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All this happened more than a thousand moons ago, when all the land was aroused and astir, and David Bushnell was not in the least surprised to meet, at the ship-yard of Uriah Hayden, Jonathan Trumbull, Governor of Connecticut.

This man was everywhere, seeing to everything, in that year. Whatever his country needed, or Commander-in-chief Washington ordered from the camp at Cambridge, was forthcoming.

A ship had been demanded of Connecticut, and so Governor Trumbull had come down from Lebanon to look with his own eyes at the huge ribs of oak, thereafter to sail the seas as “The Oliver Cromwell.”

The self-same oaken ribs had intense interest for young David Bushnell. Uriah Hayden had promised to sell to him all the pieces of ship-timber that should be left, and while the governor and the builder planned, he went about gathering together fragments.

“Better take enough to build a boat that will carry a seine. ‘T won’t cost you a mite more, and might serve you a good turn to have a sizable craft in a heavy sea some day,” said Mr. Hayden.

Now David Bushnell had been wishing that he had some good and sufficient reason to give Mr. Hayden for wanting the stuff at all, and here he had given it to him.

“That’s true,” spoke up David, “but how am I to get all this over to Pochaug?”

“Don’t get it over at all, until it’s ready to row down the Connecticut, and around the Sound. You’re welcome to build your boat at the yard, and, now and then, there will be odd minutes that the men can help you on with it.”

David thanked Mr. Hayden, grew cheerful of heart over the prospect of owning a boat of his own, and went merrily back to the village of Pochaug.

Two weeks later David’s boat was ready for sea. It was launched into the Connecticut from the ways on which the “Oliver Cromwell” grew, was named Lady Fenwick, and, when water-tight, was rowed down the river, past Saybrook and Tomb Hill, and so into the Long Island Sound.

When its owner and navigator went by Tomb Hill, he removed his hat, and bowed reverently. He thought with respect and admiration of the occupant of the sandstone tomb on its height, the Lady Fenwick who had slept there one hundred and thirty years.

With blistered palms and burning fingers David Bushnell pushed his boat with pride up the Pochaug River, and tied it to a stake at the bridge just beyond the sycamore tree, near his father’s door.

“I’ll fetch father and mother out to see it,” he thought, “when the moon gets up a little higher.”

With boyish pride he looked down at the work of his hands from the river-bank, and went in to get his supper.

“David!” called Mr. Bushnell, having heard his steps in the entry-way.

“Here I am, father,” returned the young man, appearing within the room, and speaking in a cheerful tone.

“Don’t you think you have wasted about time enough?”

The voice was high-wrought and nervous in the extreme. He, poor man, had been that afternoon thinking the matter over in a convalescent’s weak manner of looking upon the act of another man.

David Bushnell, smiling still, and taking out a large silver watch from his waistcoat pocket, and looking at it, replied:

“I haven’t wasted one moment, father. The tide was against me, but I’ve rowed around from Pautapoug ship-yard to the sycamore tree out here since two o’clock.”

” You row a boat!” cried Mr. Bushnell, with lofty disdain.

“Why, father, you have not a very good opinion of your son, have you?” questioned the son. “Come, though, and see what he has been doing. Come, mother,” as Mrs. Bushnell entered, bearing David’s supper in her hands.

She put it down. Mr. Bushnell pulled himself upright with a groan or two, and suffered David to assist him by the support of his arm as they went out.

“Why, you tremble as though you had the palsy,” said the father.