One seldom gave way to a cruel impulse to look at an ancient seafaring
William, but one felt as if he were a growing boy; I only hope that he
felt much the same about me. He did not wear the fishing clothes that
belonged to his sea-going life, but a strangely shaped old suit of
tea-colored linen garments that might have been brought home years ago
from Canton or Bombay. William had a peculiar way of giving silent
assent when one spoke, but of answering your unspoken thoughts as if
they reached him better than words. "I find them very easy," he said,
frankly referring to the clothes. "Father had them in his old
sea-chest."
The antique fashion, a quaint touch of foreign grace and even
imagination about the cut were very pleasing; if ever Mr. William
Blackett had faintly resembled an old beau, it was upon that day. He
now appeared to feel as if everything had been explained between us, as
if everything were quite understood; and we drove for some distance
without finding it necessary to speak again about anything. At last,
when it must have been a little past nine o'clock, he stopped the horse
beside a small farmhouse, and nodded when I asked if I should get down
from the wagon. "You can steer about northeast right across the
pasture," he said, looking from under the eaves of his hat with an
expectant smile. "I always leave the team here."
I helped to unfasten the harness, and William led the horse away to the
barn. It was a poor-looking little place, and a forlorn woman looked
at us through the window before she appeared at the door. I told her
that Mr. Blackett and I came up from the Landing to go fishing. "He
keeps a-comin', don't he?" she answered, with a funny little laugh, to
which I was at a loss to find answer. When he joined us, I could not
see that he took notice of her presence in any way, except to take an
armful of dried salt fish from a corded stack in the back of the wagon
which had been carefully covered with a piece of old sail. We had left
a wake of their pungent flavor behind us all the way. I wondered what
was going to become of the rest of them and some fresh lobsters which
were also disclosed to view, but he laid the present gift on the
doorstep without a word, and a few minutes later, when I looked back as
we crossed the pasture, the fish were being carried into the house.
I could not see any signs of a trout brook until I came close upon it
in the bushy pasture, and presently we struck into the low woods of
straggling spruce and fir mixed into a tangle of swamp maples and
alders which stretched away on either hand up and down stream. We
found an open place in the pasture where some taller trees seemed to
have been overlooked rather than spared. The sun was bright and hot by
this time, and I sat down in the shade while William produced his lines
and cut and trimmed us each a slender rod. I wondered where Mrs. Todd
was spending the morning, and if later she would think that pirates had
landed and captured me from the schoolhouse.