mill. Charlie and John accumulate money by labor and ventures sent

to the West Indies, and set up Fred in trade. These three boys, with another by the name of Isaac Murch, a protégé of Captain Rhines, _undertake_ to build a vessel, and _do_ build her, and send her to the French West Indies, calling her the Hard-scrabble, in commemoration of the desperate nature of the undertaking. She arrives at Martinique at a lucky moment, and pays for herself, and more too. They afterwards build another called the Casco, of larger dimensions, of which Isaac Murch becomes the master, surrendering the Hard-scrabble to another captain. Joe Griffin, to whom reference is made, is a friend of Lion Ben, a mighty man with an axe, a great wrestler, and kind-hearted, but a most inveterate practical joker.

Walter Griffin, a younger brother of Joe, inheriting all the grit of this rugged race, enters the store of Fred Williams as a clerk; but the Griffin blood rebels under the monotony and constraint, and he takes to the water. Peterson, the black pilot, was for many years addicted to intemperance. During that period some roguish boys got him into a store when intoxicated, poured molasses on his head, then applied flour, alternating the layers, till his head was as large as a half bushel; for many years after which he was known by the nickname of Flour, but, having become a sober and industrious man, has accumulated property, is respected by the whole community, and the nickname is forgotten.

The period at which this series commences is after the French revolution, when the star of Nelson was rising above the horizon, and Napoleon Bonaparte, a colonel of the artillery, was planting batteries at Toulon, and giving the English blockading fleet a taste of his quality.

These young men are now in possession of capital. John Rhines is living at home with his father; Fred is engaged in trade, and just married to a daughter of Captain Rhines. Charlie Bell is living on a farm in a most beautiful spot, called “Pleasant Cove,” upon which he chanced to stumble one lovely night in summer while sailing, became enraptured with and bought it, married another daughter of the captain, and settled down on it in a log house, while it was a forest, has one child, now a babe, and having built the Casco on his own shore, hopes to be able to cultivate the soil (an occupation he dearly loves), and to carry out those ideas of taste and beauty which in childhood he had gathered from the vales and ancestral homes of his native land.