"I don't expect I shall. I sha'n't get to Shoreham till to-morrow morning with this wind. I'm sorry it happened so; but that boy didn't mind what he was about."
"The captain didn't mind what he was about," added Lawry. "He needn't lay it to me, when it was all his own fault."
"I will cross the lake, and get a horse at Pointville, so that I shall be in Shoreham by five o'clock," continued the bank director.
Captain John ordered one of the men to pull Mr. Randall and Lawry ashore in the boat, and in a few minutes they were landed at Port Rock.
CHAPTER II
THE PORT ROCK FERRY
Lawrence Wilford was a full-fledged water-fowl. From his earliest childhood he had paddled in Lake Champlain. His father had a small place, consisting of ten acres of land with a small cottage; but it was still encumbered with a mortgage, as it had been for twenty years, though the note had passed through several hands, and had been three times renewed. John Wilford was not a very sagacious nor a very energetic man, and had not distinguished himself in the race for wealth or for fame. He wanted to be rich, but he was not willing to pay the price of riches.
His place was a short distance from the village of Port Rock, and John Wilford, at the time he had purchased the land and built his house, had established a ferry, which had been, and was still, his principal means of support; for there was considerable travel between Port Rock and Pointville, on the Vermont side of the lake.
The ferryman was a poor man, and was likely to remain a poor man to the end of his life. Hardly a day passed in which he did not sigh to be rich, and complain of the unequal and unjust distribution of property. He could point to a score of men who had not worked half so hard as he had, in his own opinion, that had made fortunes, or at least won a competence, while he was as poor as ever, and in danger of having his place taken away from him. People said that John Wilford was lazy; that he did not make the most of his land, and that his ferry, with closer attention to the wants of passengers, might be made to pay double the amount he made from it. He permitted the weeds to grow in his garden, and compelled people to wait by the hour for a passage across the lake.
John Wilford wondered that he could not grow rich, that he could not pay off the mortgage on his place. He seldom sat down to dinner without grumbling at his hard lot. His wife was a sensible woman. She did not wonder that he did not grow rich; only that he contrived to keep out of the poorhouse. She was the mother of eight children, and if he had been half as smart as she was, prosperity would have smiled upon the family. As it was, her life was filled up with struggles to make the ends meet; but, though she had the worst of it, she did not complain, and did all she could to comfort and encourage her thriftless husband.