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Captain Jim had been handling the book in a kind of reverent rapture. Now he decidedly closed it and laid it aside. "No, no, you're not going away before you take a cup of tea with the old man," he protested. "I couldn't hear to that could you, Matey? The life-book will keep, I reckon. I've waited for it this many a year. I can wait a little longer while I'm enjoying my friends."

It's great fun thinking they can't last. 'Old rheumatiz, says I, when it grips me hard, 'you've GOT to stop aching sometime. The worse you are the sooner you'll stop, mebbe. I'm bound to get the better of you in the long run, whether in the body or out of the body." One night, by the fireside at the light Anne saw Captain Jim's "life-book."

I must be here when my time comes. It can't be very far off now." I wrote often to Uncle Jesse through the winter and sent him books and magazines. He enjoyed them but he thought and truly enough that none of them came up to his life-book for real interest. "If my life-book could be took and writ by someone that knowed how, it would beat them holler," he wrote in one of his few letters to me.

As for Marshall, we're all used to him, but he must strike strangers as right down peculiar-looking. I've known him ever since he was ten he's about fifty now and I like him. Him and me was out cod-fishing today. That's about all I'm good for now catching trout and cod occasional. But 'tweren't always so not by no manner of means. I used to do other things, as you'd admit if you saw my life-book."

You know it has always been a matter of pride with Captain Jim to start the light the moment the sun sets, and put it out the moment it rises." Anne sat up in dismay. Through her window she saw the light blinking palely against the blue skies of dawn. "Perhaps he has fallen asleep over his life-book," she said anxiously, "or become so absorbed in it that he has forgotten the light."

He sat there in his poor little room and made those things live again for us. By a lift of the eyebrow, a twist of the lip, a gesture, a word, he painted some whole scene or character so that we saw it as it was. Finally, he lent Robert his life-book. Robert sat up all night reading it and came to the breakfast table in great excitement. "Mary, this is a wonderful book.

There was not the slightest doubt then that this document contained a great deal of Pen's personal experiences, and that "Leaves from the Life-book of Walter Lorraine" would never have been written but for Arthur Pendennis's own private griefs, passions, and follies.

You know what my forte is, Gilbert the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it if he were older. Anyhow, I'm going to ask him to come down next summer and meet Captain Jim."

Little Joe's mother's cake was the last word in cakes; Captain Jim was the prince of gracious hosts, never even permitting his eyes to wander to the corner where the life-book lay, in all its bravery of green and gold.

"That man is clean crazy on the subject of his life-book," said Miss Cornelia compassionately. "For my part, I think there's far too many books in the world now." Gilbert laid down the ponderous medical tome over which he had been poring until the increasing dusk of the March evening made him desist. He leaned back in his chair and gazed meditatively out of the window.