Was it right?
Was the Skipper a good man?
The child debated the question with anguish, lying with wide open eyes in his crimson-shaded nest.

Mr.Scraper was--not--very nice, perhaps; but he had taken him, John, when his mother died, and fed and clothed him.

He had often had enough to eat--almost enough--and--and Mr.Scraper was old, and perhaps pretty soon his legs would go to sleep, like old Captain Baker's, and he would not be able to walk at all, and then how would it be if he were left alone?
Perhaps people would not come to help him, as they had helped the captain, because everybody in the village loved the captain, and no one exactly loved Mr.Scraper.So if the only person who belonged to him at all should go off and leave him, how could it be expected that the folks who had their own grandfathers and things to take care of would stop and go to take care of this old man?
And if he should die there, all alone, with no one to read to him or bring him things, or feed him with a spoon, why,--how would it seem to himself, the boy John's self, when he should hear of it?
"I am a murderer!" he said aloud; and straightway, at the sound of his own voice, cowered under the bedclothes, and felt the hangman's hand at his neck.
What did it mean, when a person could not sleep?
There was a man in an old book there at the house, and he was wicked, and he never could sleep, never at all.

The things he had done came and sat on him, and they were hot, like coals, and the heat went through to his heart and burned it.

Would it be so with him, if he should go away in the "Nautilus," and forget--or try to forget--the old man who had nobody to love him?
Not that Mr.Scraper wanted to be loved yet, at all; but--but he might, some time, when his legs had gone to sleep, and then-- Sometimes, when a person could not sleep, it meant that he was going to die.