"I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was the captain's," said Davy, in a tear-choked voice.
"Didn't know what was the captain's? Now, Davy Crocker, 'twasn't ever you who took that bottle?" cried Aunt Patty.
"I found it on the floor," sobbed Davy. "I thought it was washed ashore from the shipwreck. I didn't suppose it belonged to anybody, and I wanted it for Bella. Oh, I'm so sorry."
"Why, then it ain't lost after all," cried Captain Joy, brightening up. "Well, how pleased Sarah Jane will be! Don't cry any more, my lad. I can see how it was, and that you didn't think it was stealing to take anything that had been in the sea."
Aunt Patty and Myra, however, still were deeply shocked, and could not look as lightly at Davy's offence as did the captain. Davy crept upstairs, brought down the cologne-bottle and slid it into Captain Joy's hand; then he crept away and sat in a dark corner behind the rest, but his conscience followed him, and Myra's reproachful look.
"Oh, Davy!" she whispered, "I never thought you'd be so mean as to take anything from a shipwrecked sailor!"
This was Davy's punishment, and rankled in his mind long after everybody else had forgotten the matter, after the sands had swallowed up all that was left of the "Sarah Jane," and after the captain had returned to Bucksport and made the real Sarah Jane happy by the gift of the bottle she had wished for so much. It rankles occasionally to this day, though he is now a stout lad of fifteen. That he, he of all boys, should have done such a thing to a man just saved from the sea! He consoles himself by resolving to be particularly kind to shipwrecked sailors all the rest of his life; but unluckily, the "Sarah Jane" is, so far, his sole experience of a wreck, and the only sailor he has as yet had any chance to do anything for is Captain Joy, and what he did for him we all know. One does not always have the opportunity to make up for a blunder or a fault, and I am afraid Davy may live his life out and never again have the good luck to show his good intentions by not picking up and hiding a Shipwrecked Cologne-Bottle!
[UNDER A SYRINGA-BUSH.]
