No one fully knows the New England autumn who has not seen its colors on the extreme Old Colony sea-board. There are no mountain ranges, opening out far reaches of burning maples; but there are miles of salt-marsh, spreading as far as the eye can reach, cut by countless creeks, displaying a vast expanse of soft, rich shades of brown; there are cranberry-meadows of twenty, thirty, or fifty level acres, covered with matted vines and crimson with berries; there are deserted pastures, bright with golden-rod and asters. And everywhere along the shores, against the dark pine woods, are the varied reds of oaks, of blackberry vines, of woodbine, and of sumach.

It was a bright fall afternoon; most of the boats were in, and lay near, shore before the sail-loft door; the sails were up to dry,—for it had been wet outside,—looking doubly white against the colors of the shore.

In the sail-loft they were telling stories.

“No, I don't think myself,” said Deacon Luce, from the rocking-chair, “that ministers always show what we call horse sense. They used to tell a story of Parson Allen, that preached in the Old Town, in my father's time, that pleased me. One spring the parson took a notion to raise a pig. So he went down to Jim Barrows, that lived there handy by, and says he, 'Mr. Barrows, I hear you have a litter of young pigs, and I should like to have one to raise.' So Jim he got his stilyards and weighed him out one, and the minister paid him, and Jim he sent it up. Well, the minister kep' it some three months, and he used to go out every day and put on his spectacles and take his scythe down from the apple-tree and mow pig-weed for him, and he bought corn-meal to feed him up with, and one way and another he laid out a good deal on him. The pig fattened well, but the whole incessant time he was either rooting out and gitting into the garden, or he'd ketch his foot in behind the trough and squeal like mad, or something else, so that the minister had to keep leaving his sermon-writing to straighten him out, and the minister's wife complained of the squealing when she had company. And so the parson decided to heave the enterprise up, and Jim sent up and took the pig back. Come to settle, 'How do we stand?' says the minister. 'Oh, just as you say,' says Jim, 'I'll leave it to you.' 'Well,' says the minister, 'on the one hand you've got back a pig that you've been paid for; but, on the other hand, I 've had the use of him for some three months,—and so I guess we 're square.'” “Talking of preachers,” said Caleb Parker, “reminds me of a story they tell of Uncle Cephas Bascom, of Northhaven. Uncle Cephas was a shoemaker, and he never went to sea much, only to anchor his skift in the Narrows abreast of his house, and catch a mess of scup, or to pole a load of salt-hay from San-quitt Island. But he used to visit his married daughter, in Vermont, and up there they knew he come from the sea-board, and they used to call him 'Captain Bascom.' So, one time when he was there, they had a Sabbath-school concert, and nothing would do but 'Captain Bascom' must talk to the boys, and tell a sea-yarn, and draw a moral, the way the Deacon, here, does.” The Deacon gravely smiled, and stroked his beard. “Well, Uncle Cephas was ruther pleased with his name of 'Captain Bascom,' and he did n't like to go back on it, and so he flaxed round to git up something. It seems he had heard a summer boarder talk in Sabbath-school, at Northhaven; he told how a poor boy minded his mother, and then got to tend store, and then kep' store himself, and then he jumped it on them. 'That poor boy,' says he, 'now stands before you.' So Uncle Cephas thought him up a similar yarn. Well, he had never spoke in meeting before, and he hemmed and hawed some, but he got on quite well while he was telling about a certain poor boy, and all that, and how the boy when he grew up was out at sea, in an open boat, and saw a great sword-fish making for the boat Hail Columbia, and bound to stave right through her and sink her,—and how this man he took an oar, and give it a swing, and broke the critter's sword square off; and then Uncle Cephas—he 'd begun to git a little flustered—he stops short, and waves his arms, and says he, 'Boys, what do you think! That sword-fish now stands before you!' I cal'late that brought the house down.” Captain Philo, who had laid down his three-cornered sail-needle, to listen to this exciting story, readjusted the leather thimble that covered his palm, and began to sew again. Uncle Silas, sitting near the water door, in his brown overalls made with a breast-apron and suspender-straps, looked out at the boats. A silence fell on the company.

It was broken by Calvin Green.

“A man was telling me rather a curious story, the other night,” he said. “I was just explaining to him exactly how 't was that David Prince lost his money, and so he told this:—

“There was a boy that was clerk in a store, and one day they sent him over to the bank to git some money. It was before the war, and the bank gave him twenty ten-dollar gold pieces. But when he got back to the store there was one short. The boy hadn't nothin' to say. He admitted he had n't dropped none, because he 'd put 'em in a leather bag where he could n't lose one without he lost all, and the cashier knew he had n't made any mistake. The storekeeper he heard the story, and then he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and says he, 'I don't know what to make o' this; but I believe this boy,' says he, 'and we 'll just drop it, and say no more about it.' So it run along, and the next day that it rained, one of the clerks in the store took down an old umberella, and, come to unfurl it, out falls a ten-dollar gold piece. Seems that the boy had that umberella that day, and hooked it on to the counter in the bank, by the handle, and one of the coins must have slid off into it when he was countin' 'em, and then he probably did n't spread the umberella coming back. And, as this man said that was telling me, it don't do to bet too much on suspicion. Now, only for that Jew's being such a hard character, according to the newspapers, I should be loath to charge him with taking David's money; I should say David might have lost it somewhere else.”

Nobody spoke. Captain Bennett whistled softly.

“I never felt so bad in my life,” continued Green, “as I did when he missed his money. When we come up into the depot he was telling me a kind of a comical story about old Jim Torrey, how he wanted to find out if all his hens was laying, or if any of 'em was disposed to shirk, and he got him a pass-book ruled in columns, and opened a ledger account with every hen, by a name he give her; and we got up to the ticket-window, and he put his hand into his breast-pocket for his wallet—by George! I 've seen him chaff and joke, sort of quiet, when we was going to ride under every minute; but he turned as white then as that new mainsail, and off he went, like a shot But 't was no use. Of course, the jewelry feller would n't disgorge on David's say-so, without no proof.”

“It was like this,” he went on; “the counter was here,—and David stood here,—and I was here,—and we both come off together. But I tell you,—the way David looked when he put in his hand for his wallet! He stopped laughing, as if he see a ghost; I can't get it out of my head. And how the man that stole the money can stand it I can't figure out.”

“Perhaps he 's calloused,” said the Deacon, “by what the paper said the other night about his buying a parcel of clothes hooked out of some man's entry. We concluded 'twas the same man—by the name.”

“Can't believe all that's in the paper,” said Perez Todd; “you know the paper had me to be married, once; the boys put it in for fun; they made up the name for the female, I guess, for I 've been kind of shyin' round for her this ten year, and have n't seen no such woman.”

“Yes, sir, he's a hard ticket,” said Green; “that's so, every time. Well, I must be going; I agreed to go and help Elbridge over at half flood.”

“Half flood about five,” said Captain Bennett; “you have n't any great time to spare.”

Green went to the shore, rattled a skiff down over the beach to the water, and pulled away, with quick, short strokes. First the skiff was cut off from sight by the marsh-bank; then the rower's head alone was seen above the tall brown grasses; and then he pulled around the bend and was lost to view behind a mass of flaming woodbine; and still, in the distance, could be heard across the water the rattle of his oars in the thole-pins.

“Well, Silas?” said Captain Bennett.

“Well?” said Uncle Silas.

“Oh! I 've nothing to say,” said Captain Bennett

“Nor I,” said Uncle Silas.

“Calvin's always seemed to be a good-hearted fellow,” said Captain Philo, “since he's lived here.”

“Oh, yes,” said Captain Bennett; “seems to feel for David surprisingly. Told me all about the losing of the money, told my wife, told my boy, told Uncle Joe, told our minister, told the Doctor, told Zimri Cobb, told Cyrus Bass, told Captain John Wells, told Patrick Coan; and proves it out to 'em all that 't was the Jew that did it.”

“Kind of zealous, like the Apostle Paul supplying the pulpit to the Gentiles,” said the Deacon; “won't let alone of a man, till he gives in 't the Hebrew's in the wrong.”

“But I 've nothing to say,” said Captain Bennett.

“Oh, no, nor I,” said Uncle Silas.

From the distance, borne on the gentle breeze, a click as even as a pulse-beat came faintly over the water.

“He may be a good-hearted fellow,” said the Deacon, “but I don't know as I hanker to be the man that's pulling that skiff. But then,—that may be simply and solely because I prefer a hair-cloth rocker to a skiff.”

“Delia,” said David Prince to his wife, one afternoon, “Calvin Green has bought four tickets to that stereopticon show that's going to be in the West Church to-night, and he gave me two, for you and me.”

“I don't want his tickets,” she replied, ironing away at the sunny window.

“Now, what's the use of talking that way?” said her husband, “as much as to say—”

“I have my opinion,” she said.

“Well,” said her husband, “I think it's a hard way to use a man, just because he happened to be by when I lost my money.”

“I 'll tell you,” said Delia, stopping her work; “we will go, and all I 'll say is this—you see if after the lecture's over he does n't find a text in it to talk about our money. Now, you just wait and see—that's all.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the lecturer, standing by a great circle of light thrown on the wall, behind the pulpit, “I have now, with a feeling of awe befitting this sacred place, thus given you, in the first part of my lecture, a succinct view of the origin, rise, and growth of the globe on which, as the poet has justly said, 'we dwell.' I have shown you—corroborating Scripture—the earth, without form and void, the awful monsters of the Silurian age, and Man in the Garden of Eden.

“I now invite you to journey with me—as one has said—'across the continent.'

“Travelling has ever been viewed as a means of education. Thus Athenian sages sought the learning of the Orient. Thus may we this evening, without toil or peril, or expense beyond the fifteen cents already incurred for the admission-fee, journey in spirit from the wild Atlantic to the sunset coast. In the words of the sacred lyrist, Edgar A. Poe, 'My country, 't is of thee,' that I shall now display some views.

“Of course we start from Boston. On the way to New York, we will first pause to view the scene where Putnam galloped down a flight of steps, beneath the hostile fire. See both mane and coat-tails flying in the wind, and the eyes of steed and rider wildly dilated with excitement.

“Next we pause in Brooklyn. And from my immense variety of scenes in the City of Churches, I choose the firemen's monument in Greenwood Cemetery.

[A voice: “How many are buried there?”]

“I should say, at a venture, eighteen. [A rustle of sympathy among the women.]

“Passing on, and coming thence to the metropolis of New York, I am greatly embarrassed, so vast is the richness and variety of views. But I will show first the 'Five Points.' [Great eagerness, and cries, “Down front!”] Of late, philanthropy and religion, walking in sweet converse, hand in hand, have relieved the horrors of this region, and now one may walk there comparatively safe. [Sudden cessation of interest]

“I will give even another view of the metropolis: a charming scene in Central Park. [Here wavered dimly on the screen five bushes, and a nursery-maid with a baby-carriage.] From this exquisite picture you may gain some faint idea of the charms of that Paradise raised by the wand of taste and skill in a waste of arid sands.

“Passing westward, I next present the Suspension Bridge at Niagara, erected by drawing over the majestic stream a cord, a small rope, then a wire, until the whole vast framework was complete. The idea was taken from the spider's web. Thus the humblest may guide the highest; and I love to recall, in this connection, that the lamented Lincoln, some years before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, heard me lecture on slavery, in Peoria.

“Next we come to Cleveland; and our attention is seized by three cannons taken in the famous naval battle on the lake. Every visitor pauses here, and with uncovered head and eyes suffused with tears recalls the sacrifices of the Fathers.

“Next we view Chicago the morning after the fire; on every hand are blackened ruins,—painful proofs of the vicissitudes of human fortune! [A voice: “I was there at the time.”] I am delighted to know it Such spontaneous corroboration from the audience is to the lecturer's heart as a draught from the well of Baca. [Laughter, and a voice: “What Baker?”]

“But, in order to cross so broad a continent, we must not dally, and next I show you the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, the seat of a defiant system of sin. All things, however, have their uses, and I can recommend this religion to any young lady present who does not find it easy to secure a helpmeet. [Appreciative laughter.]

“And now, for a view of the Pacific States, I choose two of the famed Big Trees. Judge of them by the two men who stand, like the Widow's mites, beside them. These trees are called 'Father and Daughter.' [A voice: “Which is Father, and which is Daughter?”] I am not informed, but from their appearance I judge that the nearer is the Father. [Derisive laughter.]

“And now we approach a climax.

“When the Ten Thousand, in their storied march, reached at last the blue waters of the Euxine, thrilled with joy they loudly cried: 'The Sea! The Sea!' So we, travellers likewise, reach at last the Western Ocean; and for a striking scene upon its waters, I present a Pacific Mail steamer at her dock in the harbor of San Francisco. In the left foreground is a Chinese laundry. And now I can hardly restrain myself from passing on to Asia; for imagination, taking fire, beckons to Niphon and the Flowery Kingdom. But remorseless Time says no, and we pause at the Golden Gate.

“In closing, now, I will, as is usual, give one or two moral views, relieved by others of a somewhat playful character.

“First is Napoleon's grave. He who held Europe struggling in his hand, died a prisoner in solitudes remote, far from home endearments.

“Next you see Daniel Lambert, whose greatness was of a more solid cast. Less grasping in his pretensions than Napoleon, he lived an honored life, and died, I understand, among his relatives.

“Next is a picture of the guillotine, calling up thoughts of severed heads from memory's cloisters. On the left you see a ghastly head; on the right the decapitated trunk. By the victim stand the bloody actors in the tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen! When I review the awful guilt of Marat and Robespierre, humbly do I give thanks that I have been kept from yielding, like them, to fierce ambition and lust of power, and that I can lay my head upon a peaceful pillow at my home in Fall River.

“Next is the Serenade. Part one: The Spanish lover with bow-knot shoes, pointed hat, and mantle over shoulder, stands, with his lute, on the covered water-butt, while at the casement above is his lady's charming face. Part two: The head of the water-butt has given way, and the angry father, from his window, beholds a scene of luckless misery.

“I turn now to a more pleasing view,—the Village Blacksmith. The mighty man is at his work, and by a triumph of art I am enabled to show his fine physique in action: now you see his arm uplifted,—and now the hammer is on the iron. Up—down—up—down. [A voice: “There are two right arms!”] That arises from some slight defect in the arrangement of the light; the uplifted arm does not entirely vanish when the lowered arm appears. But to the thoughtful observer, such slight contrasts only heighten enjoyment.

“Ladies and gentlemen! A single word in closing. Our transcontinental journey this evening ended at the Golden Gate. When life's journey ends, may we not so pause, but, as the poet Judson Backus sweetly sings:—

“Meanwhile, adieu.”

David Prince and his wife walked slowly home in the clear, cold moonlight.

“Did you notice,” said Delia, “how the man kept saying that he didn't know just what to pick out, to show? Well, I heard the Kelley boy, that helped at the lamps, say that they showed every identical picture there was. I suppose they are a lot of odds and ends he picked up at an auction.”

“I think he was a kind of a humbug,” said Calvin Green, who, with his wife, had come up close behind. “See how he kept dragging in his morals, jes like overhauling a trawl and taking off a haddock, every once in so often.”

“What away to travel,” said his wife; “to go ker-jump from New York City to Niagara, and from there to Cleveland. He must have thought we had long stilts.”

“The pictures were rather here and there and everywhere, to be sure,”, said David; “but I have a good deal of charity for these men; I s'pose they 're put to it for bread and butter.”

“Well, I don't know,” said Green; “I don't think it has a good influence on young people to show such a picture as that man that they murdered by slicing his head off with that machine. I don't like such things to be brought up.”

“I should think the opposite,” said his wife, laughing, “by the way you 've told every man in town about David's money, and the way he blanched when he missed it. I think you 'd better take a lesson yourself about bringing up dreadful things.”

When they reached Green's house, a low, black cottage, they stopped a moment for the women to finish a discussion about croup.

“How did that look to you now, David?” said Green. “Did n't you think it would have been a good deal better to have left that picture out?”

“Which one?” said David.

“Why, the one where they'd chopped the man's head off with that machine, and were standing by, looking at the corpse. I don't like to see such things, for my part.”

“I don't know,” said David. “I did n't think about it particularly. I understood it was in the French Revolution.”

“Well, see all that flummer-diddle he got off about it,” said Green; “just as if any fool did n't know that a man could n't sleep that was haunted by a thing like that.”

“Well, some can stomach anything, and I suppose some can sleep on anything,” said David. “I guess it would take more than slicing one man's head off to make that Jew lie awake nights. If he 'd only admitted that I 'd been there! But as soon as I said I 'd left something, then for him and his wife to claim they never saw me! They 're cool ones!”

“Well, right here,—about what my wife flung out,” said Green, glancing over his shoulder to where the women were talking, both at once, woman-fashion; “you know my wife's way,—you haven't ever heard any such talk going round, have you, as that I was hounding folks about your bad luck? I say an honest man speaks right out,—no fear, no favor. Ain't that so?”

It was a bitterly cold, clear night, a few weeks later. Runners squeaked and boot-heels crunched in the road. David had passed Green's house at seven o'clock, going to the store; he always went by there at that time, Saturdays, and passed again, returning home, at about eight.

When he reached the gate, on his return, Green was standing there, apparently waiting.

“Come into the house a minute, David,” he said; “I want to see you.”

He led him into the kitchen.

“My wife's gone over to Aunt Nathan's for the evening,” he said.

He shut the door, and locked it.

“There!” he said; “I can't stand it any longer;” and he laid upon a table at David's side a wallet. David took it up and opened it; it held a great roll of bills.

“What does this mean?” he said; “why—this is mine! You don't mean—”

“I mean I stole it,” said Green.

David sat down. “I wish you had put it in the fire,” he said, “and never told me.”

“There 's just one thing I want to say,” said Green. “I picked it up, first, to give it to you, and when I saw that you 'd forgot it, I thought I 'd have a little joke on you for a while; and then, when I saw how things was going, I kind o' drifted into keeping it. You know how I come home,—all my voyage eat up, and a hundred dollars' debts besides, and children sick. But every dollar 's there.

“Now, what I ask,” he added, “is four days' time to ship and get away. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” said David; “settle your debts and pay me when you can.” And taking five twenty-dollar bills from the wallet, he left them on the table and went away.