"But surely, what with buying the brig and taking all his papers, which I looked over myself in the cabin of the Adventure and which were lost, every one, when she broke up, he had nothing left. Why, the brig must have cost a pretty penny."
"That may well be, Joe, but there's money in the bank, for all that. Seth Upham had more money tucked away than most people would have believed."
I thought this over with growing wonder. "I do believe, my love," I said, "that we shall be able to make a fair start in the world after all, and, which is more, repay certain debts at once."
Faith smiled as she looked up at me; then she turned and looked at the quaint old town, which was spread before us in the sun.
CHAPTER XXXV
EHEU FUGACES!
Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare with our African adventures. The press-gang that set upon us in Havana had rushed him away to a Spanish ship, where he was kicked about and cruelly abused, until, at peril of his life, he dropped overboard in the dark and swam to an American schooner, whose captain, hearing his story, took him on board and hid him in the chain-locker until they were well on their way to Boston. Thence Sim had set out on foot for Topham, where he had hired himself once again to tend the store and had led a dog's life ever since.
That Sim was right about Uncle Seth's bank accounts and his will, which left all to me, I learned before sunset that very day. The sums were not large in themselves, and taken all together they were small enough compared with the golden dreams my poor uncle had lived in; but they assured Faith and me of comfort at least; and when that evening I called upon the new storekeeper and found him so eager to escape from a town where his short measures and petty deceits had made him unpopular and discontented, that he was not in the mood to haggle over the bargain, I bought back the store on the spot.