I smiled, and waited for him to go on.

“I am an old man, as you can see,” he continued, “and I have been a

shipmaster the greater part of my life,—forty-three years in all. You

may not think it, but I am above eighty years of age.”

He did not look so old, and I hastened to say so.

“You must have left the sea a good many years ago, then, Captain

Littlepage?” I said.

“I should have been serviceable at least five or six years more,” he

answered. “My acquaintance with certain—my experience upon a certain

occasion, I might say, gave rise to prejudice. I do not mind telling you

that I chanced to learn of one of the greatest discoveries that man has

ever made.”

Now we were approaching dangerous ground, but a sudden sense of his

sufferings at the hands of the ignorant came to my help, and I asked to

hear more with all the deference I really felt. A swallow flew into the

schoolhouse at this moment as if a kingbird were after it, and beat

itself against the walls for a minute, and escaped again to the open

air; but Captain Littlepage took no notice whatever of the flurry.

“I had a valuable cargo of general merchandise from the London docks to

Fort Churchill, a station of the old company on Hudson’s Bay,” said the

captain earnestly. “We were delayed in lading, and baffled by head winds

and a heavy tumbling sea all the way north-about and across. Then the

fog kept us off the coast; and when I made port at last, it was too late

to delay in those northern waters with such a vessel and such a crew as

I had. They cared for nothing, and idled me into a fit of sickness; but

my first mate was a good, excellent man, with no more idea of being

frozen in there until spring than I had, so we made what speed we could

to get clear of Hudson’s Bay and off the coast. I owned an eighth of the

vessel, and he owned a sixteenth of her. She was a full-rigged ship,

called the Minerva, but she was getting old and leaky. I meant it should

be my last v’y’ge in her, and so it proved. She had been an excellent

vessel in her day. Of the cowards aboard her I can’t say so much.”

“Then you were wrecked?” I asked, as he made a long pause.

“I wa’n’t caught astern o’ the lighter by any fault of mine,” said the

captain gloomily. “We left Fort Churchill and run out into the Bay with

a light pair o’ heels; but I had been vexed to death with their red-tape

rigging at the company’s office, and chilled with stayin’ on deck an’

tryin’ to hurry up things, and when we were well out o’ sight o’ land,

headin’ for Hudson’s Straits, I had a bad turn o’ some sort o’ fever,

and had to stay below. The days were getting short, and we made good

runs, all well on board but me, and the crew done their work by dint of

hard driving.”

I began to find this unexpected narrative a little dull. Captain

Littlepage spoke with a kind of slow correctness that lacked the

longshore high flavor to which I had grown used; but I listened

respectfully while he explained the winds having become contrary, and

talked on in a dreary sort of way about his voyage, the bad weather, and

the disadvantages he was under in the lightness of his ship, which

bounced about like a chip in a bucket, and would not answer the rudder

or properly respond to the most careful setting of sails.

“So there we were blowin’ along anyways,” he complained; but looking at

me at this moment, and seeing that my thoughts were unkindly wandering,

he ceased to speak.

“It was a hard life at sea in those days, I am sure,” said I, with

redoubled interest.

“It was a dog’s life,” said the poor old gentleman, quite reassured,

“but it made men of those who followed it. I see a change for the worse

even in our own town here; full of loafers now, small and poor as ’tis,

who once would have followed the sea, every lazy soul of ’em. There is

no occupation so fit for just that class o’ men who never get beyond the

fo’cas’le. I view it, in addition, that a community narrows down and

grows dreadful ignorant when it is shut up to its own affairs, and gets

no knowledge of the outside world except from a cheap, unprincipled

newspaper. In the old days, a good part o’ the best men here knew a

hundred ports and something of the way folks lived in them. They saw the

world for themselves, and like ’s not their wives and children saw it

with them. They may not have had the best of knowledge to carry with ’em

sight-seein’, but they were some acquainted with foreign lands an’ their

laws, an’ could see outside the battle for town clerk here in Dunnet;

they got some sense o’ proportion. Yes, they lived more dignified, and

their houses were better within an’ without. Shipping’s a terrible loss

to this part o’ New England from a social point o’ view, ma’am.”

“I have thought of that myself,” I returned, with my interest quite

awakened. “It accounts for the change in a great many things,—the sad

disappearance of sea captains,—doesn’t it?”

“A shipmaster was apt to get the habit of reading,” said my companion,

brightening still more, and taking on a most touching air of unreserve.

“A captain is not expected to be familiar with his crew, and for

company’s sake in dull days and nights he turns to his book. Most of us

old shipmasters came to know ’most everything about something; one would

take to readin’ on farming topics, and some were great on medicine,—but

Lord help their poor crews!—or some were all for history, and now and

then there’d be one like me that gave his time to the poets. I was well

acquainted with a shipmaster that was all for bees an’ bee-keepin’; and

if you met him in port and went aboard, he’d sit and talk a terrible

while about their havin’ so much information, and the money that could

be made out of keepin’ ’em. He was one of the smartest captains that

ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle, a great bark

he commanded for many years, Tuttle’s beehive. There was old Cap’n

Jameson: he had notions of Solomon’s Temple, and made a very handsome

little model of the same, right from the Scripture measurements, same’s

other sailors make little ships and design new tricks of rigging and all

that. No, there’s nothing to take the place of shipping in a place like

ours. These bicycles offend me dreadfully; they don’t afford no real

opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when

folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when

they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it. There’s no

large-minded way of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule

everything; we’re all turned upside down and going back year by year.”

“Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not,” said I, trying to soothe his

feelings.

There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the noise of

the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange warning wave

that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late golden robin, with the

most joyful and eager of voices, was singing close by in a thicket of

wild roses.

VI.

THE WAITING PLACE.

“How did you manage with the rest of that rough voyage on the Minerva?”

I asked.

“I shall be glad to explain to you,” said Captain Littlepage, forgetting

his grievances for the moment. “If I had a map at hand I could explain

better. We were driven to and fro ’way up toward what we used to call

Parry’s Discoveries, and lost our bearings. It was thick and foggy, and

at last I lost my ship; she drove on a rock, and we managed to get

ashore on what I took to be a barren island, the few of us that were

left alive. When she first struck, the sea was somewhat calmer than it

had been, and most of the crew, against orders, manned the long-boat and

put off in a hurry, and were never heard of more. Our own boat upset,

but the carpenter kept himself and me above water, and we drifted in. I

had no strength to call upon after my recent fever, and laid down to

die; but he found the tracks of a man and dog the second day, and got

along the shore to one of those far missionary stations that the

Moravians support. They were very poor themselves, and in distress;

’twas a useless place. There were but few Esquimaux left in that region.

There we remained for some time, and I became acquainted with strange

events.”

The captain lifted his head and gave me a questioning glance. I could

not help noticing that the dulled look in his eyes had gone, and there

was instead a dear intentness that made them seem dark and piercing.

“There was a supply ship expected, and the pastor, an excellent

Christian man, made no doubt that we should get passage in her. He was

hoping that orders would come to break up the station; but everything

was uncertain, and we got on the best we could for a while. We fished,

and helped the people in other ways; there was no other way of paying

our debts. I was taken to the pastor’s house until I got better; but

they were crowded, and I felt myself in the way, and made excuse to join

with an old seaman, a Scotchman, who had built him a warm cabin, and had

room in it for another. He was looked upon with regard, and had stood by

the pastor in some troubles with the people. He had been on one of those

English exploring parties that found one end of the road to the north

pole, but never could find the other. We lived like dogs in a kennel, or

so you’d thought if you had seen the hut from the outside; but the main

thing was to keep warm; there were piles of birdskins to lie on, and

he’d made him a good bunk, and there was another for me. ’Twas dreadful

dreary waitin’ there; we begun to think the supply steamer was lost, and

my poor ship broke up and strewed herself all along the shore. We got to

watching on the headlands; my men and me knew the people were short of

supplies and had to pinch themselves. It ought to read in the Bible,

‘Man cannot live by fish alone,’ if they’d told the truth of things;

’taint bread that wears the worst on you! First part of the time, old

Gaffett, that I lived with, seemed speechless, and I didn’t know what to

make of him, nor he of me, I dare say; but as we got acquainted, I found

he’d been through more disasters than I had, and had troubles that

wa’n’t going to let him live a great while. It used to ease his mind to

talk to an understanding person, so we used to sit and talk together all

day, if it rained or blew so that we couldn’t get out. I’d got a bad

blow on the back of my head at the time we came ashore, and it pained me

at times, and my strength was broken, anyway; I’ve never been so able

since.”

Captain Littlepage fell into a reverie.

“Then I had the good of my reading,” he explained presently. “I had no

books; the pastor spoke but little English, and all his books were

foreign; but I used to say over all I could remember. The old poets

little knew what comfort they could be to a man. I was well acquainted

with the works of Milton, but up there it did seem to me as if

Shakespeare was the king; he has his sea terms very accurate, and some

beautiful passages were calming to the mind. I could say them over until

I shed tears; there was nothing beautiful to me in that place but the

stars above and those passages of verse.

“Gaffett was always brooding and brooding, and talking to himself; he

was afraid he should never get away, and it preyed upon his mind. He

thought when I got home I could interest the scientific men in his

discovery: but they’re all taken up with their own notions; some didn’t

even take pains to answer the letters I wrote. You observe that I said

this crippled man Gaffett had been shipped on a voyage of discovery. I

now tell you that the ship was lost on its return, and only Gaffett and

two officers were saved off the Greenland coast, and he had knowledge

later that those men never got back to England; the brig they shipped on

was run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and he

gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country ’way up north

beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaffett believed it was

the next world to this.”

“What do you mean, Captain Littlepage?” I exclaimed. The old man was

bending forward and whispering; he looked over his shoulder before he

spoke the last sentence.

“To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful,” he said, going

on with his story quite steadily after the moment of excitement had

passed. “’Twas first a tale of dogs and sledges, and cold and wind and

snow. Then they begun to find the ice grow rotten; they had been frozen

in, and got into a current flowing north, far up beyond Fox Channel, and

they took to their boats when the ship got crushed, and this warm

current took them out of sight of the ice, and into a great open sea;

and they still followed it due north, just the very way they had planned

to go. Then they struck a coast that wasn’t laid down or charted, but

the cliffs were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and

struck across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower;

they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight of

something that looked like a great town. ‘For God’s sake, Gaffett!’ said

I, the first time he told me. ‘You don’t mean a town two degrees farther

north than ships had ever been?’ for he’d got their course marked on an

old chart that he’d pieced out at the top; but he insisted upon it, and

told it over and over again, to be sure I had it straight to carry to

those who would be interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after

they had sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come

right from under the ice that they’d been pinched up in and had been

crossing on foot for weeks.”

“But what about the town?” I asked. “Did they get to the town?”

“They did,” said the captain, “and found inhabitants; ’twas an awful

condition of things. It appeared, as near as Gaffett could express it,

like a place where there was neither living nor dead. They could see the

place when they were approaching it by sea pretty near like any town,

and thick with habitations; but all at once they lost sight of it

altogether, and when they got close inshore they could see the shapes of

folks, but they never could get near them,—all blowing gray figures that

would pass along alone, or sometimes gathered in companies as if they

were watching. The men were frightened at first, but the shapes never

came near them,—it was as if they blew back; and at last they all got

bold and went ashore, and found birds’ eggs and sea fowl, like any wild

northern spot where creatures were tame and folks had never been, and

there was good water. Gaffett said that he and another man came near one

o’ the fog-shaped men that was going along slow with the look of a pack

on his back, among the rocks, an’ they chased him; but, Lord! he

flittered away out o’ sight like a leaf the wind takes with it, or a

piece of cobweb. They would make as if they talked together, but there

was no sound of voices, and ‘they acted as if they didn’t see us, but

only felt us coming towards them,’ says Gaffett one day, trying to tell

the particulars. They couldn’t see the town when they were ashore. One

day the captain and the doctor were gone till night up across the high

land where the town had seemed to be, and they came back at night beat

out and white as ashes, and wrote and wrote all next day in their

notebooks, and whispered together full of excitement, and they were

sharp-spoken with the men when they offered to ask any questions.

“Then there came a day,” said Captain Littlepage, leaning toward me with

a strange look in his eyes, and whispering quickly. “The men all swore

they wouldn’t stay any longer; the man on watch early in the morning

gave the alarm, and they all put off in the boat and got a little way

out to sea. Those folks, or whatever they were, come about ’em like

bats; all at once they raised incessant armies, and come as if to drive

’em back to sea. They stood thick at the edge o’ the water like the

ridges o’ grim war; no thought o’ flight, none of retreat. Some times a

standing fight, then soaring on main wing tormented all the air. And

when they’d got the boat out o’ reach o’ danger, Gaffett said they

looked back, and there was the town again, standing up just as they’d

seen it first, comin’ on the coast. Say what you might, they all

believed ’twas a kind of waiting place between this world an’ the next.”

The captain had sprung to his feet in his excitement, and made excited

gestures, but he still whispered huskily.

“Sit down, sir,” I said as quietly as I could, and he sank into his

chair quite spent.

“Gaffett thought the officers were hurrying home to report and to fit

out a new expedition when they were all lost. At the time, the men got

orders not to talk over what they had seen,” the old man explained

presently in a more natural tone.

“Weren’t they all starving, and wasn’t it a mirage or something of that

sort?” I ventured to ask. But he looked at me blankly.

“Gaffett had got so that his mind ran on nothing else,” he went on. “The

ship’s surgeon let fall an opinion to the captain, one day, that ’twas

some condition o’ the light and the magnetic currents that let them see

those folks. ’Twa’n’t a right-feeling part of the world, anyway; they

had to battle with the compass to make it serve, an’ everything seemed

to go wrong. Gaffett had worked it out in his own mind that they was all

common ghosts, but the conditions were unusual favorable for seeing

them. He was always talking about the Ge’graphical Society, but he never

took proper steps, as I view it now, and stayed right there at the

mission. He was a good deal crippled, and thought they’d confine him in

some jail of a hospital. He said he was waiting to find the right men to

tell, somebody bound north. Once in a while they stopped there to leave

a mail or something. He was set in his notions, and let two or three

proper explorin’ expeditions go by him because he didn’t like their

looks; but when I was there he had got restless, fearin’ he might be

taken away or something. He had all his directions written out straight

as a string to give the right ones. I wanted him to trust ’em to me, so

I might have something to show, but he wouldn’t. I suppose he’s dead

now. I wrote to him, an’ I done all I could. ’Twill be a great exploit

some o’ these days.”

I assented absent-mindedly, thinking more just then of my companion’s

alert, determined look and the seafaring, ready aspect that had come to

his face; but at this moment there fell a sudden change, and the old,

pathetic, scholarly look returned. Behind me hung a map of North

America, and I saw, as I turned a little, that his eyes were fixed upon

the northernmost regions and their careful recent outlines with a look

of bewilderment.

VII.

THE OUTER ISLAND.

Gaffett with his good bunk and the birdskins, the story of the wreck of

the Minerva, the human-shaped creatures of fog and cobweb, the great

words of Milton with which he described their onslaught upon the crew,

all this moving tale had such an air of truth that I could not argue

with Captain Littlepage. The old man looked away from the map as if it

had vaguely troubled him, and regarded me appealingly.

“We were just speaking of”—and he stopped. I saw that he had suddenly

forgotten his subject.

“There were a great many persons at the funeral,” I hastened to say.

“Oh yes,” the captain answered, with satisfaction. “All showed respect

who could. The sad circumstances had for a moment slipped my mind. Yes,

Mrs. Begg will be very much missed. She was a capital manager for her

husband when he was at sea. Oh yes, shipping is a very great loss.” And

he sighed heavily. “There was hardly a man of any standing who didn’t

interest himself in some way in navigation. It always gave credit to a

town. I call it low-water mark now here in Dunnet.”

He rose with dignity to take leave, and asked me to stop at his house

some day, when he would show me some outlandish things that he had

brought home from sea. I was familiar with the subject of the decadence

of shipping interests in all its affecting branches, having been already

some time in Dunnet, and I felt sure that Captain Littlepage’s mind had

now returned to a safe level.

As we came down the hill toward the village our ways divided, and when I

had seen the old captain well started on a smooth piece of sidewalk

which would lead him to his own door, we parted, the best of friends.

“Step in some afternoon,” he said, as affectionately as if I were a

fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself. I turned

toward home, and presently met Mrs. Todd coming toward me with an

anxious expression.

“I see you sleevin’ the old gentleman down the hill,” she suggested.

“Yes. I’ve had a very interesting afternoon with him,” I answered; and

her face brightened.

“Oh, then he’s all right. I was afraid ’twas one o’ his flighty spells,

an’ Mari’ Harris wouldn’t”—

“Yes,” I returned, smiling, “he has been telling me some old stories,

but we talked about Mrs. Begg and the funeral beside, and Paradise

Lost.”

“I expect he got tellin’ of you some o’ his great narratives,” she

answered, looking at me shrewdly. “Funerals always sets him goin’. Some

o’ them tales hangs together toler’ble well,” she added, with a sharper

look than before. “An’ he’s been a great reader all his seafarin’ days.

Some thinks he overdid, and affected his head, but for a man o’ his

years he’s amazin’ now when he’s at his best. Oh, he used to be a

beautiful man!”

We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long

stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs,

darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked

far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward

still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water’s edge.

It had been growing gray and cloudy, like the first evening of autumn,

and a shadow had fallen on the darkening shore. Suddenly, as we looked,

a gleam of golden sunshine struck the outer islands, and one of them

shone out clear in the light, and revealed itself in a compelling way to

our eyes. Mrs. Todd was looking off across the bay with a face full of

affection and interest. The sunburst upon that outermost island made it

seem like a sudden revelation of the world beyond this which some

believe to be so near.

“That’s where mother lives,” said Mrs. Todd. “Can’t we see it plain? I

was brought up out there on Green Island. I know every rock an’ bush on

it.”

“Your mother!” I exclaimed, with great interest.

“Yes, dear, cert’in; I’ve got her yet, old’s I be. She’s one of them

spry, light-footed little women; always was, an’ lighthearted, too,”

answered Mrs. Todd, with satisfaction. “She’s seen all the trouble folks

can see, without it’s her last sickness; an’ she’s got a word of courage

for everybody. Life ain’t spoilt her a mite. She’s eighty-six an’ I’m

sixty-seven, and I’ve seen the time I’ve felt a good sight the oldest.

‘Land sakes alive!’ says she, last time I was out to see her. ‘How you

do lurch about steppin’ into a bo’t!’ I laughed so I liked to have gone

right over into the water; an’ we pushed off, an’ left her laughin’

there on the shore.”

The light had faded as we watched. Mrs. Todd had mounted a gray rock,

and stood there grand and architectural, like a _caryatide_. Presently

she stepped down, and we continued our way homeward.

“You an’ me, we’ll take a bo’t an’ go out some day and see mother,” she

promised me. “’Twould please her very much, an’ there’s one or two

sca’ce herbs grows better on the island than anywheres else. I ain’t

seen their like nowheres here on the main.

“Now I’m goin’ right down to get us each a mug o’ my beer,” she

announced as we entered the house, “an’ I believe I’ll sneak in a little

mite o’ camomile. Goin’ to the funeral an’ all, I feel to have had a

very wearin’ afternoon.”

I heard her going down into the cool little cellar, and then there was

considerable delay. When she returned, mug in hand, I noticed the taste

of camomile, in spite of my protest; but its flavor was disguised by

some other herb that I did not know, and she stood over me until I drank

it all and said that I liked it.

“I don’t give that to everybody,” said Mrs. Todd kindly; and I felt for

a moment as if it were part of a spell and incantation, and as if my

enchantress would now begin to look like the cobweb shapes of the arctic

town. Nothing happened but a quiet evening and some delightful plans

that we made about going to Green Island, and on the morrow there was

the clear sunshine and blue sky of another day.

VIII.

GREEN ISLAND.

One morning, very early, I heard Mrs. Todd in the garden outside my

window. By the unusual loudness of her remarks to a passer-by, and the

notes of a familiar hymn which she sang as she worked among the herbs,

and which came as if directed purposely to the sleepy ears of my

consciousness, I knew that she wished I would wake up and come and speak

to her.

In a few minutes she responded to a morning voice from behind the

blinds. “I expect you’re goin’ up to your schoolhouse to pass all this

pleasant day; yes, I expect you’re goin’ to be dreadful busy,” she said

despairingly.

“Perhaps not,” said I. “Why, what’s going to be the matter with you,

Mrs. Todd?” For I supposed that she was tempted by the fine weather to

take one of her favorite expeditions along the shore pastures to gather

herbs and simples, and would like to have me keep the house.

“No, I don’t want to go nowhere by land,” she answered gayly,—“no, not

by land; but I don’t know’s we shall have a better day all the rest of

the summer to go out to Green Island an’ see mother. I waked up early

thinkin’ of her. The wind’s light northeast,—’twill take us right

straight out; an’ this time o’ year it’s liable to change round

southwest an’ fetch us home pretty, ’long late in the afternoon. Yes,

it’s goin’ to be a good day.”

“Speak to the captain and the Bowden boy, if you see anybody going by

toward the landing,” said I. “We’ll take the big boat.”

“Oh, my sakes! now you let me do things my way,” said Mrs. Todd

scornfully. “No, dear, we won’t take no big bo’t. I’ll just git a handy

dory, an’ Johnny Bowden an’ me, we’ll man her ourselves. I don’t want no

abler bo’t than a good dory, an’ a nice light breeze ain’t goin’ to make

no sea; an’ Johnny’s my cousin’s son,—mother’ll like to have him come;

an’ he’ll be down to the herrin’ weirs all the time we’re there, anyway;

we don’t want to carry no men folks havin’ to be considered every minute

an’ takin’ up all our time. No, you let me do; we’ll just slip out an’

see mother by ourselves. I guess what breakfast you’ll want’s about

ready now.”

I had become well acquainted with Mrs. Todd as landlady, herb-gatherer,

and rustic philosopher; we had been discreet fellow-passengers once or

twice when I had sailed up the coast to a larger town than Dunnet

Landing to do some shopping; but I was yet to become acquainted with her

as a mariner. An hour later we pushed off from the landing in the

desired dory. The tide was just on the turn, beginning to fall, and

several friends and acquaintances stood along the side of the

dilapidated wharf and cheered us by their words and evident interest.

Johnny Bowden and I were both rowing in haste to get out where we could

catch the breeze and put up the small sail which lay clumsily furled

along the gunwale. Mrs. Todd sat aft, a stern and unbending lawgiver.

“You better let her drift; we’ll get there ’bout as quick; the tide’ll

take her right out from under these old buildin’s; there’s plenty wind

outside.”

“Your bo’t ain’t trimmed proper, Mis’ Todd!” exclaimed a voice from

shore. “You’re lo’ded so the bo’t’ll drag; you can’t git her before the

wind, ma’am. You set ‘midships, Mis’ Todd, an’ let the boy hold the

sheet ’n’ steer after he gits the sail up; you won’t never git out to

Green Island that way. She’s lo’ded bad, your bo’t is,—she’s heavy

behind’s she is now!”

Mrs. Todd turned with some difficulty and regarded the anxious adviser,

my right oar flew out of water, and we seemed about to capsize. “That

you, Asa? Good-mornin’,” she said politely. “I al’ays liked the starn

seat best. When’d you git back from up country?”

This allusion to Asa’s origin was not lost upon the rest of the company.

We were some little distance from shore, but we could hear a chuckle of

laughter, and Asa, a person who was too ready with his criticism and

advice on every possible subject, turned and walked indignantly away.

When we caught the wind we were soon on our seaward course, and only

stopped to underrun a trawl, for the floats of which Mrs. Todd looked

earnestly, explaining that her mother might not be prepared for three

extra to dinner; it was her brother’s trawl, and she meant to just run

her eye along for the right sort of a little haddock. I leaned over the

boat’s side with great interest and excitement, while she skillfully

handled the long line of hooks, and made scornful remarks upon

worthless, bait-consuming creatures of the sea as she reviewed them and

left them on the trawl or shook them off into the waves. At last we came

to what she pronounced a proper haddock, and having taken him on board

and ended his life resolutely, we went our way.

As we sailed along I listened to an increasingly delightful commentary

upon the islands, some of them barren rocks, or at best giving sparse

pasturage for sheep in the early summer. On one of these an eager little

flock ran to the water’s edge and bleated at us so affectingly that I

would willingly have stopped; but Mrs. Todd steered away from the rocks,

and scolded at the sheep’s mean owner, an acquaintance of hers, who

grudged the little salt and still less care which the patient creatures

needed. The hot midsummer sun makes prisons of these small islands that

are a paradise in early June, with their cool springs and short

thick-growing grass. On a larger island, farther out to sea, my

entertaining companion showed me with glee the small houses of two

farmers who shared the island between them, and declared that for three

generations the people had not spoken to each other even in times of

sickness or death or birth. “When the news come that the war was over,

one of ’em knew it a week, and never stepped across his wall to tell the

others,” she said. “There, they enjoy it: they’ve got to have somethin’

to interest ’em in such a place; ’tis a good deal more tryin’ to be tied

to folks you don’t like than ’tis to be alone. Each of ’em tells the

neighbors their wrongs; plenty likes to hear and tell again; them as

fetch a bone’ll carry one, an’ so they keep the fight a-goin’. I must

say I like variety myself; some folks washes Monday an’ irons Tuesday

the whole year round, even if the circus is goin’ by!”

A long time before we landed at Green Island we could see the small

white house, standing high like a beacon, where Mrs. Todd was born and

where her mother lived, on a green slope above the water, with dark

spruce woods still higher. There were crops in the fields, which we

presently distinguished from one another. Mrs. Todd examined them while

we were still far at sea. “Mother’s late potatoes looks backward; ain’t

had rain enough so far,” she pronounced her opinion. “They look weedier

than what they call Front Street down to Cowper Centre. I expect brother

William is so occupied with his herrin’ weirs an’ servin’ out bait to

the schooners that he don’t think once a day of the land.”

“What’s the flag for, up above the spruces there behind the house?” I

inquired, with eagerness.

“Oh, that’s the sign for herrin’,” she explained kindly, while Johnny

Bowden regarded me with contemptuous surprise. “When they get enough for

schooners they raise that flag; an’ when ’tis a poor catch in the weir

pocket they just fly a little signal down by the shore, an’ then the

small bo’ts comes and get enough an’ over for their trawls. There, look!

there she is: mother sees us; she’s wavin’ somethin’ out o’ the fore

door! She’ll be to the landin’-place quick’s we are.”

I looked, and could see a tiny flutter in the doorway, but a quicker

signal had made its way from the heart on shore to the heart on the sea.

“How do you suppose she knows it’s me?” said Mrs. Todd, with a tender

smile on her broad face. “There, you never get over bein’ a child long’s

you have a mother to go to. Look at the chimney, now; she’s gone right

in an’ brightened up the fire. Well, there, I’m glad mother’s well;

you’ll enjoy seein’ her very much.”

Mrs. Todd leaned back into her proper position, and the boat trimmed

again. She took a firmer grasp of the sheet, and gave an impatient look

up at the gaff and the leech of the little sail, and twitched the sheet

as if she urged the wind like a horse. There came at once a fresh gust,

and we seemed to have doubled our speed. Soon we were near enough to see

a tiny figure with handkerchiefed head come down across the field and

stand waiting for us at the cove above a curve of pebble beach.

Presently the dory grated on the pebbles, and Johnny Bowden, who had

been kept in abeyance during the voyage, sprang out and used manful

exertions to haul us up with the next wave, so that Mrs. Todd could make

a dry landing.

“You done that very well,” she said, mounting to her feet, and coming

ashore somewhat stiffly, but with great dignity, refusing our

outstretched hands, and returning to possess herself of a bag which had

lain at her feet.

“Well, mother, here I be!” she announced with indifference; but they

stood and beamed in each other’s faces.

“Lookin’ pretty well for an old lady, ain’t she?” said Mrs. Todd’s

mother, turning away from her daughter to speak to me. She was a

delightful little person herself, with bright eyes and an affectionate

air of expectation like a child on a holiday. You felt as if Mrs.

Blackett were an old and dear friend before you let go her cordial hand.

We all started together up the hill.

“Now don’t you haste too fast, mother,” said Mrs. Todd warningly; “’tis

a far reach o’ risin’ ground to the fore door, and you won’t set an’ get

your breath when you’re once there, but go trotting about. Now don’t you

go a mite faster than we proceed with this bag an’ basket. Johnny,

there, ’ll fetch up the haddock. I just made one stop to underrun

William’s trawl till I come to jes’ such a fish’s I thought you’d want

to make one o’ your nice chowders of. I’ve brought an onion with me that

was layin’ about on the window-sill at home.”

“That’s just what I was wantin’,” said the hostess. “I give a sigh when

you spoke o’ chowder, knowin’ my onions was out. William forgot to

replenish us last time he was to the Landin’. Don’t you haste so

yourself, Almiry, up this risin’ ground. I hear you commencin’ to wheeze

a’ready.”

This mild revenge seemed to afford great pleasure to both giver and

receiver. They laughed a little, and looked at each other

affectionately, and then at me. Mrs. Todd considerately paused, and

faced about to regard the wide sea view. I was glad to stop, being more

out of breath than either of my companions, and I prolonged the halt by

asking the names of the neighboring islands. There was a fine breeze

blowing, which we felt more there on the high land than when we were

running before it in the dory.

“Why, this ain’t that kitten I saw when I was out last, the one that I

said didn’t appear likely?” exclaimed Mrs. Todd as we went our way.

“That’s the one, Almiry,” said her mother. “She always had a likely look

to me, an’ she’s right after her business. I never see such a mouser for

one of her age. If ’twan’t for William, I never should have housed that

other dronin’ old thing so long; but he sets by her on account of her

havin’ a bob tail. I don’t deem it advisable to maintain cats just on

account of their havin’ bob tails; they’re like all other curiosities,

good for them that wants to see ’em twice. This kitten catches mice for

both, an’ keeps me respectable as I ain’t been for a year. She’s a real

understandin’ little help, this kitten is. I picked her from among five

Miss Augusta Pennell had over to Burnt Island,” said the old woman,

trudging along with the kitten close at her skirts. “Augusta, she says

to me, ‘Why, Mis’ Blackett, you’ve took the homeliest;’ an’ says I,

‘I’ve got the smartest; I’m satisfied.’”

“I’d trust nobody sooner’n you to pick out a kitten, mother,” said the

daughter handsomely, and we went on in peace and harmony.

The house was just before us now, on a green level that looked as if a

huge hand had scooped it out of the long green field we had been

ascending. A little way above, the dark spruce woods began to climb the

top of the hill and cover the seaward slopes of the island. There was

just room for the small farm and the forest; we looked down at the

fish-house and its rough sheds, and the weirs stretching far out into

the water. As we looked upward, the tops of the firs came sharp against

the blue sky. There was a great stretch of rough pasture-land round the

shoulder of the island to the eastward, and here were all the

thick-scattered gray rocks that kept their places, and the gray backs of

many sheep that forever wandered and fed on the thin sweet pasturage

that fringed the ledges and made soft hollows and strips of green turf

like growing velvet. I could see the rich green of bayberry bushes here

and there, where the rocks made room. The air was very sweet; one could

not help wishing to be a citizen of such a complete and tiny continent

and home of fisherfolk.

The house was broad and clean, with a roof that looked heavy on its low

walls. It was one of the houses that seem firm-rooted in the ground, as

if they were two-thirds below the surface, like icebergs. The front door

stood hospitably open in expectation of company, and an orderly vine

grew at each side; but our path led to the kitchen door at the

house-end, and there grew a mass of gay flowers and greenery, as if they

had been swept together by some diligent garden broom into a tangled

heap: there were portulacas all along under the lower step and

straggling off into the grass, and clustering mallows that crept as near

as they dared, like poor relations. I saw the bright eyes and brainless

little heads of two half-grown chickens who were snuggled down among the

mallows as if they had been chased away from the door more than once,

and expected to be again.

“It seems kind o’ formal comin’ in this way,” said Mrs. Todd

impulsively, as we passed the flowers and came to the front doorstep;

but she was mindful of the proprieties, and walked before us into the

best room on the left.

“Why, mother, if you haven’t gone an’ turned the carpet!” she exclaimed,

with something in her voice that spoke of awe and admiration. “When’d

you get to it? I s’pose Mis’ Addicks come over an’ helped you, from

White Island Landing?”

“No, she didn’t,” answered the old woman, standing proudly erect, and

making the most of a great moment. “I done it all myself with William’s

help. He had a spare day, an’ took right holt with me; an’ ’twas all

well beat on the grass, an’ turned, an’ put down again afore we went to

bed. I ripped an’ sewed over two o’ them long breadths. I ain’t had such

a good night’s sleep for two years.”

“There, what do you think o’ havin’ such a mother as that for eighty-six

year old?” said Mrs. Todd, standing before us like a large figure of

Victory.

As for the mother, she took on a sudden look of youth; you felt as if

she promised a great future, and was beginning, not ending, her summers

and their happy toils.

“My, my!” exclaimed Mrs. Todd. “I couldn’t ha’ done it myself, I’ve got

to own it.”

“I was much pleased to have it off my mind,” said Mrs. Blackett, humbly;

“the more so because along at the first of the next week I wasn’t very

well. I suppose it may have been the change of weather.”

Mrs. Todd could not resist a significant glance at me, but, with

charming sympathy, she forbore to point the lesson or to connect this

illness with its apparent cause. She loomed larger than ever in the

little old-fashioned best room, with its few pieces of good furniture

and pictures of national interest. The green paper curtains were stamped

with conventional landscapes of a foreign order,—castles on inaccessible

crags, and lovely lakes with steep wooded shores; underfoot the

treasured carpet was covered thick with home-made rugs. There were empty

glass lamps and crystallized bouquets of grass and some fine shells on

the narrow mantelpiece.

“I was married in this room,” said Mrs. Todd unexpectedly; and I heard

her give a sigh after she had spoken, as if she could not help the touch

of regret that would forever come with all her thoughts of happiness.

“We stood right there between the windows,” she added, “and the minister

stood here. William wouldn’t come in. He was always odd about seein’

folks, just’s he is now. I run to meet ’em from a child, an’ William,

he’d take an’ run away.”

“I’ve been the gainer,” said the old mother cheerfully. “William has

been son an’ daughter both since you was married off the island. He’s

been ’most too satisfied to stop at home ’long o’ his old mother, but I

always tell ’em I’m the gainer.”

We were all moving toward the kitchen as if by common instinct. The best

room was too suggestive of serious occasions, and the shades were all

pulled down to shut out the summer light and air. It was indeed a

tribute to Society to find a room set apart for her behests out there on

so apparently neighborless and remote an island. Afternoon visits and

evening festivals must be few in such a bleak situation at certain

seasons of the year, but Mrs. Blackett was of those who do not live to

themselves, and who have long since passed the line that divides mere

self-concern from a valued share in whatever Society can give and take.

There were those of her neighbors who never had taken the trouble to

furnish a best room, but Mrs. Blackett was one who knew the uses of a

parlor.

“Yes, do come right out into the old kitchen; I shan’t make any stranger

of you,” she invited us pleasantly, after we had been properly received

in the room appointed to formality. “I expect Almiry, here, ’ll be

driftin’ out ’mongst the pasture-weeds quick’s she can find a good

excuse. ’Tis hot now. You’d better content yourselves till you get nice

an’ rested, an’ ’long after dinner the sea-breeze’ll spring up, an’ then

you can take your walks, an’ go up an’ see the prospect from the big

ledge. Almiry’ll want to show off everything there is. Then I’ll get you

a good cup o’ tea before you start to go home. The days are plenty long

now.”

While we were talking in the best room the selected fish had been

mysteriously brought up from the shore, and lay all cleaned and ready in

an earthen crock on the table.

“I think William might have just stopped an’ said a word,” remarked Mrs.

Todd, pouting with high affront as she caught sight of it. “He’s

friendly enough when he comes ashore, an’ was remarkable social the last

time, for him.”

“He ain’t disposed to be very social with the ladies,” explained

William’s mother, with a delightful glance at me, as if she counted upon

my friendship and tolerance. “He’s very particular, and he’s all in his

old fishin’-clothes to-day. He’ll want me to tell him everything you

said and done, after you’ve gone. William has very deep affections.

He’ll want to see you, Almiry. Yes, I guess he’ll be in by an’ by.”

“I’ll search for him by ’n’ by, if he don’t,” proclaimed Mrs. Todd, with

an air of unalterable resolution. “I know all of his burrows down ’long

the shore. I’ll catch him by hand ’fore he knows it. I’ve got some

business with William, anyway. I brought forty-two cents with me that

was due him for them last lobsters he brought in.”

“You can leave it with me,” suggested the little old mother, who was

already stepping about among her pots and pans in the pantry, and

preparing to make the chowder.

I became possessed of a sudden unwonted curiosity in regard to William,

and felt that half the pleasure of my visit would be lost if I could not

make his interesting acquaintance.

IX.

WILLIAM.

Mrs. Todd had taken the onion out of her basket and laid it down upon

the kitchen table. “There’s Johnny Bowden come with us, you know,” she

reminded her mother. “He’ll be hungry enough to eat his size.”

“I’ve got new doughnuts, dear,” said the little old lady. “You don’t

often catch William ’n’ me out o’ provisions. I expect you might have

chose a somewhat larger fish, but I’ll try an’ make it do. I shall have

to have a few extra potatoes, but there’s a field full out there, an’

the hoe’s leanin’ against the well-house, in ’mongst the

climbin’-beans.” She smiled, and gave her daughter a commanding nod.

“Land sakes alive! Le’’s blow the horn for William,” insisted Mrs. Todd,

with some excitement. “He needn’t break his spirit so far’s to come in.

He’ll know you need him for something particular, an’ then we can call

to him as he comes up the path. I won’t put him to no pain.”

Mrs. Blackett’s old face, for the first time, wore a look of trouble,

and I found it necessary to counteract the teasing spirit of Almira. It

was too pleasant to stay indoors altogether, even in such rewarding

companionship; besides, I might meet William; and, straying out

presently, I found the hoe by the well-house and an old splint basket at

the woodshed door, and also found my way down to the field where there

was a great square patch of rough, weedy potato-tops and tall ragweed.

One corner was already dug, and I chose a fat-looking hill where the

tops were well withered. There is all the pleasure that one can have in

gold-digging in finding one’s hopes satisfied in the riches of a good

hill of potatoes. I longed to go on; but it did not seem frugal to dig

any longer after my basket was full, and at last I took my hoe by the

middle and lifted the basket to go back up the hill. I was sure that

Mrs. Blackett must be waiting impatiently to slice the potatoes into the

chowder, layer after layer, with the fish.

“You let me take holt o’ that basket, ma’am,” said a pleasant, anxious

voice behind me.

I turned, startled in the silence of the wide field, and saw an elderly

man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-headed and

clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. He looked just like

his mother, and I had been imagining that he was large and stout like

his sister, Almira Todd; and, strange to say, my fancy had led me to

picture him not far from thirty and a little loutish. It was necessary

instead to pay William the respect due to age.

I accustomed myself to plain facts on the instant, and we said

good-morning like old friends. The basket was really heavy, and I put

the hoe through its handle and offered him one end; then we moved easily

toward the house together, speaking of the fine weather and of mackerel

which were reported to be striking in all about the bay. William had

been out since three o’ clock, and had taken an extra fare of fish. I

could feel that Mrs. Todd’s eyes were upon us as we approached the

house, and although I fell behind in the narrow path, and let William

take the basket alone and precede me at some little distance the rest of

the way, I could plainly hear her greet him.

“Got round to comin’ in, didn’t you?” she inquired, with amusement.

“Well, now, that’s clever. Didn’t know’s I should see you to-day,

William, an’ I wanted to settle an account.”

I felt somewhat disturbed and responsible, but when I joined them they

were on most simple and friendly terms. It became evident that, with

William, it was the first step that cost, and that, having once joined

in social interests, he was able to pursue them with more or less

pleasure. He was about sixty, and not young-looking for his years, yet

so undying is the spirit of youth, and bashfulness has such a power of

survival, that I felt all the time as if one must try to make the

occasion easy for some one who was young and new to the affairs of

social life. He asked politely if I would like to go up to the great

ledge while dinner was getting ready; so, not without a deep sense of

pleasure, and a delighted look of surprise from the two hostesses, we

started, William and I, as if both of us felt much younger than we

looked. Such was the innocence and simplicity of the moment that when I

heard Mrs. Todd laughing behind us in the kitchen I laughed too, but

William did not even blush. I think he was a little deaf, and he stepped

along before me most businesslike and intent upon his errand.

We went from the upper edge of the field above the house into a smooth,

brown path among the dark spruces. The hot sun brought out the fragrance

of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as we climbed the hill.

William stopped once or twice to show me a great wasps’-nest close by,

or some fishhawks’-nests below in a bit of swamp. He picked a few sprigs

of late-blooming linnæa as we came out upon an open bit of pasture at

the top of the island, and gave them to me without speaking, but he knew

as well as I that one could not say half he wished about linnæa. Through

this piece of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the great

backbone of an enormous creature. At the end, near the woods, we could

climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above the

circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and could

see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of

islandground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It gave a

sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged one

in,—that sense of liberty in space and time which great prospects always

give.

“There ain’t no such view in the world, I expect,” said William proudly,

and I hastened to speak my heartfelt tribute of praise; it was

impossible not to feel as if an untraveled boy had spoken, and yet one

loved to have him value his native heath.

X.

WHERE PENNYROYAL GREW.

We were a little late to dinner, but Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd were

lenient, and we all took our places after William had paused to wash his

hands, like a pious Brahmin, at the well, and put on a neat blue coat

which he took from a peg behind the kitchen door. Then he resolutely

asked a blessing in words that I could not hear, and we ate the chowder

and were thankful. The kitten went round and round the table, quite

erect, and, holding on by her fierce young claws, she stopped to mew

with pathos at each elbow, or darted off to the open door when a song

sparrow forgot himself and lit in the grass too near. William did not

talk much, but his sister Todd occupied the time and told all the news

there was to tell of Dunnet Landing and its coasts, while the old mother

listened with delight. Her hospitality was something exquisite; she had

the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves and

their houses belong entirely to a guest’s pleasure,—that charming

surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so

that they make a part of one’s own life that can never be forgotten.

Tact is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held the golden

gift. Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett’s

world and mine were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that

final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness.

Sometimes, as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she

had been set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast. It

must have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her

scattered and depending neighbors for other things which they may have

lacked.

When we had finished clearing away the old blue plates, and the kitten

had taken care of her share of the fresh haddock, just as we were

putting back the kitchen chairs in their places, Mrs. Todd said briskly

that she must go up into the pasture now to gather the desired herbs.

“You can stop here an’ rest, or you can accompany me,” she announced.

“Mother ought to have her nap, and when we come back she an’ William’ll

sing for you. She admires music,” said Mrs. Todd, turning to speak to

her mother.

But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldn’t sing as she used, and

perhaps William wouldn’t feel like it. She looked tired, the good old

soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful little house while

she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of pastures already in her

daughter’s company. But it seemed best to go with Mrs. Todd, and off we

went.

Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from home, and a

small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight and slender from

her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew breathless, so that we

sat down to rest awhile on a convenient large stone among the bayberry.

“There, I wanted you to see this,—’tis mother’s picture,” said Mrs.

Todd; “’twas taken once when she was up to Portland, soon after she was

married. That’s me,” she added, opening another worn case, and

displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked like still in

spite of being past sixty. “And here’s William an’ father together. I

take after father, large and heavy, an’ William is like mother’s folks,

short an’ thin. He ought to have made something o’ himself, bein’ a man

an’ so like mother; but though he’s been very steady to work, an’ kept

up the farm, an’ done his fishin’ too right along, he never had mother’s

snap an’ power o’ seein’ things just as they be. He’s got excellent

judgment, too,” meditated William’s sister, but she could not arrive at

any satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure in

life. “I think it is well to see any one so happy an’ makin’ the most of

life just as it falls to hand,” she said as she began to put the

daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my hand to see her mother’s

once more, a most flowerlike face of a lovely young woman in quaint

dress. There was in the eyes a look of anticipation and joy, a far-off

look that sought the horizon; one often sees it in seafaring families,

inherited by girls and boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea,

and are always watching for distant sails or the first loom of the land.

At sea there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its

counterpart in a sailor’s character, in the large and brave and patient

traits that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in

a seafarer.

When the family pictures were wrapped again in a big handkerchief, we

set forward in a narrow footpath and made our way to a lonely place that

faced northward, where there was more pasturage and fewer bushes, and we

went down to the edge of short grass above some rocky cliffs where the

deep sea broke with a great noise, though the wind was down and the

water looked quiet a little way from shore. Among the grass grew such

pennyroyal as the rest of the world could not provide. There was a fine

fragrance in the air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along

carefully, and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands

and offered it to me again and again.

“There’s nothin’ like it,” she said; “oh no, there’s no such pennyr’yal

as this in the State of Maine. It’s the right pattern of the plant, and

all the rest I ever see is but an imitation. Don’t it do you good?” And

I answered with enthusiasm.

“There, dear, I never showed nobody else but mother where to find this

place; ’tis kind of sainted to me. Nathan, my husband, an’ I used to

love this place when we was courtin’, and”—she hesitated, and then spoke

softly—“when he was lost, ’twas just off shore tryin’ to get in by the

short channel out there between Squaw Islands, right in sight o’ this

headland where we’d set an’ made our plans all summer long.”

I had never heard her speak of her husband before, but I felt that we

were friends now since she had brought me to this place.

“’Twas but a dream with us,” Mrs. Todd said. “I knew it when he was

gone. I knew it”—and she whispered as if she were at confession—“I knew

it afore he started to go to sea. My heart was gone out o’ my keepin’

before I ever saw Nathan; but he loved me well, and he made me real

happy, and he died before he ever knew what he’d had to know if we’d

lived long together. ’Tis very strange about love. No, Nathan never

found out, but my heart was troubled when I knew him first. There’s more

women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves. I spent some

happy hours right here. I always liked Nathan, and he never knew. But

this pennyr’yal always reminded me, as I’d sit and gather it and hear

him talkin’—it always would remind me of—the other one.”

She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by herself.

There was something lonely and solitary about her great determined

shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban plain. It is not

often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and

silence. An absolute, archaic grief possessed this countrywoman; she

seemed like a renewal of some historic soul, with her sorrows and the

remoteness of a daily life busied with rustic simplicities and the

scents of primeval herbs.

I was not incompetent at herb-gathering, and after a while, when I had

sat long enough waking myself to new thoughts, and reading a page of

remembrance with new pleasure, I gathered some bunches, as I was bound

to do, and at last we met again higher up the shore, in the plain

every-day world we had left behind when we went down to the pennyroyal

plot. As we walked together along the high edge of the field we saw a

hundred sails about the bay and farther seaward; it was mid-afternoon or

after, and the day was coming to an end.

“Yes, they’re all makin’ towards the shore,—the small craft an’ the

lobster smacks an’ all,” said my companion. “We must spend a little time

with mother now, just to have our tea, an’ then put for home.”

“No matter if we lose the wind at sundown; I can row in with Johnny,”

said I; and Mrs. Todd nodded reassuringly and kept to her steady plod,

not quickening her gait even when we saw William come round the corner

of the house as if to look for us, and wave his hand and disappear.

“Why, William’s right on deck; I didn’t know’s we should see any more of

him!” exclaimed Mrs. Todd. “Now mother’ll put the kettle right on; she’s

got a good fire goin’.” I too could see the blue smoke thicken, and then

we both walked a little faster, while Mrs. Todd groped in her full bag

of herbs to find the daguerreotypes and be ready to put them in their

places.

XI.

THE OLD SINGERS.

William was sitting on the side door step, and the old mother was busy

making her tea; she gave into my hand an old flowered-glass tea caddy.

“William thought you’d like to see this, when he was settin’ the table.

My father brought it to my mother from the island of Tobago; an’ here’s

a pair of beautiful mugs that came with it.” She opened the glass door

of a little cupboard beside the chimney. “These I call my best things,

dear,” she said. “You’d laugh to see how we enjoy ’em Sunday nights in

winter: we have a real company tea ’stead o’ livin’ right along just the

same, an’ I make somethin’ good for a s’prise an’ put on some o’ my

preserves, an’ we get a-talkin’ together an’ have real pleasant times.”

Mrs. Todd laughed indulgently, and looked to see what I thought of such

childishness.

“I wish I could be here some Sunday evening,” said I.

“William an’ me’ll be talkin’ about you an’ thinkin’ o’ this nice day,”

said Mrs. Blackett affectionately, and she glanced at William, and he

looked up bravely and nodded. I began to discover that he and his sister

could not speak their deeper feelings before each other.

“Now I want you an’ mother to sing,” said Mrs. Todd abruptly, with an

air of command, and I gave William much sympathy in his evident

distress.

“After I’ve had my cup o’ tea, dear,” answered the old hostess

cheerfully; and so we sat down and took our cups and made merry while

they lasted. It was impossible not to wish to stay on forever at Green

Island, and I could not help saying so.

“I’m very happy here, both winter an’ summer,” said old Mrs. Blackett.

“William an’ I never wish for any other home, do we, William? I’m glad

you find it pleasant; I wish you’d come an’ stay, dear, whenever you

feel inclined. But here’s Almiry; I always think Providence was kind to

plot an’ have her husband leave her a good house where she really

belonged. She’d been very restless if she’d had to continue here on

Green Island. You wanted more scope, didn’t you, Almiry, an’ to live in

a large place where more things grew? Sometimes folks wonders that we

don’t live together; perhaps we shall some time,” and a shadow of

sadness and apprehension flitted across her face. “The time o’ sickness

an’ failin’ has got to come to all. But Almiry’s got an herb that’s good

for everything.” She smiled as she spoke, and looked bright again.

“There’s some herb that’s good for everybody, except for them that

thinks they’re sick when they ain’t,” announced Mrs. Todd, with a truly

professional air of finality. “Come, William, let’s have Sweet Home, an’

then mother’ll sing Cupid an’ the Bee for us.”

Then followed a most charming surprise. William mastered his timidity

and began to sing. His voice was a little faint and frail, like the

family daguerreotypes, but it was a tenor voice, and perfectly true and

sweet. I have never heard Home, Sweet Home sung as touchingly and

seriously as he sang it; he seemed to make it quite new; and when he

paused for a moment at the end of the first line and began the next, the

old mother joined him and they sang together, she missing only the

higher notes, where he seemed to lend his voice to hers for the moment

and carry on her very note and air. It was the silent man’s real and

only means of expression, and one could have listened forever, and have

asked for more and more songs of old Scotch and English inheritance and

the best that have lived from the ballad music of the war. Mrs. Todd

kept time visibly, and sometimes audibly, with her ample foot. I saw the

tears in her eyes sometimes, when I could see beyond the tears in mine.

But at last the songs ended and the time came to say good-by; it was the

end of a great pleasure.

Mrs. Blackett, the dear old lady, opened the door of her bedroom while

Mrs. Todd was tying up the herb bag, and William had gone down to get

the boat ready and to blow the horn for Johnny Bowden, who had joined a

roving boat party who were off the shore lobstering.

I went to the door of the bedroom, and thought how pleasant it looked,

with its pink-and-white patchwork quilt and the brown unpainted paneling

of its woodwork.

“Come right in, dear,” she said. “I want you to set down in my old

quilted rockin’-chair there by the window; you’ll say it’s the prettiest

view in the house. I set there a good deal to rest me and when I want to

read.”

There was a worn red Bible on the lightstand, and Mrs. Blackett’s heavy

silver-bowed glasses; her thimble was on the narrow window-ledge, and

folded carefully on the table was a thick striped-cotton shirt that she

was making for her son. Those dear old fingers and their loving

stitches, that heart which had made the most of everything that needed

love! Here was the real home, the heart of the old house on Green

Island! I sat in the rocking-chair, and felt that it was a place of

peace, the little brown bedroom, and the quiet outlook upon field and

sea and sky.

I looked up, and we understood each other without speaking. “I shall

like to think o’ your settin’ here to-day,” said Mrs. Blackett. “I want

you to come again. It has been so pleasant for William.”

The wind served us all the way home, and did not fall or let the sail

slacken until we were close to the shore. We had a generous freight of

lobsters in the boat, and new potatoes which William had put aboard, and

what Mrs. Todd proudly called a full “kag” of prime number one salted

mackerel; and when we landed we had to make business arrangements to

have these conveyed to her house in a wheelbarrow.

I never shall forget the day at Green Island. The town of Dunnet Landing

seemed large and noisy and oppressive as we came ashore. Such is the

power of contrast; for the village was so still that I could hear the

shy whippoorwills singing that night as I lay awake in my downstairs

bedroom, and the scent of Mrs. Todd’s herb garden under the window blew

in again and again with every gentle rising of the sea-breeze.

XII.

A STRANGE SAIL.

Except for a few stray guests, islanders or from the inland country, to

whom Mrs. Todd offered the hospitalities of a single meal, we were quite

by ourselves all summer; and when there were signs of invasion, late in

July, and a certain Mrs. Fosdick appeared like a strange sail on the far

horizon, I suffered much from apprehension. I had been living in the

quaint little house with as much comfort and unconsciousness as if it

were a larger body, or a double shell, in whose simple convolutions Mrs.

Todd and I had secreted ourselves, until some wandering hermit crab of a

visitor marked the little spare room for her own. Perhaps now and then a

castaway on a lonely desert island dreads the thought of being rescued.

I heard of Mrs. Fosdick for the first time with a selfish sense of

objection; but after all, I was still vacation-tenant of the

schoolhouse, where I could always be alone, and it was impossible not to

sympathize with Mrs. Todd, who, in spite of some preliminary grumbling,

was really delighted with the prospect of entertaining an old friend.

For nearly a month we received occasional news of Mrs. Fosdick, who

seemed to be making a royal progress from house to house in the inland

neighborhood, after the fashion of Queen Elizabeth. One Sunday after

another came and went, disappointing Mrs. Todd in the hope of seeing her

guest at church and fixing the day for the great visit to begin; but

Mrs. Fosdick was not ready to commit herself to a date. An assurance of

“some time this week” was not sufficiently definite from a free-footed

housekeeper’s point of view, and Mrs. Todd put aside all herb-gathering

plans, and went through the various stages of expectation, provocation,

and despair. At last she was ready to believe that Mrs. Fosdick must

have forgotten her promise and returned to her home, which was vaguely

said to be over Thomaston way. But one evening, just as the supper-table

was cleared and “readied up,” and Mrs. Todd had put her large apron over

her head and stepped forth for an evening stroll in the garden, the

unexpected happened. She heard the sound of wheels, and gave an excited

cry to me, as I sat by the window, that Mrs. Fosdick was coming right up

the street.

“She may not be considerate, but she’s dreadful good company,” said Mrs.

Todd hastily, coming back a few steps from the neighborhood of the gate.

“No, she ain’t a mite considerate, but there’s a small lobster left over

from your tea; yes, it’s a real mercy there’s a lobster. Susan Fosdick

might just as well have passed the compliment o’ comin’ an hour ago.”

“Perhaps she has had her supper,” I ventured to suggest, sharing the

housekeeper’s anxiety, and meekly conscious of an inconsiderate appetite

for my own supper after a long expedition up the bay. There were so few

emergencies of any sort at Dunnet Landing that this one appeared

overwhelming.

“No, she’s rode ’way over from Nahum Brayton’s place. I expect they were

busy on the farm, and couldn’t spare the horse in proper season. You

just sly out an’ set the teakittle on again, dear, an’ drop in a good

han’ful o’ chips; the fire’s all alive. I’ll take her right up to lay

off her things, an’ she’ll be occupied with explanations an’ gettin’ her

bunnit off, so you’ll have plenty o’ time. She’s one I shouldn’t like to

have find me unprepared.”

Mrs. Fosdick was already at the gate, and Mrs. Todd now turned with an

air of complete surprise and delight to welcome her.

“Why, Susan Fosdick,” I heard her exclaim in a fine unhindered voice, as

if she were calling across a field, “I come near giving of you up! I was

afraid you’d gone an’ ’portioned out my visit to somebody else. I s’pose

you’ve been to supper?”

“Lor’, no, I ain’t, Almiry Todd,” said Mrs. Fosdick cheerfully, as she

turned, laden with bags and bundles, from making her adieux to the boy

driver. “I ain’t had a mite o’ supper, dear. I’ve been lottin’ all the

way on a cup o’ that best tea o’ yourn,—some o’ that Oolong you keep in

the little chist. I don’t want none o’ your useful herbs.”

“I keep that tea for ministers’ folks,” gayly responded Mrs. Todd. “Come

right along in, Susan Fosdick. I declare if you ain’t the same old

sixpence!”

As they came up the walk together, laughing like girls, I fled, full of

cares, to the kitchen, to brighten the fire and be sure that the

lobster, sole dependence of a late supper, was well out of reach of the

cat. There proved to be fine reserves of wild raspberries and bread and

butter, so that I regained my composure, and waited impatiently for my

own share of this illustrious visit to begin. There was an instant sense

of high festivity in the evening air from the moment when our guest had

so frankly demanded the Oolong tea.

The great moment arrived. I was formally presented at the stair-foot,

and the two friends passed on to the kitchen, where I soon heard a

hospitable clink of crockery and the brisk stirring of a tea-cup. I sat

in my high-backed rocking-chair by the window in the front room with an

unreasonable feeling of being left out, like the child who stood at the

gate in Hans Andersen’s story. Mrs. Fosdick did not look, at first

sight, like a person of great social gifts. She was a serious-looking

little bit of an old woman, with a birdlike nod of the head. I had often

been told that she was the “best hand in the world to make a visit,”—as

if to visit were the highest of vocations; that everybody wished for

her, while few could get her; and I saw that Mrs. Todd felt a

comfortable sense of distinction in being favored with the company of

this eminent person who “knew just how.” It was certainly true that Mrs.

Fosdick gave both her hostess and me a warm feeling of enjoyment and

expectation, as if she had the power of social suggestion to all

neighboring minds.

The two friends did not reappear for at least an hour. I could hear

their busy voices, loud and low by turns, as they ranged from public to

confidential topics. At last Mrs. Todd kindly remembered me and

returned, giving my door a ceremonious knock before she stepped in, with

the small visitor in her wake. She reached behind her and took Mrs.

Fosdick’s hand as if she were young and bashful, and gave her a gentle

pull forward.

“There, I don’t know whether you’re goin’ to take to each other or not;

no, nobody can’t tell whether you’ll suit each other, but I expect

you’ll get along some way, both having seen the world,” said our

affectionate hostess. “You can inform Mis’ Fosdick how we found the

folks out to Green Island the other day. She’s always been well

acquainted with mother. I’ll slip out now an’ put away the supper things

an’ set my bread to rise, if you’ll both excuse me. You can come out an’

keep me company when you get ready, either or both.” And Mrs. Todd,

large and amiable, disappeared and left us.

Being furnished not only with a subject of conversation, but with a safe

refuge in the kitchen in case of incompatibility, Mrs. Fosdick and I sat

down, prepared to make the best of each other. I soon discovered that

she, like many of the elder women of that coast, had spent a part of her

life at sea, and was full of a good traveler’s curiosity and

enlightenment. By the time we thought it discreet to join our hostess we

were already sincere friends.

You may speak of a visit’s setting in as well as a tide’s, and it was

impossible, as Mrs. Todd whispered to me, not to be pleased at the way

this visit was setting in; a new impulse and refreshing of the social

currents and seldom visited bays of memory appeared to have begun. Mrs.

Fosdick had been the mother of a large family of sons and

daughters,—sailors and sailors’ wives,—and most of them had died before

her. I soon grew more or less acquainted with the histories of all their

fortunes and misfortunes, and subjects of an intimate nature were no

more withheld from my ears than if I had been a shell on the

mantelpiece. Mrs. Fosdick was not without a touch of dignity and

elegance; she was fashionable in her dress, but it was a curiously

well-preserved provincial fashion of some years back. In a wider sphere

one might have called her a woman of the world, with her unexpected bits

of modern knowledge, but Mrs. Todd’s wisdom was an intimation of truth

itself. She might belong to any age, like an idyl of Theocritus; but

while she always understood Mrs. Fosdick, that entertaining pilgrim

could not always understand Mrs. Todd.

That very first evening my friends plunged into a borderless sea of

reminiscences and personal news. Mrs. Fosdick had been staying with a

family who owned the farm where she was born, and she had visited every

sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when she said that it might be

for the last time, I detected in her tone something expectant of the

contradiction which Mrs. Todd promptly offered.

“Almiry,” said Mrs. Fosdick, with sadness, “you may say what you like,

but I am one of nine brothers and sisters brought up on the old place,

and we’re all dead but me.”

“Your sister Dailey ain’t gone, is she? Why, no, Louisa ain’t gone!”

exclaimed Mrs. Todd, with surprise. “Why, I never heard of that

occurrence!”

“Yes’m; she passed away last October, in Lynn. She had made her distant

home in Vermont State, but she was making a visit to her youngest

daughter. Louisa was the only one of my family whose funeral I wasn’t

able to attend, but ’twas a mere accident. All the rest of us were

settled right about home. I thought it was very slack of ’em in Lynn not

to fetch her to the old place; but when I came to hear about it, I

learned that they’d recently put up a very elegant monument, and my

sister Dailey was always great for show. She’d just been out to see the

monument the week before she was taken down, and admired it so much that

they felt sure of her wishes.”

“So she’s really gone, and the funeral was up to Lynn!” repeated Mrs.

Todd, as if to impress the sad fact upon her mind. “She was some years

younger than we be, too. I recollect the first day she ever came to

school; ’twas that first year mother sent me inshore to stay with Aunt

Topham’s folks and get my schooling. You fetched little Louisa to school

one Monday mornin’ in a pink dress an’ her long curls, and she set

between you an’ me, and got cryin’ after a while, so the teacher sent us

home with her at recess.”

“She was scared of seeing so many children about her; there was only her

and me and brother John at home then; the older boys were to sea with

father, an’ the rest of us wa’n’t born,” explained Mrs. Fosdick. “That

next fall we all went to sea together. Mother was uncertain till the

last minute, as one may say. The ship was waiting orders, but the baby

that then was, was born just in time, and there was a long spell of

extra bad weather, so mother got about again before they had to sail,

an’ we all went. I remember my clothes were all left ashore in the east

chamber in a basket where mother’d took them out o’ my chist o’ drawers

an’ left ’em ready to carry aboard. She didn’t have nothing aboard, of

her own, that she wanted to cut up for me, so when my dress wore out she

just put me into a spare suit o’ John’s, jacket and trousers. I wasn’t

but eight years old an’ he was most seven and large of his age. Quick as

we made a port she went right ashore an’ fitted me out pretty, but we

was bound for the East Indies and didn’t put in anywhere for a good

while. So I had quite a spell o’ freedom. Mother made my new skirt long

because I was growing, and I poked about the deck after that, real

discouraged, feeling the hem at my heels every minute, and as if youth

was past and gone. I liked the trousers best; I used to climb the

riggin’ with ’em and frighten mother till she said an’ vowed she’d never

take me to sea again.”

I thought by the polite absent-minded smile on Mrs. Todd’s face this was

no new story.

“Little Louisa was a beautiful child; yes, I always thought Louisa was

very pretty,” Mrs. Todd said. “She was a dear little girl in those days.

She favored your mother; the rest of you took after your father’s

folks.”

“We did certain,” agreed Mrs. Fosdick, rocking steadily. “There, it does

seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you

know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have

neither past nor future. Conversation’s got to have some root in the

past, or else you’ve got to explain every remark you make, an’ it wears

a person out.”

Mrs. Todd gave a funny little laugh. “Yes’m, old friends is always best,

’less you can catch a new one that’s fit to make an old one out of,” she

said, and we gave an affectionate glance at each other, which Mrs.

Fosdick could not have understood, being the latest comer to the house.

XIII.

POOR JOANNA.

One evening my ears caught a mysterious allusion which Mrs. Todd made to

Shell-heap Island. It was a chilly night of cold northeasterly rain, and

I made a fire for the first time in the Franklin stove in my room, and

begged my two housemates to come in and keep me company. The weather had

convinced Mrs. Todd that it was time to make a supply of cough-drops,

and she had been bringing forth herbs from dark and dry hiding-places,

until now the pungent dust and odor of them had resolved themselves into

one mighty flavor of spearmint that came from a simmering caldron of

syrup in the kitchen. She called it done, and well done, and had

ostentatiously left it to cool, and taken her knitting-work because Mrs.

Fosdick was busy with hers. They sat in the two rocking-chairs, the

small woman and the large one, but now and then I could see that Mrs.

Todd’s thoughts remained with the cough-drops. The time of gathering

herbs was nearly over, but the time of syrups and cordials had begun.

The heat of the open fire made us a little drowsy, but something in the

way Mrs. Todd spoke of Shell-heap Island waked my interest. I waited to

see if she would say any more, and then took a roundabout way back to

the subject by saying what was first in my mind: that I wished the Green

Island family were there to spend the evening with us,—Mrs. Todd’s

mother and her brother William.

Mrs. Todd smiled, and drummed on the arm of the rocking-chair. “Might

scare William to death,” she warned me; and Mrs. Fosdick mentioned her

intention of going out to Green Island to stay two or three days, if

this wind didn’t make too much sea.

“Where is Shell-heap Island?” I ventured to ask, seizing the

opportunity.

“Bears nor’east somewheres about three miles from Green Island; right

off shore, I should call it about eight miles out,” said Mrs. Todd. “You

never was there, dear; ’tis off the thoroughfares, and a very bad place

to land at best.”

“I should think ’twas,” agreed Mrs. Fosdick, smoothing down her black

silk apron. “’Tis a place worth visitin’ when you once get there. Some

o’ the old folks was kind o’ fearful about it. ’Twas ’counted a great

place in old Indian times; you can pick up their stone tools ’most any

time if you hunt about. There’s a beautiful spring o’ water, too. Yes, I

remember when they used to tell queer stories about Shell-heap Island.

Some said ’twas a great bangeing-place for the Indians, and an old chief

resided there once that ruled the winds; and others said they’d always

heard that once the Indians come down from up country an’ left a captive

there without any bo’t, an’ ’twas too far to swim across to Black

Island, so called, an’ he lived there till he perished.”

“I’ve heard say he walked the island after that, and sharp-sighted folks

could see him an’ lose him like one o’ them citizens Cap’n Littlepage

was acquainted with up to the north pole,” announced Mrs. Todd grimly.

“Anyway, there was Indians,—you can see their shell-heap that named the

island; and I’ve heard myself that ’twas one o’ their cannibal places,

but I never could believe it. There never was no cannibals on the coast

o’ Maine. All the Indians o’ these regions are tame-looking folks.”

“Sakes alive, yes!” exclaimed Mrs. Fosdick. “Ought to see them painted

savages I’ve seen when I was young out in the South Sea Islands! That

was the time for folks to travel, ’way back in the old whalin’ days!”

“Whalin’ must have been dull for a lady, hardly ever makin’ a lively

port, and not takin’ in any mixed cargoes,” said Mrs. Todd. “I never

desired to go a whalin’ v’y’ge myself.”

“I used to return feelin’ very slack an’ behind the times, ’tis true,”

explained Mrs. Fosdick, “but ’twas excitin’, an’ we always done extra

well, and felt rich when we did get ashore. I liked the variety. There,

how times have changed; how few seafarin’ families there are left! What

a lot o’ queer folks there used to be about here, anyway, when we was

young, Almiry. Everybody’s just like everybody else, now; nobody to

laugh about, and nobody to cry about.”

It seemed to me that there were peculiarities of character in the region

of Dunnet Landing yet, but I did not like to interrupt.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Todd after a moment of meditation, “there was certain a

good many curiosities of human natur’ in this neighborhood years ago.

There was more energy then, and in some the energy took a singular turn.

In these days the young folks is all copy-cats, ’fraid to death they

won’t be all just alike; as for the old folks, they pray for the

advantage o’ bein’ a little different.”

“I ain’t heard of a copy-cat this great many years,” said Mrs. Fosdick,

laughing; “’twas a favorite term o’ my grandmother’s. No, I wa’n’t

thinking o’ those things, but of them strange straying creatur’s that

used to rove the country. You don’t see them now, or the ones that used

to hive away in their own houses with some strange notion or other.”

I thought again of Captain Littlepage, but my companions were not

reminded of his name; and there was brother William at Green Island,

whom we all three knew.

“I was talking o’ poor Joanna the other day. I hadn’t thought of her for

a great while,” said Mrs. Fosdick abruptly. “Mis’ Brayton an’ I recalled

her as we sat together sewing. She was one o’ your peculiar persons,

wa’n’t she? Speaking of such persons,” she turned to explain to me,

“there was a sort of a nun or hermit person lived out there for years

all alone on Shell-heap Island. Miss Joanna Todd, her name was,—a cousin

o’ Almiry’s late husband.”

I expressed my interest, but as I glanced at Mrs. Todd I saw that she

was confused by sudden affectionate feeling and unmistakable desire for

reticence.

“I never want to hear Joanna laughed about,” she said anxiously.

“Nor I,” answered Mrs. Fosdick reassuringly. “She was crossed in

love,—that was all the matter to begin with; but as I look back, I can

see that Joanna was one doomed from the first to fall into a melancholy.

She retired from the world for good an’ all, though she was a well-off

woman. All she wanted was to get away from folks; she thought she wasn’t

fit to live with anybody, and wanted to be free. Shell-heap Island come

to her from her father, and first thing folks knew she’d gone off out

there to live, and left word she didn’t want no company. ’Twas a bad

place to get to, unless the wind an’ tide were just right; ’twas hard

work to make a landing.”

“What time of year was this?” I asked.

“Very late in the summer,” said Mrs. Fosdick. “No, I never could laugh

at Joanna, as some did. She set everything by the young man, an’ they

were going to marry in about a month, when he got bewitched with a girl

’way up the bay, and married her, and went off to Massachusetts. He

wasn’t well thought of,—there were those who thought Joanna’s money was

what had tempted him; but she’d given him her whole heart, an’ she

wa’n’t so young as she had been. All her hopes were built on marryin’,

an’ havin’ a real home and somebody to look to; she acted just like a

bird when its nest is spoilt. The day after she heard the news she was

in dreadful woe, but the next she came to herself very quiet, and took

the horse and wagon, and drove fourteen miles to the lawyer’s, and

signed a paper givin’ her half of the farm to her brother. They never

had got along very well together, but he didn’t want to sign it, till

she acted so distressed that he gave in. Edward Todd’s wife was a good

woman, who felt very bad indeed, and used every argument with Joanna;

but Joanna took a poor old boat that had been her father’s and lo’ded in

a few things, and off she put all alone, with a good land breeze, right

out to sea. Edward Todd ran down to the beach, an’ stood there cryin’

like a boy to see her go, but she was out o’ hearin’. She never stepped

foot on the mainland again long as she lived.”

“How large an island is it? How did she manage in winter?” I asked.

“Perhaps thirty acres, rocks and all,” answered Mrs. Todd, taking up the

story gravely. “There can’t be much of it that the salt spray don’t fly

over in storms. No, ’tis a dreadful small place to make a world of; it

has a different look from any of the other islands, but there’s a

sheltered cove on the south side, with mud-flats across one end of it at

low water where there’s excellent clams, and the big shell-heap keeps

some o’ the wind off a little house her father took the trouble to build

when he was a young man. They said there was an old house built o’ logs

there before that, with a kind of natural cellar in the rock under it.

He used to stay out there days to a time, and anchor a little sloop he

had, and dig clams to fill it, and sail up to Portland. They said the

dealers always gave him an extra price, the clams were so noted. Joanna

used to go out and stay with him. They were always great companions, so

she knew just what ’twas out there. There was a few sheep that belonged

to her brother an’ her, but she bargained for him to come and get them

on the edge o’ cold weather. Yes, she desired him to come for the sheep;

an’ his wife thought perhaps Joanna’d return, but he said no, an’ lo’ded

the bo’t with warm things an’ what he thought she’d need through the

winter. He come home with the sheep an’ left the other things by the

house, but she never so much as looked out o’ the window. She done it

for a penance. She must have wanted to see Edward by that time.”

Mrs. Fosdick was fidgeting with eagerness to speak.

“Some thought the first cold snap would set her ashore, but she always

remained,” concluded Mrs. Todd soberly.

“Talk about the men not having any curiosity!” exclaimed Mrs. Fosdick

scornfully. “Why, the waters round Shell-heap Island were white with

sails all that fall. ’Twas never called no great of a fishin’-ground

before. Many of ’em made excuse to go ashore to get water at the spring;

but at last she spoke to a bo’t-load, very dignified and calm, and said

that she’d like it better if they’d make a practice of getting water to

Black Island or somewheres else and leave her alone, except in case of

accident or trouble. But there was one man who had always set everything

by her from a boy. He’d have married her if the other hadn’t come about

an’ spoilt his chance, and he used to get close to the island, before

light, on his way out fishin’, and throw a little bundle ’way up the

green slope front o’ the house. His sister told me she happened to see,

the first time, what a pretty choice he made o’ useful things that a

woman would feel lost without. He stood off fishin’, and could see them

in the grass all day, though sometimes she’d come out and walk right by

them. There was other bo’ts near, out after mackerel. But early next

morning his present was gone. He didn’t presume too much, but once he

took her a nice firkin o’ things he got up to Portland, and when spring

come he landed her a hen and chickens in a nice little coop. There was a

good many old friends had Joanna on their minds.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Todd, losing her sad reserve in the growing sympathy of

these reminiscences. “How everybody used to notice whether there was

smoke out of the chimney! The Black Island folks could see her with

their spy-glass, and if they’d ever missed getting some sign o’ life

they’d have sent notice to her folks. But after the first year or two

Joanna was more and more forgotten as an every-day charge. Folks lived

very simple in those days, you know,” she continued, as Mrs. Fosdick’s

knitting was taking much thought at the moment. “I expect there was

always plenty of driftwood thrown up, and a poor failin’ patch of

spruces covered all the north side of the island, so she always had

something to burn. She was very fond of workin’ in the garden ashore,

and that first summer she began to till the little field out there, and

raised a nice parcel o’ potatoes. She could fish, o’ course, and there

was all her clams an’ lobsters. You can always live well in any wild

place by the sea when you’d starve to death up country, except ’twas

berry time. Joanna had berries out there, blackberries at least, and

there was a few herbs in case she needed them. Mullein in great

quantities and a plant o’ wormwood I remember seeing once when I stayed

there, long before she fled out to Shell-heap. Yes, I recall the

wormwood, which is always a planted herb, so there must have been folks

there before the Todds’ day. A growin’ bush makes the best gravestone; I

expect that wormwood always stood for somebody’s solemn monument.

Catnip, too, is a very endurin’ herb about an old place.”

“But what I want to know is what she did for other things,” interrupted

Mrs. Fosdick. “Almiry, what did she do for clothin’ when she needed to

replenish, or risin’ for her bread, or the piece-bag that no woman can

live long without?”

“Or company,” suggested Mrs. Todd. “Joanna was one that loved her

friends. There must have been a terrible sight o’ long winter evenin’s

that first year.”

“There was her hens,” suggested Mrs. Fosdick, after reviewing the

melancholy situation. “She never wanted the sheep after that first

season. There wa’n’t no proper pasture for sheep after the June grass

was past, and she ascertained the fact and couldn’t bear to see them

suffer; but the chickens done well. I remember sailin’ by one spring

afternoon, an’ seein’ the coops out front o’ the house in the sun. How

long was it before you went out with the minister? You were the first

ones that ever really got ashore to see Joanna.”