“Here, old fellow,” said John; “if you want something to do, take these birds and carry them to the house, for our dinner.”
“John,” said his father, “have you had as good a time as you expected?”
“O, father, I never had such a good time in all my life! You know the brook?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s the greatest place for frost-fish you ever did see. The sea-fowl come in there to drink, and there is the best chance to creep to them behind the wood. You never saw such a good dog to play as Sailor is; you throw him a stone, and he’ll play half an hour with it. What’s Tige been about, father, since I’ve been gone?”
“Well, when he wan’t down on the beach watching for you, barking and whining, he was smelling all round the barn and orchard, and going up in your bedroom: he has rooted the clothes of your bed a dozen times, to see if you was in it; and every night he has slept on your old jacket.”
The opinion expressed by John’s mother, that ’twas much better he should be on the island than in the company of some of the boys he went with, grew out of the following circumstances:—
During the past summer, a boy by the name of Peter Clash ran away from a Nova Scotia vessel, that came in for a harbor. Old Mr. Smullen had taken him in, out of charity. This boy was eighteen years of age, and belonged in Halifax, where, having the run of the streets and wharves, he learned all kinds of vice. He was of a malicious disposition, and intolerably lazy.
He soon made the acquaintance of all the boys in the neighborhood, but consorted chiefly with Fred Williams, the miller’s son, John Pettigrew, Isaac Godsoe, Henry Griffin, and some others.
None of these boys would have been disposed to engage in any mischief beyond mere fun, or that was injurious to any one’s person or property, if left to themselves; they also had but little leisure, as, when not at school, they were at work; but Peter, who did very much as he pleased at old Uncle Smullen’s, had a great deal of spare time, when he both planned mischief and persuaded the others to aid him in the execution. He had been in the place but a month, when he manifested his mean, cowardly disposition by a trick that he played upon his benefactors.