of a winter's day. The only sign that the brothers gave of age was a slight crooking of the back, like packmen bending beneath their load -of years; for their teeth were still perfect, neither was the mouth drawn in, nor were the cheeks hollowed with the capacious dimples of second childhood.

Had it not been for the " sad color" and formal Quaker-like cut of their clothes, no one would have fancied that they belonged to that heroic and righteous body of men, who, following in the footsteps of the first "pilgrims" to America, had willingly submitted to the martyrdom of exile for the sake of enjoying the free exercise of their religion; for the hale and hearty Josiah had the cheerful and contented look of the English yeoman, while the more portly and dumpy Benjamin had so good-humored an air that he might have

* "I never knew my father or mother to have any sickness but that of which they died-he at 89, and she at 85

been mistaken, in another suit, for the jolly landlord of a roadside inn.*

Mistress Franklin, being some dozen years younger than her husband, and looking even younger than she was, seemed barely to have reached the summit of life's hill rather than to have commenced her journey down it. True, a quick eye might have discovered just a filament or two of silver streaking the dark bands of hair that braided her forehead; but these were merely the hoar-frosts of Autumn whitening the spider's threads, for as yet there was no trace of Winter in her face.

At the first glance, however, there was a half masculine look about the dame that made her seem deficient in the softer qualities of feminine grace; for her features, though regular, were too bold and statuesque to be considered beautiful in a woman, and yet there was such exquisite tenderness—indeed, a plaintiveness that was almost musical—in her voice, together with such a good expression, glowing like sunshine over her whole countenance, that the stranger soon felt as assured of her excellence as those even who had proved it by long acquaintance.

The wife, too, belonged to the same Puritan stock as Josiah; her father-"Peter Folger, of Sherbourne," in Nantucket-having been among the earliest pilgrims to New England, and being styled "a godly and learned Englishman" in the chronicles of the country.t

*"I suppose you may like to know what kind of a man my father was," says Benjamin Franklin in writing to his son. "He had an excellent constitution, was of a middle stature, well set, and very strong."

"My mother (the second wife of my father) was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather in his ecclesiastical history of that country, en