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+Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Pearl of Orr's Island
+       A Story of the Coast of Maine
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: March 6, 2010 [EBook #31522]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND
+
+
+A Story of the Coast of Maine
+
+
+BY
+
+HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+1896
+
+
+Copyright, 1862 and 1890,
+
+BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
+
+
+Copyright, 1896,
+
+BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
+
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+
+_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
+
+Electrotyped and Printed by H.O. Houghton & Co.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  INTRODUCTORY NOTE                                  vii
+
+     CHAP.                                          PAGE
+
+        I. NAOMI                                      1
+
+       II. MARA                                       5
+
+      III. THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL                 9
+
+       IV. AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY                   15
+
+        V. THE KITTRIDGES                            25
+
+       VI. GRANDPARENTS                              36
+
+      VII. FROM THE SEA                              47
+
+     VIII. THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN                   58
+
+       IX. MOSES                                     74
+
+        X. THE MINISTER                              85
+
+       XI. LITTLE ADVENTURERS                        99
+
+      XII. SEA TALES                                110
+
+     XIII. BOY AND GIRL                             120
+
+      XIV. THE ENCHANTED ISLAND                     132
+
+       XV. THE HOME COMING                          143
+
+      XVI. THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL            154
+
+     XVII. LESSONS                                  165
+
+    XVIII. SALLY                                    175
+
+      XIX. EIGHTEEN                                 179
+
+       XX. REBELLION                                186
+
+      XXI. THE TEMPTER                              198
+
+     XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED                         208
+
+    XXIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY               218
+
+     XXIV. DESIRES AND DREAMS                       229
+
+      XXV. MISS EMILY                               235
+
+     XXVI. DOLORES                                  245
+
+    XXVII. HIDDEN THINGS                            258
+
+   XXVIII. A COQUETTE                               270
+
+     XXIX. NIGHT TALKS                              279
+
+      XXX. THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL                  290
+
+     XXXI. GREEK MEETS GREEK                        303
+
+    XXXII. THE BETROTHAL                            315
+
+   XXXIII. AT A QUILTING                            323
+
+    XXXIV. FRIENDS                                  329
+
+     XXXV. THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE                    335
+
+    XXXVI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH                      339
+
+   XXXVII. THE VICTORY                              351
+
+  XXXVIII. OPEN VISION                              358
+
+    XXXIX. THE LAND OF BEULAH                       368
+
+       XL. THE MEETING                              376
+
+      XLI. CONSOLATION                              380
+
+     XLII. LAST WORDS                               387
+
+    XLIII. THE PEARL                                393
+
+     XLIV. FOUR YEARS AFTER                         398
+
+The frontispiece (Mara, page 376) was drawn by W.L. Taylor. The vignette
+was etched by Charles H. Woodbury.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
+
+
+The publication of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, though much more than an
+incident in an author's career, seems to have determined Mrs. Stowe more
+surely in her purpose to devote herself to literature. During the summer
+following its appearance, she was in Andover, making over the house
+which she and her husband were to occupy upon leaving Brunswick; and
+yet, busy as she was, she was writing articles for _The Independent_ and
+_The National Era_. The following extract from a letter written at that
+time, July 29, 1852, intimates that she already was sketching the
+outline of the story which later grew into _The Pearl of Orr's
+Island_:--
+
+"I seem to have so much to fill my time, and yet there is my Maine story
+waiting. However, I am composing it every day, only I greatly need
+living studies for the filling in of my sketches. There is old Jonas, my
+"fish father," a sturdy, independent fisherman farmer, who in his youth
+sailed all over the world and made up his mind about everything. In his
+old age he attends prayer-meetings and reads the _Missionary Herald_. He
+also has plenty of money in an old brown sea-chest. He is a great heart
+with an inflexible will and iron muscles. I must go to Orr's Island and
+see him again." The story seems to have remained in her mind, for we are
+told by her son that she worked upon it by turns with _The Minister's
+Wooing_.
+
+It was not, however, until eight years later, after _The Minister's
+Wooing_ had been published and _Agnes of Sorrento_ was well begun, that
+she took up her old story in earnest and set about making it into a
+short serial. It would seem that her first intention was to confine
+herself to a sketch of the childhood of her chief characters, with a
+view to delineating the influences at work upon them; but, as she
+herself expressed it, "Out of the simple history of the little Pearl of
+Orr's Island as it had shaped itself in her mind, rose up a Captain
+Kittridge with his garrulous yarns, and Misses Roxy and Ruey, given to
+talk, and a whole pigeon roost of yet undreamed of fancies and dreams
+which would insist on being written." So it came about that the story as
+originally planned came to a stopping place at the end of Chapter XVII.,
+as the reader may see when he reaches that place. The childish life of
+her characters ended there, and a lapse of ten years was assumed before
+their story was taken up again in the next chapter. The book when
+published had no chapter headings. These have been supplied in the
+present edition.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+NAOMI
+
+
+On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath, in the State of
+Maine, might have been seen, on a certain autumnal afternoon, a
+one-horse wagon, in which two persons were sitting. One was an old man,
+with the peculiarly hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes
+the seafaring population of the New England shores. A clear blue eye,
+evidently practiced in habits of keen observation, white hair, bronzed,
+weather-beaten cheeks, and a face deeply lined with the furrows of
+shrewd thought and anxious care, were points of the portrait that made
+themselves felt at a glance.
+
+By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of a marked and
+peculiar personal appearance. Her hair was black, and smoothly parted on
+a broad forehead, to which a pair of penciled dark eyebrows gave a
+striking and definite outline. Beneath, lay a pair of large black eyes,
+remarkable for tremulous expression of melancholy and timidity. The
+cheek was white and bloodless as a snowberry, though with the clear and
+perfect oval of good health; the mouth was delicately formed, with a
+certain sad quiet in its lines, which indicated a habitually repressed
+and sensitive nature.
+
+The dress of this young person, as often happens in New England, was, in
+refinement and even elegance, a marked contrast to that of her male
+companion and to the humble vehicle in which she rode. There was not
+only the most fastidious neatness, but a delicacy in the choice of
+colors, an indication of elegant tastes in the whole arrangement, and
+the quietest suggestion in the world of an acquaintance with the usages
+of fashion, which struck one oddly in those wild and dreary
+surroundings. On the whole, she impressed one like those fragile
+wild-flowers which in April cast their fluttering shadows from the mossy
+crevices of the old New England granite,--an existence in which
+colorless delicacy is united to a sort of elastic hardihood of life, fit
+for the rocky soil and harsh winds it is born to encounter.
+
+The scenery of the road along which the two were riding was wild and
+bare. Only savins and mulleins, with their dark pyramids or white spires
+of velvet leaves, diversified the sandy wayside; but out at sea was a
+wide sweep of blue, reaching far to the open ocean, which lay rolling,
+tossing, and breaking into white caps of foam in the bright sunshine.
+For two or three days a northeast storm had been raging, and the sea was
+in all the commotion which such a general upturning creates.
+
+The two travelers reached a point of elevated land, where they paused a
+moment, and the man drew up the jogging, stiff-jointed old farm-horse,
+and raised himself upon his feet to look out at the prospect.
+
+There might be seen in the distance the blue Kennebec sweeping out
+toward the ocean through its picturesque rocky shores, docked with
+cedars and other dusky evergreens, which were illuminated by the orange
+and flame-colored trees of Indian summer. Here and there scarlet
+creepers swung long trailing garlands over the faces of the dark rock,
+and fringes of goldenrod above swayed with the brisk blowing wind that
+was driving the blue waters seaward, in face of the up-coming ocean
+tide,--a conflict which caused them to rise in great foam-crested
+waves. There are two channels into this river from the open sea,
+navigable for ships which are coming in to the city of Bath; one is
+broad and shallow, the other narrow and deep, and these are divided by a
+steep ledge of rocks.
+
+Where the spectators of this scene were sitting, they could see in the
+distance a ship borne with tremendous force by the rising tide into the
+mouth of the river, and encountering a northwest wind which had
+succeeded the gale, as northwest winds often do on this coast. The ship,
+from what might be observed in the distance, seemed struggling to make
+the wider channel, but was constantly driven off by the baffling force
+of the wind.
+
+"There she is, Naomi," said the old fisherman, eagerly, to his
+companion, "coming right in." The young woman was one of the sort that
+never start, and never exclaim, but with all deeper emotions grow still.
+The color slowly mounted into her cheek, her lips parted, and her eyes
+dilated with a wide, bright expression; her breathing came in thick
+gasps, but she said nothing.
+
+The old fisherman stood up in the wagon, his coarse, butternut-colored
+coat-flaps fluttering and snapping in the breeze, while his interest
+seemed to be so intense in the efforts of the ship that he made
+involuntary and eager movements as if to direct her course. A moment
+passed, and his keen, practiced eye discovered a change in her
+movements, for he cried out involuntarily,--
+
+"_Don't_ take the narrow channel to-day!" and a moment after, "O Lord! O
+Lord! have mercy,--there they go! Look! look! look!"
+
+And, in fact, the ship rose on a great wave clear out of the water, and
+the next second seemed to leap with a desperate plunge into the narrow
+passage; for a moment there was a shivering of the masts and the
+rigging, and she went down and was gone.
+
+"They're split to pieces!" cried the fisherman. "Oh, my poor girl--my
+poor girl--they're gone! O Lord, have mercy!"
+
+The woman lifted up no voice, but, as one who has been shot through the
+heart falls with no cry, she fell back,--a mist rose up over her great
+mournful eyes,--she had fainted.
+
+The story of this wreck of a home-bound ship just entering the harbor is
+yet told in many a family on this coast. A few hours after, the
+unfortunate crew were washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in
+which they had attired themselves that morning to go to their sisters,
+wives, and mothers.
+
+This is the first scene in our story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MARA
+
+
+Down near the end of Orr's Island, facing the open ocean, stands a brown
+house of the kind that the natives call "lean-to," or "linter,"--one of
+those large, comfortable structures, barren in the ideal, but rich in
+the practical, which the workingman of New England can always command.
+The waters of the ocean came up within a rod of this house, and the
+sound of its moaning waves was even now filling the clear autumn
+starlight. Evidently something was going on within, for candles
+fluttered and winked from window to window, like fireflies in a dark
+meadow, and sounds as of quick footsteps, and the flutter of brushing
+garments, might be heard.
+
+Something unusual is certainly going on within the dwelling of Zephaniah
+Pennel to-night.
+
+Let us enter the dark front-door. We feel our way to the right, where a
+solitary ray of light comes from the chink of a half-opened door. Here
+is the front room of the house, set apart as its place of especial
+social hilarity and sanctity,--the "best room," with its low studded
+walls, white dimity window-curtains, rag carpet, and polished wood
+chairs. It is now lit by the dim gleam of a solitary tallow candle,
+which seems in the gloom to make only a feeble circle of light around
+itself, leaving all the rest of the apartment in shadow.
+
+In the centre of the room, stretched upon a table, and covered partially
+by a sea-cloak, lies the body of a man of twenty-five,--lies, too,
+evidently as one of whom it is written, "He shall return to his house
+no more, neither shall his place know him any more." A splendid manhood
+has suddenly been called to forsake that lifeless form, leaving it, like
+a deserted palace, beautiful in its desolation. The hair, dripping with
+the salt wave, curled in glossy abundance on the finely-formed head; the
+flat, broad brow; the closed eye, with its long black lashes; the firm,
+manly mouth; the strongly-moulded chin,--all, all were sealed with that
+seal which is never to be broken till the great resurrection day.
+
+He was lying in a full suit of broadcloth, with a white vest and smart
+blue neck-tie, fastened with a pin, in which was some braided hair under
+a crystal. All his clothing, as well as his hair, was saturated with
+sea-water, which trickled from time to time, and struck with a leaden
+and dropping sound into a sullen pool which lay under the table.
+
+This was the body of James Lincoln, ship-master of the brig Flying Scud,
+who that morning had dressed himself gayly in his state-room to go on
+shore and meet his wife,--singing and jesting as he did so.
+
+This is all that you have to learn in the room below; but as we stand
+there, we hear a trampling of feet in the apartment above,--the quick
+yet careful opening and shutting of doors,--and voices come and go about
+the house, and whisper consultations on the stairs. Now comes the roll
+of wheels, and the Doctor's gig drives up to the door; and, as he goes
+creaking up with his heavy boots, we will follow and gain admission to
+the dimly-lighted chamber.
+
+Two gossips are sitting in earnest, whispering conversation over a small
+bundle done up in an old flannel petticoat. To them the doctor is about
+to address himself cheerily, but is repelled by sundry signs and sounds
+which warn him not to speak. Moderating his heavy boots as well as he
+is able to a pace of quiet, he advances for a moment, and the petticoat
+is unfolded for him to glance at its contents; while a low, eager,
+whispered conversation, attended with much head-shaking, warns him that
+his first duty is with somebody behind the checked curtains of a bed in
+the farther corner of the room. He steps on tiptoe, and draws the
+curtain; and there, with closed eye, and cheek as white as wintry snow,
+lies the same face over which passed the shadow of death when that
+ill-fated ship went down.
+
+This woman was wife to him who lies below, and within the hour has been
+made mother to a frail little human existence, which the storm of a
+great anguish has driven untimely on the shores of life,--a precious
+pearl cast up from the past eternity upon the wet, wave-ribbed sand of
+the present. Now, weary with her moanings, and beaten out with the
+wrench of a double anguish, she lies with closed eyes in that passive
+apathy which precedes deeper shadows and longer rest.
+
+Over against her, on the other side of the bed, sits an aged woman in an
+attitude of deep dejection, and the old man we saw with her in the
+morning is standing with an anxious, awestruck face at the foot of the
+bed.
+
+The doctor feels the pulse of the woman, or rather lays an inquiring
+finger where the slightest thread of vital current is scarcely
+throbbing, and shakes his head mournfully. The touch of his hand rouses
+her,--her large wild, melancholy eyes fix themselves on him with an
+inquiring glance, then she shivers and moans,--
+
+"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!--Jamie, Jamie!"
+
+"Come, come!" said the doctor, "cheer up, my girl, you've got a fine
+little daughter,--the Lord mingles mercies with his afflictions."
+
+Her eyes closed, her head moved with a mournful but decided dissent.
+
+A moment after she spoke in the sad old words of the Hebrew Scripture,--
+
+"Call her not Naomi; call her Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very
+bitterly with me."
+
+And as she spoke, there passed over her face the sharp frost of the last
+winter; but even as it passed there broke out a smile, as if a flower
+had been thrown down from Paradise, and she said,--
+
+"Not my will, but thy will," and so was gone.
+
+Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey were soon left alone in the chamber of death.
+
+"She'll make a beautiful corpse," said Aunt Roxy, surveying the still,
+white form contemplatively, with her head in an artistic attitude.
+
+"She was a pretty girl," said Aunt Ruey; "dear me, what a Providence! I
+'member the wedd'n down in that lower room, and what a handsome couple
+they were."
+
+"They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they
+were not divided," said Aunt Roxy, sententiously.
+
+"What was it she said, did ye hear?" said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"She called the baby 'Mary.'"
+
+"Ah! sure enough, her mother's name afore her. What a still,
+softly-spoken thing she always was!"
+
+"A pity the poor baby didn't go with her," said Aunt Roxy;
+"seven-months' children are so hard to raise."
+
+"'Tis a pity," said the other.
+
+But babies will live, and all the more when everybody says that it is a
+pity they should. Life goes on as inexorably in this world as death. It
+was ordered by THE WILL above that out of these two graves should spring
+one frail, trembling autumn flower,--the "Mara" whose poor little roots
+first struck deep in the salt, bitter waters of our mortal life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL
+
+
+Now, I cannot think of anything more unlikely and uninteresting to make
+a story of than that old brown "linter" house of Captain Zephaniah
+Pennel, down on the south end of Orr's Island.
+
+Zephaniah and Mary Pennel, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, are a pair of
+worthy, God-fearing people, walking in all the commandments and
+ordinances of the Lord blameless; but that is no great recommendation to
+a world gaping for sensation and calling for something stimulating. This
+worthy couple never read anything but the Bible, the "Missionary
+Herald," and the "Christian Mirror,"--never went anywhere except in the
+round of daily business. He owned a fishing-smack, in which he labored
+after the apostolic fashion; and she washed, and ironed, and scrubbed,
+and brewed, and baked, in her contented round, week in and out. The only
+recreation they ever enjoyed was the going once a week, in good weather,
+to a prayer-meeting in a little old brown school-house, about a mile
+from their dwelling; and making a weekly excursion every Sunday, in
+their fishing craft, to the church opposite, on Harpswell Neck.
+
+To be sure, Zephaniah had read many wide leaves of God's great book of
+Nature, for, like most Maine sea-captains, he had been wherever ship can
+go,--to all usual and unusual ports. His hard, shrewd, weather-beaten
+visage had been seen looking over the railings of his brig in the port
+of Genoa, swept round by its splendid crescent of palaces and its
+snow-crested Apennines. It had looked out in the Lagoons of Venice at
+that wavy floor which in evening seems a sea of glass mingled with fire,
+and out of which rise temples, and palaces, and churches, and distant
+silvery Alps, like so many fabrics of dreamland. He had been through the
+Skagerrack and Cattegat,--into the Baltic, and away round to Archangel,
+and there chewed a bit of chip, and considered and calculated what
+bargains it was best to make. He had walked the streets of Calcutta in
+his shirt-sleeves, with his best Sunday vest, backed with black glazed
+cambric, which six months before came from the hands of Miss Roxy, and
+was pronounced by her to be as good as any tailor could make; and in all
+these places he was just Zephaniah Pennel,--a chip of old
+Maine,--thrifty, careful, shrewd, honest, God-fearing, and carrying an
+instinctive knowledge of men and things under a face of rustic
+simplicity.
+
+It was once, returning from one of his voyages, that he found his wife
+with a black-eyed, curly-headed little creature, who called him papa,
+and climbed on his knee, nestled under his coat, rifled his pockets, and
+woke him every morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and
+jabbering unintelligible dialects in his ears.
+
+"We will call this child Naomi, wife," he said, after consulting his old
+Bible; "for that means pleasant, and I'm sure I never see anything beat
+her for pleasantness. I never knew as children was so engagin'!"
+
+It was to be remarked that Zephaniah after this made shorter and shorter
+voyages, being somehow conscious of a string around his heart which
+pulled him harder and harder, till one Sunday, when the little Naomi was
+five years old, he said to his wife,--
+
+"I hope I ain't a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help
+thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman
+seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price,
+for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that
+pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said,
+folding his daughter's little quiet head under his coat, "'cause it
+seems to me the Lord's given us this pearl of great price, and it's
+enough for us. I don't want to be rambling round the world after riches.
+We'll have a little farm down on Orr's Island, and I'll have a little
+fishing-smack, and we'll live and be happy together."
+
+And so Mary, who in those days was a pretty young married woman, felt
+herself rich and happy,--no duchess richer or happier. The two
+contentedly delved and toiled, and the little Naomi was their princess.
+The wise men of the East at the feet of an infant, offering gifts, gold,
+frankincense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in every
+house where there is a young child. All the hard and the harsh, and the
+common and the disagreeable, is for the parents,--all the bright and
+beautiful for their child.
+
+When the fishing-smack went to Portland to sell mackerel, there came
+home in Zephaniah's fishy coat pocket strings of coral beads, tiny
+gaiter boots, brilliant silks and ribbons for the little fairy
+princess,--his Pearl of the Island; and sometimes, when a stray party
+from the neighboring town of Brunswick came down to explore the romantic
+scenery of the solitary island, they would be startled by the apparition
+of this still, graceful, dark-eyed child exquisitely dressed in the best
+and brightest that the shops of a neighboring city could
+afford,--sitting like some tropical bird on a lonely rock, where the sea
+came dashing up into the edges of arbor vitæ, or tripping along the wet
+sands for shells and seaweed.
+
+Many children would have been spoiled by such unlimited indulgence; but
+there are natures sent down into this harsh world so timorous, and
+sensitive, and helpless in themselves, that the utmost stretch of
+indulgence and kindness is needed for their development,--like plants
+which the warmest shelf of the green-house and the most careful watch of
+the gardener alone can bring into flower. The pale child, with her
+large, lustrous, dark eyes, and sensitive organization, was nursed and
+brooded into a beautiful womanhood, and then found a protector in a
+high-spirited, manly young ship-master, and she became his wife.
+
+And now we see in the best room--the walls lined with serious
+faces--men, women, and children, that have come to pay the last tribute
+of sympathy to the living and the dead. The house looked so utterly
+alone and solitary in that wild, sea-girt island, that one would have as
+soon expected the sea-waves to rise and walk in, as so many neighbors;
+but they had come from neighboring points, crossing the glassy sea in
+their little crafts, whose white sails looked like millers' wings, or
+walking miles from distant parts of the island.
+
+Some writer calls a funeral one of the amusements of a New England
+population. Must we call it an amusement to go and see the acted despair
+of Medea? or the dying agonies of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur? It is
+something of the same awful interest in life's tragedy, which makes an
+untaught and primitive people gather to a funeral,--a tragedy where
+there is no acting,--and one which each one feels must come at some time
+to his own dwelling.
+
+Be that as it may, here was a roomful. Not only Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey,
+who by a prescriptive right presided over all the births, deaths, and
+marriages of the neighborhood, but there was Captain Kittridge, a long,
+dry, weather-beaten old sea-captain, who sat as if tied in a double
+bow-knot, with his little fussy old wife, with a great Leghorn bonnet,
+and eyes like black glass beads shining through in the bows of her horn
+spectacles, and her hymn-book in her hand ready to lead the psalm. There
+were aunts, uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased; and in the
+midst stood two coffins, where the two united in death lay sleeping
+tenderly, as those to whom rest is good. All was still as death, except
+a chance whisper from some busy neighbor, or a creak of an old lady's
+great black fan, or the fizz of a fly down the window-pane, and then a
+stifled sound of deep-drawn breath and weeping from under a cloud of
+heavy black crape veils, that were together in the group which
+country-people call the mourners.
+
+A gleam of autumn sunlight streamed through the white curtains, and fell
+on a silver baptismal vase that stood on the mother's coffin, as the
+minister rose and said, "The ordinance of baptism will now be
+administered." A few moments more, and on a baby brow had fallen a few
+drops of water, and the little pilgrim of a new life had been called
+Mara in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,--the minister
+slowly repeating thereafter those beautiful words of Holy Writ, "A
+father of the fatherless is God in his holy habitation,"--as if the
+baptism of that bereaved one had been a solemn adoption into the
+infinite heart of the Lord.
+
+With something of the quaint pathos which distinguishes the primitive
+and Biblical people of that lonely shore, the minister read the passage
+in Ruth from which the name of the little stranger was drawn, and which
+describes the return of the bereaved Naomi to her native land. His voice
+trembled, and there were tears in many eyes as he read, "And it came to
+pass as she came to Bethlehem, all the city was moved about them; and
+they said, Is this Naomi? And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi;
+call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went
+out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call
+ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty
+hath afflicted me?"
+
+Deep, heavy sobs from the mourners were for a few moments the only
+answer to these sad words, till the minister raised the old funeral
+psalm of New England,--
+
+    "Why do we mourn departing friends,
+      Or shake at Death's alarms?
+    'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends
+      To call them to his arms.
+
+    "Are we not tending upward too,
+      As fast as time can move?
+    And should we wish the hours more slow
+      That bear us to our love?"
+
+The words rose in old "China,"--that strange, wild warble, whose
+quaintly blended harmonies might have been learned of moaning seas or
+wailing winds, so strange and grand they rose, full of that intense
+pathos which rises over every defect of execution; and as they sung,
+Zephaniah Pennel straightened his tall form, before bowed on his hands,
+and looked heavenward, his cheeks wet with tears, but something sublime
+and immortal shining upward through his blue eyes; and at the last verse
+he came forward involuntarily, and stood by his dead, and his voice rose
+over all the others as he sung,--
+
+    "Then let the last loud trumpet sound,
+      And bid the dead arise!
+    Awake, ye nations under ground!
+      Ye saints, ascend the skies!"
+
+The sunbeam through the window-curtain fell on his silver hair, and they
+that looked beheld his face as it were the face of an angel; he had
+gotten a sight of the city whose foundation is jasper, and whose every
+gate is a separate pearl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY
+
+
+The sea lay like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely
+shores of Orr's Island. Tall, kingly spruces wore their regal crowns of
+cones high in air, sparkling with diamonds of clear exuded gum; vast old
+hemlocks of primeval growth stood darkling in their forest shadows,
+their branches hung with long hoary moss; while feathery larches, turned
+to brilliant gold by autumn frosts, lighted up the darker shadows of the
+evergreens. It was one of those hazy, calm, dissolving days of Indian
+summer, when everything is so quiet that the faintest kiss of the wave
+on the beach can be heard, and white clouds seem to faint into the blue
+of the sky, and soft swathing bands of violet vapor make all earth look
+dreamy, and give to the sharp, clear-cut outlines of the northern
+landscape all those mysteries of light and shade which impart such
+tenderness to Italian scenery.
+
+The funeral was over; the tread of many feet, bearing the heavy burden
+of two broken lives, had been to the lonely graveyard, and had come back
+again,--each footstep lighter and more unconstrained as each one went
+his way from the great old tragedy of Death to the common cheerful walks
+of Life.
+
+The solemn black clock stood swaying with its eternal "tick-tock,
+tick-tock," in the kitchen of the brown house on Orr's Island. There was
+there that sense of a stillness that can be felt,--such as settles down
+on a dwelling when any of its inmates have passed through its doors for
+the last time, to go whence they shall not return. The best room was
+shut up and darkened, with only so much light as could fall through a
+little heart-shaped hole in the window-shutter,--for except on solemn
+visits, or prayer meetings, or weddings, or funerals, that room formed
+no part of the daily family scenery.
+
+The kitchen was clean and ample, with a great open fireplace and wide
+stone hearth, and oven on one side, and rows of old-fashioned
+splint-bottomed chairs against the wall. A table scoured to snowy
+whiteness, and a little work-stand whereon lay the Bible, the
+"Missionary Herald" and the "Weekly Christian Mirror," before named,
+formed the principal furniture. One feature, however, must not be
+forgotten,--a great sea-chest, which had been the companion of Zephaniah
+through all the countries of the earth. Old, and battered, and unsightly
+it looked, yet report said that there was good store within of that
+which men for the most part respect more than anything else; and,
+indeed, it proved often when a deed of grace was to be done,--when a
+woman was suddenly made a widow in a coast gale, or a fishing-smack was
+run down in the fogs off the banks, leaving in some neighboring cottage
+a family of orphans,--in all such cases, the opening of this sea-chest
+was an event of good omen to the bereaved; for Zephaniah had a large
+heart and a large hand, and was apt to take it out full of silver
+dollars when once it went in. So the ark of the covenant could not have
+been looked on with more reverence than the neighbors usually showed to
+Captain Pennel's sea-chest.
+
+The afternoon sun is shining in a square of light through the open
+kitchen-door, whence one dreamily disposed might look far out to sea,
+and behold ships coming and going in every variety of shape and size.
+
+But Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who for the present were sole occupants of
+the premises, were not people of the dreamy kind, and consequently were
+not gazing off to sea, but attending to very terrestrial matters that in
+all cases somebody must attend to. The afternoon was warm and balmy, but
+a few smouldering sticks were kept in the great chimney, and thrust deep
+into the embers was a mongrel species of snub-nosed tea-pot, which fumed
+strongly of catnip-tea, a little of which gracious beverage Miss Roxy
+was preparing in an old-fashioned cracked India china tea-cup, tasting
+it as she did so with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+Apparently this was for the benefit of a small something in long white
+clothes, that lay face downward under a little blanket of very blue new
+flannel, and which something Aunt Roxy, when not otherwise engaged,
+constantly patted with a gentle tattoo, in tune to the steady trot of
+her knee. All babies knew Miss Roxy's tattoo on their backs, and never
+thought of taking it in ill part. On the contrary, it had a vital and
+mesmeric effect of sovereign force against colic, and all other
+disturbers of the nursery; and never was infant known so pressed with
+those internal troubles which infants cry about, as not speedily to give
+over and sink to slumber at this soothing appliance.
+
+At a little distance sat Aunt Ruey, with a quantity of black crape
+strewed on two chairs about her, very busily employed in getting up a
+mourning-bonnet, at which she snipped, and clipped, and worked,
+zealously singing, in a high cracked voice, from time to time, certain
+verses of a funeral psalm.
+
+Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey Toothacre were two brisk old bodies of the
+feminine gender and singular number, well known in all the region of
+Harpswell Neck and Middle Bay, and such was their fame that it had even
+reached the town of Brunswick, eighteen miles away.
+
+They were of that class of females who might be denominated, in the Old
+Testament language, "cunning women,"--that is, gifted with an infinite
+diversity of practical "faculty," which made them an essential
+requisite in every family for miles and miles around. It was impossible
+to say what they could not do: they could make dresses, and make shirts
+and vests and pantaloons, and cut out boys' jackets, and braid straw,
+and bleach and trim bonnets, and cook and wash, and iron and mend, could
+upholster and quilt, could nurse all kinds of sicknesses, and in default
+of a doctor, who was often miles away, were supposed to be infallible
+medical oracles. Many a human being had been ushered into life under
+their auspices,--trotted, chirruped in babyhood on their knees, clothed
+by their handiwork in garments gradually enlarging from year to year,
+watched by them in the last sickness, and finally arrayed for the long
+repose by their hands.
+
+These universally useful persons receive among us the title of "aunt" by
+a sort of general consent, showing the strong ties of relationship which
+bind them to the whole human family. They are nobody's aunts in
+particular, but aunts to human nature generally. The idea of restricting
+their usefulness to any one family, would strike dismay through a whole
+community. Nobody would be so unprincipled as to think of such a thing
+as having their services more than a week or two at most. Your country
+factotum knows better than anybody else how absurd it would be
+
+    "To give to a part what was meant for mankind."
+
+Nobody knew very well the ages of these useful sisters. In that cold,
+clear, severe climate of the North, the roots of human existence are
+hard to strike; but, if once people do take to living, they come in time
+to a place where they seem never to grow any older, but can always be
+found, like last year's mullein stalks, upright, dry, and seedy,
+warranted to last for any length of time.
+
+Miss Roxy Toothacre, who sits trotting the baby, is a tall, thin,
+angular woman, with sharp black eyes, and hair once black, but now well
+streaked with gray. These ravages of time, however, were concealed by an
+ample mohair frisette of glossy blackness woven on each side into a heap
+of stiff little curls, which pushed up her cap border in rather a
+bristling and decisive way. In all her movements and personal habits,
+even to her tone of voice and manner of speaking, Miss Roxy was
+vigorous, spicy, and decided. Her mind on all subjects was made up, and
+she spoke generally as one having authority; and who should, if she
+should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sibyl in all the most
+awful straits and mysteries of life? How many births, and weddings, and
+deaths had come and gone under her jurisdiction! And amid weeping or
+rejoicing, was not Miss Roxy still the master-spirit,--consulted,
+referred to by all?--was not her word law and precedent? Her younger
+sister, Miss Ruey, a pliant, cozy, easy-to-be-entreated personage, plump
+and cushiony, revolved around her as a humble satellite. Miss Roxy
+looked on Miss Ruey as quite a frisky young thing, though under her
+ample frisette of carroty hair her head might be seen white with the
+same snow that had powdered that of her sister. Aunt Ruey had a face
+much resembling the kind of one you may see, reader, by looking at
+yourself in the convex side of a silver milk-pitcher. If you try the
+experiment, this description will need no further amplification.
+
+The two almost always went together, for the variety of talent comprised
+in their stock could always find employment in the varying wants of a
+family. While one nursed the sick, the other made clothes for the well;
+and thus they were always chippering and chatting to each other, like a
+pair of antiquated house-sparrows, retailing over harmless gossips, and
+moralizing in that gentle jogtrot which befits serious old women. In
+fact, they had talked over everything in Nature, and said everything
+they could think of to each other so often, that the opinions of one
+were as like those of the other as two sides of a pea-pod. But as often
+happens in cases of the sort, this was not because the two were in all
+respects exactly alike, but because the stronger one had mesmerized the
+weaker into consent.
+
+Miss Roxy was the master-spirit of the two, and, like the great coining
+machine of a mint, came down with her own sharp, heavy stamp on every
+opinion her sister put out. She was matter-of-fact, positive, and
+declarative to the highest degree, while her sister was naturally
+inclined to the elegiac and the pathetic, indulging herself in
+sentimental poetry, and keeping a store thereof in her thread-case,
+which she had cut from the "Christian Mirror." Miss Roxy sometimes, in
+her brusque way, popped out observations on life and things, with a
+droll, hard quaintness that took one's breath a little, yet never failed
+to have a sharp crystallization of truth,--frosty though it were. She
+was one of those sensible, practical creatures who tear every veil, and
+lay their fingers on every spot in pure business-like good-will; and if
+we shiver at them at times, as at the first plunge of a cold bath, we
+confess to an invigorating power in them after all.
+
+"Well, now," said Miss Roxy, giving a decisive push to the tea-pot,
+which buried it yet deeper in the embers, "ain't it all a strange kind
+o' providence that this 'ere little thing is left behind so; and then
+their callin' on her by such a strange, mournful kind of name,--Mara. I
+thought sure as could be 'twas Mary, till the minister read the passage
+from Scriptur'. Seems to me it's kind o' odd. I'd call it Maria, or I'd
+put an Ann on to it. Mara-ann, now, wouldn't sound so strange."
+
+"It's a Scriptur' name, sister," said Aunt Ruey, "and that ought to be
+enough for us."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Aunt Roxy. "Now there was Miss Jones down on
+Mure P'int called her twins Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser,--Scriptur'
+names both, but I never liked 'em. The boys used to call 'em, Tiggy and
+Shally, so no mortal could guess they was Scriptur'."
+
+"Well," said Aunt Ruey, drawing a sigh which caused her plump
+proportions to be agitated in gentle waves, "'tain't much matter, after
+all, _what_ they call the little thing, for 'tain't 'tall likely it's
+goin' to live,--cried and worried all night, and kep' a-suckin' my cheek
+and my night-gown, poor little thing! This 'ere's a baby that won't get
+along without its mother. What Mis' Pennel's a-goin' to do with it when
+we is gone, I'm sure I don't know. It comes kind o' hard on old people
+to be broke o' their rest. If it's goin' to be called home, it's a pity,
+as I said, it didn't go with its mother"--
+
+"And save the expense of another funeral," said Aunt Roxy. "Now when
+Mis' Pennel's sister asked her what she was going to do with Naomi's
+clothes, I couldn't help wonderin' when she said she should keep 'em for
+the child."
+
+"She had a sight of things, Naomi did," said Aunt Ruey. "Nothin' was
+never too much for her. I don't believe that Cap'n Pennel ever went to
+Bath or Portland without havin' it in his mind to bring Naomi
+somethin'."
+
+"Yes, and she had a faculty of puttin' of 'em on," said Miss Roxy, with
+a decisive shake of the head. "Naomi was a still girl, but her faculty
+was uncommon; and I tell you, Ruey, 'tain't everybody hes faculty as hes
+things."
+
+"The poor Cap'n," said Miss Ruey, "he seemed greatly supported at the
+funeral, but he's dreadful broke down since. I went into Naomi's room
+this morning, and there the old man was a-sittin' by her bed, and he had
+a pair of her shoes in his hand,--you know what a leetle bit of a foot
+she had. I never saw nothin' look so kind o' solitary as that poor old
+man did!"
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "she was a master-hand for keepin' things,
+Naomi was; her drawers is just a sight; she's got all the little
+presents and things they ever give her since she was a baby, in one
+drawer. There's a little pair of red shoes there that she had when she
+wa'n't more'n five year old. You 'member, Ruey, the Cap'n brought 'em
+over from Portland when we was to the house a-makin' Mis' Pennel's
+figured black silk that he brought from Calcutty. You 'member they cost
+just five and sixpence; but, law! the Cap'n he never grudged the money
+when 'twas for Naomi. And so she's got all her husband's keepsakes and
+things just as nice as when he give 'em to her."
+
+"It's real affectin'," said Miss Ruey, "I can't all the while help
+a-thinkin' of the Psalm,--
+
+    "'So fades the lovely blooming flower,--
+    Frail, smiling solace of an hour;
+    So quick our transient comforts fly,
+    And pleasure only blooms to die.'"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Roxy; "and, Ruey, I was a-thinkin' whether or no it
+wa'n't best to pack away them things, 'cause Naomi hadn't fixed no baby
+drawers, and we seem to want some."
+
+"I was kind o' hintin' that to Mis' Pennel this morning," said Ruey,
+"but she can't seem to want to have 'em touched."
+
+"Well, we may just as well come to such things first as last," said Aunt
+Roxy; "'cause if the Lord takes our friends, he does take 'em; and we
+can't lose 'em and have 'em too, and we may as well give right up at
+first, and done with it, that they are gone, and we've got to do without
+'em, and not to be hangin' on to keep things just as they was."
+
+"So I was a-tellin' Mis' Pennel," said Miss Ruey, "but she'll come to it
+by and by. I wish the baby might live, and kind o' grow up into her
+mother's place."
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I wish it might, but there'd be a sight o'
+trouble fetchin' on it up. Folks can do pretty well with children when
+they're young and spry, if they do get 'em up nights; but come to
+grandchildren, it's pretty tough."
+
+"I'm a-thinkin', sister," said Miss Ruey, taking off her spectacles and
+rubbing her nose thoughtfully, "whether or no cow's milk ain't goin' to
+be too hearty for it, it's such a pindlin' little thing. Now, Mis'
+Badger she brought up a seven-months' child, and she told me she gave it
+nothin' but these 'ere little seed cookies, wet in water, and it throve
+nicely,--and the seed is good for wind."
+
+"Oh, don't tell me none of Mis' Badger's stories," said Miss Roxy, "I
+don't believe in 'em. Cows is the Lord's ordinances for bringing up
+babies that's lost their mothers; it stands to reason they should
+be,--and babies that can't eat milk, why they can't be fetched up; but
+babies can eat milk, and this un will if it lives, and if it can't it
+won't live." So saying, Miss Roxy drummed away on the little back of the
+party in question, authoritatively, as if to pound in a wholesome
+conviction at the outset.
+
+"I hope," said Miss Ruey, holding up a strip of black crape, and looking
+through it from end to end so as to test its capabilities, "I hope the
+Cap'n and Mis' Pennel'll get some support at the prayer-meetin' this
+afternoon."
+
+"It's the right place to go to," said Miss Roxy, with decision.
+
+"Mis' Pennel said this mornin' that she was just beat out tryin' to
+submit; and the more she said, 'Thy will be done,' the more she didn't
+seem to feel it."
+
+"Them's common feelin's among mourners, Ruey. These 'ere forty years
+that I've been round nussin', and layin'-out, and tendin' funerals, I've
+watched people's exercises. People's sometimes supported wonderfully
+just at the time, and maybe at the funeral; but the three or four weeks
+after, most everybody, if they's to say what they feel, is
+unreconciled."
+
+"The Cap'n, he don't say nothin'," said Miss Ruey.
+
+"No, he don't, but he looks it in his eyes," said Miss Roxy; "he's one
+of the kind o' mourners as takes it deep; that kind don't cry; it's a
+kind o' dry, deep pain; them's the worst to get over it,--sometimes they
+just says nothin', and in about six months they send for you to nuss 'em
+in consumption or somethin'. Now, Mis' Pennel, she can cry and she can
+talk,--well, she'll get over it; but _he_ won't get no support unless
+the Lord reaches right down and lifts him up over the world. I've seen
+that happen sometimes, and I tell you, Ruey, that sort makes powerful
+Christians."
+
+At that moment the old pair entered the door. Zephaniah Pennel came and
+stood quietly by the pillow where the little form was laid, and lifted a
+corner of the blanket. The tiny head was turned to one side, showing the
+soft, warm cheek, and the little hand was holding tightly a morsel of
+the flannel blanket. He stood swallowing hard for a few moments. At last
+he said, with deep humility, to the wise and mighty woman who held her,
+"I'll tell you what it is, Miss Roxy, I'll give all there is in my old
+chest yonder if you'll only make her--live."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE KITTRIDGES
+
+
+It did live. The little life, so frail, so unprofitable in every mere
+material view, so precious in the eyes of love, expanded and flowered at
+last into fair childhood. Not without much watching and weariness. Many
+a night the old fisherman walked the floor with the little thing in his
+arms, talking to it that jargon of tender nonsense which fairies bring
+as love-gifts to all who tend a cradle. Many a day the good little old
+grandmother called the aid of gossips about her, trying various
+experiments of catnip, and sweet fern, and bayberry, and other teas of
+rustic reputation for baby frailties.
+
+At the end of three years, the two graves in the lonely graveyard were
+sodded and cemented down by smooth velvet turf, and playing round the
+door of the brown houses was a slender child, with ways and manners so
+still and singular as often to remind the neighbors that she was not
+like other children,--a bud of hope and joy,--but the outcome of a great
+sorrow,--a pearl washed ashore by a mighty, uprooting tempest. They that
+looked at her remembered that her father's eye had never beheld her, and
+her baptismal cup had rested on her mother's coffin.
+
+She was small of stature, beyond the wont of children of her age, and
+moulded with a fine waxen delicacy that won admiration from all eyes.
+Her hair was curly and golden, but her eyes were dark like her mother's,
+and the lids drooped over them in that manner which gives a peculiar
+expression of dreamy wistfulness. Every one of us must remember eyes
+that have a strange, peculiar expression of pathos and desire, as if the
+spirit that looked out of them were pressed with vague remembrances of a
+past, or but dimly comprehended the mystery of its present life. Even
+when the baby lay in its cradle, and its dark, inquiring eyes would
+follow now one object and now another, the gossips would say the child
+was longing for something, and Miss Roxy would still further venture to
+predict that that child always would long and never would know exactly
+what she was after.
+
+That dignitary sits at this minute enthroned in the kitchen corner,
+looking majestically over the press-board on her knee, where she is
+pressing the next year's Sunday vest of Zephaniah Pennel. As she makes
+her heavy tailor's goose squeak on the work, her eyes follow the little
+delicate fairy form which trips about the kitchen, busily and silently
+arranging a little grotto of gold and silver shells and seaweed. The
+child sings to herself as she works in a low chant, like the prattle of
+a brook, but ever and anon she rests her little arms on a chair and
+looks through the open kitchen-door far, far off where the horizon line
+of the blue sea dissolves in the blue sky.
+
+"See that child now, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who sat stitching beside
+her; "do look at her eyes. She's as handsome as a pictur', but 't ain't
+an ordinary look she has neither; she seems a contented little thing;
+but what makes her eyes always look so kind o' wishful?"
+
+"Wa'n't her mother always a-longin' and a-lookin' to sea, and watchin'
+the ships, afore she was born?" said Miss Roxy; "and didn't her heart
+break afore she was born? Babies like that is marked always. They don't
+know what ails 'em, nor nobody."
+
+"It's her mother she's after," said Miss Ruey.
+
+"The Lord only knows," said Miss Roxy; "but them kind o' children always
+seem homesick to go back where they come from. They're mostly grave and
+old-fashioned like this 'un. If they gets past seven years, why they
+live; but it's always in 'em to long; they don't seem to be really
+unhappy neither, but if anything's ever the matter with 'em, it seems a
+great deal easier for 'em to die than to live. Some say it's the mothers
+longin' after 'em makes 'em feel so, and some say it's them longin'
+after their mothers; but dear knows, Ruey, what anything is or what
+makes anything. Children's mysterious, that's my mind."
+
+"Mara, dear," said Miss Ruey, interrupting the child's steady lookout,
+"what you thinking of?"
+
+"Me want somefin'," said the little one.
+
+"That's what she's always sayin'," said Miss Roxy.
+
+"Me want somebody to pay wis'," continued the little one.
+
+"Want somebody to play with," said old Dame Pennel, as she came in from
+the back-room with her hands yet floury with kneading bread; "sure
+enough, she does. Our house stands in such a lonesome place, and there
+ain't any children. But I never saw such a quiet little thing--always
+still and always busy."
+
+"I'll take her down with me to Cap'n Kittridge's," said Miss Roxy, "and
+let her play with their little girl; she'll chirk her up, I'll warrant.
+She's a regular little witch, Sally is, but she'll chirk her up. It
+ain't good for children to be so still and old-fashioned; children ought
+to be children. Sally takes to Mara just 'cause she's so different."
+
+"Well, now, you may," said Dame Pennel; "to be sure _he_ can't bear her
+out of his sight a minute after he comes in; but after all, old folks
+can't be company for children."
+
+Accordingly, that afternoon, the little Mara was arrayed in a little
+blue flounced dress, which stood out like a balloon, made by Miss Roxy
+in first-rate style, from a French fashion-plate; her golden hair was
+twined in manifold curls by Dame Pennel, who, restricted in her ideas
+of ornamentation, spared, nevertheless, neither time nor money to
+enhance the charms of this single ornament to her dwelling. Mara was her
+picture-gallery, who gave her in the twenty-four hours as many Murillos
+or Greuzes as a lover of art could desire; and as she tied over the
+child's golden curls a little flat hat, and saw her go dancing off along
+the sea-sands, holding to Miss Roxy's bony finger, she felt she had in
+her what galleries of pictures could not buy.
+
+It was a good mile to the one story, gambrel-roofed cottage where lived
+Captain Kittridge,--the long, lean, brown man, with his good wife of the
+great Leghorn bonnet, round, black bead eyes, and psalm-book, whom we
+told you of at the funeral. The Captain, too, had followed the sea in
+his early life, but being not, as he expressed it, "very rugged," in
+time changed his ship for a tight little cottage on the seashore, and
+devoted himself to boat-building, which he found sufficiently lucrative
+to furnish his brown cottage with all that his wife's heart desired,
+besides extra money for knick-knacks when she chose to go up to
+Brunswick or over to Portland to shop.
+
+The Captain himself was a welcome guest at all the firesides round,
+being a chatty body, and disposed to make the most of his foreign
+experiences, in which he took the usual advantages of a traveler. In
+fact, it was said, whether slanderously or not, that the Captain's yarns
+were spun to order; and as, when pressed to relate his foreign
+adventures, he always responded with, "What would you like to hear?" it
+was thought that he fabricated his article to suit his market. In short,
+there was no species of experience, finny, fishy, or aquatic,--no legend
+of strange and unaccountable incident of fire or flood,--no romance of
+foreign scenery and productions, to which his tongue was not competent,
+when he had once seated himself in a double bow-knot at a neighbor's
+evening fireside.
+
+His good wife, a sharp-eyed, literal body, and a vigorous church-member,
+felt some concern of conscience on the score of these narrations; for,
+being their constant auditor, she, better than any one else, could
+perceive the variations and discrepancies of text which showed their
+mythical character, and oftentimes her black eyes would snap and her
+knitting-needles rattle with an admonitory vigor as he went on, and
+sometimes she would unmercifully come in at the end of a narrative
+with,--
+
+"Well, now, the Cap'n's told them ar stories till he begins to b'lieve
+'em himself, I think."
+
+But works of fiction, as we all know, if only well gotten up, have
+always their advantages in the hearts of listeners over plain, homely
+truth; and so Captain Kittridge's yarns were marketable fireside
+commodities still, despite the skepticisms which attended them.
+
+The afternoon sunbeams at this moment are painting the gambrel-roof with
+a golden brown. It is September again, as it was three years ago when
+our story commenced, and the sea and sky are purple and amethystine with
+its Italian haziness of atmosphere.
+
+The brown house stands on a little knoll, about a hundred yards from the
+open ocean. Behind it rises a ledge of rocks, where cedars and hemlocks
+make deep shadows into which the sun shoots golden shafts of light,
+illuminating the scarlet feathers of the sumach, which throw themselves
+jauntily forth from the crevices; while down below, in deep, damp, mossy
+recesses, rise ferns which autumn has just begun to tinge with yellow
+and brown. The little knoll where the cottage stood had on its right
+hand a tiny bay, where the ocean water made up amid picturesque
+rocks--shaggy and solemn. Here trees of the primeval forest, grand and
+lordly, looked down silently into the waters which ebbed and flowed
+daily into this little pool. Every variety of those beautiful evergreens
+which feather the coast of Maine, and dip their wings in the very spray
+of its ocean foam, found here a representative. There were aspiring
+black spruces, crowned on the very top with heavy coronets of cones;
+there were balsamic firs, whose young buds breathe the scent of
+strawberries; there were cedars, black as midnight clouds, and white
+pines with their swaying plumage of needle-like leaves, strewing the
+ground beneath with a golden, fragrant matting; and there were the
+gigantic, wide-winged hemlocks, hundreds of years old, and with long,
+swaying, gray beards of moss, looking white and ghostly under the deep
+shadows of their boughs. And beneath, creeping round trunk and matting
+over stones, were many and many of those wild, beautiful things which
+embellish the shadows of these northern forests. Long, feathery wreaths
+of what are called ground-pines ran here and there in little ruffles of
+green, and the prince's pine raised its oriental feather, with a mimic
+cone on the top, as if it conceived itself to be a grown-up tree. Whole
+patches of partridge-berry wove their evergreen matting, dotted
+plentifully with brilliant scarlet berries. Here and there, the rocks
+were covered with a curiously inwoven tapestry of moss, overshot with
+the exquisite vine of the Linnea borealis, which in early spring rings
+its two fairy bells on the end of every spray; while elsewhere the
+wrinkled leaves of the mayflower wove themselves through and through
+deep beds of moss, meditating silently thoughts of the thousand little
+cups of pink shell which they had it in hand to make when the time of
+miracles should come round next spring.
+
+Nothing, in short, could be more quaintly fresh, wild, and beautiful
+than the surroundings of this little cove which Captain Kittridge had
+thought fit to dedicate to his boat-building operations,--where he had
+set up his tar-kettle between two great rocks above the highest
+tide-mark, and where, at the present moment, he had a boat upon the
+stocks.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge, at this hour, was sitting in her clean kitchen, very
+busily engaged in ripping up a silk dress, which Miss Roxy had engaged
+to come and make into a new one; and, as she ripped, she cast now and
+then an eye at the face of a tall, black clock, whose solemn tick-tock
+was the only sound that could be heard in the kitchen.
+
+By her side, on a low stool, sat a vigorous, healthy girl of six years,
+whose employment evidently did not please her, for her well-marked black
+eyebrows were bent in a frown, and her large black eyes looked surly and
+wrathful, and one versed in children's grievances could easily see what
+the matter was,--she was turning a sheet! Perhaps, happy young female
+reader, you don't know what that is,--most likely not; for in these
+degenerate days the strait and narrow ways of self-denial, formerly
+thought so wholesome for little feet, are quite grass-grown with
+neglect. Childhood nowadays is unceasingly fêted and caressed, the
+principal difficulty of the grown people seeming to be to discover what
+the little dears want,--a thing not always clear to the little dears
+themselves. But in old times, turning sheets was thought a most especial
+and wholesome discipline for young girls; in the first place, because it
+took off the hands of their betters a very uninteresting and monotonous
+labor; and in the second place, because it was such a long, straight,
+unending turnpike, that the youthful travelers, once started thereupon,
+could go on indefinitely, without requiring guidance and direction of
+their elders. For these reasons, also, the task was held in special
+detestation by children in direct proportion to their amount of life,
+and their ingenuity and love of variety. A dull child took it tolerably
+well; but to a lively, energetic one, it was a perfect torture.
+
+"I don't see the use of sewing up sheets one side, and ripping up the
+other," at last said Sally, breaking the monotonous tick-tock of the
+clock by an observation which has probably occurred to every child in
+similar circumstances.
+
+"Sally Kittridge, if you say another word about that ar sheet, I'll whip
+you," was the very explicit rejoinder; and there was a snap of Mrs.
+Kittridge's black eyes, that seemed to make it likely that she would
+keep her word. It was answered by another snap from the six-year-old
+eyes, as Sally comforted herself with thinking that when she was a woman
+she'd speak her mind out in pay for all this.
+
+At this moment a burst of silvery child-laughter rang out, and there
+appeared in the doorway, illuminated by the afternoon sunbeams, the
+vision of Miss Roxy's tall, lank figure, with the little golden-haired,
+blue-robed fairy, hanging like a gay butterfly upon the tip of a
+thorn-bush. Sally dropped the sheet and clapped her hands, unnoticed by
+her mother, who rose to pay her respects to the "cunning woman" of the
+neighborhood.
+
+"Well, now, Miss Roxy, I was 'mazin' afraid you wer'n't a-comin'. I'd
+just been an' got my silk ripped up, and didn't know how to get a step
+farther without you."
+
+"Well, I was finishin' up Cap'n Pennel's best pantaloons," said Miss
+Roxy; "and I've got 'em along so, Ruey can go on with 'em; and I told
+Mis' Pennel I must come to you, if 'twas only for a day; and I fetched
+the little girl down, 'cause the little thing's so kind o' lonesome
+like. I thought Sally could play with her, and chirk her up a little."
+
+"Well, Sally," said Mrs. Kittridge, "stick in your needle, fold up your
+sheet, put your thimble in your work-pocket, and then you may take the
+little Mara down to the cove to play; but be sure you don't let her go
+near the tar, nor wet her shoes. D'ye hear?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Sally, who had sprung up in light and radiance, like
+a translated creature, at this unexpected turn of fortune, and
+performed the welcome orders with a celerity which showed how agreeable
+they were; and then, stooping and catching the little one in her arms,
+disappeared through the door, with the golden curls fluttering over her
+own crow-black hair.
+
+The fact was, that Sally, at that moment, was as happy as human creature
+could be, with a keenness of happiness that children who have never been
+made to turn sheets of a bright afternoon can never realize. The sun was
+yet an hour high, as she saw, by the flash of her shrewd, time-keeping
+eye, and she could bear her little prize down to the cove, and collect
+unknown quantities of gold and silver shells, and starfish, and
+salad-dish shells, and white pebbles for her, besides quantities of well
+turned shavings, brown and white, from the pile which constantly was
+falling under her father's joiner's bench, and with which she would make
+long extemporaneous tresses, so that they might play at being mermaids,
+like those that she had heard her father tell about in some of his
+sea-stories.
+
+"Now, railly, Sally, what you got there?" said Captain Kittridge, as he
+stood in his shirt-sleeves peering over his joiner's bench, to watch the
+little one whom Sally had dumped down into a nest of clean white
+shavings. "Wal', wal', I should think you'd a-stolen the big doll I see
+in a shop-window the last time I was to Portland. So this is Pennel's
+little girl?--poor child!"
+
+"Yes, father, and we want some nice shavings."
+
+"Stay a bit, I'll make ye a few a-purpose," said the old man, reaching
+his long, bony arm, with the greatest ease, to the farther part of his
+bench, and bringing up a board, from which he proceeded to roll off
+shavings in fine satin rings, which perfectly delighted the hearts of
+the children, and made them dance with glee; and, truth to say, reader,
+there are coarser and homelier things in the world than a well turned
+shaving.
+
+"There, go now," he said, when both of them stood with both hands full;
+"go now and play; and mind you don't let the baby wet her feet, Sally;
+them shoes o' hern must have cost five-and-sixpence at the very least."
+
+That sunny hour before sundown seemed as long to Sally as the whole seam
+of the sheet; for childhood's joys are all pure gold; and as she ran up
+and down the white sands, shouting at every shell she found, or darted
+up into the overhanging forest for checkerberries and ground-pine, all
+the sorrows of the morning came no more into her remembrance.
+
+The little Mara had one of those sensitive, excitable natures, on which
+every external influence acts with immediate power. Stimulated by the
+society of her energetic, buoyant little neighbor, she no longer seemed
+wishful or pensive, but kindled into a perfect flame of wild delight,
+and gamboled about the shore like a blue and gold-winged fly; while her
+bursts of laughter made the squirrels and blue jays look out
+inquisitively from their fastnesses in the old evergreens. Gradually the
+sunbeams faded from the pines, and the waves of the tide in the little
+cove came in, solemnly tinted with purple, flaked with orange and
+crimson, borne in from a great rippling sea of fire, into which the sun
+had just sunk.
+
+"Mercy on us--them children!" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"_He's_ bringin' 'em along," said Mrs. Kittridge, as she looked out of
+the window and saw the tall, lank form of the Captain, with one child
+seated on either shoulder, and holding on by his head.
+
+The two children were both in the highest state of excitement, but never
+was there a more marked contrast of nature. The one seemed a perfect
+type of well-developed childish health and vigor, good solid flesh and
+bones, with glowing skin, brilliant eyes, shining teeth, well-knit,
+supple limbs,--vigorously and healthily beautiful; while the other
+appeared one of those aerial mixtures of cloud and fire, whose radiance
+seems scarcely earthly. A physiologist, looking at the child, would
+shake his head, seeing one of those perilous organizations, all nerve
+and brain, which come to life under the clear, stimulating skies of
+America, and, burning with the intensity of lighted phosphorus, waste
+themselves too early.
+
+The little Mara seemed like a fairy sprite, possessed with a wild spirit
+of glee. She laughed and clapped her hands incessantly, and when set
+down on the kitchen-floor spun round like a little elf; and that night
+it was late and long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled in
+sleep.
+
+"Company jist sets this 'ere child crazy," said Miss Roxy; "it's jist
+her lonely way of livin'; a pity Mis' Pennel hadn't another child to
+keep company along with her."
+
+"Mis' Pennel oughter be trainin' of her up to work," said Mrs.
+Kittridge. "Sally could oversew and hem when she wa'n't more'n three
+years old; nothin' straightens out children like work. Mis' Pennel she
+just keeps that ar child to look at."
+
+"All children ain't alike, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Roxy,
+sententiously. "This 'un ain't like your Sally. 'A hen and a bumble-bee
+can't be fetched up alike, fix it how you will!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GRANDPARENTS
+
+
+Zephaniah Pennel came back to his house in the evening, after Miss Roxy
+had taken the little Mara away. He looked for the flowery face and
+golden hair as he came towards the door, and put his hand in his
+vest-pocket, where he had deposited a small store of very choice shells
+and sea curiosities, thinking of the widening of those dark, soft eyes
+when he should present them.
+
+"Where's Mara?" was the first inquiry after he had crossed the
+threshold.
+
+"Why, Roxy's been an' taken her down to Cap'n Kittridge's to spend the
+night," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy's gone to help Mis' Kittridge to turn her
+spotted gray and black silk. We was talking this mornin' whether 'no 't
+would turn, 'cause _I_ thought the spot was overshot, and wouldn't make
+up on the wrong side; but Roxy she says it's one of them ar Calcutty
+silks that has two sides to 'em, like the one you bought Miss Pennel,
+that we made up for her, you know;" and Miss Ruey arose and gave a
+finishing snap to the Sunday pantaloons, which she had been left to
+"finish off,"--which snap said, as plainly as words could say that there
+was a good job disposed of.
+
+Zephaniah stood looking as helpless as animals of the male kind
+generally do when appealed to with such prolixity on feminine details;
+in reply to it all, only he asked meekly,--
+
+"Where's Mary?"
+
+"Mis' Pennel? Why, she's up chamber. She'll be down in a minute, she
+said; she thought she'd have time afore supper to get to the bottom of
+the big chist, and see if that 'ere vest pattern ain't there, and them
+sticks o' twist for the button-holes, 'cause Roxy she says she never see
+nothin' so rotten as that 'ere twist we've been a-workin' with, that
+Mis' Pennel got over to Portland; it's a clear cheat, and Mis' Pennel
+she give more'n half a cent a stick more for 't than what Roxy got for
+her up to Brunswick; so you see these 'ere Portland stores charge up,
+and their things want lookin' after."
+
+Here Mrs. Pennel entered the room, "the Captain" addressing her
+eagerly,--
+
+"How came you to let Aunt Roxy take Mara off so far, and be gone so
+long?"
+
+"Why, law me, Captain Pennel! the little thing seems kind o' lonesome.
+Chil'en want chil'en; Miss Roxy says she's altogether too sort o' still
+and old-fashioned, and must have child's company to chirk her up, and so
+she took her down to play with Sally Kittridge; there's no manner of
+danger or harm in it, and she'll be back to-morrow afternoon, and Mara
+will have a real good time."
+
+"Wal', now, really," said the good man, "but it's 'mazin' lonesome."
+
+"Cap'n Pennel, you're gettin' to make an idol of that 'ere child," said
+Miss Ruey. "We have to watch our hearts. It minds me of the hymn,--
+
+    "'The fondness of a creature's love,
+      How strong it strikes the sense,--
+    Thither the warm affections move,
+      Nor can we call them hence.'"
+
+Miss Ruey's mode of getting off poetry, in a sort of high-pitched
+canter, with a strong thump on every accented syllable, might have
+provoked a smile in more sophisticated society, but Zephaniah listened
+to her with deep gravity, and answered,--
+
+"I'm 'fraid there's truth in what you say, Aunt Ruey. When her mother
+was called away, I thought that was a warning I never should forget; but
+now I seem to be like Jonah,--I'm restin' in the shadow of my gourd, and
+my heart is glad because of it. I kind o' trembled at the prayer meetin'
+when we was a-singin',--
+
+    "'The dearest idol I have known,
+      Whate'er that idol be,
+    Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
+      And worship only Thee.'"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "Roxy says if the Lord should take us up short on
+our prayers, it would make sad work with us sometimes."
+
+"Somehow," said Mrs. Pennel, "it seems to me just her mother over again.
+She don't look like her. I think her hair and complexion comes from the
+Badger blood; my mother had that sort o' hair and skin,--but then she
+has ways like Naomi,--and it seems as if the Lord had kind o' given
+Naomi back to us; so I hope she's goin' to be spared to us."
+
+Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures--gentle, trustful, and hopeful,
+because not very deep; she was one of the little children of the world
+whose faith rests on child-like ignorance, and who know not the deeper
+needs of deeper natures; such see only the sunshine and forget the
+storm.
+
+This conversation had been going on to the accompaniment of a clatter of
+plates and spoons and dishes, and the fizzling of sausages, prefacing
+the evening meal, to which all now sat down after a lengthened grace
+from Zephaniah.
+
+"There's a tremendous gale a-brewin'," he said, as they sat at table. "I
+noticed the clouds to-night as I was comin' home, and somehow I felt
+kind o' as if I wanted all our folks snug in-doors."
+
+"Why, law, husband, Cap'n Kittridge's house is as good as ours, if it
+does blow. You never can seem to remember that houses don't run aground
+or strike on rocks in storms."
+
+"The Cap'n puts me in mind of old Cap'n Jeduth Scranton," said Miss
+Ruey, "that built that queer house down by Middle Bay. The Cap'n he
+would insist on havin' on't jist like a ship, and the closet-shelves had
+holes for the tumblers and dishes, and he had all his tables and chairs
+battened down, and so when it came a gale, they say the old Cap'n used
+to sit in his chair and hold on to hear the wind blow."
+
+"Well, I tell you," said Captain, "those that has followed the seas
+hears the wind with different ears from lands-people. When you lie with
+only a plank between you and eternity, and hear the voice of the Lord on
+the waters, it don't sound as it does on shore."
+
+And in truth, as they were speaking, a fitful gust swept by the house,
+wailing and screaming and rattling the windows, and after it came the
+heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild, angry howl
+of some savage animal just beginning to be lashed into fury.
+
+"Sure enough, the wind is rising," said Miss Ruey, getting up from the
+table, and flattening her snub nose against the window-pane. "Dear me,
+how dark it is! Mercy on us, how the waves come in!--all of a sheet of
+foam. I pity the ships that's comin' on coast such a night."
+
+The storm seemed to have burst out with a sudden fury, as if myriads of
+howling demons had all at once been loosened in the air. Now they piped
+and whistled with eldritch screech round the corners of the house--now
+they thundered down the chimney--and now they shook the door and rattled
+the casement--and anon mustering their forces with wild ado, seemed to
+career over the house, and sail high up into the murky air. The dash of
+the rising tide came with successive crash upon crash like the discharge
+of heavy artillery, seeming to shake the very house, and the spray
+borne by the wind dashed whizzing against the window-panes.
+
+Zephaniah, rising from supper, drew up the little stand that had the
+family Bible on it, and the three old time-worn people sat themselves as
+seriously down to evening worship as if they had been an extensive
+congregation. They raised the old psalm-tune which our fathers called
+"Complaint," and the cracked, wavering voices of the women, with the
+deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain, rose in the uproar of the storm
+with a ghostly, strange wildness, like the scream of the curlew or the
+wailing of the wind:--
+
+    "Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray,
+      Nor let our sun go down at noon:
+    Thy years are an eternal day,
+      And must thy children die so soon!"
+
+Miss Ruey valued herself on singing a certain weird and exalted part
+which in ancient days used to be called counter, and which wailed and
+gyrated in unimaginable heights of the scale, much as you may hear a
+shrill, fine-voiced wind over a chimney-top; but altogether, the deep
+and earnest gravity with which the three filled up the pauses in the
+storm with their quaint minor key, had something singularly impressive.
+When the singing was over, Zephaniah read to the accompaniment of wind
+and sea, the words of poetry made on old Hebrew shores, in the dim, gray
+dawn of the world:--
+
+"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thundereth;
+the Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord shaketh the
+wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. The Lord sitteth
+upon the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King forever. The Lord will give
+strength to his people; yea, the Lord will bless his people with peace."
+
+How natural and home-born sounded this old piece of Oriental poetry in
+the ears of the three! The wilderness of Kadesh, with its great cedars,
+was doubtless Orr's Island, where even now the goodly fellowship of
+black-winged trees were groaning and swaying, and creaking as the breath
+of the Lord passed over them.
+
+And the three old people kneeling by their smouldering fireside, amid
+the general uproar, Zephaniah began in the words of a prayer which Moses
+the man of God made long ago under the shadows of Egyptian pyramids:
+"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the
+mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
+the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."
+
+We hear sometimes in these days that the Bible is no more inspired of
+God than many other books of historic and poetic merit. It is a fact,
+however, that the Bible answers a strange and wholly exceptional purpose
+by thousands of firesides on all shores of the earth; and, till some
+other book can be found to do the same thing, it will not be surprising
+if a belief of its Divine origin be one of the ineffaceable ideas of the
+popular mind. It will be a long while before a translation from Homer or
+a chapter in the Koran, or any of the beauties of Shakespeare, will be
+read in a stormy night on Orr's Island with the same sense of a Divine
+presence as the Psalms of David, or the prayer of Moses, the man of God.
+
+Boom! boom! "What's that?" said Zephaniah, starting, as they rose up
+from prayer. "Hark! again, that's a gun,--there's a ship in distress."
+
+"Poor souls," said Miss Ruey; "it's an awful night!"
+
+The captain began to put on his sea-coat.
+
+"You ain't a-goin' out?" said his wife.
+
+"I must go out along the beach a spell, and see if I can hear any more
+of that ship."
+
+"Mercy on us; the wind'll blow you over!" said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"I rayther think I've stood wind before in my day," said Zephaniah, a
+grim smile stealing over his weather-beaten cheeks. In fact, the man
+felt a sort of secret relationship to the storm, as if it were in some
+manner a family connection--a wild, roystering cousin, who drew him out
+by a rough attraction of comradeship.
+
+"Well, at any rate," said Mrs. Pennel, producing a large tin lantern
+perforated with many holes, in which she placed a tallow candle, "take
+this with you, and don't stay out long."
+
+The kitchen door opened, and the first gust of wind took off the old
+man's hat and nearly blew him prostrate. He came back and shut the
+door. "I ought to have known better," he said, knotting his
+pocket-handkerchief over his head, after which he waited for a momentary
+lull, and went out into the storm.
+
+Miss Ruey looked through the window-pane, and saw the light go twinkling
+far down into the gloom, and ever and anon came the mournful boom of
+distant guns.
+
+"Certainly there is a ship in trouble somewhere," she said.
+
+"He never can be easy when he hears these guns," said Mrs. Pennel; "but
+what can he do, or anybody, in such a storm, the wind blowing right on
+to shore?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if Cap'n Kittridge should be out on the beach, too,"
+said Miss Ruey; "but laws, he ain't much more than one of these 'ere old
+grasshoppers you see after frost comes. Well, any way, there _ain't_
+much help in man if a ship comes ashore in such a gale as this, such a
+dark night too."
+
+"It's kind o' lonesome to have poor little Mara away such a night as
+this is," said Mrs. Pennel; "but who would a-thought it this afternoon,
+when Aunt Roxy took her?"
+
+"I 'member my grandmother had a silver cream-pitcher that come ashore
+in a storm on Mare P'int," said Miss Ruey, as she sat trotting her
+knitting-needles. "Grand'ther found it, half full of sand, under a knot
+of seaweed way up on the beach. It had a coat of arms on it,--might have
+belonged to some grand family, that pitcher; in the Toothacre family
+yet."
+
+"I remember when I was a girl," said Mrs. Pennel, "seeing the hull of a
+ship that went on Eagle Island; it run way up in a sort of gully between
+two rocks, and lay there years. They split pieces off it sometimes to
+make fires, when they wanted to make a chowder down on the beach."
+
+"My aunt, Lois Toothacre, that lives down by Middle Bay," said Miss
+Ruey, "used to tell about a dreadful blow they had once in time of the
+equinoctial storm; and what was remarkable, she insisted that she heard
+a baby cryin' out in the storm,--she heard it just as plain as could
+be."
+
+"Laws a-mercy," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously, "it was nothing but the
+wind,--it always screeches like a child crying; or maybe it was the
+seals; seals will cry just like babes."
+
+"So they told her; but no,--she insisted she knew the difference,--it
+_was_ a baby. Well, what do you think, when the storm cleared off, they
+found a baby's cradle washed ashore sure enough!"
+
+"But they didn't find any baby," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously.
+
+"No; they searched the beach far and near, and that cradle was all they
+found. Aunt Lois took it in--it was a very good cradle, and she took it
+to use, but every time there came up a gale, that ar cradle would rock,
+rock, jist as if somebody was a-sittin' by it; and you could stand
+across the room and see there wa'n't nobody there."
+
+"You make me all of a shiver," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+This, of course, was just what Miss Ruey intended, and she went on:--
+
+"Wal', you see they kind o' got used to it; they found there wa'n't no
+harm come of its rockin', and so they didn't mind; but Aunt Lois had a
+sister Cerinthy that was a weakly girl, and had the janders. Cerinthy
+was one of the sort that's born with veils over their faces, and can see
+sperits; and one time Cerinthy was a-visitin' Lois after her second baby
+was born, and there came up a blow, and Cerinthy comes out of the
+keepin'-room, where the cradle was a-standin', and says, 'Sister,' says
+she, 'who's that woman sittin' rockin' the cradle?' and Aunt Lois says
+she, 'Why, there ain't nobody. That ar cradle always will rock in a
+gale, but I've got used to it, and don't mind it.' 'Well,' says
+Cerinthy, 'jist as true as you live, I just saw a woman with a silk gown
+on, and long black hair a-hangin' down, and her face was pale as a
+sheet, sittin' rockin' that ar cradle, and she looked round at me with
+her great black eyes kind o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped
+down over the cradle.' 'Well,' says Lois, 'I ain't goin' to have no such
+doin's in my house,' and she went right in and took up the baby, and the
+very next day she jist had the cradle split up for kindlin'; and that
+night, if you'll believe, when they was a-burnin' of it, they heard,
+jist as plain as could be, a baby scream, scream, screamin' round the
+house; but after that they never heard it no more."
+
+"I don't like such stories," said Dame Pennel, "'specially to-night,
+when Mara's away. I shall get to hearing all sorts of noises in the
+wind. I wonder when Cap'n Pennel will be back."
+
+And the good woman put more wood on the fire, and as the tongues of
+flame streamed up high and clear, she approached her face to the
+window-pane and started back with half a scream, as a pale, anxious
+visage with sad dark eyes seemed to approach her. It took a moment or
+two for her to discover that she had seen only the reflection of her own
+anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without having converted the
+window into a sort of dark mirror.
+
+Miss Ruey meanwhile began solacing herself by singing, in her
+chimney-corner, a very favorite sacred melody, which contrasted oddly
+enough with the driving storm and howling sea:--
+
+    "Haste, my beloved, haste away,
+    Cut short the hours of thy delay;
+    Fly like the bounding hart or roe,
+    Over the hills where spices grow."
+
+The tune was called "Invitation,"--one of those profusely florid in
+runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted the ears of a former
+generation; and Miss Ruey, innocently unconscious of the effect of old
+age on her voice, ran them up and down, and out and in, in a way that
+would have made a laugh, had there been anybody there to notice or to
+laugh.
+
+"I remember singin' that ar to Mary Jane Wilson the very night she
+died," said Aunt Ruey, stopping. "She wanted me to sing to her, and it
+was jist between two and three in the mornin'; there was jist the least
+red streak of daylight, and I opened the window and sat there and sung,
+and when I come to 'over the hills where spices grow,' I looked round
+and there was a change in Mary Jane, and I went to the bed, and says she
+very bright, 'Aunt Ruey, the Beloved has come,' and she was gone afore I
+could raise her up on her pillow. I always think of Mary Jane at them
+words; if ever there was a broken-hearted crittur took home, it was
+her."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Pennel caught sight through the window of the gleam
+of the returning lantern, and in a moment Captain Pennel entered,
+dripping with rain and spray.
+
+"Why, Cap'n! you're e'en a'most drowned," said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"How long have you been gone? You must have been a great ways," said
+Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"Yes, I have been down to Cap'n Kittridge's. I met Kittridge out on the
+beach. We heard the guns plain enough, but couldn't see anything. I went
+on down to Kittridge's to get a look at little Mara."
+
+"Well, she's all well enough?" said Mrs. Pennel, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, yes, well enough. Miss Roxy showed her to me in the trundle-bed,
+'long with Sally. The little thing was lying smiling in her sleep, with
+her cheek right up against Sally's. I took comfort looking at her. I
+couldn't help thinking: 'So he giveth his beloved sleep!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FROM THE SEA
+
+
+During the night and storm, the little Mara had lain sleeping as quietly
+as if the cruel sea, that had made her an orphan from her birth, were
+her kind-tempered old grandfather singing her to sleep, as he often
+did,--with a somewhat hoarse voice truly, but with ever an undertone of
+protecting love. But toward daybreak, there came very clear and bright
+into her childish mind a dream, having that vivid distinctness which
+often characterizes the dreams of early childhood.
+
+She thought she saw before her the little cove where she and Sally had
+been playing the day before, with its broad sparkling white beach of
+sand curving round its blue sea-mirror, and studded thickly with gold
+and silver shells. She saw the boat of Captain Kittridge upon the
+stocks, and his tar-kettle with the smouldering fires flickering under
+it; but, as often happens in dreams, a certain rainbow vividness and
+clearness invested everything, and she and Sally were jumping for joy at
+the beautiful things they found on the beach.
+
+Suddenly, there stood before them a woman, dressed in a long white
+garment. She was very pale, with sweet, serious dark eyes, and she led
+by the hand a black-eyed boy, who seemed to be crying and looking about
+as for something lost. She dreamed that she stood still, and the woman
+came toward her, looking at her with sweet, sad eyes, till the child
+seemed to feel them in every fibre of her frame. The woman laid her hand
+on her head as if in blessing, and then put the boy's hand in hers, and
+said, "Take him, Mara, he is a playmate for you;" and with that the
+little boy's face flashed out into a merry laugh. The woman faded away,
+and the three children remained playing together, gathering shells and
+pebbles of a wonderful brightness. So vivid was this vision, that the
+little one awoke laughing with pleasure, and searched under her pillows
+for the strange and beautiful things that she had been gathering in
+dreamland.
+
+"What's Mara looking after?" said Sally, sitting up in her trundle-bed,
+and speaking in the patronizing motherly tone she commonly used to her
+little playmate.
+
+"All gone, pitty boy--all gone!" said the child, looking round
+regretfully, and shaking her golden head; "pitty lady all gone!"
+
+"How queer she talks!" said Sally, who had awakened with the project of
+building a sheet-house with her fairy neighbor, and was beginning to
+loosen the upper sheet and dispose the pillows with a view to this
+species of architecture. "Come, Mara, let's make a pretty house!" she
+said.
+
+"Pitty boy out dere--out dere!" said the little one, pointing to the
+window, with a deeper expression than ever of wishfulness in her eyes.
+
+"Come, Sally Kittridge, get up this minute!" said the voice of her
+mother, entering the door at this moment; "and here, put these clothes
+on to Mara, the child mustn't run round in her best; it's strange, now,
+Mary Pennel never thinks of such things."
+
+Sally, who was of an efficient temperament, was preparing energetically
+to second these commands of her mother, and endue her little neighbor
+with a coarse brown stuff dress, somewhat faded and patched, which she
+herself had outgrown when of Mara's age; with shoes, which had been
+coarsely made to begin with, and very much battered by time; but, quite
+to her surprise, the child, generally so passive and tractable, opposed
+a most unexpected and desperate resistance to this operation. She began
+to cry and to sob and shake her curly head, throwing her tiny hands out
+in a wild species of freakish opposition, which had, notwithstanding, a
+quaint and singular grace about it, while she stated her objections in
+all the little English at her command.
+
+"Mara don't want--Mara want pitty boo des--and _pitty_ shoes."
+
+"Why, was ever anything like it?" said Mrs. Kittridge to Miss Roxy, as
+they both were drawn to the door by the outcry; "here's this child won't
+have decent every-day clothes put on her,--she must be kept dressed up
+like a princess. Now, that ar's French calico!" said Mrs. Kittridge,
+holding up the controverted blue dress, "and that ar never cost a cent
+under five-and-sixpence a yard; it takes a yard and a half to make it,
+and it must have been a good day's work to make it up; call that
+three-and-sixpence more, and with them pearl buttons and thread and all,
+that ar dress never cost less than a dollar and seventy-five, and here
+she's goin' to run out every day in it!"
+
+"Well, well!" said Miss Roxy, who had taken the sobbing fair one in her
+lap, "you know, Mis' Kittridge, this 'ere's a kind o' pet lamb, an
+old-folks' darling, and things be with her as they be, and we can't make
+her over, and she's such a nervous little thing we mustn't cross her."
+Saying which, she proceeded to dress the child in her own clothes.
+
+"If you had a good large checked apron, I wouldn't mind putting that on
+her!" added Miss Roxy, after she had arrayed the child.
+
+"Here's one," said Mrs. Kittridge; "that may save her clothes some."
+
+Miss Roxy began to put on the wholesome garment; but, rather to her
+mortification, the little fairy began to weep again in a most
+heart-broken manner.
+
+"Don't want che't apon."
+
+"Why don't Mara want nice checked apron?" said Miss Roxy, in that extra
+cheerful tone by which children are to be made to believe they have
+mistaken their own mind.
+
+"Don't want it!" with a decided wave of the little hand; "I's too pitty
+to wear che't apon."
+
+"Well! well!" said Mrs. Kittridge, rolling up her eyes, "did I ever! no,
+I never did. If there ain't depraved natur' a-comin' out early. Well, if
+she says she's pretty now, what'll it be when she's fifteen?"
+
+"She'll learn to tell a lie about it by that time," said Miss Roxy, "and
+say she thinks she's horrid. The child _is_ pretty, and the truth comes
+uppermost with her now."
+
+"Haw! haw! haw!" burst with a great crash from Captain Kittridge, who
+had come in behind, and stood silently listening during this
+conversation; "that's musical now; come here, my little maid, you _are_
+too pretty for checked aprons, and no mistake;" and seizing the child in
+his long arms, he tossed her up like a butterfly, while her sunny curls
+shone in the morning light.
+
+"There's one comfort about the child, Miss Kittridge," said Aunt Roxy:
+"she's one of them that dirt won't stick to. I never knew her to stain
+or tear her clothes,--she always come in jist so nice."
+
+"She ain't much like Sally, then!" said Mrs. Kittridge. "That girl'll
+run through more clothes! Only last week she walked the crown out of my
+old black straw bonnet, and left it hanging on the top of a
+blackberry-bush."
+
+"Wal', wal'," said Captain Kittridge, "as to dressin' this 'ere
+child,--why, ef Pennel's a mind to dress her in cloth of gold, it's none
+of our business! He's rich enough for all he wants to do, and so let's
+eat our breakfast and mind our own business."
+
+After breakfast Captain Kittridge took the two children down to the
+cove, to investigate the state of his boat and tar-kettle, set high
+above the highest tide-mark. The sun had risen gloriously, the sky was
+of an intense, vivid blue, and only great snowy islands of clouds, lying
+in silver banks on the horizon, showed vestiges of last night's storm.
+The whole wide sea was one glorious scene of forming and dissolving
+mountains of blue and purple, breaking at the crest into brilliant
+silver. All round the island the waves were constantly leaping and
+springing into jets and columns of brilliant foam, throwing themselves
+high up, in silvery cataracts, into the very arms of the solemn
+evergreen forests which overhung the shore.
+
+The sands of the little cove seemed harder and whiter than ever, and
+were thickly bestrewn with the shells and seaweed which the upturnings
+of the night had brought in. There lay what might have been fringes and
+fragments of sea-gods' vestures,--blue, crimson, purple, and orange
+seaweeds, wreathed in tangled ropes of kelp and sea-grass, or lying
+separately scattered on the sands. The children ran wildly, shouting as
+they began gathering sea-treasures; and Sally, with the air of an
+experienced hand in the business, untwisted the coils of rosy seaweed,
+from which every moment she disengaged some new treasure, in some rarer
+shell or smoother pebble.
+
+Suddenly, the child shook out something from a knotted mass of
+sea-grass, which she held up with a perfect shriek of delight. It was a
+bracelet of hair, fastened by a brilliant clasp of green, sparkling
+stones, such as she had never seen before. She redoubled her cries of
+delight, as she saw it sparkle between her and the sun, calling upon her
+father.
+
+"Father! father! do come here, and see what I've found!"
+
+He came quickly, and took the bracelet from the child's hand; but, at
+the same moment, looking over her head, he caught sight of an object
+partially concealed behind a projecting rock. He took a step forward,
+and uttered an exclamation,--
+
+"Well, well! sure enough! poor things!"
+
+There lay, bedded in sand and seaweed, a woman with a little boy clasped
+in her arms! Both had been carefully lashed to a spar, but the child was
+held to the bosom of the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot
+that mortal hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which
+had streamed the woman's long, dark hair, which sparkled with glittering
+morsels of sand and pebbles, and with those tiny, brilliant, yellow
+shells which are so numerous on that shore.
+
+The woman was both young and beautiful. The forehead, damp with
+ocean-spray, was like sculptured marble,--the eyebrows dark and decided
+in their outline; but the long, heavy, black fringes had shut down, as a
+solemn curtain, over all the history of mortal joy or sorrow that those
+eyes had looked upon. A wedding-ring gleamed on the marble hand; but the
+sea had divorced all human ties, and taken her as a bride to itself.
+And, in truth, it seemed to have made to her a worthy bed, for she was
+all folded and inwreathed in sand and shells and seaweeds, and a great,
+weird-looking leaf of kelp, some yards in length, lay twined around her
+like a shroud. The child that lay in her bosom had hair, and face, and
+eyelashes like her own, and his little hands were holding tightly a
+portion of the black dress which she wore.
+
+"Cold,--cold,--stone dead!" was the muttered exclamation of the old
+seaman, as he bent over the woman.
+
+"She must have struck her head there," he mused, as he laid his finger
+on a dark, bruised spot on her temple. He laid his hand on the child's
+heart, and put one finger under the arm to see if there was any
+lingering vital heat, and then hastily cut the lashings that bound the
+pair to the spar, and with difficulty disengaged the child from the cold
+clasp in which dying love had bound him to a heart which should beat no
+more with mortal joy or sorrow.
+
+Sally, after the first moment, had run screaming toward the house, with
+all a child's forward eagerness, to be the bearer of news; but the
+little Mara stood, looking anxiously, with a wishful earnestness of
+face.
+
+"Pitty boy,--pitty boy,--come!" she said often; but the old man was so
+busy, he scarcely regarded her.
+
+"Now, Cap'n Kittridge, do tell!" said Miss Roxy, meeting him in all
+haste, with a cap-border stiff in air, while Dame Kittridge exclaimed,--
+
+"Now, you don't! Well, well! didn't I say that was a ship last night?
+And what a solemnizing thought it was that souls might be goin' into
+eternity!"
+
+"We must have blankets and hot bottles, right away," said Miss Roxy, who
+always took the earthly view of matters, and who was, in her own person,
+a personified humane society. "Miss Kittridge, you jist dip out your
+dishwater into the smallest tub, and we'll put him in. Stand away, Mara!
+Sally, you take her out of the way! We'll fetch this child to, perhaps.
+I've fetched 'em to, when they's seemed to be dead as door-nails!"
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, you're sure the woman's dead?"
+
+"Laws, yes; she had a blow right on her temple here. There's no bringing
+her to till the resurrection."
+
+"Well, then, you jist go and get Cap'n Pennel to come down and help you,
+and get the body into the house, and we'll attend to layin' it out by
+and by. Tell Ruey to come down."
+
+Aunt Roxy issued her orders with all the military vigor and precision of
+a general in case of a sudden attack. It was her habit. Sickness and
+death were her opportunities; where they were, she felt herself at home,
+and she addressed herself to the task before her with undoubting faith.
+
+Before many hours a pair of large, dark eyes slowly emerged from under
+the black-fringed lids of the little drowned boy,--they rolled dreamily
+round for a moment, and dropped again in heavy languor.
+
+The little Mara had, with the quiet persistence which formed a trait in
+her baby character, dragged stools and chairs to the back of the bed,
+which she at last succeeded in scaling, and sat opposite to where the
+child lay, grave and still, watching with intense earnestness the
+process that was going on. At the moment when the eyes had opened, she
+stretched forth her little arms, and said, eagerly, "Pitty boy,
+come,"--and then, as they closed again, she dropped her hands with a
+sigh of disappointment. Yet, before night, the little stranger sat up in
+bed, and laughed with pleasure at the treasures of shells and pebbles
+which the children spread out on the bed before him.
+
+He was a vigorous, well-made, handsome child, with brilliant eyes and
+teeth, but the few words that he spoke were in a language unknown to
+most present. Captain Kittridge declared it to be Spanish, and that a
+call which he most passionately and often repeated was for his mother.
+But he was of that happy age when sorrow can be easily effaced, and the
+efforts of the children called forth joyous smiles. When his playthings
+did not go to his liking, he showed sparkles of a fiery, irascible
+spirit.
+
+The little Mara seemed to appropriate him in feminine fashion, as a
+chosen idol and graven image. She gave him at once all her slender stock
+of infantine treasures, and seemed to watch with an ecstatic devotion
+his every movement,--often repeating, as she looked delightedly around,
+"Pitty boy, come."
+
+She had no words to explain the strange dream of the morning; it lay in
+her, struggling for expression, and giving her an interest in the
+new-comer as in something belonging to herself. Whence it came,--whence
+come multitudes like it, which spring up as strange, enchanted flowers,
+every now and then in the dull, material pathway of life,--who knows? It
+may be that our present faculties have among them a rudimentary one,
+like the germs of wings in the chrysalis, by which the spiritual world
+becomes sometimes an object of perception; there may be natures in which
+the walls of the material are so fine and translucent that the spiritual
+is seen through them as through a glass darkly. It may be, too, that the
+love which is stronger than death has a power sometimes to make itself
+heard and felt through the walls of our mortality, when it would plead
+for the defenseless ones it has left behind. All these things _may_
+be,--who knows?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There," said Miss Roxy, coming out of the keeping-room at sunset; "I
+wouldn't ask to see a better-lookin' corpse. That ar woman was a sight
+to behold this morning. I guess I shook a double handful of stones and
+them little shells out of her hair,--now she reely looks beautiful.
+Captain Kittridge has made a coffin out o' some cedar-boards he happened
+to have, and I lined it with bleached cotton, and stuffed the pillow
+nice and full, and when we come to get her in, she reely will look
+lovely."
+
+"I s'pose, Mis' Kittridge, you'll have the funeral to-morrow,--it's
+Sunday."
+
+"Why, yes, Aunt Roxy,--I think everybody must want to improve such a
+dispensation. Have you took little Mara in to look at the corpse?"
+
+"Well, no," said Miss Roxy; "Mis' Pennel's gettin' ready to take her
+home."
+
+"I think it's an opportunity we ought to improve," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+"to learn children what death is. I think we can't begin to solemnize
+their minds too young."
+
+At this moment Sally and the little Mara entered the room.
+
+"Come here, children," said Mrs. Kittridge, taking a hand of either one,
+and leading them to the closed door of the keeping-room; "I've got
+somethin' to show you."
+
+The room looked ghostly and dim,--the rays of light fell through the
+closed shutter on an object mysteriously muffled in a white sheet.
+
+Sally's bright face expressed only the vague curiosity of a child to see
+something new; but the little Mara resisted and hung back with all her
+force, so that Mrs. Kittridge was obliged to take her up and hold her.
+
+She folded back the sheet from the chill and wintry form which lay so
+icily, lonely, and cold. Sally walked around it, and gratified her
+curiosity by seeing it from every point of view, and laying her warm,
+busy hand on the lifeless and cold one; but Mara clung to Mrs.
+Kittridge, with eyes that expressed a distressed astonishment. The good
+woman stooped over and placed the child's little hand for a moment on
+the icy forehead. The little one gave a piercing scream, and struggled
+to get away; and as soon as she was put down, she ran and hid her face
+in Aunt Roxy's dress, sobbing bitterly.
+
+"That child'll grow up to follow vanity," said Mrs. Kittridge; "her
+little head is full of dress now, and she hates anything serious,--it's
+easy to see that."
+
+The little Mara had no words to tell what a strange, distressful chill
+had passed up her arm and through her brain, as she felt that icy cold
+of death,--that cold so different from all others. It was an impression
+of fear and pain that lasted weeks and months, so that she would start
+out of sleep and cry with a terror which she had not yet a sufficiency
+of language to describe.
+
+"You seem to forget, Mis' Kittridge, that this 'ere child ain't rugged
+like our Sally," said Aunt Roxy, as she raised the little Mara in her
+arms. "She was a seven-months' baby, and hard to raise at all, and a
+shivery, scary little creature."
+
+"Well, then, she ought to be hardened," said Dame Kittridge. "But Mary
+Pennel never had no sort of idea of bringin' up children; 'twas jist so
+with Naomi,--the girl never had no sort o' resolution, and she just died
+for want o' resolution,--that's what came of it. I tell ye, children's
+got to learn to take the world as it is; and 'tain't no use bringin' on
+'em up too tender. Teach 'em to begin as they've got to go out,--that's
+my maxim."
+
+"Mis' Kittridge," said Aunt Roxy, "there's reason in all things, and
+there's difference in children. 'What's one's meat's another's pison.'
+You couldn't fetch up Mis' Pennel's children, and she couldn't fetch up
+your'n,--so let's say no more 'bout it."
+
+"I'm always a-tellin' my wife that ar," said Captain Kittridge; "she's
+always wantin' to make everybody over after her pattern."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, I don't think _you_ need to speak," resumed his wife.
+"When such a loud providence is a-knockin' at _your_ door, I think you'd
+better be a-searchin' your own heart,--here it is the eleventh hour, and
+you hain't come into the Lord's vineyard yet."
+
+"Oh! come, come, Mis' Kittridge, don't twit a feller afore folks," said
+the Captain. "I'm goin' over to Harpswell Neck this blessed minute after
+the minister to 'tend the funeral,--so we'll let _him_ preach."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
+
+
+Life on any shore is a dull affair,--ever degenerating into commonplace;
+and this may account for the eagerness with which even a great calamity
+is sometimes accepted in a neighborhood, as affording wherewithal to
+stir the deeper feelings of our nature. Thus, though Mrs. Kittridge was
+by no means a hard-hearted woman, and would not for the world have had a
+ship wrecked on her particular account, yet since a ship had been
+wrecked and a body floated ashore at her very door, as it were, it
+afforded her no inconsiderable satisfaction to dwell on the details and
+to arrange for the funeral.
+
+It was something to talk about and to think of, and likely to furnish
+subject-matter for talk for years to come when she should go out to tea
+with any of her acquaintances who lived at Middle Bay, or Maquoit, or
+Harpswell Neck. For although in those days,--the number of light-houses
+being much smaller than it is now,--it was no uncommon thing for ships
+to be driven on shore in storms, yet this incident had undeniably more
+that was stirring and romantic in it than any within the memory of any
+tea-table gossip in the vicinity. Mrs. Kittridge, therefore, looked
+forward to the funeral services on Sunday afternoon as to a species of
+solemn fête, which imparted a sort of consequence to her dwelling and
+herself. Notice of it was to be given out in "meeting" after service,
+and she might expect both keeping-room and kitchen to be full. Mrs.
+Pennel had offered to do her share of Christian and neighborly
+kindness, in taking home to her own dwelling the little boy. In fact, it
+became necessary to do so in order to appease the feelings of the little
+Mara, who clung to the new acquisition with most devoted fondness, and
+wept bitterly when he was separated from her even for a few moments.
+Therefore, in the afternoon of the day when the body was found, Mrs.
+Pennel, who had come down to assist, went back in company with Aunt Ruey
+and the two children.
+
+The September evening set in brisk and chill, and the cheerful fire that
+snapped and roared up the ample chimney of Captain Kittridge's kitchen
+was a pleasing feature. The days of our story were before the advent of
+those sullen gnomes, the "air-tights," or even those more sociable and
+cheery domestic genii, the cooking-stoves. They were the days of the
+genial open kitchen-fire, with the crane, the pot-hooks, and
+trammels,--where hissed and boiled the social tea-kettle, where steamed
+the huge dinner-pot, in whose ample depths beets, carrots, potatoes, and
+turnips boiled in jolly sociability with the pork or corned beef which
+they were destined to flank at the coming meal.
+
+On the present evening, Miss Roxy sat bolt upright, as was her wont, in
+one corner of the fireplace, with her spectacles on her nose, and an
+unwonted show of candles on the little stand beside her, having resumed
+the task of the silk dress which had been for a season interrupted. Mrs.
+Kittridge, with her spectacles also mounted, was carefully and warily
+"running-up breadths," stopping every few minutes to examine her work,
+and to inquire submissively of Miss Roxy if "it will do?"
+
+Captain Kittridge sat in the other corner busily whittling on a little
+boat which he was shaping to please Sally, who sat on a low stool by his
+side with her knitting, evidently more intent on what her father was
+producing than on the evening task of "ten bouts," which her mother
+exacted before she could freely give her mind to anything on her own
+account. As Sally was rigorously sent to bed exactly at eight o'clock,
+it became her to be diligent if she wished to do anything for her own
+amusement before that hour.
+
+And in the next room, cold and still, was lying that faded image of
+youth and beauty which the sea had so strangely given up. Without a
+name, without a history, without a single accompaniment from which her
+past could even be surmised,--there she lay, sealed in eternal silence.
+
+"It's strange," said Captain Kittridge, as he whittled away,--"it's very
+strange we don't find anything more of that ar ship. I've been all up
+and down the beach a-lookin'. There was a spar and some broken bits of
+boards and timbers come ashore down on the beach, but nothin' to speak
+of."
+
+"It won't be known till the sea gives up its dead," said Miss Roxy,
+shaking her head solemnly, "and there'll be a great givin' up then, I'm
+a-thinkin'."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Kittridge, with an emphatic nod.
+
+"Father," said Sally, "how many, many things there must be at the bottom
+of the sea,--so many ships are sunk with all their fine things on board.
+Why don't people contrive some way to go down and get them?"
+
+"They do, child," said Captain Kittridge; "they have diving-bells, and
+men go down in 'em with caps over their faces, and long tubes to get the
+air through, and they walk about on the bottom of the ocean."
+
+"Did you ever go down in one, father?"
+
+"Why, yes, child, to be sure; and strange enough it was, to be sure.
+There you could see great big sea critters, with ever so many eyes and
+long arms, swimming right up to catch you, and all you could do would be
+to muddy the water on the bottom, so they couldn't see you."
+
+"I never heard of that, Cap'n Kittridge," said his wife, drawing herself
+up with a reproving coolness.
+
+"Wal', Mis' Kittridge, you hain't heard of everything that ever
+happened," said the Captain, imperturbably, "though you _do_ know a
+sight."
+
+"And how does the bottom of the ocean look, father?" said Sally.
+
+"Laws, child, why trees and bushes grow there, just as they do on land;
+and great plants,--blue and purple and green and yellow, and lots of
+great pearls lie round. I've seen 'em big as chippin'-birds' eggs."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge!" said his wife.
+
+"I have, and big as robins' eggs, too, but them was off the coast of
+Ceylon and Malabar, and way round the Equator," said the Captain,
+prudently resolved to throw his romance to a sufficient distance.
+
+"It's a pity you didn't get a few of them pearls," said his wife, with
+an indignant appearance of scorn.
+
+"I did get lots on 'em, and traded 'em off to the Nabobs in the interior
+for Cashmere shawls and India silks and sich," said the Captain,
+composedly; "and brought 'em home and sold 'em at a good figure, too."
+
+"Oh, father!" said Sally, earnestly, "I wish you had saved just one or
+two for us."
+
+"Laws, child, I wish now I had," said the Captain, good-naturedly. "Why,
+when I was in India, I went up to Lucknow, and Benares, and round, and
+saw all the Nabobs and Biggums,--why, they don't make no more of gold
+and silver and precious stones than we do of the shells we find on the
+beach. Why, I've seen one of them fellers with a diamond in his turban
+as big as my fist."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, what are you telling?" said his wife once more.
+
+"Fact,--as big as my fist," said the Captain, obdurately; "and all the
+clothes he wore was jist a stiff crust of pearls and precious stones. I
+tell you, he looked like something in the Revelations,--a real New
+Jerusalem look he had."
+
+"I call that ar talk wicked, Cap'n Kittridge, usin' Scriptur' that ar
+way," said his wife.
+
+"Why, don't it tell about all sorts of gold and precious stones in the
+Revelations?" said the Captain; "that's all I meant. Them ar countries
+off in Asia ain't like our'n,--stands to reason they shouldn't be;
+them's Scripture countries, and everything is different there."
+
+"Father, didn't you ever get any of those splendid things?" said Sally.
+
+"Laws, yes, child. Why, I had a great green ring, an emerald, that one
+of the princes giv' me, and ever so many pearls and diamonds. I used to
+go with 'em rattlin' loose in my vest pocket. I was young and gay in
+them days, and thought of bringin' of 'em home for the gals, but somehow
+I always got opportunities for swappin' of 'em off for goods and sich.
+That ar shawl your mother keeps in her camfire chist was what I got for
+one on 'em."
+
+"Well, well," said Mrs. Kittridge, "there's never any catchin' you,
+'cause you've been where we haven't."
+
+"You've caught me once, and that ought'r do," said the Captain, with
+unruffled good-nature. "I tell you, Sally, your mother was the
+handsomest gal in Harpswell in them days."
+
+"I should think you was too old for such nonsense, Cap'n," said Mrs.
+Kittridge, with a toss of her head, and a voice that sounded far less
+inexorable than her former admonition. In fact, though the old Captain
+was as unmanageable under his wife's fireside _régime_ as any brisk old
+cricket that skipped and sang around the hearth, and though he hopped
+over all moral boundaries with a cheerful alertness of conscience that
+was quite discouraging, still there was no resisting the spell of his
+inexhaustible good-nature.
+
+By this time he had finished the little boat, and to Sally's great
+delight, began sailing it for her in a pail of water.
+
+"I wonder," said Mrs. Kittridge, "what's to be done with that ar child.
+I suppose the selectmen will take care on't; it'll be brought up by the
+town."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said Miss Roxy, "if Cap'n Pennel should adopt it."
+
+"You don't think so," said Mrs. Kittridge. "'Twould be taking a great
+care and expense on their hands at their time of life."
+
+"I wouldn't want no better fun than to bring up that little shaver,"
+said Captain Kittridge; "he's a bright un, I promise you."
+
+"You, Cap'n Kittridge! I wonder you can talk so," said his wife. "It's
+an awful responsibility, and I wonder you don't think whether or no
+you're fit for it."
+
+"Why, down here on the shore, I'd as lives undertake a boy as a
+Newfoundland pup," said the Captain. "Plenty in the sea to eat, drink,
+and wear. That ar young un may be the staff of their old age yet."
+
+"You see," said Miss Roxy, "I think they'll adopt it to be company for
+little Mara; they're bound up in her, and the little thing pines bein'
+alone."
+
+"Well, they make a real graven image of that ar child," said Mrs.
+Kittridge, "and fairly bow down to her and worship her."
+
+"Well, it's natural," said Miss Roxy. "Besides, the little thing is
+cunnin'; she's about the cunnin'est little crittur that I ever saw, and
+has such enticin' ways."
+
+The fact was, as the reader may perceive, that Miss Roxy had been thawed
+into an unusual attachment for the little Mara, and this affection was
+beginning to spread a warming element though her whole being. It was as
+if a rough granite rock had suddenly awakened to a passionate
+consciousness of the beauty of some fluttering white anemone that
+nestled in its cleft, and felt warm thrills running through all its
+veins at every tender motion and shadow. A word spoken against the
+little one seemed to rouse her combativeness. Nor did Dame Kittridge
+bear the child the slightest ill-will, but she was one of those
+naturally care-taking people whom Providence seems to design to perform
+the picket duties for the rest of society, and who, therefore, challenge
+everybody and everything to stand and give an account of themselves.
+Miss Roxy herself belonged to this class, but sometimes found herself so
+stoutly overhauled by the guns of Mrs. Kittridge's battery, that she
+could only stand modestly on the defensive.
+
+One of Mrs. Kittridge's favorite hobbies was education, or, as she
+phrased it, the "fetchin' up" of children, which she held should be
+performed to the letter of the old stiff rule. In this manner she had
+already trained up six sons, who were all following their fortunes upon
+the seas, and, on this account, she had no small conceit of her
+abilities; and when she thought she discerned a lamb being left to frisk
+heedlessly out of bounds, her zeal was stirred to bring it under proper
+sheepfold regulations.
+
+"Come, Sally, it's eight o'clock," said the good woman.
+
+Sally's dark brows lowered over her large, black eyes, and she gave an
+appealing look to her father.
+
+"Law, mother, let the child sit up a quarter of an hour later, jist for
+once."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, if I was to hear to you, there'd never be no rule in
+this house. Sally, you go 'long this minute, and be sure you put your
+knittin' away in its place."
+
+The Captain gave a humorous nod of submissive good-nature to his
+daughter as she went out. In fact, putting Sally to bed was taking away
+his plaything, and leaving him nothing to do but study faces in the
+coals, or watch the fleeting sparks which chased each other in flocks
+up the sooty back of the chimney.
+
+It was Saturday night, and the morrow was Sunday,--never a very pleasant
+prospect to the poor Captain, who, having, unfortunately, no spiritual
+tastes, found it very difficult to get through the day in compliance
+with his wife's views of propriety, for he, alas! soared no higher in
+his aims.
+
+"I b'lieve, on the hull, Polly, I'll go to bed, too," said he, suddenly
+starting up.
+
+"Well, father, your clean shirt is in the right-hand corner of the upper
+drawer, and your Sunday clothes on the back of the chair by the bed."
+
+The fact was that the Captain promised himself the pleasure of a long
+conversation with Sally, who nestled in the trundle-bed under the
+paternal couch, to whom he could relate long, many-colored yarns,
+without the danger of interruption from her mother's sharp,
+truth-seeking voice.
+
+A moralist might, perhaps, be puzzled exactly what account to make of
+the Captain's disposition to romancing and embroidery. In all real,
+matter-of-fact transactions, as between man and man, his word was as
+good as another's, and he was held to be honest and just in his
+dealings. It was only when he mounted the stilts of foreign travel that
+his paces became so enormous. Perhaps, after all, a rude poetic and
+artistic faculty possessed the man. He might have been a humbler phase
+of the "mute, inglorious Milton." Perhaps his narrations required the
+privileges and allowances due to the inventive arts generally. Certain
+it was that, in common with other artists, he required an atmosphere of
+sympathy and confidence in which to develop himself fully; and, when
+left alone with children, his mind ran such riot, that the bounds
+between the real and unreal became foggier than the banks of
+Newfoundland.
+
+The two women sat up, and the night wore on apace, while they kept
+together that customary vigil which it was thought necessary to hold
+over the lifeless casket from which an immortal jewel had recently been
+withdrawn.
+
+"I re'lly did hope," said Mrs. Kittridge, mournfully, "that this 'ere
+solemn Providence would have been sent home to the Cap'n's mind; but he
+seems jist as light and triflin' as ever."
+
+"There don't nobody see these 'ere things unless they's effectually
+called," said Miss Roxy, "and the Cap'n's time ain't come."
+
+"It's gettin' to be t'ward the eleventh hour," said Mrs. Kittridge, "as
+I was a-tellin' him this afternoon."
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "you know
+
+    "'While the lamp holds out to burn,
+    The vilest sinner may return.'"
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Mrs. Kittridge, rising and taking up the
+candle. "Don't you think, Aunt Roxy, we may as well give a look in there
+at the corpse?"
+
+It was past midnight as they went together into the keeping-room. All
+was so still that the clash of the rising tide and the ticking of the
+clock assumed that solemn and mournful distinctness which even tones
+less impressive take on in the night-watches. Miss Roxy went
+mechanically through with certain arrangements of the white drapery
+around the cold sleeper, and uncovering the face and bust for a moment,
+looked critically at the still, unconscious countenance.
+
+"Not one thing to let us know who or what she is," she said; "that boy,
+if he lives, would give a good deal to know, some day."
+
+"What is it one's duty to do about this bracelet?" said Mrs. Kittridge,
+taking from a drawer the article in question, which had been found on
+the beach in the morning.
+
+"Well, I s'pose it belongs to the child, whatever it's worth," said Miss
+Roxy.
+
+"Then if the Pennels conclude to take him, I may as well give it to
+them," said Mrs. Kittridge, laying it back in the drawer.
+
+Miss Roxy folded the cloth back over the face, and the two went out into
+the kitchen. The fire had sunk low--the crickets were chirruping
+gleefully. Mrs. Kittridge added more wood, and put on the tea-kettle
+that their watching might be refreshed by the aid of its talkative and
+inspiring beverage. The two solemn, hard-visaged women drew up to each
+other by the fire, and insensibly their very voices assumed a tone of
+drowsy and confidential mystery.
+
+"If this 'ere poor woman was hopefully pious, and could see what was
+goin' on here," said Mrs. Kittridge, "it would seem to be a comfort to
+her that her child has fallen into such good hands. It seems a'most a
+pity she couldn't know it."
+
+"How do you know she don't?" said Miss Roxy, brusquely.
+
+"Why, you know the hymn," said Mrs. Kittridge, quoting those somewhat
+saddusaical lines from the popular psalm-book:--
+
+    "'The living know that they must die,
+    But all the dead forgotten lie--
+    _Their memory and their senses gone,
+    Alike unknowing and unknown_.'"
+
+"Well, I don't know 'bout that," said Miss Roxy, flavoring her cup of
+tea; "hymn-book ain't Scriptur', and I'm pretty sure that ar ain't true
+always;" and she nodded her head as if she could say more if she chose.
+
+Now Miss Roxy's reputation of vast experience in all the facts relating
+to those last fateful hours, which are the only certain event in every
+human existence, caused her to be regarded as a sort of Delphic oracle
+in such matters, and therefore Mrs. Kittridge, not without a share of
+the latent superstition to which each human heart must confess at some
+hours, drew confidentially near to Miss Roxy, and asked if she had
+anything particular on her mind.
+
+"Well, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Roxy, "I ain't one of the sort as
+likes to make a talk of what I've seen, but mebbe if I was, I've seen
+some things _as_ remarkable as anybody. I tell you, Mis' Kittridge,
+folks don't tend the sick and dyin' bed year in and out, at all hours,
+day and night, and not see some remarkable things; that's my opinion."
+
+"Well, Miss Roxy, did you ever see a sperit?"
+
+"I won't say as I have, and I won't say as I haven't," said Miss Roxy;
+"only as I have seen some remarkable things."
+
+There was a pause, in which Mrs. Kittridge stirred her tea, looking
+intensely curious, while the old kitchen-clock seemed to tick with one
+of those fits of loud insistence which seem to take clocks at times when
+all is still, as if they had something that they were getting ready to
+say pretty soon, if nobody else spoke.
+
+But Miss Roxy evidently had something to say, and so she began:--
+
+"Mis' Kittridge, this 'ere's a very particular subject to be talkin'
+of. I've had opportunities to observe that most haven't, and I don't
+care if I jist say to you, that I'm pretty sure spirits that has left
+the body do come to their friends sometimes."
+
+The clock ticked with still more _empressement_, and Mrs. Kittridge
+glared through the horn bows of her glasses with eyes of eager
+curiosity.
+
+"Now, you remember Cap'n Titcomb's wife, that died fifteen years ago
+when her husband had gone to Archangel; and you remember that he took
+her son John out with him--and of all her boys, John was the one she
+was particular sot on."
+
+"Yes, and John died at Archangel; I remember that."
+
+"Jes' so," said Miss Roxy, laying her hand on Mrs. Kittridge's; "he died
+at Archangel the very day his mother died, and jist the hour, for the
+Cap'n had it down in his log-book."
+
+"You don't say so!"
+
+"Yes, I do. Well, now," said Miss Roxy, sinking her voice, "this 'ere
+was remarkable. Mis' Titcomb was one of the fearful sort, tho' one of
+the best women that ever lived. Our minister used to call her 'Mis'
+Muchafraid'--you know, in the 'Pilgrim's Progress'--but he was satisfied
+with her evidences, and told her so; she used to say she was 'afraid of
+the dark valley,' and she told our minister so when he went out, that ar
+last day he called; and his last words, as he stood with his hand on the
+knob of the door, was 'Mis' Titcomb, the Lord will find ways to bring
+you thro' the dark valley.' Well, she sunk away about three o'clock in
+the morning. I remember the time, 'cause the Cap'n's chronometer watch
+that he left with her lay on the stand for her to take her drops by. I
+heard her kind o' restless, and I went up, and I saw she was struck with
+death, and she looked sort o' anxious and distressed.
+
+"'Oh, Aunt Roxy,' says she, 'it's so dark, who will go with me?' and in
+a minute her whole face brightened up, and says she, 'John is going with
+me,' and she jist gave the least little sigh and never breathed no
+more--she jist died as easy as a bird. I told our minister of it next
+morning, and he asked if I'd made a note of the hour, and I told him I
+had, and says he, 'You did right, Aunt Roxy.'"
+
+"What did he seem to think of it?"
+
+"Well, he didn't seem inclined to speak freely. 'Miss Roxy,' says he,
+'all natur's in the Lord's hands, and there's no saying why he uses this
+or that; them that's strong enough to go by faith, he lets 'em, but
+there's no saying what he won't do for the weak ones.'"
+
+"Wa'n't the Cap'n overcome when you told him?" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Indeed he was; he was jist as white as a sheet."
+
+Miss Roxy now proceeded to pour out another cup of tea, and having mixed
+and flavored it, she looked in a weird and sibylline manner across it,
+and inquired,--
+
+"Mis' Kittridge, do you remember that ar Mr. Wadkins that come to
+Brunswick twenty years ago, in President Averill's days?"
+
+"Yes, I remember the pale, thin, long-nosed gentleman that used to sit
+in President Averill's pew at church. Nobody knew who he was, or where
+he came from. The college students used to call him Thaddeus of Warsaw.
+Nobody knew who he was but the President, 'cause he could speak all the
+foreign tongues--one about as well as another; but the President he knew
+his story, and said he was a good man, and he used to stay to the
+sacrament regular, I remember."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Roxy, "he used to live in a room all alone, and keep
+himself. Folks said he was quite a gentleman, too, and fond of reading."
+
+"I heard Cap'n Atkins tell," said Mrs. Kittridge, "how they came to take
+him up on the shores of Holland. You see, when he was somewhere in a
+port in Denmark, some men come to him and offered him a pretty good sum
+of money if he'd be at such a place on the coast of Holland on such a
+day, and take whoever should come. So the Cap'n he went, and sure enough
+on that day there come a troop of men on horseback down to the beach
+with this man, and they all bid him good-by, and seemed to make much of
+him, but he never told 'em nothin' on board ship, only he seemed kind o'
+sad and pinin'."
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy; "Ruey and I we took care o' that man in his
+last sickness, and we watched with him the night he died, and there was
+something quite remarkable."
+
+"Do tell now," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Well, you see," said Miss Roxy, "he'd been low and poorly all day, kind
+o' tossin' and restless, and a little light-headed, and the Doctor said
+he thought he wouldn't last till morning, and so Ruey and I we set up
+with him, and between twelve and one Ruey said she thought she'd jist
+lop down a few minutes on the old sofa at the foot of the bed, and I
+made me a cup of tea like as I'm a-doin' now, and set with my back to
+him."
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Kittridge, eagerly.
+
+"Well, you see he kept a-tossin' and throwin' off the clothes, and I
+kept a-gettin' up to straighten 'em; and once he threw out his arms, and
+something bright fell out on to the pillow, and I went and looked, and
+it was a likeness that he wore by a ribbon round his neck. It was a
+woman--a real handsome one--and she had on a low-necked black dress, of
+the cut they used to call Marie Louise, and she had a string of pearls
+round her neck, and her hair curled with pearls in it, and very wide
+blue eyes. Well, you see, I didn't look but a minute before he seemed to
+wake up, and he caught at it and hid it in his clothes. Well, I went and
+sat down, and I grew kind o' sleepy over the fire; but pretty soon I
+heard him speak out very clear, and kind o' surprised, in a tongue I
+didn't understand, and I looked round."
+
+Miss Roxy here made a pause, and put another lump of sugar into her tea.
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Kittridge, ready to burst with curiosity.
+
+"Well, now, I don't like to tell about these 'ere things, and you
+mustn't never speak about it; but as sure as you live, Polly Kittridge,
+I see that ar very woman standin' at the back of the bed, right in the
+partin' of the curtains, jist as she looked in the pictur'--blue eyes
+and curly hair and pearls on her neck, and black dress."
+
+"What did you do?" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Do? Why, I jist held my breath and looked, and in a minute it kind o'
+faded away, and I got up and went to the bed, but the man was gone. He
+lay there with the pleasantest smile on his face that ever you see; and
+I woke up Ruey, and told her about it."
+
+Mrs. Kittridge drew a long breath. "What do you think it was?"
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I know what I think, but I don't think best to
+tell. I told Doctor Meritts, and he said there were more things in
+heaven and earth than folks knew about--and so I think."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, on this same evening, the little Mara frisked like a
+household fairy round the hearth of Zephaniah Pennel.
+
+The boy was a strong-limbed, merry-hearted little urchin, and did full
+justice to the abundant hospitalities of Mrs. Pennel's tea-table; and
+after supper little Mara employed herself in bringing apronful after
+apronful of her choicest treasures, and laying them down at his feet.
+His great black eyes flashed with pleasure, and he gamboled about the
+hearth with his new playmate in perfect forgetfulness, apparently, of
+all the past night of fear and anguish.
+
+When the great family Bible was brought out for prayers, and little Mara
+composed herself on a low stool by her grandmother's side, he, however,
+did not conduct himself as a babe of grace. He resisted all Miss Ruey's
+efforts to make him sit down beside her, and stood staring with his
+great, black, irreverent eyes during the Bible-reading, and laughed out
+in the most inappropriate manner when the psalm-singing began, and
+seemed disposed to mingle incoherent remarks of his own even in the
+prayers.
+
+"This is a pretty self-willed youngster," said Miss Ruey, as they rose
+from the exercises, "and I shouldn't think he'd been used to religious
+privileges."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Zephaniah Pennel; "but who can say but what this
+providence is a message of the Lord to us--such as Pharaoh's daughter
+sent about Moses, 'Take this child, and bring him up for me'?"
+
+"I'd like to take him, if I thought I was capable," said Mrs. Pennel,
+timidly. "It seems a real providence to give Mara some company; the poor
+child pines so for want of it."
+
+"Well, then, Mary, if you say so, we will bring him up with our little
+Mara," said Zephaniah, drawing the child toward him. "May the Lord bless
+him!" he added, laying his great brown hands on the shining black curls
+of the child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MOSES
+
+
+Sunday morning rose clear and bright on Harpswell Bay. The whole sea was
+a waveless, blue looking-glass, streaked with bands of white, and
+flecked with sailing cloud-shadows from the skies above. Orr's Island,
+with its blue-black spruces, its silver firs, its golden larches, its
+scarlet sumachs, lay on the bosom of the deep like a great many-colored
+gem on an enchanted mirror. A vague, dreamlike sense of rest and Sabbath
+stillness seemed to brood in the air. The very spruce-trees seemed to
+know that it was Sunday, and to point solemnly upward with their dusky
+fingers; and the small tide-waves that chased each other up on the
+shelly beach, or broke against projecting rocks, seemed to do it with a
+chastened decorum, as if each blue-haired wave whispered to his brother,
+"Be still--be still."
+
+Yes, Sunday it was along all the beautiful shores of Maine--netted in
+green and azure by its thousand islands, all glorious with their
+majestic pines, all musical and silvery with the caresses of the
+sea-waves, that loved to wander and lose themselves in their numberless
+shelly coves and tiny beaches among their cedar shadows.
+
+Not merely as a burdensome restraint, or a weary endurance, came the
+shadow of that Puritan Sabbath. It brought with it all the sweetness
+that belongs to rest, all the sacredness that hallows home, all the
+memories of patient thrift, of sober order, of chastened yet intense
+family feeling, of calmness, purity, and self-respecting dignity which
+distinguish the Puritan household. It seemed a solemn pause in all the
+sights and sounds of earth. And he whose moral nature was not yet enough
+developed to fill the blank with visions of heaven was yet wholesomely
+instructed by his weariness into the secret of his own spiritual
+poverty.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel, in his best Sunday clothes, with his hard visage
+glowing with a sort of interior tenderness, ministered this morning at
+his family-altar--one of those thousand priests of God's ordaining that
+tend the sacred fire in as many families of New England. He had risen
+with the morning star and been forth to meditate, and came in with his
+mind softened and glowing. The trance-like calm of earth and sea found a
+solemn answer with him, as he read what a poet wrote by the sea-shores
+of the Mediterranean, ages ago: "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my
+God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who
+coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of
+the wind. The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon,
+which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests; as for the
+stork, the fir-trees are her house. O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
+in wisdom hast thou made them all."
+
+Ages ago the cedars that the poet saw have rotted into dust, and from
+their cones have risen generations of others, wide-winged and grand. But
+the words of that poet have been wafted like seed to our days, and
+sprung up in flowers of trust and faith in a thousand households.
+
+"Well, now," said Miss Ruey, when the morning rite was over, "Mis'
+Pennel, I s'pose you and the Cap'n will be wantin' to go to the meetin',
+so don't you gin yourse'ves a mite of trouble about the children, for
+I'll stay at home with 'em. The little feller was starty and fretful in
+his sleep last night, and didn't seem to be quite well."
+
+"No wonder, poor dear," said Mrs. Pennel; "it's a wonder children can
+forget as they do."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Ruey; "you know them lines in the 'English Reader,'--
+
+    'Gay hope is theirs by fancy led,
+      Least pleasing when possessed;
+    The tear forgot as soon as shed,
+      The sunshine of the breast.'
+
+Them lines all'ys seemed to me affectin'."
+
+Miss Ruey's sentiment was here interrupted by a loud cry from the
+bedroom, and something between a sneeze and a howl.
+
+"Massy! what is that ar young un up to!" she exclaimed, rushing into the
+adjoining bedroom.
+
+There stood the young Master Hopeful of our story, with streaming eyes
+and much-bedaubed face, having just, after much labor, succeeded in
+making Miss Ruey's snuff-box fly open, which he did with such force as
+to send the contents in a perfect cloud into eyes, nose, and mouth. The
+scene of struggling and confusion that ensued cannot be described. The
+washings, and wipings, and sobbings, and exhortings, and the sympathetic
+sobs of the little Mara, formed a small tempest for the time being that
+was rather appalling.
+
+"Well, this 'ere's a youngster that's a-goin' to make work," said Miss
+Ruey, when all things were tolerably restored. "Seems to make himself at
+home first thing."
+
+"Poor little dear," said Mrs. Pennel, in the excess of loving-kindness,
+"I hope he will; he's welcome, I'm sure."
+
+"Not to my snuff-box," said Miss Ruey, who had felt herself attacked in
+a very tender point.
+
+"He's got the notion of lookin' into things pretty early," said Captain
+Pennel, with an indulgent smile.
+
+"Well, Aunt Ruey," said Mrs. Pennel, when this disturbance was somewhat
+abated, "I feel kind o' sorry to deprive you of your privileges to-day."
+
+"Oh! never mind me," said Miss Ruey, briskly. "I've got the big Bible,
+and I can sing a hymn or two by myself. My voice ain't quite what it
+used to be, but then I get a good deal of pleasure out of it." Aunt
+Ruey, it must be known, had in her youth been one of the foremost
+leaders in the "singers' seats," and now was in the habit of speaking of
+herself much as a retired _prima donna_ might, whose past successes were
+yet in the minds of her generation.
+
+After giving a look out of the window, to see that the children were
+within sight, she opened the big Bible at the story of the ten plagues
+of Egypt, and adjusting her horn spectacles with a sort of sideway twist
+on her little pug nose, she seemed intent on her Sunday duties. A moment
+after she looked up and said, "I don't know but I must send a message by
+you over to Mis' Deacon Badger, about a worldly matter, if 'tis Sunday;
+but I've been thinkin', Mis' Pennel, that there'll have to be clothes
+made up for this 'ere child next week, and so perhaps Roxy and I had
+better stop here a day or two longer, and you tell Mis' Badger that
+we'll come to her a Wednesday, and so she'll have time to have that new
+press-board done,--the old one used to pester me so."
+
+"Well, I'll remember," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"It seems a'most impossible to prevent one's thoughts wanderin'
+Sundays," said Aunt Ruey; "but I couldn't help a-thinkin' I could get
+such a nice pair o' trousers out of them old Sunday ones of the Cap'n's
+in the garret. I was a-lookin' at 'em last Thursday, and thinkin' what a
+pity 'twas you hadn't nobody to cut down for; but this 'ere young un's
+going to be such a tearer, he'll want somethin' real stout; but I'll try
+and put it out of my mind till Monday. Mis' Pennel, you'll be sure to
+ask Mis' Titcomb how Harriet's toothache is, and whether them drops
+cured her that I gin her last Sunday; and ef you'll jist look in a
+minute at Major Broad's, and tell 'em to use bayberry wax for his
+blister, it's so healin'; and do jist ask if Sally's baby's eye-tooth
+has come through yet."
+
+"Well, Aunt Ruey, I'll try to remember all," said Mrs. Pennel, as she
+stood at the glass in her bedroom, carefully adjusting the respectable
+black silk shawl over her shoulders, and tying her neat bonnet-strings.
+
+"I s'pose," said Aunt Ruey, "that the notice of the funeral'll be gin
+out after sermon."
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"It's another loud call," said Miss Ruey, "and I hope it will turn the
+young people from their thoughts of dress and vanity,--there's Mary Jane
+Sanborn was all took up with gettin' feathers and velvet for her fall
+bonnet. I don't think I shall get no bonnet this year till snow comes.
+My bonnet's respectable enough,--don't you think so?"
+
+"Certainly, Aunt Ruey, it looks very well."
+
+"Well, I'll have the pork and beans and brown-bread all hot on table
+agin you come back," said Miss Ruey, "and then after dinner we'll all go
+down to the funeral together. Mis' Pennel, there's one thing on my
+mind,--what you goin' to call this 'ere boy?"
+
+"Father and I've been thinkin' that over," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"Wouldn't think of giv'n him the Cap'n's name?" said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"He must have a name of his own," said Captain Pennel. "Come here,
+sonny," he called to the child, who was playing just beside the door.
+
+The child lowered his head, shook down his long black curls, and looked
+through them as elfishly as a Skye terrier, but showed no inclination to
+come.
+
+"One thing he hasn't learned, evidently," said Captain Pennel, "and that
+is to mind."
+
+"Here!" he said, turning to the boy with a little of the tone he had
+used of old on the quarter-deck, and taking his small hand firmly.
+
+The child surrendered, and let the good man lift him on his knee and
+stroke aside the clustering curls; the boy then looked fixedly at him
+with his great gloomy black eyes, his little firm-set mouth and bridled
+chin,--a perfect little miniature of proud manliness.
+
+"What's your name, little boy?"
+
+The great eyes continued looking in the same solemn quiet.
+
+"Law, he don't understand a word," said Zephaniah, putting his hand
+kindly on the child's head; "our tongue is all strange to him. Kittridge
+says he's a Spanish child; may be from the West Indies; but nobody
+knows,--we never shall know his name."
+
+"Well, I dare say it was some Popish nonsense or other," said Aunt Ruey;
+"and now he's come to a land of Christian privileges, we ought to give
+him a good Scripture name, and start him well in the world."
+
+"Let's call him Moses," said Zephaniah, "because we drew him out of the
+water."
+
+"Now, did I ever!" said Miss Ruey; "there's something in the Bible to
+fit everything, ain't there?"
+
+"I like Moses, because I had a brother of that name," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+The child had slid down from his protector's knee, and stood looking
+from one to the other gravely while this discussion was going on. What
+change of destiny was then going on for him in this simple formula of
+adoption, none could tell; but, surely, never orphan stranded on a
+foreign shore found home with hearts more true and loving.
+
+"Well, wife, I suppose we must be goin'," said Zephaniah.
+
+About a stone's throw from the open door, the little fishing-craft lay
+courtesying daintily on the small tide-waves that came licking up the
+white pebbly shore. Mrs. Pennel seated herself in the end of the boat,
+and a pretty placid picture she was, with her smooth, parted hair, her
+modest, cool, drab bonnet, and her bright hazel eyes, in which was the
+Sabbath calm of a loving and tender heart. Zephaniah loosed the sail,
+and the two children stood on the beach and saw them go off. A pleasant
+little wind carried them away, and back on the breeze came the sound of
+Zephaniah's Sunday-morning psalm:--
+
+    "Lord, in the morning thou shalt hear
+      My voice ascending high;
+    To thee will I direct my prayer,
+      To thee lift up mine eye.
+
+    "Unto thy house will I resort.
+      To taste thy mercies there;
+    I will frequent thy holy court,
+      And worship in thy fear."
+
+The surface of the glassy bay was dotted here and there with the white
+sails of other little craft bound for the same point and for the same
+purpose. It was as pleasant a sight as one might wish to see.
+
+Left in charge of the house, Miss Ruey drew a long breath, took a
+consoling pinch of snuff, sang "Bridgewater" in an uncommonly high key,
+and then began reading in the prophecies. With her good head full of the
+"daughter of Zion" and the house of Israel and Judah, she was recalled
+to terrestrial things by loud screams from the barn, accompanied by a
+general flutter and cackling among the hens.
+
+Away plodded the good soul, and opening the barn-door saw the little boy
+perched on the top of the hay-mow, screaming and shrieking,--his face
+the picture of dismay,--while poor little Mara's cries came in a more
+muffled manner from some unexplored lower region. In fact, she was found
+to have slipped through a hole in the hay-mow into the nest of a very
+domestic sitting-hen, whose clamors at the invasion of her family
+privacy added no little to the general confusion.
+
+The little princess, whose nicety as to her dress and sensitiveness as
+to anything unpleasant about her pretty person we have seen, was lifted
+up streaming with tears and broken eggs, but otherwise not seriously
+injured, having fallen on the very substantial substratum of hay which
+Dame Poulet had selected as the foundation of her domestic hopes.
+
+"Well, now, did I ever!" said Miss Ruey, when she had ascertained that
+no bones were broken; "if that ar young un isn't a limb! I declare for't
+I pity Mis' Pennel,--she don't know what she's undertook. How upon 'arth
+the critter managed to get Mara on to the hay, I'm sure I can't
+tell,--that ar little thing never got into no such scrapes before."
+
+Far from seeming impressed with any wholesome remorse of conscience, the
+little culprit frowned fierce defiance at Miss Ruey, when, after having
+repaired the damages of little Mara's toilet, she essayed the good old
+plan of shutting him into the closet. He fought and struggled so
+fiercely that Aunt Ruey's carroty frisette came off in the skirmish, and
+her head-gear, always rather original, assumed an aspect verging on the
+supernatural. Miss Ruey thought of Philistines and Moabites, and all the
+other terrible people she had been reading about that morning, and came
+as near getting into a passion with the little elf as so good-humored
+and Christian an old body could possibly do. Human virtue is frail, and
+every one has some vulnerable point. The old Roman senator could not
+control himself when his beard was invaded, and the like sensitiveness
+resides in an old woman's cap; and when young master irreverently clawed
+off her Sunday best, Aunt Ruey, in her confusion of mind, administered a
+sound cuff on either ear.
+
+Little Mara, who had screamed loudly through the whole scene, now
+conceiving that her precious new-found treasure was endangered, flew at
+poor Miss Ruey with both little hands; and throwing her arms round her
+"boy," as she constantly called him, she drew him backward, and looked
+defiance at the common enemy. Miss Ruey was dumb-struck.
+
+"I declare for't, I b'lieve he's bewitched her," she said, stupefied,
+having never seen anything like the martial expression which now gleamed
+from those soft brown eyes. "Why, Mara dear,--putty little Mara."
+
+But Mara was busy wiping away the angry tears that stood on the hot,
+glowing cheeks of the boy, and offering her little rosebud of a mouth to
+kiss him, as she stood on tiptoe.
+
+"Poor boy,--no kie,--Mara's boy," she said; "Mara love boy;" and then
+giving an angry glance at Aunt Ruey, who sat much disheartened and
+confused, she struck out her little pearly hand, and cried, "Go way,--go
+way, naughty!"
+
+The child jabbered unintelligibly and earnestly to Mara, and she seemed
+to have the air of being perfectly satisfied with his view of the case,
+and both regarded Miss Ruey with frowning looks. Under these peculiar
+circumstances, the good soul began to bethink her of some mode of
+compromise, and going to the closet took out a couple of slices of cake,
+which she offered to the little rebels with pacificatory words.
+
+Mara was appeased at once, and ran to Aunt Ruey; but the boy struck the
+cake out of her hand, and looked at her with steady defiance. The little
+one picked it up, and with much chippering and many little feminine
+manoeuvres, at last succeeded in making him taste it, after which
+appetite got the better of his valorous resolutions,--he ate and was
+comforted; and after a little time, the three were on the best possible
+footing. And Miss Ruey having smoothed her hair, and arranged her
+frisette and cap, began to reflect upon herself as the cause of the
+whole disturbance. If she had not let them run while she indulged in
+reading and singing, this would not have happened. So the toilful good
+soul kept them at her knee for the next hour or two, while they looked
+through all the pictures in the old family Bible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening of that day witnessed a crowded funeral in the small rooms
+of Captain Kittridge. Mrs. Kittridge was in her glory. Solemn and
+lugubrious to the last degree, she supplied in her own proper person the
+want of the whole corps of mourners, who generally attract sympathy on
+such occasions. But what drew artless pity from all was the unconscious
+orphan, who came in, led by Mrs. Pennel by the one hand, and with the
+little Mara by the other.
+
+The simple rite of baptism administered to the wondering little creature
+so strongly recalled that other scene three years before, that Mrs.
+Pennel hid her face in her handkerchief, and Zephaniah's firm hand shook
+a little as he took the boy to offer him to the rite. The child received
+the ceremony with a look of grave surprise, put up his hand quickly and
+wiped the holy drops from his brow, as if they annoyed him; and
+shrinking back, seized hold of the gown of Mrs. Pennel. His great
+beauty, and, still more, the air of haughty, defiant firmness with which
+he regarded the company, drew all eyes, and many were the whispered
+comments.
+
+"Pennel'll have his hands full with that ar chap," said Captain
+Kittridge to Miss Roxy.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge darted an admonitory glance at her husband, to remind him
+that she was looking at him, and immediately he collapsed into
+solemnity.
+
+The evening sunbeams slanted over the blackberry bushes and mullein
+stalks of the graveyard, when the lonely voyager was lowered to the rest
+from which she should not rise till the heavens be no more. As the
+purple sea at that hour retained no trace of the ships that had furrowed
+its waves, so of this mortal traveler no trace remained, not even in
+that infant soul that was to her so passionately dear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MINISTER
+
+
+Mrs. Kittridge's advantages and immunities resulting from the shipwreck
+were not yet at an end. Not only had one of the most "solemn
+providences" known within the memory of the neighborhood fallen out at
+her door,--not only had the most interesting funeral that had occurred
+for three or four years taken place in her parlor, but she was still
+further to be distinguished in having the minister to tea after the
+performances were all over. To this end she had risen early, and taken
+down her best china tea-cups, which had been marked with her and her
+husband's joint initials in Canton, and which only came forth on high
+and solemn occasions. In view of this probable distinction, on Saturday,
+immediately after the discovery of the calamity, Mrs. Kittridge had
+found time to rush to her kitchen, and make up a loaf of pound-cake and
+some doughnuts, that the great occasion which she foresaw might not find
+her below her reputation as a forehanded housewife.
+
+It was a fine golden hour when the minister and funeral train turned
+away from the grave. Unlike other funerals, there was no draught on the
+sympathies in favor of mourners--no wife, or husband, or parent, left a
+heart in that grave; and so when the rites were all over, they turned
+with the more cheerfulness back into life, from the contrast of its
+freshness with those shadows into which, for the hour, they had been
+gazing.
+
+The Rev. Theophilus Sewell was one of the few ministers who preserved
+the costume of a former generation, with something of that imposing
+dignity with which, in earlier times, the habits of the clergy were
+invested. He was tall and majestic in stature, and carried to advantage
+the powdered wig and three-cornered hat, the broad-skirted coat,
+knee-breeches, high shoes, and plated buckles of the ancient costume.
+There was just a sufficient degree of the formality of olden times to
+give a certain quaintness to all he said and did. He was a man of a
+considerable degree of talent, force, and originality, and in fact had
+been held in his day to be one of the most promising graduates of
+Harvard University. But, being a good man, he had proposed to himself no
+higher ambition than to succeed to the pulpit of his father in
+Harpswell.
+
+His parish included not only a somewhat scattered seafaring population
+on the mainland, but also the care of several islands. Like many other
+of the New England clergy of those times, he united in himself numerous
+different offices for the benefit of the people whom he served. As there
+was neither lawyer nor physician in the town, he had acquired by his
+reading, and still more by his experience, enough knowledge in both
+these departments to enable him to administer to the ordinary wants of a
+very healthy and peaceable people.
+
+It was said that most of the deeds and legal conveyances in his parish
+were in his handwriting, and in the medical line his authority was only
+rivaled by that of Miss Roxy, who claimed a very obvious advantage over
+him in a certain class of cases, from the fact of her being a woman,
+which was still further increased by the circumstance that the good man
+had retained steadfastly his bachelor estate. "So, of course," Miss Roxy
+used to say, "poor man! what could he know about a woman, you know?"
+
+This state of bachelorhood gave occasion to much surmising; but when
+spoken to about it, he was accustomed to remark with gallantry, that he
+should have too much regard for any lady whom he could think of as a
+wife, to ask her to share his straitened circumstances. His income,
+indeed, consisted of only about two hundred dollars a year; but upon
+this he and a very brisk, cheerful maiden sister contrived to keep up a
+thrifty and comfortable establishment, in which everything appeared to
+be pervaded by a spirit of quaint cheerfulness.
+
+In fact, the man might be seen to be an original in his way, and all the
+springs of his life were kept oiled by a quiet humor, which sometimes
+broke out in playful sparkles, despite the gravity of the pulpit and the
+awfulness of the cocked hat. He had a placid way of amusing himself with
+the quaint and picturesque side of life, as it appeared in all his
+visitings among a very primitive, yet very shrewd-minded people.
+
+There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of mingling in the
+affairs of this life as spectators as well as actors. It does not, of
+course, suppose any coldness of nature or want of human interest or
+sympathy--nay, it often exists most completely with people of the
+tenderest human feeling. It rather seems to be a kind of distinct
+faculty working harmoniously with all the others; but he who possesses
+it needs never to be at a loss for interest or amusement; he is always a
+spectator at a tragedy or comedy, and sees in real life a humor and a
+pathos beyond anything he can find shadowed in books.
+
+Mr. Sewell sometimes, in his pastoral visitations, took a quiet pleasure
+in playing upon these simple minds, and amusing himself with the odd
+harmonies and singular resolutions of chords which started out under his
+fingers. Surely he had a right to something in addition to his limited
+salary, and this innocent, unsuspected entertainment helped to make up
+the balance for his many labors.
+
+His sister was one of the best-hearted and most unsuspicious of the
+class of female idolaters, and worshiped her brother with the most
+undoubting faith and devotion--wholly ignorant of the constant amusement
+she gave him by a thousand little feminine peculiarities, which struck
+him with a continual sense of oddity. It was infinitely diverting to him
+to see the solemnity of her interest in his shirts and stockings, and
+Sunday clothes, and to listen to the subtle distinctions which she would
+draw between best and second-best, and every-day; to receive her
+somewhat prolix admonition how he was to demean himself in respect of
+the wearing of each one; for Miss Emily Sewell was a gentlewoman, and
+held rigidly to various traditions of gentility which had been handed
+down in the Sewell family, and which afforded her brother too much quiet
+amusement to be disturbed. He would not have overthrown one of her
+quiddities for the world; it would be taking away a part of his capital
+in existence.
+
+Miss Emily was a trim, genteel little person, with dancing black eyes,
+and cheeks which had the roses of youth well dried into them. It was
+easy to see that she had been quite pretty in her days; and her neat
+figure, her brisk little vivacious ways, her unceasing good-nature and
+kindness of heart, still made her an object both of admiration and
+interest in the parish. She was great in drying herbs and preparing
+recipes; in knitting and sewing, and cutting and contriving; in saving
+every possible snip and chip either of food or clothing; and no less
+liberal was she in bestowing advice and aid in the parish, where she
+moved about with all the sense of consequence which her brother's
+position warranted.
+
+The fact of his bachelorhood caused his relations to the female part of
+his flock to be even more shrouded in sacredness and mystery than is
+commonly the case with the great man of the parish; but Miss Emily
+delighted to act as interpreter. She was charmed to serve out to the
+willing ears of his parish from time to time such scraps of information
+as regarded his life, habits, and opinions as might gratify their ever
+new curiosity. Instructed by her, all the good wives knew the difference
+between his very best long silk stocking and his second best, and how
+carefully the first had to be kept under lock and key, where he could
+not get at them; for he was understood, good as he was, to have
+concealed in him all the thriftless and pernicious inconsiderateness of
+the male nature, ready at any moment to break out into unheard-of
+improprieties. But the good man submitted himself to Miss Emily's rule,
+and suffered himself to be led about by her with an air of half
+whimsical consciousness.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge that day had felt the full delicacy of the compliment
+when she ascertained by a hasty glance, before the first prayer, that
+the good man had been brought out to her funeral in all his very best
+things, not excepting the long silk stockings, for she knew the
+second-best pair by means of a certain skillful darn which Miss Emily
+had once shown her, which commemorated the spot where a hole had been.
+The absence of this darn struck to Mrs. Kittridge's heart at once as a
+delicate attention.
+
+"Mis' Simpkins," said Mrs. Kittridge to her pastor, as they were seated
+at the tea-table, "told me that she wished when you were going home that
+you would call in to see Mary Jane; she couldn't come out to the funeral
+on account of a dreffle sore throat. I was tellin' on her to gargle it
+with blackberry-root tea--don't you think that is a good gargle, Mr.
+Sewell?"
+
+"Yes, I think it a very good gargle," replied the minister, gravely.
+
+"Ma'sh rosemary is the gargle that I always use," said Miss Roxy; "it
+cleans out your throat so."
+
+"Marsh rosemary is a very excellent gargle," said Mr. Sewell.
+
+"Why, brother, don't you think that rose leaves and vitriol is a good
+gargle?" said little Miss Emily; "I always thought that you liked rose
+leaves and vitriol for a gargle."
+
+"So I do," said the imperturbable Mr. Sewell, drinking his tea with the
+air of a sphinx.
+
+"Well, now, you'll have to tell which on 'em will be most likely to cure
+Mary Jane," said Captain Kittridge, "or there'll be a pullin' of caps,
+I'm thinkin'; or else the poor girl will have to drink them all, which
+is generally the way."
+
+"There won't any of them cure Mary Jane's throat," said the minister,
+quietly.
+
+"Why, brother!" "Why, Mr. Sewell!" "Why, you don't!" burst in different
+tones from each of the women.
+
+"I thought you said that blackberry-root tea was good," said Mrs.
+Kittridge.
+
+"I understood that you 'proved of ma'sh rosemary," said Miss Roxy,
+touched in her professional pride.
+
+"And I am sure, brother, that I have heard you say, often and often,
+that there wasn't a better gargle than rose leaves and vitriol," said
+Miss Emily.
+
+"You are quite right, ladies, all of you. I think these are all good
+gargles--excellent ones."
+
+"But I thought you said that they didn't do any good?" said all the
+ladies in a breath.
+
+"No, they don't--not the least in the world," said Mr. Sewell; "but they
+are all excellent gargles, and as long as people must have gargles, I
+think one is about as good as another."
+
+"Now you have got it," said Captain Kittridge.
+
+"Brother, you do say the strangest things," said Miss Emily.
+
+"Well, I must say," said Miss Roxy, "it is a new idea to me, long as
+I've been nussin', and I nussed through one season of scarlet fever
+when sometimes there was five died in one house; and if ma'sh rosemary
+didn't do good then, I should like to know what did."
+
+"So would a good many others," said the minister.
+
+"Law, now, Miss Roxy, you mus'n't mind him. Do you know that I believe
+he says these sort of things just to hear us talk? Of course he wouldn't
+think of puttin' his experience against yours."
+
+"But, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Emily, with a view of summoning a less
+controverted subject, "what a beautiful little boy that was, and what a
+striking providence that brought him into such a good family!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Kittridge; "but I'm sure I don't see what Mary Pennel
+is goin' to do with that boy, for she ain't got no more government than
+a twisted tow-string."
+
+"Oh, the Cap'n, he'll lend a hand," said Miss Roxy, "it won't be easy
+gettin' roun' him; Cap'n bears a pretty steady hand when he sets out to
+drive."
+
+"Well," said Miss Emily, "I do think that bringin' up children is the
+most awful responsibility, and I always wonder when I hear that any one
+dares to undertake it."
+
+"It requires a great deal of resolution, certainly," said Mrs.
+Kittridge; "I'm sure I used to get a'most discouraged when my boys was
+young: they was a reg'lar set of wild ass's colts," she added, not
+perceiving the reflection on their paternity.
+
+But the countenance of Mr. Sewell was all aglow with merriment, which
+did not break into a smile.
+
+"Wal', Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "strikes me that you're
+gettin' pussonal."
+
+"No, I ain't neither," said the literal Mrs. Kittridge, ignorant of the
+cause of the amusement which she saw around her; "but you wa'n't no help
+to me, you know; you was always off to sea, and the whole wear and tear
+on't came on me."
+
+"Well, well, Polly, all's well that ends well; don't you think so, Mr.
+Sewell?"
+
+"I haven't much experience in these matters," said Mr. Sewell, politely.
+
+"No, indeed, that's what he hasn't, for he never will have a child round
+the house that he don't turn everything topsy-turvy for them," said Miss
+Emily.
+
+"But I was going to remark," said Mr. Sewell, "that a friend of mine
+said once, that the woman that had brought up six boys deserved a seat
+among the martyrs; and that is rather my opinion."
+
+"Wal', Polly, if you git up there, I hope you'll keep a seat for me."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, what levity!" said his wife.
+
+"I didn't begin it, anyhow," said the Captain.
+
+Miss Emily interposed, and led the conversation back to the subject.
+"What a pity it is," she said, "that this poor child's family can never
+know anything about him. There may be those who would give all the world
+to know what has become of him; and when he comes to grow up, how sad he
+will feel to have no father and mother!"
+
+"Sister," said Mr. Sewell, "you cannot think that a child brought up by
+Captain Pennel and his wife would ever feel as without father and
+mother."
+
+"Why, no, brother, to be sure not. There's no doubt he will have
+everything done for him that a child could. But then it's a loss to lose
+one's real home."
+
+"It may be a gracious deliverance," said Mr. Sewell--"who knows? We may
+as well take a cheerful view, and think that some kind wave has drifted
+the child away from an unfortunate destiny to a family where we are
+quite sure he will be brought up industriously and soberly, and in the
+fear of God."
+
+"Well, I never thought of that," said Miss Roxy.
+
+Miss Emily, looking at her brother, saw that he was speaking with a
+suppressed vehemence, as if some inner fountain of recollection at the
+moment were disturbed. But Miss Emily knew no more of the deeper parts
+of her brother's nature than a little bird that dips its beak into the
+sunny waters of some spring knows of its depths of coldness and shadow.
+
+"Mis' Pennel was a-sayin' to me," said Mrs. Kittridge, "that I should
+ask you what was to be done about the bracelet they found. We don't know
+whether 'tis real gold and precious stones, or only glass and pinchbeck.
+Cap'n Kittridge he thinks it's real; and if 'tis, why then the question
+is, whether or no to try to sell it, or keep it for the boy agin he
+grows up. It may help find out who and what he is."
+
+"And why should he want to find out?" said Mr. Sewell. "Why should he
+not grow up and think himself the son of Captain and Mrs. Pennel? What
+better lot could a boy be born to?"
+
+"That may be, brother, but it can't be kept from him. Everybody knows
+how he was found, and you may be sure every bird of the air will tell
+him, and he'll grow up restless and wanting to know. Mis' Kittridge,
+have you got the bracelet handy?"
+
+The fact was, little Miss Emily was just dying with curiosity to set her
+dancing black eyes upon it.
+
+"Here it is," said Mrs. Kittridge, taking it from a drawer.
+
+It was a bracelet of hair, of some curious foreign workmanship. A green
+enameled serpent, studded thickly with emeralds and with eyes of ruby,
+was curled around the clasp. A crystal plate covered a wide flat braid
+of hair, on which the letters "D.M." were curiously embroidered in a
+cipher of seed pearls. The whole was in style and workmanship quite
+different from any jewelry which ordinarily meets one's eye.
+
+But what was remarkable was the expression in Mr. Sewell's face when
+this bracelet was put into his hand. Miss Emily had risen from table and
+brought it to him, leaning over him as she did so, and he turned his
+head a little to hold it in the light from the window, so that only she
+remarked the sudden expression of blank surprise and startled
+recognition which fell upon it. He seemed like a man who chokes down an
+exclamation; and rising hastily, he took the bracelet to the window, and
+standing with his back to the company, seemed to examine it with the
+minutest interest. After a few moments he turned and said, in a very
+composed tone, as if the subject were of no particular interest,--
+
+"It is a singular article, so far as workmanship is concerned. The value
+of the gems in themselves is not great enough to make it worth while to
+sell it. It will be worth more as a curiosity than anything else. It
+will doubtless be an interesting relic to keep for the boy when he grows
+up."
+
+"Well, Mr. Sewell, you keep it," said Mrs. Kittridge; "the Pennels told
+me to give it into your care."
+
+"I shall commit it to Emily here; women have a native sympathy with
+anything in the jewelry line. She'll be sure to lay it up so securely
+that she won't even know where it is herself."
+
+"Brother!"
+
+"Come, Emily," said Mr. Sewell, "your hens will all go to roost on the
+wrong perch if you are not at home to see to them; so, if the Captain
+will set us across to Harpswell, I think we may as well be going."
+
+"Why, what's your hurry?" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Sewell, "firstly, there's the hens; secondly, the pigs;
+and lastly, the cow. Besides I shouldn't wonder if some of Emily's
+admirers should call on her this evening,--never any saying when Captain
+Broad may come in."
+
+"Now, brother, you are too bad," said Miss Emily, as she bustled about
+her bonnet and shawl. "Now, that's all made up out of whole cloth.
+Captain Broad called last week a Monday, to talk to you about the pews,
+and hardly spoke a word to me. You oughtn't to say such things, 'cause
+it raises reports."
+
+"Ah, well, then, I won't again," said her brother. "I believe, after
+all, it was Captain Badger that called twice."
+
+"Brother!"
+
+"And left you a basket of apples the second time."
+
+"Brother, you know he only called to get some of my hoarhound for
+Mehitable's cough."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember."
+
+"If you don't take care," said Miss Emily, "I'll tell where you call."
+
+"Come, Miss Emily, you must not mind him," said Miss Roxy; "we all know
+his ways."
+
+And now took place the grand leave-taking, which consisted first of the
+three women's standing in a knot and all talking at once, as if their
+very lives depended upon saying everything they could possibly think of
+before they separated, while Mr. Sewell and Captain Kittridge stood
+patiently waiting with the resigned air which the male sex commonly
+assume on such occasions; and when, after two or three "Come, Emily's,"
+the group broke up only to form again on the door-step, where they were
+at it harder than ever, and a third occasion of the same sort took place
+at the bottom of the steps, Mr. Sewell was at last obliged by main force
+to drag his sister away in the middle of a sentence.
+
+Miss Emily watched her brother shrewdly all the way home, but all traces
+of any uncommon feeling had passed away; and yet, with the restlessness
+of female curiosity, she felt quite sure that she had laid hold of the
+end of some skein of mystery, could she only find skill enough to unwind
+it.
+
+She took up the bracelet, and held it in the fading evening light, and
+broke into various observations with regard to the singularity of the
+workmanship. Her brother seemed entirely absorbed in talking with
+Captain Kittridge about the brig Anna Maria, which was going to be
+launched from Pennel's wharf next Wednesday. But she, therefore,
+internally resolved to lie in wait for the secret in that confidential
+hour which usually preceded going to bed. Therefore, as soon as she had
+arrived at their quiet dwelling, she put in operation the most seducing
+little fire that ever crackled and snapped in a chimney, well knowing
+that nothing was more calculated to throw light into any hidden or
+concealed chamber of the soul than that enlivening blaze, which danced
+so merrily on her well-polished andirons, and made the old chintz sofa
+and the time-worn furniture so rich in remembrances of family comfort.
+
+She then proceeded to divest her brother of his wig and his dress-coat,
+and to induct him into the flowing ease of a study-gown, crowning his
+well-shaven head with a black cap, and placing his slippers before the
+corner of a sofa nearest the fire. She observed him with satisfaction
+sliding into his seat, and then she trotted to a closet with a glass
+door in the corner of the room, and took down an old, quaintly-shaped
+silver cup, which had been an heirloom in their family, and was the only
+piece of plate which their modern domestic establishment could boast;
+and with this, down cellar she tripped, her little heels tapping lightly
+on each stair, and the hum of a song coming back after her as she sought
+the cider-barrel. Up again she came, and set the silver cup, with its
+clear amber contents, down by the fire, and then busied herself in
+making just the crispest, nicest square of toast to be eaten with it;
+for Miss Emily had conceived the idea that some little ceremony of this
+sort was absolutely necessary to do away all possible ill effects from a
+day's labor, and secure an uninterrupted night's repose. Having done
+all this, she took her knitting-work, and stationed herself just
+opposite to her brother.
+
+It was fortunate for Miss Emily that the era of daily journals had not
+yet arisen upon the earth, because if it had, after all her care and
+pains, her brother would probably have taken up the evening paper, and
+holding it between his face and her, have read an hour or so in silence;
+but Mr. Sewell had not this resort. He knew perfectly well that he had
+excited his sister's curiosity on a subject where he could not gratify
+it, and therefore he took refuge in a kind of mild, abstracted air of
+quietude which bid defiance to all her little suggestions.
+
+After in vain trying every indirect form, Miss Emily approached the
+subject more pointedly. "I thought that you looked very much interested
+in that poor woman to-day."
+
+"She had an interesting face," said her brother, dryly.
+
+"Was it like anybody that you ever saw?" said Miss Emily.
+
+Her brother did not seem to hear her, but, taking the tongs, picked up
+the two ends of a stick that had just fallen apart, and arranged them so
+as to make a new blaze.
+
+Miss Emily was obliged to repeat her question, whereat he started as one
+awakened out of a dream, and said,--
+
+"Why, yes, he didn't know but she did; there were a good many women with
+black eyes and black hair,--Mrs. Kittridge, for instance."
+
+"Why, I don't think that she looked like Mrs. Kittridge in the least,"
+said Miss Emily, warmly.
+
+"Oh, well! I didn't say she did," said her brother, looking drowsily at
+his watch; "why, Emily, it's getting rather late."
+
+"What made you look so when I showed you that bracelet?" said Miss
+Emily, determined now to push the war to the heart of the enemy's
+country.
+
+"Look how?" said her brother, leisurely moistening a bit of toast in his
+cider.
+
+"Why, I never saw anybody look more wild and astonished than you did for
+a minute or two."
+
+"I did, did I?" said her brother, in the same indifferent tone. "My dear
+child, what an active imagination you have. Did you ever look through a
+prism, Emily?"
+
+"Why, no, Theophilus; what do you mean?"
+
+"Well, if you should, you would see everybody and everything with a nice
+little bordering of rainbow around them; now the rainbow isn't on the
+things, but in the prism."
+
+"Well, what's that to the purpose?" said Miss Emily, rather bewildered.
+
+"Why, just this: you women are so nervous and excitable, that you are
+very apt to see your friends and the world in general with some coloring
+just as unreal. I am sorry for you, childie, but really I can't help you
+to get up a romance out of this bracelet. Well, good-night, Emily; take
+good care of yourself and go to bed;" and Mr. Sewell went to his room,
+leaving poor Miss Emily almost persuaded out of the sight of her own
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LITTLE ADVENTURERS
+
+
+The little boy who had been added to the family of Zephaniah Pennel and
+his wife soon became a source of grave solicitude to that mild and
+long-suffering woman. For, as the reader may have seen, he was a
+resolute, self-willed little elf, and whatever his former life may have
+been, it was quite evident that these traits had been developed without
+any restraint.
+
+Mrs. Pennel, whose whole domestic experience had consisted in rearing
+one very sensitive and timid daughter, who needed for her development
+only an extreme of tenderness, and whose conscientiousness was a law
+unto herself, stood utterly confounded before the turbulent little
+spirit to which her loving-kindness had opened so ready an asylum, and
+she soon discovered that it is one thing to take a human being to bring
+up, and another to know what to do with it after it is taken.
+
+The child had the instinctive awe of Zephaniah which his manly nature
+and habits of command were fitted to inspire, so that morning and
+evening, when he was at home, he was demure enough; but while the good
+man was away all day, and sometimes on fishing excursions which often
+lasted a week, there was a chronic state of domestic warfare--a
+succession of skirmishes, pitched battles, long treaties, with divers
+articles of capitulation, ending, as treaties are apt to do, in open
+rupture on the first convenient opportunity.
+
+Mrs. Pennel sometimes reflected with herself mournfully, and with many
+self-disparaging sighs, what was the reason that young master somehow
+contrived to keep her far more in awe of him than he was of her. Was she
+not evidently, as yet at least, bigger and stronger than he, able to
+hold his rebellious little hands, to lift and carry him, and to shut him
+up, if so she willed, in a dark closet, and even to administer to him
+that discipline of the birch which Mrs. Kittridge often and forcibly
+recommended as the great secret of her family prosperity? Was it not her
+duty, as everybody told her, to break his will while he was young?--a
+duty which hung like a millstone round the peaceable creature's neck,
+and weighed her down with a distressing sense of responsibility.
+
+Now, Mrs. Pennel was one of the people to whom self-sacrifice is
+constitutionally so much a nature, that self-denial for her must have
+consisted in standing up for her own rights, or having her own way when
+it crossed the will and pleasure of any one around her. All she wanted
+of a child, or in fact of any human creature, was something to love and
+serve. We leave it entirely to theologians to reconcile such facts with
+the theory of total depravity; but it is a fact that there are a
+considerable number of women of this class. Their life would flow on
+very naturally if it might consist only in giving, never in
+withholding--only in praise, never in blame--only in acquiescence, never
+in conflict; and the chief comfort of such women in religion is that it
+gives them at last an object for love without criticism, and for whom
+the utmost degree of self-abandonment is not idolatry, but worship.
+
+Mrs. Pennel would gladly have placed herself and all she possessed at
+the disposition of the children; they might have broken her china, dug
+in the garden with her silver spoons, made turf alleys in her best room,
+drummed on her mahogany tea-table, filled her muslin drawer with their
+choicest shells and seaweed; only Mrs. Pennel knew that such kindness
+was no kindness, and that in the dreadful word responsibility, familiar
+to every New England mother's ear, there lay an awful summons to deny
+and to conflict where she could so much easier have conceded.
+
+She saw that the tyrant little will would reign without mercy, if it
+reigned at all; and ever present with her was the uneasy sense that it
+was her duty to bring this erratic little comet within the laws of a
+well-ordered solar system,--a task to which she felt about as competent
+as to make a new ring for Saturn. Then, too, there was a secret feeling,
+if the truth must be told, of what Mrs. Kittridge would think about it;
+for duty is never more formidable than when she gets on the cap and gown
+of a neighbor; and Mrs. Kittridge, with her resolute voice and
+declamatory family government, had always been a secret source of
+uneasiness to poor Mrs. Pennel, who was one of those sensitive souls who
+can feel for a mile or more the sphere of a stronger neighbor. During
+all the years that they had lived side by side, there had been this
+shadowy, unconfessed feeling on the part of poor Mrs. Pennel, that Mrs.
+Kittridge thought her deficient in her favorite virtue of "resolution,"
+as, in fact, in her inmost soul she knew she was;--but who wants to have
+one's weak places looked into by the sharp eyes of a neighbor who is
+strong precisely where we are weak? The trouble that one neighbor may
+give to another, simply by living within a mile of one, is incredible;
+but until this new accession to her family, Mrs. Pennel had always been
+able to comfort herself with the idea that the child under her
+particular training was as well-behaved as any of those of her more
+demonstrative friend. But now, all this consolation had been put to
+flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge without most humiliating
+recollections.
+
+On Sundays, when those sharp black eyes gleamed upon her through the
+rails of the neighboring pew, her very soul shrank within her, as she
+recollected all the compromises and defeats of the week before. It
+seemed to her that Mrs. Kittridge saw it all,--how she had ingloriously
+bought peace with gingerbread, instead of maintaining it by rightful
+authority,--how young master had sat up till nine o'clock on divers
+occasions, and even kept little Mara up for his lordly pleasure.
+
+How she trembled at every movement of the child in the pew, dreading
+some patent and open impropriety which should bring scandal on her
+government! This was the more to be feared, as the first effort to
+initiate the youthful neophyte in the decorums of the sanctuary had
+proved anything but a success,--insomuch that Zephaniah Pennel had been
+obliged to carry him out from the church; therefore, poor Mrs. Pennel
+was thankful every Sunday when she got her little charge home without
+any distinct scandal and breach of the peace.
+
+But, after all, he was such a handsome and engaging little wretch,
+attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so full of saucy drolleries,
+that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that everything and everybody conspired to
+help her spoil him. There are two classes of human beings in this world:
+one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. Now Mrs.
+Pennel and Mara belonged to the first class, and little Master Moses to
+the latter.
+
+It was, perhaps, of service to the little girl to give to her delicate,
+shrinking, highly nervous organization the constant support of a
+companion so courageous, so richly blooded, and highly vitalized as the
+boy seemed to be. There was a fervid, tropical richness in his air that
+gave one a sense of warmth in looking at him, and made his Oriental name
+seem in good-keeping. He seemed an exotic that might have waked up under
+fervid Egyptian suns, and been found cradled among the lotus blossoms of
+old Nile; and the fair golden-haired girl seemed to be gladdened by his
+companionship, as if he supplied an element of vital warmth to her
+being. She seemed to incline toward him as naturally as a needle to a
+magnet.
+
+The child's quickness of ear and the facility with which he picked up
+English were marvelous to observe. Evidently, he had been somewhat
+accustomed to the sound of it before, for there dropped out of his
+vocabulary, after he began to speak, phrases which would seem to betoken
+a longer familiarity with its idioms than could be equally accounted for
+by his present experience. Though the English evidently was not his
+native language, there had yet apparently been some effort to teach it
+to him, although the terror and confusion of the shipwreck seemed at
+first to have washed every former impression from his mind.
+
+But whenever any attempt was made to draw him to speak of the past, of
+his mother, or of where he came from, his brow lowered gloomily, and he
+assumed that kind of moody, impenetrable gravity, which children at
+times will so strangely put on, and which baffle all attempts to look
+within them. Zephaniah Pennel used to call it putting up his
+dead-lights. Perhaps it was the dreadful association of agony and terror
+connected with the shipwreck, that thus confused and darkened the mirror
+of his mind the moment it was turned backward; but it was thought wisest
+by his new friends to avoid that class of subjects altogether--indeed,
+it was their wish that he might forget the past entirely, and remember
+them as his only parents.
+
+Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey came duly, as appointed, to initiate the young
+pilgrim into the habiliments of a Yankee boy, endeavoring, at the same
+time, to drop into his mind such seeds of moral wisdom as might make the
+internal economy in time correspond to the exterior. But Miss Roxy
+declared that "of all the children that ever she see, he beat all for
+finding out new mischief,--the moment you'd make him understand he
+mustn't do one thing, he was right at another."
+
+One of his exploits, however, had very nearly been the means of cutting
+short the materials of our story in the outset.
+
+It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the three women, being busy together
+with their stitching, had tied a sun-bonnet on little Mara, and turned
+the two loose upon the beach to pick up shells. All was serene, and
+quiet, and retired, and no possible danger could be apprehended. So up
+and down they trotted, till the spirit of adventure which ever burned in
+the breast of little Moses caught sight of a small canoe which had been
+moored just under the shadow of a cedar-covered rock. Forthwith he
+persuaded his little neighbor to go into it, and for a while they made
+themselves very gay, rocking it from side to side.
+
+The tide was going out, and each retreating wave washed the boat up and
+down, till it came into the boy's curly head how beautiful it would be
+to sail out as he had seen men do,--and so, with much puffing and
+earnest tugging of his little brown hands, the boat at last was loosed
+from her moorings and pushed out on the tide, when both children laughed
+gayly to find themselves swinging and balancing on the amber surface,
+and watching the rings and sparkles of sunshine and the white pebbles
+below. Little Moses was glorious,--his adventures had begun,--and with a
+fairy-princess in his boat, he was going to stretch away to some of the
+islands of dreamland. He persuaded Mara to give him her pink sun-bonnet,
+which he placed for a pennon on a stick at the end of the boat, while he
+made a vehement dashing with another, first on one side of the boat and
+then on the other,--spattering the water in diamond showers, to the
+infinite amusement of the little maiden.
+
+Meanwhile the tide waves danced them out and still outward, and as they
+went farther and farther from shore, the more glorious felt the boy. He
+had got Mara all to himself, and was going away with her from all grown
+people, who wouldn't let children do as they pleased,--who made them sit
+still in prayer-time, and took them to meeting, and kept so many things
+which they must not touch, or open, or play with. Two white sea-gulls
+came flying toward the children, and they stretched their little arms in
+welcome, nothing doubting but these fair creatures were coming at once
+to take passage with them for fairy-land. But the birds only dived and
+shifted and veered, turning their silvery sides toward the sun, and
+careering in circles round the children. A brisk little breeze, that
+came hurrying down from the land, seemed disposed to favor their
+unsubstantial enterprise,--for your winds, being a fanciful, uncertain
+tribe of people, are always for falling in with anything that is
+contrary to common sense. So the wind trolled them merrily along,
+nothing doubting that there might be time, if they hurried, to land
+their boat on the shore of some of the low-banked red clouds that lay in
+the sunset, where they could pick up shells,--blue and pink and
+purple,--enough to make them rich for life. The children were all
+excitement at the rapidity with which their little bark danced and
+rocked, as it floated outward to the broad, open ocean; at the blue,
+freshening waves, at the silver-glancing gulls, at the floating,
+white-winged ships, and at vague expectations of going rapidly
+somewhere, to something more beautiful still. And what is the happiness
+of the brightest hours of grown people more than this?
+
+"Roxy," said Aunt Ruey innocently, "seems to me I haven't heard nothin'
+o' them children lately. They're so still, I'm 'fraid there's some
+mischief."
+
+"Well, Ruey, you jist go and give a look at 'em," said Miss Roxy. "I
+declare, that boy! I never know what he will do next; but there didn't
+seem to be nothin' to get into out there but the sea, and the beach is
+so shelving, a body can't well fall into that."
+
+Alas! good Miss Roxy, the children are at this moment tilting up and
+down on the waves, half a mile out to sea, as airily happy as the
+sea-gulls; and little Moses now thinks, with glorious scorn, of you and
+your press-board, as of grim shadows of restraint and bondage that shall
+never darken his free life more.
+
+Both Miss Roxy and Mrs. Pennel were, however, startled into a paroxysm
+of alarm when poor Miss Ruey came screaming, as she entered the door,--
+
+"As sure as you're alive, them chil'en are off in the boat,--they're out
+to sea, sure as I'm alive! What shall we do? The boat'll upset, and the
+sharks'll get 'em."
+
+Miss Roxy ran to the window, and saw dancing and courtesying on the blue
+waves the little pinnace, with its fanciful pink pennon fluttered gayly
+by the indiscreet and flattering wind.
+
+Poor Mrs. Pennel ran to the shore, and stretched her arms wildly, as if
+she would have followed them across the treacherous blue floor that
+heaved and sparkled between them.
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara! Oh, my poor little girl! Oh, poor children!"
+
+"Well, if ever I see such a young un as that," soliloquized Miss Roxy
+from the chamber-window; "there they be, dancin' and giggitin' about;
+they'll have the boat upset in a minit, and the sharks are waitin' for
+'em, no doubt. _I_ b'lieve that ar young un's helped by the Evil
+One,--not a boat round, else I'd push off after 'em. Well, I don't see
+but we must trust in the Lord,--there don't seem to be much else to
+trust to," said the spinster, as she drew her head in grimly.
+
+To say the truth, there was some reason for the terror of these most
+fearful suggestions; for not far from the place where the children
+embarked was Zephaniah's fish-drying ground, and multitudes of sharks
+came up with every rising tide, allured by the offal that was here
+constantly thrown into the sea. Two of these prowlers, outward-bound
+from their quest, were even now assiduously attending the little boat,
+and the children derived no small amusement from watching their motions
+in the pellucid water,--the boy occasionally almost upsetting the boat
+by valorous plunges at them with his stick. It was the most exhilarating
+and piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and little Mara
+laughed in chorus at every lunge that he made.
+
+What would have been the end of it all, it is difficult to say, had not
+some mortal power interfered before they had sailed finally away into
+the sunset. But it so happened, on this very afternoon, Rev. Mr. Sewell
+was out in a boat, busy in the very apostolic employment of catching
+fish, and looking up from one of the contemplative pauses which his
+occupation induced, he rubbed his eyes at the apparition which presented
+itself. A tiny little shell of a boat came drifting toward him, in which
+was a black-eyed boy, with cheeks like a pomegranate and lustrous
+tendrils of silky dark hair, and a little golden-haired girl, white as a
+water-lily, and looking ethereal enough to have risen out of the
+sea-foam. Both were in the very sparkle and effervescence of that
+fanciful glee which bubbles up from the golden, untried fountains of
+early childhood. Mr. Sewell, at a glance, comprehended the whole, and at
+once overhauling the tiny craft, he broke the spell of fairy-land, and
+constrained the little people to return to the confines, dull and
+dreary, of real and actual life.
+
+Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous trance of
+forbidden pleasure which shadowed with so many fears the wiser and more
+far-seeing heads and hearts of the grown people; nor was there enough
+language yet in common between the two classes to make the little ones
+comprehend the risk they had run. Perhaps so do our elder brothers, in
+our Father's house, look anxiously out when we are sailing gayly over
+life's sea,--over unknown depths,--amid threatening monsters,--but want
+words to tell us why what seems so bright is so dangerous.
+
+Duty herself could not have worn a more rigid aspect than Miss Roxy, as
+she stood on the beach, press-board in hand; for she had forgotten to
+lay it down in the eagerness of her anxiety. She essayed to lay hold of
+the little hand of Moses to pull him from the boat, but he drew back,
+and, looking at her with a world of defiance in his great eyes, jumped
+magnanimously upon the beach. The spirit of Sir Francis Drake and of
+Christopher Columbus was swelling in his little body, and was he to be
+brought under by a dry-visaged woman with a press-board? In fact,
+nothing is more ludicrous about the escapades of children than the utter
+insensibility they feel to the dangers they have run, and the light
+esteem in which they hold the deep tragedy they create.
+
+That night, when Zephaniah, in his evening exercise, poured forth most
+fervent thanksgivings for the deliverance, while Mrs. Pennel was sobbing
+in her handkerchief, Miss Roxy was much scandalized by seeing the young
+cause of all the disturbance sitting upon his heels, regarding the
+emotion of the kneeling party with his wide bright eyes, without a wink
+of compunction.
+
+"Well, for her part," she said, "she hoped Cap'n Pennel would be blessed
+in takin' that ar boy; but she was sure she didn't see much that looked
+like it now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Rev. Mr. Sewell fished no more that day, for the draught from
+fairy-land with which he had filled his boat brought up many thoughts
+into his mind, which he pondered anxiously.
+
+"Strange ways of God," he thought, "that should send to my door this
+child, and should wash upon the beach the only sign by which he could be
+identified. To what end or purpose? Hath the Lord a will in this
+matter, and what is it?"
+
+So he thought as he slowly rowed homeward, and so did his thoughts work
+upon him that half way across the bay to Harpswell he slackened his oar
+without knowing it, and the boat lay drifting on the purple and
+gold-tinted mirror, like a speck between two eternities. Under such
+circumstances, even heads that have worn the clerical wig for years at
+times get a little dizzy and dreamy. Perhaps it was because of the
+impression made upon him by the sudden apparition of those great dark
+eyes and sable curls, that he now thought of the boy that he had found
+floating that afternoon, looking as if some tropical flower had been
+washed landward by a monsoon; and as the boat rocked and tilted, and the
+minister gazed dreamily downward into the wavering rings of purple,
+orange, and gold which spread out and out from it, gradually it seemed
+to him that a face much like the child's formed itself in the waters;
+but it was the face of a girl, young and radiantly beautiful, yet with
+those same eyes and curls,--he saw her distinctly, with her thousand
+rings of silky hair, bound with strings of pearls and clasped with
+strange gems, and she raised one arm imploringly to him, and on the
+wrist he saw the bracelet embroidered with seed pearls, and the letters
+D.M. "Ah, Dolores," he said, "well wert thou called so. Poor Dolores! I
+cannot help thee."
+
+"What am I dreaming of?" said the Rev. Mr. Sewell. "It is my Thursday
+evening lecture on Justification, and Emily has got tea ready, and here
+I am catching cold out on the bay."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SEA TALES
+
+
+Mr. Sewell, as the reader may perhaps have inferred, was of a nature
+profoundly secretive. It was in most things quite as pleasant for him to
+keep matters to himself, as it was to Miss Emily to tell them to
+somebody else. She resembled more than anything one of those trotting,
+chattering little brooks that enliven the "back lot" of many a New
+England home, while he was like one of those wells you shall sometimes
+see by a deserted homestead, so long unused that ferns and lichens
+feather every stone down to the dark, cool water.
+
+Dear to him was the stillness and coolness of inner thoughts with which
+no stranger intermeddles; dear to him every pendent fern-leaf of memory,
+every dripping moss of old recollection; and though the waters of his
+soul came up healthy and refreshing enough when one really must have
+them, yet one had to go armed with bucket and line and draw them
+up,--they never flowed. One of his favorite maxims was, that the only
+way to keep a secret was never to let any one suspect that you have one.
+And as he had one now, he had, as you have seen, done his best to baffle
+and put to sleep the feminine curiosity of his sister.
+
+He rather wanted to tell her, too, for he was a good-natured brother,
+and would have liked to have given her the amount of pleasure the
+confidence would have produced; but then he reflected with dismay on the
+number of women in his parish with whom Miss Emily was on tea-drinking
+terms,--he thought of the wondrous solvent powers of that beverage in
+whose amber depths so many resolutions yea, and solemn vows, of utter
+silence have been dissolved like Cleopatra's pearls. He knew that an
+infusion of his secret would steam up from every cup of tea Emily should
+drink for six months to come, till gradually every particle would be
+dissolved and float in the air of common fame. No; it would not do.
+
+You would have thought, however, that something was the matter with Mr.
+Sewell, had you seen him after he retired for the night, after he had so
+very indifferently dismissed the subject of Miss Emily's inquiries. For
+instead of retiring quietly to bed, as had been his habit for years at
+that hour, he locked his door, and then unlocked a desk of private
+papers, and emptied certain pigeon-holes of their contents, and for an
+hour or two sat unfolding and looking over old letters and papers; and
+when all this was done, he pushed them from him, and sat for a long time
+buried in thoughts which went down very, very deep into that dark and
+mossy well of which we have spoken.
+
+Then he took a pen and wrote a letter, and addressed it to a direction
+for which he had searched through many piles of paper, and having done
+so, seemed to ponder, uncertainly, whether to send it or not. The
+Harpswell post-office was kept in Mr. Silas Perrit's store, and the
+letters were every one of them carefully and curiously investigated by
+all the gossips of the village, and as this was addressed to St.
+Augustine in Florida, he foresaw that before Sunday the news would be in
+every mouth in the parish that the minister had written to so and so in
+Florida, "and what do you s'pose it's about?"
+
+"No, no," he said to himself, "that will never do; but at all events
+there is no hurry," and he put back the papers in order, put the letter
+with them, and locking his desk, looked at his watch and found it to be
+two o'clock, and so he went to bed to think the matter over.
+
+Now, there may be some reader so simple as to feel a portion of Miss
+Emily's curiosity. But, my friend, restrain it, for Mr. Sewell will
+certainly, as we foresee, become less rather than more communicative on
+this subject, as he thinks upon it. Nevertheless, whatever it be that he
+knows or suspects, it is something which leads him to contemplate with
+more than usual interest this little mortal waif that has so strangely
+come ashore in his parish. He mentally resolves to study the child as
+minutely as possible, without betraying that he has any particular
+reason for being interested in him.
+
+Therefore, in the latter part of this mild November afternoon, which he
+has devoted to pastoral visiting, about two months after the funeral, he
+steps into his little sail-boat, and stretches away for the shores of
+Orr's Island. He knows the sun will be down before he reaches there; but
+he sees, in the opposite horizon, the spectral, shadowy moon, only
+waiting for daylight to be gone to come out, calm and radiant, like a
+saintly friend neglected in the flush of prosperity, who waits patiently
+to enliven our hours of darkness.
+
+As his boat-keel grazed the sands on the other side, a shout of laughter
+came upon his oar from behind a cedar-covered rock, and soon emerged
+Captain Kittridge, as long and lean and brown as the Ancient Mariner,
+carrying little Mara on one shoulder, while Sally and little Moses
+Pennel trotted on before.
+
+It was difficult to say who in this whole group was in the highest
+spirits. The fact was that Mrs. Kittridge had gone to a tea-drinking
+over at Maquoit, and left the Captain as housekeeper and general
+overseer; and little Mara and Moses and Sally had been gloriously
+keeping holiday with him down by the boat-cove, where, to say the truth,
+few shavings were made, except those necessary to adorn the children's
+heads with flowing suits of curls of a most extraordinary effect. The
+aprons of all of them were full of these most unsubstantial specimens of
+woody treasure, which hung out in long festoons, looking of a yellow
+transparency in the evening light. But the delight of the children in
+their acquisitions was only equaled by that of grown-up people in
+possessions equally fanciful in value.
+
+The mirth of the little party, however, came to a sudden pause as they
+met the minister. Mara clung tight to the Captain's neck, and looked out
+slyly under her curls. But the little Moses made a step forward, and
+fixed his bold, dark, inquisitive eyes upon him. The fact was, that the
+minister had been impressed upon the boy, in his few visits to the
+"meeting," as such a grand and mysterious reason for good behavior, that
+he seemed resolved to embrace the first opportunity to study him close
+at hand.
+
+"Well, my little man," said Mr. Sewell, with an affability which he
+could readily assume with children, "you seem to like to look at me."
+
+"I do like to look at you," said the boy gravely, continuing to fix his
+great black eyes upon him.
+
+"I see you do, my little fellow."
+
+"Are you the Lord?" said the child, solemnly.
+
+"Am I what?"
+
+"The Lord," said the boy.
+
+"No, indeed, my lad," said Mr. Sewell, smiling. "Why, what put that into
+your little head?"
+
+"I thought you were," said the boy, still continuing to study the pastor
+with attention. "Miss Roxy said so."
+
+"It's curious what notions chil'en will get in their heads," said
+Captain Kittridge. "They put this and that together and think it over,
+and come out with such queer things."
+
+"But," said the minister, "I have brought something for you all;" saying
+which he drew from his pocket three little bright-cheeked apples, and
+gave one to each child; and then taking the hand of the little Moses in
+his own, he walked with him toward the house-door.
+
+Mrs. Pennel was sitting in her clean kitchen, busily spinning at the
+little wheel, and rose flushed with pleasure at the honor that was done
+her.
+
+"Pray, walk in, Mr. Sewell," she said, rising, and leading the way
+toward the penetralia of the best room.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Pennel, I am come here for a good sit-down by your
+kitchen-fire, this evening," said Mr. Sewell. "Emily has gone out to sit
+with old Mrs. Broad, who is laid up with the rheumatism, and so I am
+turned loose to pick up my living on the parish, and you must give me a
+seat for a while in your kitchen corner. Best rooms are always cold."
+
+"The minister's right," said Captain Kittridge. "When rooms ain't much
+set in, folks never feel so kind o' natural in 'em. So you jist let me
+put on a good back-log and forestick, and build up a fire to tell
+stories by this evening. My wife's gone out to tea, too," he said, with
+an elastic skip.
+
+And in a few moments the Captain had produced in the great cavernous
+chimney a foundation for a fire that promised breadth, solidity, and
+continuance. A great back-log, embroidered here and there with tufts of
+green or grayish moss, was first flung into the capacious arms of the
+fireplace, and a smaller log placed above it. "Now, all you young uns go
+out and bring in chips," said the Captain. "There's capital ones out to
+the wood-pile."
+
+Mr. Sewell was pleased to see the flash that came from the eyes of
+little Moses at this order, how energetically he ran before the others,
+and came with glowing cheeks and distended arms, throwing down great
+white chips with their green mossy bark, scattering tufts on the floor.
+"Good," said he softly to himself, as he leaned on the top of his
+gold-headed cane; "there's energy, ambition, muscle;" and he nodded his
+head once or twice to some internal decision.
+
+"There!" said the Captain, rising out of a perfect whirlwind of chips
+and pine kindlings with which in his zeal he had bestrown the wide,
+black stone hearth, and pointing to the tongues of flame that were
+leaping and blazing up through the crevices of the dry pine wood which
+he had intermingled plentifully with the more substantial fuel,--"there,
+Mis' Pennel, ain't I a master-hand at a fire? But I'm really sorry I've
+dirtied your floor," he said, as he brushed down his pantaloons, which
+were covered with bits of grizzly moss, and looked on the surrounding
+desolations; "give me a broom, I can sweep up now as well as any woman."
+
+"Oh, never mind," said Mrs. Pennel, laughing, "I'll sweep up."
+
+"Well, now, Mis' Pennel, you're one of the women that don't get put out
+easy; ain't ye?" said the Captain, still contemplating his fire with a
+proud and watchful eye.
+
+"Law me!" he exclaimed, glancing through the window, "there's the Cap'n
+a-comin'. I'm jist goin' to give a look at what he's brought in. Come,
+chil'en," and the Captain disappeared with all three of the children at
+his heels, to go down to examine the treasures of the fishing-smack.
+
+Mr. Sewell seated himself cozily in the chimney corner and sank into a
+state of half-dreamy reverie; his eyes fixed on the fairest sight one
+can see of a frosty autumn twilight--a crackling wood-fire.
+
+Mrs. Pennel moved soft-footed to and fro, arraying her tea-table in her
+own finest and pure damask, and bringing from hidden stores her best
+china and newest silver, her choicest sweetmeats and cake--whatever was
+fairest and nicest in her house--to honor her unexpected guest.
+
+Mr. Sewell's eyes followed her occasionally about the room, with an
+expression of pleased and curious satisfaction. He was taking it all in
+as an artistic picture--that simple, kindly hearth, with its mossy logs,
+yet steaming with the moisture of the wild woods; the table so neat, so
+cheery with its many little delicacies, and refinements of appointment,
+and its ample varieties to tempt the appetite; and then the Captain
+coming in, yet fresh and hungry from his afternoon's toil, with the
+children trotting before him.
+
+"And this is the inheritance he comes into," he murmured;
+"healthy--wholesome--cheerful--secure: how much better than hot,
+stifling luxury!"
+
+Here the minister's meditations were interrupted by the entrance of all
+the children, joyful and loquacious. Little Moses held up a string of
+mackerel, with their graceful bodies and elegantly cut fins.
+
+"Just a specimen of the best, Mary," said Captain Pennel. "I thought I'd
+bring 'em for Miss Emily."
+
+"Miss Emily will be a thousand times obliged to you," said Mr. Sewell,
+rising up.
+
+As to Mara and Sally, they were reveling in apronfuls of shells and
+seaweed, which they bustled into the other room to bestow in their
+spacious baby-house.
+
+And now, after due time for Zephaniah to assume a land toilet, all sat
+down to the evening meal.
+
+After supper was over, the Captain was besieged by the children. Little
+Mara mounted first into his lap, and nestled herself quietly under his
+coat--Moses and Sally stood at each knee.
+
+"Come, now," said Moses, "you said you would tell us about the mermen
+to-night."
+
+"Yes, and the mermaids," said Sally. "Tell them all you told me the
+other night in the trundle-bed."
+
+Sally valued herself no little on the score of the Captain's talent as a
+romancer.
+
+"You see, Moses," she said, volubly, "father saw mermen and mermaids a
+plenty of them in the West Indies."
+
+"Oh, never mind about 'em now," said Captain Kittridge, looking at Mr.
+Sewell's corner.
+
+"Why not, father? mother isn't here," said Sally, innocently.
+
+A smile passed round the faces of the company, and Mr. Sewell said,
+"Come, Captain, no modesty; we all know you have as good a faculty for
+telling a story as for making a fire."
+
+"Do tell me what mermen are," said Moses.
+
+"Wal'," said the Captain, sinking his voice confidentially, and hitching
+his chair a little around, "mermen and maids is a kind o' people that
+have their world jist like our'n, only it's down in the bottom of the
+sea, 'cause the bottom of the sea has its mountains and its valleys, and
+its trees and its bushes, and it stands to reason there should be people
+there too."
+
+Moses opened his broad black eyes wider than usual, and looked absorbed
+attention.
+
+"Tell 'em about how you saw 'em," said Sally.
+
+"Wal', yes," said Captain Kittridge; "once when I was to the
+Bahamas,--it was one Sunday morning in June, the first Sunday in the
+month,--we cast anchor pretty nigh a reef of coral, and I was jist
+a-sittin' down to read my Bible, when up comes a merman over the side of
+the ship, all dressed as fine as any old beau that ever ye see, with
+cocked hat and silk stockings, and shoe-buckles, and his clothes were
+sea-green, and his shoe-buckles shone like diamonds."
+
+"Do you suppose they were diamonds, really?" said Sally.
+
+"Wal', child, I didn't ask him, but I shouldn't be surprised, from all I
+know of their ways, if they was," said the Captain, who had now got so
+wholly into the spirit of his fiction that he no longer felt
+embarrassed by the minister's presence, nor saw the look of amusement
+with which he was listening to him in his chimney-corner. "But, as I was
+sayin', he came up to me, and made the politest bow that ever ye see,
+and says he, 'Cap'n Kittridge, I presume,' and says I, 'Yes, sir.' 'I'm
+sorry to interrupt your reading,' says he; and says I, 'Oh, no matter,
+sir.' 'But,' says he, 'if you would only be so good as to move your
+anchor. You've cast anchor right before my front-door, and my wife and
+family can't get out to go to meetin'.'"
+
+"Why, do they go to meeting in the bottom of the sea?" said Moses.
+
+"Law, bless you sonny, yes. Why, Sunday morning, when the sea was all
+still, I used to hear the bass-viol a-soundin' down under the waters,
+jist as plain as could be,--and psalms and preachin'. I've reason to
+think there's as many hopefully pious mermaids as there be folks," said
+the Captain.
+
+"But," said Moses, "you said the anchor was before the front-door, so
+the family couldn't get out,--how did the merman get out?"
+
+"Oh! he got out of the scuttle on the roof," said the Captain, promptly.
+
+"And did you move your anchor?" said Moses.
+
+"Why, child, yes, to be sure I did; he was such a gentleman I wanted to
+oblige him,--it shows you how important it is always to be polite," said
+the Captain, by way of giving a moral turn to his narrative.
+
+Mr. Sewell, during the progress of this story, examined the Captain with
+eyes of amused curiosity. His countenance was as fixed and steady, and
+his whole manner of reciting as matter-of-fact and collected, as if he
+were relating some of the every-day affairs of his boat-building.
+
+"Wal', Sally," said the Captain, rising, after his yarn had proceeded
+for an indefinite length in this manner, "you and I must be goin'. I
+promised your ma you shouldn't be up late, and we have a long walk
+home,--besides it's time these little folks was in bed."
+
+The children all clung round the Captain, and could hardly be persuaded
+to let him go.
+
+When he was gone, Mrs. Pennel took the little ones to their nest in an
+adjoining room.
+
+Mr. Sewell approached his chair to that of Captain Pennel, and began
+talking to him in a tone of voice so low, that we have never been able
+to make out exactly what he was saying. Whatever it might be, however,
+it seemed to give rise to an anxious consultation. "I did not think it
+advisable to tell _any_ one this but yourself, Captain Pennel. It is for
+you to decide, in view of the probabilities I have told you, what you
+will do."
+
+"Well," said Zephaniah, "since you leave it to me, I say, let us keep
+him. It certainly seems a marked providence that he has been thrown upon
+us as he has, and the Lord seemed to prepare a way for him in our
+hearts. I am well able to afford it, and Mis' Pennel, she agrees to it,
+and on the whole I don't think we'd best go back on our steps; besides,
+our little Mara has thrived since he came under our roof. He is, to be
+sure, kind o' masterful, and I shall have to take him off Mis' Pennel's
+hands before long, and put him into the sloop. But, after all, there
+seems to be the makin' of a man in him, and when we are called away, why
+he'll be as a brother to poor little Mara. Yes, I think it's best as 't
+is."
+
+The minister, as he flitted across the bay by moonlight, felt relieved
+of a burden. His secret was locked up as safe in the breast of Zephaniah
+Pennel as it could be in his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BOY AND GIRL
+
+
+Zephaniah Pennel was what might be called a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
+
+New England, in her earlier days, founding her institutions on the
+Hebrew Scriptures, bred better Jews than Moses could, because she read
+Moses with the amendments of Christ.
+
+The state of society in some of the districts of Maine, in these days,
+much resembled in its spirit that which Moses labored to produce in
+ruder ages. It was entirely democratic, simple, grave, hearty, and
+sincere,--solemn and religious in its daily tone, and yet, as to all
+material good, full of wholesome thrift and prosperity. Perhaps, taking
+the average mass of the people, a more healthful and desirable state of
+society never existed. Its better specimens had a simple Doric grandeur
+unsurpassed in any age. The bringing up a child in this state of society
+was a far more simple enterprise than in our modern times, when the
+factious wants and aspirations are so much more developed.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel was as high as anybody in the land. He owned not only
+the neat little schooner, "Brilliant," with divers small fishing-boats,
+but also a snug farm, adjoining the brown house, together with some
+fresh, juicy pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised
+mutton, unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and wool, which
+furnished homespun to clothe his family on all every-day occasions.
+
+Mrs. Pennel, to be sure, had silks and satins, and flowered India
+chintz, and even a Cashmere shawl, the fruits of some of her husband's
+earlier voyages, which were, however, carefully stowed away for
+occasions so high and mighty, that they seldom saw the light. _Not to
+wear best things every day_ was a maxim of New England thrift as little
+disputed as any verse of the catechism; and so Mrs. Pennel found the
+stuff gown of her own dyeing and spinning so respectable for most
+purposes, that it figured even in the meeting-house itself, except on
+the very finest of Sundays, when heaven and earth seemed alike
+propitious. A person can well afford to wear homespun stuff to meeting,
+who is buoyed up by a secret consciousness of an abundance of fine
+things that could be worn, if one were so disposed, and everybody
+respected Mrs. Pennel's homespun the more, because they thought of the
+things she didn't wear.
+
+As to advantages of education, the island, like all other New England
+districts, had its common school, where one got the key of
+knowledge,--for having learned to read, write, and cipher, the young
+fellow of those regions commonly regarded himself as in possession of
+all that a man needs, to help himself to any further acquisitions he
+might desire. The boys then made fishing voyages to the Banks, and those
+who were so disposed took their books with them. If a boy did not wish
+to be bored with study, there was nobody to force him; but if a bright
+one saw visions of future success in life lying through the avenues of
+knowledge, he found many a leisure hour to pore over his books, and work
+out the problems of navigation directly over the element they were meant
+to control.
+
+Four years having glided by since the commencement of our story, we find
+in the brown house of Zephaniah Pennel a tall, well-knit, handsome boy
+of ten years, who knows no fear of wind or sea; who can set you over
+from Orr's Island to Harpswell, either in sail or row-boat, he thinks,
+as well as any man living; who knows every rope of the schooner
+Brilliant, and fancies he could command it as well as "father" himself;
+and is supporting himself this spring, during the tamer drudgeries of
+driving plough, and dropping potatoes, with the glorious vision of being
+taken this year on the annual trip to "the Banks," which comes on after
+planting. He reads fluently,--witness the "Robinson Crusoe," which never
+departs from under his pillow, and Goldsmith's "History of Greece and
+Rome," which good Mr. Sewell has lent him,--and he often brings shrewd
+criticisms on the character and course of Romulus or Alexander into the
+common current of every-day life, in a way that brings a smile over the
+grave face of Zephaniah, and makes Mrs. Pennel think the boy certainly
+ought to be sent to college.
+
+As for Mara, she is now a child of seven, still adorned with long golden
+curls, still looking dreamily out of soft hazel eyes into some unknown
+future not her own. She has no dreams for herself--they are all for
+Moses. For his sake she has learned all the womanly little
+accomplishments which Mrs. Kittridge has dragooned into Sally. She knits
+his mittens and his stockings, and hems his pocket-handkerchiefs, and
+aspires to make his shirts all herself. Whatever book Moses reads,
+forthwith she aspires to read too, and though three years younger, reads
+with a far more precocious insight.
+
+Her little form is slight and frail, and her cheek has a clear
+transparent brilliancy quite different from the rounded one of the boy;
+she looks not exactly in ill health, but has that sort of transparent
+appearance which one fancies might be an attribute of fairies and
+sylphs. All her outward senses are finer and more acute than his, and
+finer and more delicate all the attributes of her mind. Those who
+contend against giving woman the same education as man do it on the
+ground that it would make the woman unfeminine, as if Nature had done
+her work so slightly that it could be so easily raveled and knit over.
+In fact, there is a masculine and a feminine element in all knowledge,
+and a man and a woman put to the same study extract only what their
+nature fits them to see, so that knowledge can be fully orbed only when
+the two unite in the search and share the spoils.
+
+When Moses was full of Romulus and Numa, Mara pondered the story of the
+nymph Egeria--sweet parable, in which lies all we have been saying. Her
+trust in him was boundless. He was a constant hero in her eyes, and in
+her he found a steadfast believer as to all possible feats and exploits
+to which he felt himself competent, for the boy often had privately
+assured her that he could command the Brilliant as well as father
+himself.
+
+Spring had already come, loosing the chains of ice in all the bays and
+coves round Harpswell, Orr's Island, Maquoit, and Middle Bay. The
+magnificent spruces stood forth in their gala-dresses, tipped on every
+point with vivid emerald; the silver firs exuded from their tender
+shoots the fragrance of ripe pineapple; the white pines shot forth long
+weird fingers at the end of their fringy boughs; and even every little
+mimic evergreen in the shadows at their feet was made beautiful by the
+addition of a vivid border of green on the sombre coloring of its last
+year's leaves. Arbutus, fragrant with its clean, wholesome odors, gave
+forth its thousand dewy pink blossoms, and the trailing Linnea borealis
+hung its pendent twin bells round every mossy stump and old rock damp
+with green forest mould. The green and vermilion matting of the
+partridge-berry was impearled with white velvet blossoms, the
+checkerberry hung forth a translucent bell under its varnished green
+leaf, and a thousand more fairy bells, white or red, hung on blueberry
+and huckleberry bushes. The little Pearl of Orr's Island had wandered
+many an hour gathering bouquets of all these, to fill the brown house
+with sweetness when her grandfather and Moses should come in from work.
+
+The love of flowers seemed to be one of her earliest characteristics,
+and the young spring flowers of New England, in their airy delicacy and
+fragility, were much like herself; and so strong seemed the affinity
+between them, that not only Mrs. Pennel's best India china vases on the
+keeping-room mantel were filled, but here stood a tumbler of scarlet
+rock columbine, and there a bowl of blue and white violets, and in
+another place a saucer of shell-tinted crowfoot, blue liverwort, and
+white anemone, so that Zephaniah Pennel was wont to say there wasn't a
+drink of water to be got, for Mara's flowers; but he always said it with
+a smile that made his weather-beaten, hard features look like a rock lit
+up by a sunbeam. Little Mara was the pearl of the old seaman's life,
+every finer particle of his nature came out in her concentrated and
+polished, and he often wondered at a creature so ethereal belonging to
+him--as if down on some shaggy sea-green rock an old pearl oyster should
+muse and marvel on the strange silvery mystery of beauty that was
+growing in the silence of his heart.
+
+But May has passed; the arbutus and the Linnea are gone from the woods,
+and the pine tips have grown into young shoots, which wilt at noon under
+a direct reflection from sun and sea, and the blue sky has that metallic
+clearness and brilliancy which distinguishes those regions, and the
+planting is at last over, and this very morning Moses is to set off in
+the Brilliant for his first voyage to the Banks. Glorious knight he! the
+world all before him, and the blood of ten years racing and throbbing in
+his veins as he talks knowingly of hooks, and sinkers, and bait, and
+lines, and wears proudly the red flannel shirt which Mara had just
+finished for him.
+
+"How I do wish I were going with you!" she says. "I could do something,
+couldn't I--take care of your hooks, or something?"
+
+"Pooh!" said Moses, sublimely regarding her while he settled the collar
+of his shirt, "you're a girl; and what can girls do at sea? you never
+like to catch fish--it always makes you cry to see 'em flop."
+
+"Oh, yes, poor fish!" said Mara, perplexed between her sympathy for the
+fish and her desire for the glory of her hero, which must be founded on
+their pain; "I can't help feeling sorry when they gasp so."
+
+"Well, and what do you suppose you would do when the men are pulling up
+twenty and forty pounder?" said Moses, striding sublimely. "Why, they
+flop so, they'd knock you over in a minute."
+
+"Do they? Oh, Moses, do be careful. What if they should hurt you?"
+
+"Hurt me!" said Moses, laughing; "that's a good one. I'd like to see a
+fish that could hurt me."
+
+"Do hear that boy talk!" said Mrs. Pennel to her husband, as they stood
+within their chamber-door.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Captain Pennel, smiling; "he's full of the matter. I
+believe he'd take the command of the schooner this morning, if I'd let
+him."
+
+The Brilliant lay all this while courtesying on the waves, which kissed
+and whispered to the little coquettish craft. A fairer June morning had
+not risen on the shores that week; the blue mirror of the ocean was all
+dotted over with the tiny white sails of fishing-craft bound on the same
+errand, and the breeze that was just crisping the waters had the very
+spirit of energy and adventure in it.
+
+Everything and everybody was now on board, and she began to spread her
+fair wings, and slowly and gracefully to retreat from the shore. Little
+Moses stood on the deck, his black curls blowing in the wind, and his
+large eyes dancing with excitement,--his clear olive complexion and
+glowing cheeks well set off by his red shirt.
+
+Mrs. Pennel stood with Mara on the shore to see them go. The fair little
+golden-haired Ariadne shaded her eyes with one arm, and stretched the
+other after her Theseus, till the vessel grew smaller, and finally
+seemed to melt away into the eternal blue. Many be the wives and lovers
+that have watched those little fishing-craft as they went gayly out like
+this, but have waited long--too long--and seen them again no more. In
+night and fog they have gone down under the keel of some ocean packet or
+Indiaman, and sunk with brave hearts and hands, like a bubble in the
+mighty waters. Yet Mrs. Pennel did not turn back to her house in
+apprehension of this. Her husband had made so many voyages, and always
+returned safely, that she confidently expected before long to see them
+home again.
+
+The next Sunday the seat of Zephaniah Pennel was vacant in church.
+According to custom, a note was put up asking prayers for his safe
+return, and then everybody knew that he was gone to the Banks; and as
+the roguish, handsome face of Moses was also missing, Miss Roxy
+whispered to Miss Ruey, "There! Captain Pennel's took Moses on his first
+voyage. We must contrive to call round on Mis' Pennel afore long. She'll
+be lonesome."
+
+Sunday evening Mrs. Pennel was sitting pensively with little Mara by the
+kitchen hearth, where they had been boiling the tea-kettle for their
+solitary meal. They heard a brisk step without, and soon Captain and
+Mrs. Kittridge made their appearance.
+
+"Good evening, Mis' Pennel," said the Captain; "I's a-tellin' my good
+woman we must come down and see how you's a-getting along. It's raly a
+work of necessity and mercy proper for the Lord's day. Rather lonesome,
+now the Captain's gone, ain't ye? Took little Moses, too, I see. Wasn't
+at meetin' to-day, so I says, Mis' Kittridge, we'll just step down and
+chirk 'em up a little."
+
+"I didn't really know how to come," said Mrs. Kittridge, as she allowed
+Mrs. Pennel to take her bonnet; "but Aunt Roxy's to our house now, and
+she said she'd see to Sally. So you've let the boy go to the Banks? He's
+young, ain't he, for that?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Captain Kittridge. "Why, I was off to the Banks
+long afore I was his age, and a capital time we had of it, too. Golly!
+how them fish did bite! We stood up to our knees in fish before we'd
+fished half an hour."
+
+Mara, who had always a shy affinity for the Captain, now drew towards
+him and climbed on his knee. "Did the wind blow very hard?" she said.
+
+"What, my little maid?"
+
+"Does the wind blow at the Banks?"
+
+"Why, yes, my little girl, that it does, sometimes; but then there ain't
+the least danger. Our craft ride out storms like live creatures. I've
+stood it out in gales that was tight enough, I'm sure. 'Member once I
+turned in 'tween twelve and one, and hadn't more'n got asleep, afore I
+came _clump_ out of my berth, and found everything upside down. And
+'stead of goin' upstairs to get on deck, I had to go right down. Fact
+was, that 'ere vessel jist turned clean over in the water, and come
+right side up like a duck."
+
+"Well, now, Cap'n, I wouldn't be tellin' such a story as that," said his
+helpmeet.
+
+"Why, Polly, what do you know about it? you never was to sea. We did
+turn clear over, for I 'member I saw a bunch of seaweed big as a peck
+measure stickin' top of the mast next day. Jist shows how safe them ar
+little fishing craft is,--for all they look like an egg-shell on the
+mighty deep, as Parson Sewell calls it."
+
+"I was very much pleased with Mr. Sewell's exercise in prayer this
+morning," said Mrs. Kittridge; "it must have been a comfort to you, Mis'
+Pennel."
+
+"It was, to be sure," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"Puts me in mind of poor Mary Jane Simpson. Her husband went out, you
+know, last June, and hain't been heard of since. Mary Jane don't really
+know whether to put on mourning or not."
+
+"Law! I don't think Mary Jane need give up yet," said the Captain.
+"'Member one year I was out, we got blowed clear up to Baffin's Bay, and
+got shut up in the ice, and had to go ashore and live jist as we could
+among them Esquimaux. Didn't get home for a year. Old folks had clean
+giv' us up. Don't need never despair of folks gone to sea, for they's
+sure to turn up, first or last."
+
+"But I hope," said Mara, apprehensively, "that grandpapa won't get blown
+up to Baffin's Bay. I've seen that on his chart,--it's a good ways."
+
+"And then there's them 'ere icebergs," said Mrs. Kittridge; "I'm always
+'fraid of running into them in the fog."
+
+"Law!" said Captain Kittridge, "I've met 'em bigger than all the
+colleges up to Brunswick,--great white bears on 'em,--hungry as Time in
+the Primer. Once we came kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying
+Betsey hadn't been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been
+stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry, that they
+stood there with the water jist runnin' out of their chops in a perfect
+stream."
+
+"Oh, dear, dear," said Mara, with wide round eyes, "what will Moses do
+if they get on the icebergs?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Kittridge, looking solemnly at the child through the
+black bows of her spectacles, "we can truly say:--
+
+    "'Dangers stand thick through all the ground,
+        To push us to the tomb,'
+
+as the hymn-book says."
+
+The kind-hearted Captain, feeling the fluttering heart of little Mara,
+and seeing the tears start in her eyes, addressed himself forthwith to
+consolation. "Oh, never you mind, Mara," he said, "there won't nothing
+hurt 'em. Look at me. Why, I've been everywhere on the face of the
+earth. I've been on icebergs, and among white bears and Indians, and
+seen storms that would blow the very hair off your head, and here I am,
+dry and tight as ever. You'll see 'em back before long."
+
+The cheerful laugh with which the Captain was wont to chorus his
+sentences sounded like the crackling of dry pine wood on the social
+hearth. One would hardly hear it without being lightened in heart; and
+little Mara gazed at his long, dry, ropy figure, and wrinkled thin face,
+as a sort of monument of hope; and his uproarious laugh, which Mrs.
+Kittridge sometimes ungraciously compared to "the crackling of thorns
+under a pot," seemed to her the most delightful thing in the world.
+
+"Mary Jane was a-tellin' me," resumed Mrs. Kittridge, "that when her
+husband had been out a month, she dreamed she see him, and three other
+men, a-floatin' on an iceberg."
+
+"Laws," said Captain Kittridge, "that's jist what my old mother dreamed
+about me, and 'twas true enough, too, till we got off the ice on to the
+shore up in the Esquimaux territory, as I was a-tellin'. So you tell
+Mary Jane she needn't look out for a second husband _yet_, for that ar
+dream's a sartin sign he'll be back."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge!" said his helpmeet, drawing herself up, and giving him
+an austere glance over her spectacles; "how often must I tell you that
+there _is_ subjects which shouldn't be treated with levity?"
+
+"Who's been a-treatin' of 'em with levity?" said the Captain. "I'm sure
+I ain't. Mary Jane's good-lookin', and there's plenty of young fellows
+as sees it as well as me. I declare, she looked as pretty as any young
+gal when she ris up in the singers' seats to-day. Put me in mind of you,
+Polly, when I first come home from the Injies."
+
+"Oh, come now, Cap'n Kittridge! we're gettin' too old for that sort o'
+talk."
+
+"We ain't too old, be we, Mara?" said the Captain, trotting the little
+girl gayly on his knee; "and we ain't afraid of icebergs and no sich, be
+we? I tell you they's a fine sight of a bright day; they has millions of
+steeples, all white and glistering, like the New Jerusalem, and the
+white bears have capital times trampin' round on 'em. Wouldn't little
+Mara like a great, nice white bear to ride on, with his white fur, so
+soft and warm, and a saddle made of pearls, and a gold bridle?"
+
+"You haven't seen any little girls ride so," said Mara, doubtfully.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I had; but you see, Mis' Kittridge there, she
+won't let me tell all I know," said the Captain, sinking his voice to a
+confidential tone; "you jist wait till we get alone."
+
+"But, you are sure," said Mara, confidingly, in return, "that white
+bears will be kind to Moses?"
+
+"Lord bless you, yes, child, the kindest critturs in the world they be,
+if you only get the right side of 'em," said the Captain.
+
+"Oh, yes! because," said Mara, "I know how good a wolf was to Romulus
+and Remus once, and nursed them when they were cast out to die. I read
+that in the Roman history."
+
+"Jist so," said the Captain, enchanted at this historic confirmation of
+his apocrypha.
+
+"And so," said Mara, "if Moses should happen to get on an iceberg, a
+bear might take care of him, you know."
+
+"Jist so, jist so," said the Captain; "so don't you worry your little
+curly head one bit. Some time when you come down to see Sally, we'll go
+down to the cove, and I'll tell you lots of stories about chil'en that
+have been fetched up by white bears, jist like Romulus and what's his
+name there."
+
+"Come, Mis' Kittridge," added the cheery Captain; "you and I mustn't be
+keepin' the folks up till nine o'clock."
+
+"Well now," said Mrs. Kittridge, in a doleful tone, as she began to put
+on her bonnet, "Mis' Pennel, you must keep up your spirits--it's one's
+duty to take cheerful views of things. I'm sure many's the night, when
+the Captain's been gone to sea, I've laid and shook in my bed, hearin'
+the wind blow, and thinking what if I should be left a lone widow."
+
+"There'd a-been a dozen fellows a-wanting to get you in six months,
+Polly," interposed the Captain. "Well, good-night, Mis' Pennel; there'll
+be a splendid haul of fish at the Banks this year, or there's no truth
+in signs. Come, my little Mara, got a kiss for the dry old daddy? That's
+my good girl. Well, good night, and the Lord bless you."
+
+And so the cheery Captain took up his line of march homeward, leaving
+little Mara's head full of dazzling visions of the land of romance to
+which Moses had gone. She was yet on that shadowy boundary between the
+dreamland of childhood and the real land of life; so all things looked
+to her quite possible; and gentle white bears, with warm, soft fur and
+pearl and gold saddles, walked through her dreams, and the victorious
+curls of Moses appeared, with his bright eyes and cheeks, over
+glittering pinnacles of frost in the ice-land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLAND
+
+
+June and July passed, and the lonely two lived a quiet life in the brown
+house. Everything was so still and fair--no sound but the coming and
+going tide, and the swaying wind among the pine-trees, and the tick of
+the clock, and the whirr of the little wheel as Mrs. Pennel sat spinning
+in her door in the mild weather. Mara read the Roman history through
+again, and began it a third time, and read over and over again the
+stories and prophecies that pleased her in the Bible, and pondered the
+wood-cuts and texts in a very old edition of Æsop's Fables; and as she
+wandered in the woods, picking fragrant bayberries and gathering
+hemlock, checkerberry, and sassafras to put in the beer which her
+grandmother brewed, she mused on the things that she read till her
+little mind became a tabernacle of solemn, quaint, dreamy forms, where
+old Judean kings and prophets, and Roman senators and warriors, marched
+in and out in shadowy rounds. She invented long dramas and conversations
+in which they performed imaginary parts, and it would not have appeared
+to the child in the least degree surprising either to have met an angel
+in the woods, or to have formed an intimacy with some talking wolf or
+bear, such as she read of in Æsop's Fables.
+
+One day, as she was exploring the garret, she found in an old barrel of
+cast-off rubbish a bit of reading which she begged of her grandmother
+for her own. It was the play of the "Tempest," torn from an old edition
+of Shakespeare, and was in that delightfully fragmentary condition
+which most particularly pleases children, because they conceive a
+mutilated treasure thus found to be more especially their own
+property--something like a rare wild-flower or sea-shell. The pleasure
+which thoughtful and imaginative children sometimes take in reading that
+which they do not and cannot fully comprehend is one of the most common
+and curious phenomena of childhood.
+
+And so little Mara would lie for hours stretched out on the pebbly
+beach, with the broad open ocean before her and the whispering pines and
+hemlocks behind her, and pore over this poem, from which she collected
+dim, delightful images of a lonely island, an old enchanter, a beautiful
+girl, and a spirit not quite like those in the Bible, but a very
+probable one to her mode of thinking. As for old Caliban, she fancied
+him with a face much like that of a huge skate-fish she had once seen
+drawn ashore in one of her grandfather's nets; and then there was the
+beautiful young Prince Ferdinand, much like what Moses would be when he
+was grown up--and how glad she would be to pile up his wood for him, if
+any old enchanter should set him to work!
+
+One attribute of the child was a peculiar shamefacedness and shyness
+about her inner thoughts, and therefore the wonder that this new
+treasure excited, the host of surmises and dreams to which it gave rise,
+were never mentioned to anybody. That it was all of it as much authentic
+fact as the Roman history, she did not doubt, but whether it had
+happened on Orr's Island or some of the neighboring ones, she had not
+exactly made up her mind. She resolved at her earliest leisure to
+consult Captain Kittridge on the subject, wisely considering that it
+much resembled some of his fishy and aquatic experiences.
+
+Some of the little songs fixed themselves in her memory, and she would
+hum them as she wandered up and down the beach.
+
+    "Come unto these yellow sands,
+      And then take hands;
+    Courtsied when you have and kissed
+      The wild waves whist,
+    Foot it featly here and there;
+    And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear."
+
+And another which pleased her still more:--
+
+    "Full fathom five thy father lies;
+      Of his bones are coral made,
+    Those are pearls that were his eyes:
+      Nothing of him that can fade
+    But doth suffer a sea-change
+    Into something rich and strange;
+    Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
+    Hark, now I hear them--ding-dong, bell."
+
+These words she pondered very long, gravely revolving in her little head
+whether they described the usual course of things in the mysterious
+under-world that lay beneath that blue spangled floor of the sea;
+whether everybody's eyes changed to pearl, and their bones to coral, if
+they sunk down there; and whether the sea-nymphs spoken of were the same
+as the mermaids that Captain Kittridge had told of. Had he not said that
+the bell rung for church of a Sunday morning down under the waters?
+
+Mara vividly remembered the scene on the sea-beach, the finding of
+little Moses and his mother, the dream of the pale lady that seemed to
+bring him to her; and not one of the conversations that had transpired
+before her among different gossips had been lost on her quiet, listening
+little ears. These pale, still children that play without making any
+noise are deep wells into which drop many things which lie long and
+quietly on the bottom, and come up in after years whole and new, when
+everybody else has forgotten them.
+
+So she had heard surmises as to the remaining crew of that unfortunate
+ship, where, perhaps, Moses had a father. And sometimes she wondered if
+_he_ were lying fathoms deep with sea-nymphs ringing his knell, and
+whether Moses ever thought about him; and yet she could no more have
+asked him a question about it than if she had been born dumb. She
+decided that she should never show him this poetry--it might make him
+feel unhappy.
+
+One bright afternoon, when the sea lay all dead asleep, and the long,
+steady respiration of its tides scarcely disturbed the glassy
+tranquillity of its bosom, Mrs. Pennel sat at her kitchen-door spinning,
+when Captain Kittridge appeared.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mis' Pennel; how ye gettin' along?"
+
+"Oh, pretty well, Captain; won't you walk in and have a glass of beer?"
+
+"Well, thank you," said the Captain, raising his hat and wiping his
+forehead, "I be pretty dry, it's a fact."
+
+Mrs. Pennel hastened to a cask which was kept standing in a corner of
+the kitchen, and drew from thence a mug of her own home-brewed, fragrant
+with the smell of juniper, hemlock, and wintergreen, which she presented
+to the Captain, who sat down in the doorway and discussed it in
+leisurely sips.
+
+"Wal', s'pose it's most time to be lookin' for 'em home, ain't it?" he
+said.
+
+"I _am_ lookin' every day," said Mrs. Pennel, involuntarily glancing
+upward at the sea.
+
+At the word appeared the vision of little Mara, who rose up like a
+spirit from a dusky corner, where she had been stooping over her
+reading.
+
+"Why, little Mara," said the Captain, "you ris up like a ghost all of a
+sudden. I thought you's out to play. I come down a-purpose arter you.
+Mis' Kittridge has gone shoppin' up to Brunswick, and left Sally a
+'stent' to do; and I promised her if she'd clap to and do it quick, I'd
+go up and fetch you down, and we'd have a play in the cove."
+
+Mara's eyes brightened, as they always did at this prospect, and Mrs.
+Pennel said, "Well, I'm glad to have the child go; she seems so kind o'
+still and lonesome since Moses went away; really one feels as if that
+boy took all the noise there was with him. I get tired myself sometimes
+hearing the clock tick. Mara, when she's alone, takes to her book more
+than's good for a child."
+
+"She does, does she? Well, we'll see about that. Come, little Mara, get
+on your sun-bonnet. Sally's sewin' fast as ever she can, and we're goin'
+to dig some clams, and make a fire, and have a chowder; that'll be nice,
+won't it? Don't you want to come, too, Mis' Pennel?"
+
+"Oh, thank you, Captain, but I've got so many things on hand to do afore
+they come home, I don't really think I can. I'll trust Mara to you any
+day."
+
+Mara had run into her own little room and secured her precious fragment
+of treasure, which she wrapped up carefully in her handkerchief,
+resolving to enlighten Sally with the story, and to consult the Captain
+on any nice points of criticism. Arrived at the cove, they found Sally
+already there in advance of them, clapping her hands and dancing in a
+manner which made her black elf-locks fly like those of a distracted
+creature.
+
+"Now, Sally," said the Captain, imitating, in a humble way, his wife's
+manner, "are you sure you've finished your work well?"
+
+"Yes, father, every stitch on't."
+
+"And stuck in your needle, and folded it up, and put it in the drawer,
+and put away your thimble, and shet the drawer, and all the rest on't?"
+said the Captain.
+
+"Yes, father," said Sally, gleefully, "I've done everything I could
+think of."
+
+"'Cause you know your ma'll be arter ye, if you don't leave everything
+straight."
+
+"Oh, never you fear, father, I've done it all half an hour ago, and I've
+found the most capital bed of clams just round the point here; and you
+take care of Mara there, and make up a fire while I dig 'em. If she
+comes, she'll be sure to wet her shoes, or spoil her frock, or
+something."
+
+"Wal', she likes no better fun now," said the Captain, watching Sally,
+as she disappeared round the rock with a bright tin pan.
+
+He then proceeded to construct an extemporary fireplace of loose stones,
+and to put together chips and shavings for the fire,--in which work
+little Mara eagerly assisted; but the fire was crackling and burning
+cheerily long before Sally appeared with her clams, and so the Captain,
+with a pile of hemlock boughs by his side, sat on a stone feeding the
+fire leisurely from time to time with crackling boughs. Now was the time
+for Mara to make her inquiries; her heart beat, she knew not why, for
+she was full of those little timidities and shames that so often
+embarrass children in their attempts to get at the meanings of things in
+this great world, where they are such ignorant spectators.
+
+"Captain Kittridge," she said at last, "do the mermaids toll any bells
+for people when they are drowned?"
+
+Now the Captain had never been known to indicate the least ignorance on
+any subject in heaven or earth, which any one wished his opinion on; he
+therefore leisurely poked another great crackling bough of green hemlock
+into the fire, and, Yankee-like, answered one question by asking
+another.
+
+"What put that into your curly pate?" he said.
+
+"A book I've been reading says they do,--that is, sea-nymphs do. Ain't
+sea-nymphs and mermaids the same thing?"
+
+"Wal', I guess they be, pretty much," said the Captain, rubbing down his
+pantaloons; "yes, they be," he added, after reflection.
+
+"And when people are drowned, how long does it take for their bones to
+turn into coral, and their eyes into pearl?" said little Mara.
+
+"Well, that depends upon circumstances," said the Captain, who wasn't
+going to be posed; "but let me jist see your book you've been reading
+these things out of."
+
+"I found it in a barrel up garret, and grandma gave it to me," said
+Mara, unrolling her handkerchief; "it's a beautiful book,--it tells
+about an island, and there was an old enchanter lived on it, and he had
+one daughter, and there was a spirit they called Ariel, whom a wicked
+old witch fastened in a split of a pine-tree, till the enchanter got him
+out. He was a beautiful spirit, and rode in the curled clouds and hung
+in flowers,--because he could make himself big or little, you see."
+
+"Ah, yes, I see, to be sure," said the Captain, nodding his head.
+
+"Well, that about sea-nymphs ringing his knell is here," Mara added,
+beginning to read the passage with wide, dilated eyes and great
+emphasis. "You see," she went on speaking very fast, "this enchanter had
+been a prince, and a wicked brother had contrived to send him to sea
+with his poor little daughter, in a ship so leaky that the very rats had
+left it."
+
+"Bad business that!" said the Captain, attentively.
+
+"Well," said Mara, "they got cast ashore on this desolate island, where
+they lived together. But once, when a ship was going by on the sea that
+had his wicked brother and his son--a real good, handsome young
+prince--in it, why then he made a storm by magic arts."
+
+"Jist so," said the Captain; "that's been often done, to my sartin
+knowledge."
+
+"And he made the ship be wrecked, and all the people thrown ashore, but
+there wasn't any of 'em drowned, and this handsome prince heard Ariel
+singing this song about his father, and it made him think he was dead."
+
+"Well, what became of 'em?" interposed Sally, who had come up with her
+pan of clams in time to hear this story, to which she had listened with
+breathless interest.
+
+"Oh, the beautiful young prince married the beautiful young lady," said
+Mara.
+
+"Wal'," said the Captain, who by this time had found his soundings;
+"that you've been a-tellin' is what they call a play, and I've seen 'em
+act it at a theatre, when I was to Liverpool once. I know all about it.
+Shakespeare wrote it, and he's a great English poet."
+
+"But did it ever happen?" said Mara, trembling between hope and fear.
+"Is it like the Bible and Roman history?"
+
+"Why, no," said Captain Kittridge, "not exactly; but things jist like
+it, you know. Mermaids and sich is common in foreign parts, and they has
+funerals for drowned sailors. 'Member once when we was sailing near the
+Bermudas by a reef where the Lively Fanny went down, and I heard a kind
+o' ding-dongin',--and the waters there is clear as the sky,--and I
+looked down and see the coral all a-growin', and the sea-plants a-wavin'
+as handsome as a pictur', and the mermaids they was a-singin'. It was
+beautiful; they sung kind o' mournful; and Jack Hubbard, he would have
+it they was a-singin' for the poor fellows that was a-lyin' there round
+under the seaweed."
+
+"But," said Mara, "did you ever see an enchanter that could make
+storms?"
+
+"Wal', there be witches and conjurers that make storms. 'Member once
+when we was crossin' the line, about twelve o'clock at night, there was
+an old man with a long white beard that shone like silver, came and
+stood at the masthead, and he had a pitchfork in one hand, and a lantern
+in the other, and there was great balls of fire as big as my fist came
+out all round in the rigging. And I'll tell you if we didn't get a blow
+that ar night! I thought to my soul we should all go to the bottom."
+
+"Why," said Mara, her eyes staring with excitement, "that was just like
+this shipwreck; and 'twas Ariel made those balls of fire; he says so; he
+said he 'flamed amazement' all over the ship."
+
+"I've heard Miss Roxy tell about witches that made storms," said Sally.
+
+The Captain leisurely proceeded to open the clams, separating from the
+shells the contents, which he threw into a pan, meanwhile placing a
+black pot over the fire in which he had previously arranged certain
+slices of salt pork, which soon began frizzling in the heat.
+
+"Now, Sally, you peel them potatoes, and mind you slice 'em thin," he
+said, and Sally soon was busy with her work.
+
+"Yes," said the Captain, going on with his part of the arrangement,
+"there was old Polly Twitchell, that lived in that ar old tumble-down
+house on Mure P'int; people used to say she brewed storms, and went to
+sea in a sieve."
+
+"Went in a sieve!" said both children; "why a sieve wouldn't swim!"
+
+"No more it wouldn't, in any Christian way," said the Captain; "but that
+was to show what a great witch she was."
+
+"But this was a good enchanter," said Mara, "and he did it all by a book
+and a rod."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Captain; "that ar's the gen'l way magicians do,
+ever since Moses's time in Egypt. 'Member once I was to Alexandria, in
+Egypt, and I saw a magician there that could jist see everything you
+ever did in your life in a drop of ink that he held in his hand."
+
+"He could, father!"
+
+"To be sure he could! told me all about the old folks at home; and
+described our house as natural as if he'd a-been there. He used to
+carry snakes round with him,--a kind so p'ison that it was certain death
+to have 'em bite you; but he played with 'em as if they was kittens."
+
+"Well," said Mara, "my enchanter was a king; and when he got through all
+he wanted, and got his daughter married to the beautiful young prince,
+he said he would break his staff, and deeper than plummet sounded he
+would bury his book."
+
+"It was pretty much the best thing he could do," said the Captain,
+"because the Bible is agin such things."
+
+"Is it?" said Mara; "why, he was a real good man."
+
+"Oh, well, you know, we all on us does what ain't quite right sometimes,
+when we gets pushed up," said the Captain, who now began arranging the
+clams and sliced potatoes in alternate layers with sea-biscuit, strewing
+in salt and pepper as he went on; and, in a few moments, a smell,
+fragrant to hungry senses, began to steam upward, and Sally began
+washing and preparing some mammoth clam-shells, to serve as ladles and
+plates for the future chowder.
+
+Mara, who sat with her morsel of a book in her lap, seemed deeply
+pondering the past conversation. At last she said, "What did you mean by
+saying you'd seen 'em act that at a theatre?"
+
+"Why, they make it all seem real; and they have a shipwreck, and you see
+it all jist right afore your eyes."
+
+"And the Enchanter, and Ariel, and Caliban, and all?" said Mara.
+
+"Yes, all on't,--plain as printing."
+
+"Why, that is by magic, ain't it?" said Mara.
+
+"No; they hes ways to jist make it up; but,"--added the Captain, "Sally,
+you needn't say nothin' to your ma 'bout the theatre, 'cause she
+wouldn't think I's fit to go to meetin' for six months arter, if she
+heard on't."
+
+"Why, ain't theatres good?" said Sally.
+
+"Wal', there's a middlin' sight o' bad things in 'em," said the
+Captain, "that I must say; but as long as folks _is_ folks, why, they
+will be _folksy_;--but there's never any makin' women folk understand
+about them ar things."
+
+"I am sorry they are bad," said Mara; "I want to see them."
+
+"Wal', wal'," said the Captain, "on the hull I've seen real things a
+good deal more wonderful than all their shows, and they hain't no
+make-b'lieve to 'em; but theatres is takin' arter all. But, Sally, mind
+you don't say nothin' to Mis' Kittridge."
+
+A few moments more and all discussion was lost in preparations for the
+meal, and each one, receiving a portion of the savory stew in a large
+shell, made a spoon of a small cockle, and with some slices of bread and
+butter, the evening meal went off merrily. The sun was sloping toward
+the ocean; the wide blue floor was bedropped here and there with rosy
+shadows of sailing clouds. Suddenly the Captain sprang up, calling
+out,--
+
+"Sure as I'm alive, there they be!"
+
+"Who?" exclaimed the children.
+
+"Why, Captain Pennel and Moses; don't you see?"
+
+And, in fact, on the outer circle of the horizon came drifting a line of
+small white-breasted vessels, looking like so many doves.
+
+"Them's 'em," said the Captain, while Mara danced for joy.
+
+"How soon will they be here?"
+
+"Afore long," said the Captain; "so, Mara, I guess you'll want to be
+getting hum."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE HOME COMING
+
+
+Mrs. Pennel, too, had seen the white, dove-like cloud on the horizon,
+and had hurried to make biscuits, and conduct other culinary
+preparations which should welcome the wanderers home.
+
+The sun was just dipping into the great blue sea--a round ball of
+fire--and sending long, slanting tracks of light across the top of each
+wave, when a boat was moored at the beach, and the minister sprang
+out,--not in his suit of ceremony, but attired in fisherman's garb.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Pennel," he said. "I was out fishing, and I
+thought I saw your husband's schooner in the distance. I thought I'd
+come and tell you."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Sewell. I thought I saw it, but I was not certain. Do
+come in; the Captain would be delighted to see you here."
+
+"We miss your husband in our meetings," said Mr. Sewell; "it will be
+good news for us all when he comes home; he is one of those I depend on
+to help me preach."
+
+"I'm sure you don't preach to anybody who enjoys it more," said Mrs.
+Pennel. "He often tells me that the greatest trouble about his voyages
+to the Banks is that he loses so many sanctuary privileges; though he
+always keeps Sunday on his ship, and reads and sings his psalms; but, he
+says, after all, there's nothing like going to Mount Zion."
+
+"And little Moses has gone on his first voyage?" said the minister.
+
+"Yes, indeed; the child has been teasing to go for more than a year.
+Finally the Cap'n told him if he'd be faithful in the ploughing and
+planting, he should go. You see, he's rather unsteady, and apt to be off
+after other things,--very different from Mara. Whatever you give her to
+do, she always keeps at it till it's done."
+
+"And pray, where is the little lady?" said the minister; "is she gone?"
+
+"Well, Cap'n Kittridge came in this afternoon to take her down to see
+Sally. The Cap'n's always so fond of Mara, and she has always taken to
+him ever since she was a baby."
+
+"The Captain is a curious creature," said the minister, smiling.
+
+Mrs. Pennel smiled also; and it is to be remarked that nobody ever
+mentioned the poor Captain's name without the same curious smile.
+
+"The Cap'n is a good-hearted, obliging creature," said Mrs. Pennel, "and
+a master-hand for telling stories to the children."
+
+"Yes, a perfect 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,'" said Mr. Sewell.
+
+"Well, I really believe the Cap'n believes his own stories," said Mrs.
+Pennel; "he always seems to, and certainly a more obliging man and a
+kinder neighbor couldn't be. He has been in and out almost every day
+since I've been alone, to see if I wanted anything. He would insist on
+chopping wood and splitting kindlings for me, though I told him the
+Cap'n and Moses had left a plenty to last till they came home."
+
+At this moment the subject of their conversation appeared striding along
+the beach, with a large, red lobster in one hand, while with the other
+he held little Mara upon his shoulder, she the while clapping her hands
+and singing merrily, as she saw the Brilliant out on the open blue sea,
+its white sails looking of a rosy purple in the evening light, careering
+gayly homeward.
+
+"There is Captain Kittridge this very minute," said Mrs. Pennel, setting
+down a tea-cup she had been wiping, and going to the door.
+
+"Good evening, Mis' Pennel," said the Captain. "I s'pose you see your
+folks are comin'. I brought down one of these 'ere ready b'iled, 'cause
+I thought it might make out your supper."
+
+"Thank you, Captain; you must stay and take some with us."
+
+"Wal', me and the children have pooty much done our supper," said the
+Captain. "We made a real fust-rate chowder down there to the cove; but
+I'll jist stay and see what the Cap'n's luck is. Massy!" he added, as he
+looked in at the door, "if you hain't got the minister there! Wal', now,
+I come jist as I be," he added, with a glance down at his clothes.
+
+"Never mind, Captain," said Mr. Sewell; "I'm in my fishing-clothes, so
+we're even."
+
+As to little Mara, she had run down to the beach, and stood so near the
+sea, that every dash of the tide-wave forced her little feet to tread an
+inch backward, stretching out her hands eagerly toward the schooner,
+which was standing straight toward the small wharf, not far from their
+door. Already she could see on deck figures moving about, and her sharp
+little eyes made out a small personage in a red shirt that was among the
+most active. Soon all the figures grew distinct, and she could see her
+grandfather's gray head, and alert, active form, and could see, by the
+signs he made, that he had perceived the little blowy figure that stood,
+with hair streaming in the wind, like some flower bent seaward.
+
+And now they are come nearer, and Moses shouts and dances on the deck,
+and the Captain and Mrs. Pennel come running from the house down to the
+shore, and a few minutes more, and all are landed safe and sound, and
+little Mara is carried up to the house in her grandfather's arms, while
+Captain Kittridge stops to have a few moments' gossip with Ben Halliday
+and Tom Scranton before they go to their own resting-places.
+
+Meanwhile Moses loses not a moment in boasting of his heroic exploits to
+Mara.
+
+"Oh, Mara! you've no idea what times we've had! I can fish equal to any
+of 'em, and I can take in sail and tend the helm like anything, and I
+know all the names of everything; and you ought to have seen us catch
+fish! Why, they bit just as fast as we could throw; and it was just
+throw and bite,--throw and bite,--throw and bite; and my hands got
+blistered pulling in, but I didn't mind it,--I was determined no one
+should beat me."
+
+"Oh! did you blister your hands?" said Mara, pitifully.
+
+"Oh, to be sure! Now, you girls think that's a dreadful thing, but we
+men don't mind it. My hands are getting so hard, you've no idea. And,
+Mara, we caught a great shark."
+
+"A shark!--oh, how dreadful! Isn't he dangerous?"
+
+"Dangerous! I guess not. We served him out, I tell you. He'll never eat
+any more people, I tell you, the old wretch!"
+
+"But, poor shark, it isn't his fault that he eats people. He was made
+so," said Mara, unconsciously touching a deep theological mystery.
+
+"Well, I don't know but he was," said Moses; "but sharks that we catch
+never eat any more, I'll bet you."
+
+"Oh, Moses, did you see any icebergs?"
+
+"Icebergs! yes; we passed right by one,--a real grand one."
+
+"Were there any bears on it?"
+
+"Bears! No; we didn't see any."
+
+"Captain Kittridge says there are white bears live on 'em."
+
+"Oh, Captain Kittridge," said Moses, with a toss of superb contempt; "if
+you're going to believe all _he_ says, you've got your hands full."
+
+"Why, Moses, you don't think he tells lies?" said Mara, the tears
+actually starting in her eyes. "I think he is _real_ good, and tells
+nothing but the truth."
+
+"Well, well, you are young yet," said Moses, turning away with an air of
+easy grandeur, "and only a girl besides," he added.
+
+Mara was nettled at this speech. First, it pained her to have her
+child's faith shaken in anything, and particularly in her good old
+friend, the Captain; and next, she felt, with more force than ever she
+did before, the continual disparaging tone in which Moses spoke of her
+girlhood.
+
+"I'm sure," she said to herself, "he oughtn't to feel so about girls and
+women. There was Deborah was a prophetess, and judged Israel; and there
+was Egeria,--she taught Numa Pompilius all his wisdom."
+
+But it was not the little maiden's way to speak when anything thwarted
+or hurt her, but rather to fold all her feelings and thoughts inward, as
+some insects, with fine gauzy wings, draw them under a coat of horny
+concealment. Somehow, there was a shivering sense of disappointment in
+all this meeting with Moses. She had dwelt upon it, and fancied so much,
+and had so many things to say to him; and he had come home so
+self-absorbed and glorious, and seemed to have had so little need of or
+thought for her, that she felt a cold, sad sinking at her heart; and
+walking away very still and white, sat down demurely by her
+grandfather's knee.
+
+"Well, so my little girl is glad grandfather's come," he said, lifting
+her fondly in his arms, and putting her golden head under his coat, as
+he had been wont to do from infancy; "grandpa thought a great deal about
+his little Mara."
+
+The small heart swelled against his. Kind, faithful old grandpa! how
+much more he thought about her than Moses; and yet she had thought so
+much of Moses. And there he sat, this same ungrateful Moses, bright-eyed
+and rosy-cheeked, full of talk and gayety, full of energy and vigor, as
+ignorant as possible of the wound he had given to the little loving
+heart that was silently brooding under her grandfather's
+butternut-colored sea-coat. Not only was he ignorant, but he had not
+even those conditions within himself which made knowledge possible. All
+that there was developed of him, at present, was a fund of energy,
+self-esteem, hope, courage, and daring, the love of action, life, and
+adventure; his life was in the outward and present, not in the inward
+and reflective; he was a true ten-year old boy, in its healthiest and
+most animal perfection. What she was, the small pearl with the golden
+hair, with her frail and high-strung organization, her sensitive nerves,
+her half-spiritual fibres, her ponderings, and marvels, and dreams, her
+power of love, and yearning for self-devotion, our readers may, perhaps,
+have seen. But if ever two children, or two grown people, thus
+organized, are thrown into intimate relations, it follows, from the very
+laws of their being, that one must hurt the other, simply by being
+itself; one must always hunger for what the other has not to give.
+
+It was a merry meal, however, when they all sat down to the tea-table
+once more, and Mara by her grandfather's side, who often stopped what he
+was saying to stroke her head fondly. Moses bore a more prominent part
+in the conversation than he had been wont to do before this voyage, and
+all seemed to listen to him with a kind of indulgence elders often
+accord to a handsome, manly boy, in the first flush of some successful
+enterprise. That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future,
+which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in
+experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.
+
+Gradually, little Mara quieted herself with listening to and admiring
+him. It is not comfortable to have any heart-quarrel with one's
+cherished idol, and everything of the feminine nature, therefore, can
+speedily find fifty good reasons for seeing one's self in the wrong and
+one's graven image in the right; and little Mara soon had said to
+herself, without words, that, of course, Moses couldn't be expected to
+think as much of her as she of him. He was handsomer, cleverer, and had
+a thousand other things to do and to think of--he was a boy, in short,
+and going to be a glorious man and sail all over the world, while she
+could only hem handkerchiefs and knit stockings, and sit at home and
+wait for him to come back. This was about the _résumé_ of life as it
+appeared to the little one, who went on from the moment worshiping her
+image with more undivided idolatry than ever, hoping that by and by he
+would think more of her.
+
+Mr. Sewell appeared to study Moses carefully and thoughtfully, and
+encouraged the wild, gleeful frankness which he had brought home from
+his first voyage, as a knowing jockey tries the paces of a high-mettled
+colt.
+
+"Did you get any time to read?" he interposed once, when the boy stopped
+in his account of their adventures.
+
+"No, sir," said Moses; "at least," he added, blushing very deeply, "I
+didn't feel like reading. I had so much to do, and there was so much to
+see."
+
+"It's all new to him now," said Captain Pennel; "but when he comes to
+being, as I've been, day after day, with nothing but sea and sky, he'll
+be glad of a book, just to break the sameness."
+
+"Laws, yes," said Captain Kittridge; "sailor's life ain't all
+apple-pie, as it seems when a boy first goes on a summer trip with his
+daddy--not by no manner o' means."
+
+"But," said Mara, blushing and looking very eagerly at Mr. Sewell,
+"Moses has read a great deal. He read the Roman and the Grecian history
+through before he went away, and knows all about them."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, turning with an amused look towards the tiny
+little champion; "do you read them, too, my little maid?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mara, her eyes kindling; "I have read them a great
+deal since Moses went away--them and the Bible."
+
+Mara did not dare to name her new-found treasure--there was something so
+mysterious about that, that she could not venture to produce it, except
+on the score of extreme intimacy.
+
+"Come, sit by me, little Mara," said the minister, putting out his hand;
+"you and I must be friends, I see."
+
+Mr. Sewell had a certain something of mesmeric power in his eyes which
+children seldom resisted; and with a shrinking movement, as if both
+attracted and repelled, the little girl got upon his knee.
+
+"So you like the Bible and Roman history?" he said to her, making a
+little aside for her, while a brisk conversation was going on between
+Captain Kittridge and Captain Pennel on the fishing bounty for the year.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mara, blushing in a very guilty way.
+
+"And which do you like the best?"
+
+"I don't know, sir; I sometimes think it is the one, and sometimes the
+other."
+
+"Well, what pleases you in the Roman history?"
+
+"Oh, I like that about Quintus Curtius."
+
+"Quintus Curtius?" said Mr. Sewell, pretending not to remember.
+
+"Oh, don't you remember him? why, there was a great gulf opened in the
+Forum, and the Augurs said that the country would not be saved unless
+some one would offer himself up for it, and so he jumped right in, all
+on horseback. I think that was grand. I should like to have done that,"
+said little Mara, her eyes blazing out with a kind of starry light which
+they had when she was excited.
+
+"And how would you have liked it, if you had been a Roman girl, and
+Moses were Quintus Curtius? would you like to have him give himself up
+for the good of the country?"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" said Mara, instinctively shuddering.
+
+"Don't you think it would be very grand of him?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"And shouldn't we wish our friends to do what is brave and grand?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but then," she added, "it would be so dreadful _never_ to see
+him any more," and a large tear rolled from the great soft eyes and fell
+on the minister's hand.
+
+"Come, come," thought Mr. Sewell, "this sort of experimenting is too
+bad--too much nerve here, too much solitude, too much pine-whispering
+and sea-dashing are going to the making up of this little piece of
+workmanship."
+
+"Tell me," he said, motioning Moses to sit by him, "how _you_ like the
+Roman history."
+
+"I like it first-rate," said Moses. "The Romans were such smashers, and
+beat everybody; nobody could stand against them; and I like Alexander,
+too--I think he was splendid."
+
+"True boy," said Mr. Sewell to himself, "unreflecting brother of the
+wind and the sea, and all that is vigorous and active--no precocious
+development of the moral here."
+
+"Now you have come," said Mr. Sewell, "I will lend you another book."
+
+"Thank you, sir; I love to read them when I'm at home--it's so still
+here. I should be dull if I didn't."
+
+Mara's eyes looked eagerly attentive. Mr. Sewell noticed their hungry
+look when a book was spoken of.
+
+"And you must read it, too, my little girl," he said.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Mara; "I always want to read everything Moses
+does."
+
+"What book is it?" said Moses.
+
+"It is called Plutarch's 'Lives,'" said the minister; "it has more
+particular accounts of the men you read about in history."
+
+"Are there any lives of women?" said Mara.
+
+"No, my dear," said Mr. Sewell; "in the old times, women did not get
+their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better
+worth writing than the men's."
+
+"I should like to be a great general," said Moses, with a toss of his
+head.
+
+"The way to be great lies through books, now, and not through battles,"
+said the minister; "there is more done with pens than swords; so, if you
+want to do anything, you must read and study."
+
+"Do you think of giving this boy a liberal education?" said Mr. Sewell
+some time later in the evening, after Moses and Mara were gone to bed.
+
+"Depends on the boy," said Zephaniah. "I've been up to Brunswick, and
+seen the fellows there in the college. With a good many of 'em, going to
+college seems to be just nothing but a sort of ceremony; they go because
+they're sent, and don't learn anything more'n they can help. That's what
+I call waste of time and money."
+
+"But don't you think Moses shows some taste for reading and study?"
+
+"Pretty well, pretty well!" said Zephaniah; "jist keep him a little
+hungry; not let him get all he wants, you see, and he'll bite the
+sharper. If I want to catch cod, I don't begin with flingin' over a
+barrel o' bait. So with the boys, jist bait 'em with a book here and a
+book there, and kind o' let 'em feel their own way, and then, if nothin'
+will do but a fellow must go to college, give in to him--that'd be _my_
+way."
+
+"And a very good one, too!" said Mr. Sewell. "I'll see if I can't bait
+my hook, so as to make Moses take after Latin this winter. I shall have
+plenty of time to teach him."
+
+"Now, there's Mara!" said the Captain, his face becoming phosphorescent
+with a sort of mild radiance of pleasure as it usually was when he spoke
+of her; "she's real sharp set after books; she's ready to fly out of her
+little skin at the sight of one."
+
+"That child thinks too much, and feels too much, and knows too much for
+her years!" said Mr. Sewell. "If she were a boy, and you would take her
+away cod-fishing, as you have Moses, the sea-winds would blow away some
+of the thinking, and her little body would grow stout, and her mind less
+delicate and sensitive. But she's a woman," he said, with a sigh, "and
+they are all alike. We can't do much for them, but let them come up as
+they will and make the best of it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
+
+
+"Emily," said Mr. Sewell, "did you ever take much notice of that little
+Mara Lincoln?"
+
+"No, brother; why?"
+
+"Because I think her a very uncommon child."
+
+"She is a pretty little creature," said Miss Emily, "but that is all I
+know; modest--blushing to her eyes when a stranger speaks to her."
+
+"She has wonderful eyes," said Mr. Sewell; "when she gets excited, they
+grow so large and so bright, it seems almost unnatural."
+
+"Dear me! has she?" said Miss Emily, in a tone of one who had been
+called upon to do something about it. "Well?" she added, inquiringly.
+
+"That little thing is only seven years old," said Mr. Sewell; "and she
+is thinking and feeling herself all into mere spirit--brain and nerves
+all active, and her little body so frail. She reads incessantly, and
+thinks over and over what she reads."
+
+"Well?" said Miss Emily, winding very swiftly on a skein of black silk,
+and giving a little twitch, every now and then, to a knot to make it
+subservient.
+
+It was commonly the way when Mr. Sewell began to talk with Miss Emily,
+that she constantly answered him with the manner of one who expects some
+immediate, practical proposition to flow from every train of thought.
+Now Mr. Sewell was one of the reflecting kind of men, whose thoughts
+have a thousand meandering paths, that lead nowhere in particular. His
+sister's brisk little "Well's?" and "Ah's!" and "Indeed's!" were
+sometimes the least bit in the world annoying.
+
+"What is to be done?" said Miss Emily; "shall we speak to Mrs. Pennel?"
+
+"Mrs. Pennel would know nothing about her."
+
+"How strangely you talk!--who should, if she doesn't?"
+
+"I mean, she wouldn't understand the dangers of her case."
+
+"Dangers! Do you think she has any disease? She seems to be a healthy
+child enough, I'm sure. She has a lovely color in her cheeks."
+
+Mr. Sewell seemed suddenly to become immersed in a book he was reading.
+
+"There now," said Miss Emily, with a little tone of pique, "that's the
+way you always do. You begin to talk with me, and just as I get
+interested in the conversation, you take up a book. It's too bad."
+
+"Emily," said Mr. Sewell, laying down his book, "I think I shall begin
+to give Moses Pennel Latin lessons this winter."
+
+"Why, what do you undertake that for?" said Miss Emily. "You have enough
+to do without that, I'm sure."
+
+"He is an uncommonly bright boy, and he interests me."
+
+"Now, brother, you needn't tell me; there is some mystery about the
+interest you take in that child, _you know_ there is."
+
+"I am fond of children," said Mr. Sewell, dryly.
+
+"Well, but you don't take as much interest in other boys. I never heard
+of your teaching any of them Latin before."
+
+"Well, Emily, he is an uncommonly interesting child, and the
+providential circumstances under which he came into our neighborhood"--
+
+"Providential fiddlesticks!" said Miss Emily, with heightened color,
+"_I_ believe you knew that boy's mother."
+
+This sudden thrust brought a vivid color into Mr. Sewell's cheeks. To be
+interrupted so unceremoniously, in the midst of so very proper and
+ministerial a remark, was rather provoking, and he answered, with some
+asperity,--
+
+"And suppose I had, Emily, and supposing there were any painful subject
+connected with this past event, you might have sufficient forbearance
+not to try to make me speak on what I do not wish to talk of."
+
+Mr. Sewell was one of your gentle, dignified men, from whom Heaven
+deliver an inquisitive female friend! If such people would only get
+angry, and blow some unbecoming blast, one might make something of them;
+but speaking, as they always do, from the serene heights of immaculate
+propriety, one gets in the wrong before one knows it, and has nothing
+for it but to beg pardon. Miss Emily had, however, a feminine resource:
+she began to cry--wisely confining herself to the simple eloquence of
+tears and sobs. Mr. Sewell sat as awkwardly as if he had trodden on a
+kitten's toe, or brushed down a china cup, feeling as if he were a
+great, horrid, clumsy boor, and his poor little sister a martyr.
+
+"Come, Emily," he said, in a softer tone, when the sobs subsided a
+little.
+
+But Emily didn't "come," but went at it with a fresh burst. Mr. Sewell
+had a vision like that which drowning men are said to have, in which all
+Miss Emily's sisterly devotions, stocking-darnings, account-keepings,
+nursings and tendings, and infinite self-sacrifices, rose up before him:
+and there she was--crying!
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke harshly, Emily. Come, come; that's a good girl."
+
+"I'm a silly fool," said Miss Emily, lifting her head, and wiping the
+tears from her merry little eyes, as she went on winding her silk.
+
+"Perhaps he will tell me now," she thought, as she wound.
+
+But he didn't.
+
+"What I was going to say, Emily," said her brother, "was, that I thought
+it would be a good plan for little Mara to come sometimes with Moses;
+and then, by observing her more particularly, you might be of use to
+her; her little, active mind needs good practical guidance like yours."
+
+Mr. Sewell spoke in a gentle, flattering tone, and Miss Emily was
+flattered; but she soon saw that she had gained nothing by the whole
+breeze, except a little kind of dread, which made her inwardly resolve
+never to touch the knocker of his fortress again. But she entered into
+her brother's scheme with the facile alacrity with which she usually
+seconded any schemes of his proposing.
+
+"I might teach her painting and embroidery," said Miss Emily, glancing,
+with a satisfied air, at a framed piece of her own work which hung over
+the mantelpiece, revealing the state of the fine arts in this country,
+as exhibited in the performances of well-instructed young ladies of that
+period. Miss Emily had performed it under the tuition of a celebrated
+teacher of female accomplishments. It represented a white marble
+obelisk, which an inscription, in legible India ink letters, stated to
+be "Sacred to the memory of Theophilus Sewell," etc. This obelisk stood
+in the midst of a ground made very green by an embroidery of different
+shades of chenille and silk, and was overshadowed by an embroidered
+weeping-willow. Leaning on it, with her face concealed in a plentiful
+flow of white handkerchief, was a female figure in deep mourning,
+designed to represent the desolate widow. A young girl, in a very black
+dress, knelt in front of it, and a very lugubrious-looking young man,
+standing bolt upright on the other side, seemed to hold in his hand one
+end of a wreath of roses, which the girl was presenting, as an
+appropriate decoration for the tomb. The girl and gentleman were, of
+course, the young Theophilus and Miss Emily, and the appalling grief
+conveyed by the expression of their faces was a triumph of the pictorial
+art.
+
+Miss Emily had in her bedroom a similar funeral trophy, sacred to the
+memory of her deceased mother,--besides which there were, framed and
+glazed, in the little sitting-room, two embroidered shepherdesses
+standing with rueful faces, in charge of certain animals of an uncertain
+breed between sheep and pigs. The poor little soul had mentally resolved
+to make Mara the heiress of all the skill and knowledge of the arts by
+which she had been enabled to consummate these marvels.
+
+"She is naturally a lady-like little thing," she said to herself, "and
+if I know anything of accomplishments, she shall have them."
+
+Just about the time that Miss Emily came to this resolution, had she
+been clairvoyant, she might have seen Mara sitting very quietly, busy in
+the solitude of her own room with a little sprig of partridge-berry
+before her, whose round green leaves and brilliant scarlet berries she
+had been for hours trying to imitate, as appeared from the scattered
+sketches and fragments around her. In fact, before Zephaniah started on
+his spring fishing, he had caught her one day very busy at work of the
+same kind, with bits of charcoal, and some colors compounded out of wild
+berries; and so out of his capacious pocket, after his return, he drew a
+little box of water-colors and a lead-pencil and square of India-rubber,
+which he had bought for her in Portland on his way home.
+
+Hour after hour the child works, so still, so fervent, so
+earnest,--going over and over, time after time, her simple, ignorant
+methods to make it "look like," and stopping, at times, to give the true
+artist's sigh, as the little green and scarlet fragment lies there
+hopelessly, unapproachably perfect. Ignorantly to herself, the hands of
+the little pilgrim are knocking at the very door where Giotto and
+Cimabue knocked in the innocent child-life of Italian art.
+
+"Why won't it look round?" she said to Moses, who had come in behind
+her.
+
+"Why, Mara, did you do these?" said Moses, astonished; "why, how well
+they are done! I should know in a minute what they were meant for."
+
+Mara flushed up at being praised by Moses, but heaved a deep sigh as she
+looked back.
+
+"It's so pretty, that sprig," she said; "if I only could make it just
+like"--
+
+"Why, nobody expects _that_," said Moses, "it's like enough, if people
+only know what you mean it for. But come, now, get your bonnet, and come
+with me in the boat. Captain Kittridge has just brought down our new
+one, and I'm going to take you over to Eagle Island, and we'll take our
+dinner and stay all day; mother says so."
+
+"Oh, how nice!" said the little girl, running cheerfully for her
+sun-bonnet.
+
+At the house-door they met Mrs. Pennel, with a little closely covered
+tin pail.
+
+"Here's your dinner, children; and, Moses, mind and take good care of
+her."
+
+"Never fear _me_ mother, I've been to the Banks; there wasn't a man
+there could manage a boat better than I could."
+
+"Yes, grandmother," said Mara, "you ought to see how strong his arms
+are; I believe he will be like Samson one of these days if he keeps
+on."
+
+So away they went. It was a glorious August forenoon, and the sombre
+spruces and shaggy hemlocks that dipped and rippled in the waters were
+penetrated to their deepest recesses with the clear brilliancy of the
+sky,--a true northern sky, without a cloud, without even a softening
+haze, defining every outline, revealing every minute point, cutting with
+sharp decision the form of every promontory and rock, and distant
+island.
+
+The blue of the sea and the blue of the sky were so much the same, that
+when the children had rowed far out, the little boat seemed to float
+midway, poised in the centre of an azure sphere, with a firmament above
+and a firmament below. Mara leaned dreamily over the side of the boat,
+and drew her little hands through the waters as they rippled along to
+the swift oars' strokes, and she saw as the waves broke, and divided and
+shivered around the boat, a hundred little faces, with brown eyes and
+golden hair, gleaming up through the water, and dancing away over
+rippling waves, and thought that so the sea-nymphs might look who came
+up from the coral caves when they ring the knell of drowned people.
+Moses sat opposite to her, with his coat off, and his heavy black curls
+more wavy and glossy than ever, as the exercise made them damp with
+perspiration.
+
+Eagle Island lay on the blue sea, a tangled thicket of
+evergreens,--white pine, spruce, arbor vitæ, and fragrant silver firs. A
+little strip of white beach bound it, like a silver setting to a gem.
+And there Moses at length moored his boat, and the children landed. The
+island was wholly solitary, and there is something to children quite
+delightful in feeling that they have a little lonely world all to
+themselves. Childhood is itself such an enchanted island, separated by
+mysterious depths from the mainland of nature, life, and reality.
+
+Moses had subsided a little from the glorious heights on which he
+seemed to be in the first flush of his return, and he and Mara, in
+consequence, were the friends of old time. It is true he thought himself
+quite a man, but the manhood of a boy is only a tiny masquerade,--a
+fantastic, dreamy prevision of real manhood. It was curious that Mara,
+who was by all odds the most precociously developed of the two, never
+thought of asserting herself a woman; in fact, she seldom thought of
+herself at all, but dreamed and pondered of almost everything else.
+
+"I declare," said Moses, looking up into a thick-branched, rugged old
+hemlock, which stood all shaggy, with heavy beards of gray moss drooping
+from its branches, "there's an eagle's nest up there; I mean to go and
+see." And up he went into the gloomy embrace of the old tree, crackling
+the dead branches, wrenching off handfuls of gray moss, rising higher
+and higher, every once in a while turning and showing to Mara his
+glowing face and curly hair through a dusky green frame of boughs, and
+then mounting again. "I'm coming to it," he kept exclaiming.
+
+Meanwhile his proceedings seemed to create a sensation among the
+feathered house-keepers, one of whom rose and sailed screaming away into
+the air. In a moment after there was a swoop of wings, and two eagles
+returned and began flapping and screaming about the head of the boy.
+
+Mara, who stood at the foot of the tree, could not see clearly what was
+going on, for the thickness of the boughs; she only heard a great
+commotion and rattling of the branches, the scream of the birds, and the
+swooping of their wings, and Moses's valorous exclamations, as he seemed
+to be laying about him with a branch which he had broken off.
+
+At last he descended victorious, with the eggs in his pocket. Mara stood
+at the foot of the tree, with her sun-bonnet blown back, her hair
+streaming, and her little arms upstretched, as if to catch him if he
+fell.
+
+"Oh, I was so afraid!" she said, as he set foot on the ground.
+
+"Afraid? Pooh! Who's afraid? Why, you might know the old eagles couldn't
+beat me."
+
+"Ah, well, I know how strong you are; but, you know, I couldn't help it.
+But the poor birds,--do hear 'em scream. Moses, don't you suppose they
+feel bad?"
+
+"No, they're only mad, to think they couldn't beat me. I beat them just
+as the Romans used to beat folks,--I played their nest was a city, and I
+spoiled it."
+
+"I shouldn't want to spoil cities!" said Mara.
+
+"That's 'cause you are a girl,--I'm a man, and men always like war; I've
+taken one city this afternoon, and mean to take a great many more."
+
+"But, Moses, do you think war is right?"
+
+"Right? why, yes, to be sure; if it ain't, it's a pity; for it's all
+that has ever been done in this world. In the Bible, or out, certainly
+it's right. I wish I had a gun now, I'd stop those old eagles'
+screeching."
+
+"But, Moses, we shouldn't want any one to come and steal all our things,
+and then shoot us."
+
+"How long you do think about things!" said Moses, impatient at her
+pertinacity. "I am older than you, and when I tell you a thing's right,
+you ought to believe it. Besides, don't you take hens' eggs every day,
+in the barn? How do you suppose the hens like that?"
+
+This was a home-thrust, and for the moment threw the little casuist off
+the track. She carefully folded up the idea, and laid it away on the
+inner shelves of her mind till she could think more about it. Pliable as
+she was to all outward appearances, the child had her own still,
+interior world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up crisp
+and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If anybody too
+rudely assailed a thought or suggestion she put forth, she drew it back
+again into this quiet inner chamber, and went on. Reader, there are
+some women of this habit; and there is no independence and pertinacity
+of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it
+is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince. Mara, little and
+unformed as she yet was, belonged to the race of those spirits to whom
+is deputed the office of the angel in the Apocalypse, to whom was given
+the golden rod which measured the New Jerusalem. Infant though she was,
+she had ever in her hands that invisible measuring-rod, which she was
+laying to the foundations of all actions and thoughts. There may,
+perhaps, come a time when the saucy boy, who now steps so superbly, and
+predominates so proudly in virtue of his physical strength and daring,
+will learn to tremble at the golden measuring-rod, held in the hand of a
+woman.
+
+"Howbeit, that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is
+natural." Moses is the type of the first unreflecting stage of
+development, in which are only the out-reachings of active faculties,
+the aspirations that tend toward manly accomplishments. Seldom do we
+meet sensitiveness of conscience or discriminating reflection as the
+indigenous growth of a very vigorous physical development. Your true
+healthy boy has the breezy, hearty virtues of a Newfoundland dog, the
+wild fullness of life of the young race-colt. Sentiment, sensibility,
+delicate perceptions, spiritual aspirations, are plants of later growth.
+
+But there are, both of men and women, beings born into this world in
+whom from childhood the spiritual and the reflective predominate over
+the physical. In relation to other human beings, they seem to be
+organized much as birds are in relation to other animals. They are the
+artists, the poets, the unconscious seers, to whom the purer truths of
+spiritual instruction are open. Surveying man merely as an animal, these
+sensitively organized beings, with their feebler physical powers, are
+imperfect specimens of life. Looking from the spiritual side, they seem
+to have a noble strength, a divine force. The types of this latter class
+are more commonly among women than among men. Multitudes of them pass
+away in earlier years, and leave behind in many hearts the anxious
+wonder, why they came so fair only to mock the love they kindled. They
+who live to maturity are the priests and priestesses of the spiritual
+life, ordained of God to keep the balance between the rude but absolute
+necessities of physical life and the higher sphere to which that must at
+length give place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LESSONS
+
+
+Moses felt elevated some inches in the world by the gift of a new Latin
+grammar, which had been bought for him in Brunswick. It was a step
+upward in life; no graduate from a college ever felt more ennobled.
+
+"Wal', now, I tell ye, Moses Pennel," said Miss Roxy, who, with her
+press-board and big flat-iron, was making her autumn sojourn in the
+brown house, "I tell ye Latin ain't just what you think 'tis, steppin'
+round so crank; you must remember what the king of Israel said to
+Benhadad, king of Syria."
+
+"I don't remember; what did he say?"
+
+"I remember," said the soft voice of Mara; "he said, 'Let not him that
+putteth on the harness boast as him that putteth it off.'"
+
+"Good for you, Mara," said Miss Roxy; "if some other folks read their
+Bibles as much as you do, they'd know more."
+
+Between Moses and Miss Roxy there had always been a state of sub-acute
+warfare since the days of his first arrival, she regarding him as an
+unhopeful interloper, and he regarding her as a grim-visaged,
+interfering gnome, whom he disliked with all the intense, unreasoning
+antipathy of childhood.
+
+"I hate that old woman," he said to Mara, as he flung out of the door.
+
+"Why, Moses, what for?" said Mara, who never could comprehend hating
+anybody.
+
+"I do hate her, and Aunt Ruey, too. They are two old scratching cats;
+they hate me, and I hate them; they're always trying to bring me down,
+and I won't be brought down."
+
+Mara had sufficient instinctive insight into the feminine rôle in the
+domestic concert not to adventure a direct argument just now in favor of
+her friends, and therefore she proposed that they should sit down
+together under a cedar hard by, and look over the first lesson.
+
+"Miss Emily invited me to go over with you," she said, "and I should
+like so much to hear you recite."
+
+Moses thought this very proper, as would any other male person, young or
+old, who has been habitually admired by any other female one. He did not
+doubt that, as in fishing and rowing, and all other things he had
+undertaken as yet, he should win himself distinguished honors.
+
+"See here," he said; "Mr. Sewell told me I might go as far as I liked,
+and I mean to take all the declensions to begin with; there's five of
+'em, and I shall learn them for the first lesson; then I shall take the
+adjectives next, and next the verbs, and so in a fortnight get into
+reading."
+
+Mara heaved a sort of sigh. She wished she had been invited to share
+this glorious race; but she looked on admiring when Moses read, in a
+loud voice, "Penna, pennæ, pennæ, pennam," etc.
+
+"There now, I believe I've got it," he said, handing Mara the book; and
+he was perfectly astonished to find that, with the book withdrawn, he
+boggled, and blundered, and stumbled ingloriously. In vain Mara softly
+prompted, and looked at him with pitiful eyes as he grew red in the face
+with his efforts to remember.
+
+"Confound it all!" he said, with an angry flush, snatching back the
+book; "it's more trouble than it's worth."
+
+Again he began the repetition, saying it very loud and plain; he said it
+over and over till his mind wandered far out to sea, and while his
+tongue repeated "penna, pennæ," he was counting the white sails of the
+fishing-smacks, and thinking of pulling up codfish at the Banks.
+
+"There now, Mara, try me," he said, and handed her the book again; "I'm
+sure I _must_ know it now."
+
+But, alas! with the book the sounds glided away; and "penna" and
+"pennam" and "pennis" and "pennæ" were confusedly and indiscriminately
+mingled. He thought it must be Mara's fault; she didn't read right, or
+she told him just as he was going to say it, or she didn't tell him
+right; or was he a fool? or had he lost his senses?
+
+That first declension has been a valley of humiliation to many a sturdy
+boy--to many a bright one, too; and often it is, that the more full of
+thought and vigor the mind is, the more difficult it is to narrow it
+down to the single dry issue of learning those sounds. Heinrich Heine
+said the Romans would never have found time to conquer the world, if
+they had had to learn their own language; but that, luckily for them,
+they were born into the knowledge of what nouns form their accusatives
+in "um."
+
+Long before Moses had learned the first declension, Mara knew it by
+heart; for her intense anxiety for him, and the eagerness and zeal with
+which she listened for each termination, fixed them in her mind.
+Besides, she was naturally of a more quiet and scholar-like turn than
+he,--more intellectually developed. Moses began to think, before that
+memorable day was through, that there was some sense in Aunt Roxy's
+quotation of the saying of the King of Israel, and materially to
+retrench his expectations as to the time it might take to master the
+grammar; but still, his pride and will were both committed, and he
+worked away in this new sort of labor with energy.
+
+It was a fine, frosty November morning, when he rowed Mara across the
+bay in a little boat to recite his first lesson to Mr. Sewell.
+
+Miss Emily had provided a plate of seed-cake, otherwise called cookies,
+for the children, as was a kindly custom of old times, when the little
+people were expected. Miss Emily had a dim idea that she was to do
+something for Mara in her own department, while Moses was reciting his
+lesson; and therefore producing a large sampler, displaying every form
+and variety of marking-stitch, she began questioning the little girl, in
+a low tone, as to her proficiency in that useful accomplishment.
+
+Presently, however, she discovered that the child was restless and
+uneasy, and that she answered without knowing what she was saying. The
+fact was that she was listening, with her whole soul in her eyes, and
+feeling through all her nerves, every word Moses was saying. She knew
+all the critical places, where he was likely to go wrong; and when at
+last, in one place, he gave the wrong termination, she involuntarily
+called out the right one, starting up and turning towards them. In a
+moment she blushed deeply, seeing Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily both looking
+at her with surprise.
+
+"Come here, pussy," said Mr. Sewell, stretching out his hand to her.
+"Can you say this?"
+
+"I believe I could, sir."
+
+"Well, try it."
+
+She went through without missing a word. Mr. Sewell then, for curiosity,
+heard her repeat all the other forms of the lesson. She had them
+perfectly.
+
+"Very well, my little girl," he said, "have you been studying, too?"
+
+"I heard Moses say them so often," said Mara, in an apologetic manner,
+"I couldn't help learning them."
+
+"Would you like to recite with Moses every day?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, so much."
+
+"Well, you shall. It is better for him to have company."
+
+Mara's face brightened, and Miss Emily looked with a puzzled air at her
+brother.
+
+"So," she said, when the children had gone home, "I thought you wanted
+me to take Mara under my care. I was going to begin and teach her some
+marking stitches, and you put her up to studying Latin. I don't
+understand you."
+
+"Well, Emily, the fact is, the child has a natural turn for study, that
+no child of her age ought to have; and I have done just as people always
+will with such children; there's no sense in it, but I wanted to do it.
+You can teach her marking and embroidery all the same; it would break
+her little heart, now, if I were to turn her back."
+
+"I do not see of what use Latin can be to a woman."
+
+"Of what use is embroidery?"
+
+"Why, that is an accomplishment."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, contemplating the weeping willow and
+tombstone trophy with a singular expression, which it was lucky for Miss
+Emily's peace she did not understand. The fact was, that Mr. Sewell had,
+at one period of his life, had an opportunity of studying and observing
+minutely some really fine works of art, and the remembrance of them
+sometimes rose up to his mind, in the presence of the _chefs-d'oeuvre_
+on which his sister rested with so much complacency. It was a part of
+his quiet interior store of amusement to look at these bits of Byzantine
+embroidery round the room, which affected him always with a subtle sense
+of drollery.
+
+"You see, brother," said Miss Emily, "it is far better for women to be
+accomplished than learned."
+
+"You are quite right in the main," said Mr. Sewell, "only you must let
+me have my own way just for once. One can't be consistent always."
+
+So another Latin grammar was bought, and Moses began to feel a secret
+respect for his little companion, that he had never done before, when
+he saw how easily she walked through the labyrinths which at first so
+confused him. Before this, the comparison had been wholly in points
+where superiority arose from physical daring and vigor; now he became
+aware of the existence of another kind of strength with which he had not
+measured himself. Mara's opinion in their mutual studies began to assume
+a value in his eyes that her opinions on other subjects had never done,
+and she saw and felt, with a secret gratification, that she was becoming
+more to him through their mutual pursuit. To say the truth, it required
+this fellowship to inspire Moses with the patience and perseverance
+necessary for this species of acquisition. His active, daring
+temperament little inclined him to patient, quiet study. For anything
+that could be done by two hands, he was always ready; but to hold hands
+still and work silently in the inner forces was to him a species of
+undertaking that seemed against his very nature; but then he would do
+it--he would not disgrace himself before Mr. Sewell, and let a girl
+younger than himself outdo him.
+
+But the thing, after all, that absorbed more of Moses's thoughts than
+all his lessons was the building and rigging of a small schooner, at
+which he worked assiduously in all his leisure moments. He had dozens of
+blocks of wood, into which he had cut anchor moulds; and the melting of
+lead, the running and shaping of anchors, the whittling of masts and
+spars took up many an hour. Mara entered into all those things readily,
+and was too happy to make herself useful in hemming the sails.
+
+When the schooner was finished, they built some ways down by the sea,
+and invited Sally Kittridge over to see it launched.
+
+"There!" he said, when the little thing skimmed down prosperously into
+the sea and floated gayly on the waters, "when I'm a man, I'll have a
+big ship; I'll build her, and launch her, and command her, all myself;
+and I'll give you and Sally both a passage in it, and we'll go off to
+the East Indies--we'll sail round the world!"
+
+None of the three doubted the feasibility of this scheme; the little
+vessel they had just launched seemed the visible prophecy of such a
+future; and how pleasant it would be to sail off, with the world all
+before them, and winds ready to blow them to any port they might wish!
+
+The three children arranged some bread and cheese and doughnuts on a
+rock on the shore, to represent the collation that was usually spread in
+those parts at a ship launch, and felt quite like grown people--acting
+life beforehand in that sort of shadowy pantomime which so delights
+little people. Happy, happy days--when ships can be made with a
+jack-knife and anchors run in pine blocks, and three children together
+can launch a schooner, and the voyage of the world can all be made in
+one sunny Saturday afternoon!
+
+"Mother says you are going to college," said Sally to Moses.
+
+"Not I, indeed," said Moses; "as soon as I get old enough, I'm going up
+to Umbagog among the lumberers, and I'm going to cut real, splendid
+timber for my ship, and I'm going to get it on the stocks, and have it
+built to suit myself."
+
+"What will you call her?" said Sally.
+
+"I haven't thought of that," said Moses.
+
+"Call her the Ariel," said Mara.
+
+"What! after the spirit you were telling us about?" said Sally.
+
+"Ariel is a pretty name," said Moses. "But what is that about a spirit?"
+
+"Why," said Sally, "Mara read us a story about a ship that was wrecked,
+and a spirit called Ariel, that sang a song about the drowned
+mariners."
+
+Mara gave a shy, apprehensive glance at Moses, to see if this allusion
+called up any painful recollections.
+
+No; instead of this, he was following the motions of his little schooner
+on the waters with the briskest and most unconcerned air in the world.
+
+"Why didn't you ever show me that story, Mara?" said Moses.
+
+Mara colored and hesitated; the real reason she dared not say.
+
+"Why, she read it to father and me down by the cove," said Sally, "the
+afternoon that you came home from the Banks; I remember how we saw you
+coming in; don't you, Mara?"
+
+"What have you done with it?" said Moses.
+
+"I've got it at home," said Mara, in a faint voice; "I'll show it to
+you, if you want to see it; there are such beautiful things in it."
+
+That evening, as Moses sat busy, making some alterations in his darling
+schooner, Mara produced her treasure, and read and explained to him the
+story. He listened with interest, though without any of the extreme
+feeling which Mara had thought possible, and even interrupted her once
+in the middle of the celebrated--
+
+    "Full fathom five thy father lies,"
+
+by asking her to hold up the mast a minute, while he drove in a peg to
+make it rake a little more. He was, evidently, thinking of no drowned
+father, and dreaming of no possible sea-caves, but acutely busy in
+fashioning a present reality; and yet he liked to hear Mara read, and,
+when she had done, told her that he thought it was a pretty--quite a
+pretty story, with such a total absence of recognition that the story
+had any affinities with his own history, that Mara was quite astonished.
+
+She lay and thought about him hours, that night, after she had gone to
+bed; and he lay and thought about a new way of disposing a pulley for
+raising a sail, which he determined to try the effect of early in the
+morning.
+
+What was the absolute truth in regard to the boy? Had he forgotten the
+scenes of his early life, the strange catastrophe that cast him into his
+present circumstances? To this we answer that all the efforts of Nature,
+during the early years of a healthy childhood, are bent on effacing and
+obliterating painful impressions, wiping out from each day the sorrows
+of the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows on the seashore. The
+child that broods, day after day, over some fixed idea, is so far forth
+not a healthy one. It is Nature's way to make first a healthy animal,
+and then develop in it gradually higher faculties. We have seen our two
+children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally developed. There
+will come a time, by and by in the history of the boy, when the haze of
+dreamy curiosity will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague
+yearnings, and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him, but
+it must be some years hence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here for a season we leave both our child friends, and when ten years
+have passed over their heads,--when Moses shall be twenty, and Mara
+seventeen,--we will return again to tell their story, for then there
+will be one to tell. Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara
+read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess with
+Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood,--but how by herself she
+learns, after divers trials, to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and
+trailing arbutus,--how Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally
+grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to the high
+school,--how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and Miss Roxy and Miss
+Ruey nurse and cut and make and mend for the still rising
+generation,--how there are quiltings and tea-drinkings and prayer
+meetings and Sunday sermons,--how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old
+gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the eternal
+silver tide rises and falls around our little gem, Orr's Island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+SALLY
+
+
+"Now, where's Sally Kittridge! There's the clock striking five, and
+nobody to set the table. Sally, I say! Sally!"
+
+"Why, Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "Sally's gone out more'n an
+hour ago, and I expect she's gone down to Pennel's to see Mara; 'cause,
+you know, she come home from Portland to-day."
+
+"Well, if she's come home, I s'pose I may as well give up havin' any
+good of Sally, for that girl fairly bows down to Mara Lincoln and
+worships her."
+
+"Well, good reason," said the Captain. "There ain't a puttier creature
+breathin'. I'm a'most a mind to worship her myself."
+
+"Captain Kittridge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, at your age,
+talking as you do."
+
+"Why, laws, mother, I don't feel my age," said the frisky Captain,
+giving a sort of skip. "It don't seem more'n yesterday since you and I
+was a-courtin', Polly. What a life you did lead me in them days! I think
+you kep' me on the anxious seat a pretty middlin' spell."
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't talk so. You ought to be ashamed to be triflin'
+round as you do. Come, now, can't you jest tramp over to Pennel's and
+tell Sally I want her?"
+
+"Not I, mother. There ain't but two gals in two miles square here, and I
+ain't a-goin' to be the feller to shoo 'em apart. What's the use of
+bein' gals, and young, and putty, if they can't get together and talk
+about their new gownds and the fellers? That ar's what gals is for."
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't talk in that way before Sally, father, for her
+head is full of all sorts of vanity now; and as to Mara, I never did see
+a more slack-twisted, flimsy thing than she's grown up to be. Now
+Sally's learnt to do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can
+make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and make. But as to
+Mara, what does she do? Why, she paints pictur's. Mis' Pennel was
+a-showin' on me a blue-jay she painted, and I was a-thinkin' whether she
+could brile a bird fit to be eat if she tried; and she don't know the
+price of nothin'," continued Mrs. Kittridge, with wasteful profusion of
+negatives.
+
+"Well," said the Captain, "the Lord makes some things jist to be looked
+at. Their work is to be putty, and that ar's Mara's sphere. It never
+seemed to me she was cut out for hard work; but she's got sweet ways and
+kind words for everybody, and it's as good as a psalm to look at her."
+
+"And what sort of a wife'll she make, Captain Kittridge?"
+
+"A real sweet, putty one," said the Captain, persistently.
+
+"Well, as to beauty, I'd rather have our Sally any day," said Mrs.
+Kittridge; "and she looks strong and hearty, and seems to be good for
+use."
+
+"So she is, so she is," said the Captain, with fatherly pride. "Sally's
+the very image of her ma at her age--black eyes, black hair, tall and
+trim as a spruce-tree, and steps off as if she had springs in her heels.
+I tell you, the feller'll have to be spry that catches her. There's two
+or three of 'em at it, I see; but Sally won't have nothin' to say to
+'em. I hope she won't, yet awhile."
+
+"Sally is a girl that has as good an eddication as money can give,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge. "If I'd a-had her advantages at her age, I should
+a-been a great deal more'n I am. But we ha'n't spared nothin' for Sally;
+and when nothin' would do but Mara must be sent to Miss Plucher's school
+over in Portland, why, I sent Sally too--for all she's our seventh
+child, and Pennel hasn't but the one."
+
+"You forget Moses," said the Captain.
+
+"Well, he's settin' up on his own account, I guess. They did talk o'
+giving him college eddication; but he was so unstiddy, there weren't no
+use in trying. A real wild ass's colt he was."
+
+"Wal', wal', Moses was in the right on't. He took the cross-lot track
+into life," said the Captain. "Colleges is well enough for your smooth,
+straight-grained lumber, for gen'ral buildin'; but come to fellers
+that's got knots, and streaks, and cross-grains, like Moses Pennel, and
+the best way is to let 'em eddicate 'emselves, as he's a-doin'. He's cut
+out for the sea, plain enough, and he'd better be up to Umbagog, cuttin'
+timber for his ship, than havin' rows with tutors, and blowin' the roof
+off the colleges, as one o' them 'ere kind o' fellers is apt to when he
+don't have work to use up his steam. Why, mother, there's more gas got
+up in them Brunswick buildin's, from young men that are spilin' for hard
+work, than you could shake a stick at! But Mis' Pennel told me yesterday
+she was 'spectin' Moses home to-day."
+
+"Oho! that's at the bottom of Sally's bein' up there," said Mrs.
+Kittridge.
+
+"Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "I take it you ain't the woman as
+would expect a daughter of your bringin' up to be a-runnin' after any
+young chap, be he who he may," said the Captain.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge for once was fairly silenced by this home-thrust;
+nevertheless, she did not the less think it quite possible, from all
+that she knew of Sally; for although that young lady professed great
+hardness of heart and contempt for all the young male generation of her
+acquaintance, yet she had evidently a turn for observing their
+ways--probably purely in the way of philosophical inquiry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+EIGHTEEN
+
+
+In fact, at this very moment our scene-shifter changes the picture. Away
+rolls the image of Mrs. Kittridge's kitchen, with its sanded floor, its
+scoured rows of bright pewter platters, its great, deep fireplace, with
+wide stone hearth, its little looking-glass with a bit of asparagus
+bush, like a green mist, over it. _Exeunt_ the image of Mrs. Kittridge,
+with her hands floury from the bread she has been moulding, and the dry,
+ropy, lean Captain, who has been sitting tilting back in a
+splint-bottomed chair,--and the next scene comes rolling in. It is a
+chamber in the house of Zephaniah Pennel, whose windows present a blue
+panorama of sea and sky. Through two windows you look forth into the
+blue belt of Harpswell Bay, bordered on the farther edge by Harpswell
+Neck, dotted here and there with houses, among which rises the little
+white meeting-house, like a mother-bird among a flock of chickens. The
+third window, on the other side of the room, looks far out to sea, where
+only a group of low, rocky islands interrupts the clear sweep of the
+horizon line, with its blue infinitude of distance.
+
+The furniture of this room, though of the barest and most frigid
+simplicity, is yet relieved by many of those touches of taste and fancy
+which the indwelling of a person of sensibility and imagination will
+shed off upon the physical surroundings. The bed was draped with a white
+spread, embroidered with a kind of knotted tracery, the working of which
+was considered among the female accomplishments of those days, and over
+the head of it was a painting of a bunch of crimson and white trillium,
+executed with a fidelity to Nature that showed the most delicate gifts
+of observation. Over the mantelpiece hung a painting of the Bay of
+Genoa, which had accidentally found a voyage home in Zephaniah Pennel's
+sea-chest, and which skillful fingers had surrounded with a frame
+curiously wrought of moss and sea-shells. Two vases of India china stood
+on the mantel, filled with spring flowers, crowfoot, anemones, and
+liverwort, with drooping bells of the twin-flower. The looking-glass
+that hung over the table in one corner of the room was fancifully webbed
+with long, drooping festoons of that gray moss which hangs in such
+graceful wreaths from the boughs of the pines in the deep forest shadows
+of Orr's Island. On the table below was a collection of books: a whole
+set of Shakespeare which Zephaniah Pennel had bought of a Portland
+bookseller; a selection, in prose and verse, from the best classic
+writers, presented to Mara Lincoln, the fly-leaf said, by her sincere
+friend, Theophilus Sewell; a Virgil, much thumbed, with an old, worn
+cover, which, however, some adroit fingers had concealed under a coating
+of delicately marbled paper;--there was a Latin dictionary, a set of
+Plutarch's Lives, the Mysteries of Udolpho, and Sir Charles Grandison,
+together with Edwards on the Affections, and Boston's Fourfold
+State;--there was an inkstand, curiously contrived from a sea-shell,
+with pens and paper in that phase of arrangement which betokened
+frequency of use; and, lastly, a little work-basket, containing a long
+strip of curious and delicate embroidery, in which the needle yet
+hanging showed that the work was in progress.
+
+By a table at the sea-looking window sits our little Mara, now grown to
+the maturity of eighteen summers, but retaining still unmistakable signs
+of identity with the little golden-haired, dreamy, excitable, fanciful
+"Pearl" of Orr's _Island_.
+
+She is not quite of a middle height, with something beautiful and
+child-like about the moulding of her delicate form. We still see those
+sad, wistful, hazel eyes, over which the lids droop with a dreamy
+languor, and whose dark lustre contrasts singularly with the golden hue
+of the abundant hair which waves in a thousand rippling undulations
+around her face. The impression she produces is not that of paleness,
+though there is no color in her cheek; but her complexion has everywhere
+that delicate pink tinting which one sees in healthy infants, and with
+the least emotion brightens into a fluttering bloom. Such a bloom is on
+her cheek at this moment, as she is working away, copying a bunch of
+scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-glass of water before her;
+every few moments stopping and holding her work at a distance, to
+contemplate its effect. At this moment there steps behind her chair a
+tall, lithe figure, a face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black
+eyes, glowing cheeks, marked eyebrows, and lustrous black hair arranged
+in shining braids around her head. It is our old friend, Sally
+Kittridge, whom common fame calls the handsomest girl of all the region
+round Harpswell, Maquoit, and Orr's Island. In truth, a wholesome,
+ruddy, blooming creature she was, the sight of whom cheered and warmed
+one like a good fire in December; and she seemed to have enough and to
+spare of the warmest gifts of vitality and joyous animal life. She had a
+well-formed mouth, but rather large, and a frank laugh which showed all
+her teeth sound--and a fortunate sight it was, considering that they
+were white and even as pearls; and the hand that she laid upon Mara's at
+this moment, though twice as large as that of the little artist, was yet
+in harmony with her vigorous, finely developed figure.
+
+"Mara Lincoln," she said, "you are a witch, a perfect little witch, at
+painting. How you can make things look so like, I don't see. Now, I
+could paint the things we painted at Miss Plucher's; but then, dear me!
+they didn't look at all like flowers. One needed to write under them
+what they were made for."
+
+"Does this look like to you, Sally?" said Mara. "I wish it would to me.
+Just see what a beautiful clear color that flower is. All I can do, I
+can't make one like it. My scarlet and yellows sink dead into the
+paper."
+
+"Why, I think your flowers are wonderful! You are a real genius, that's
+what you are! I am only a common girl; I can't do things as you can."
+
+"You can do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend
+to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in
+ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I
+could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push
+ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but
+somehow I can't."
+
+"To be sure you can't," said Sally, laughing. "I should like to see you
+try it."
+
+"Now," pursued Mara, in a tone of lamentation, "I could no more get into
+a carriage and drive to Brunswick as you can, than I could fly. I can't
+drive, Sally--something is the matter with me; and the horses always
+know it the minute I take the reins; they always twitch their ears and
+stare round into the chaise at me, as much as to say, 'What! you there?'
+and I feel sure they never will mind me. And then how you can make those
+wonderful bargains you do, I can't see!--you talk up to the clerks and
+the men, and somehow you talk everybody round; but as for me, if I only
+open my mouth in the humblest way to dispute the price, everybody puts
+me down. I always tremble when I go into a store, and people talk to me
+just as if I was a little girl, and once or twice they have made me buy
+things that I knew I didn't want, just because they will talk me down."
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara," said Sally, laughing till the tears rolled down her
+cheeks, "what do _you_ ever go a-shopping for?--of course you ought
+always to send me. Why, look at this dress--real India chintz; do you
+know I made old Pennywhistle's clerk up in Brunswick give it to me just
+for the price of common cotton? You see there was a yard of it had got
+faded by lying in the shop-window, and there were one or two holes and
+imperfections in it, and you ought to have heard the talk I made! I
+abused it to right and left, and actually at last I brought the poor
+wretch to believe that he ought to be grateful to me for taking it off
+his hands. Well, you see the dress I've made of it. The imperfections
+didn't hurt it the least in the world as I managed it,--and the faded
+breadth makes a good apron, so you see. And just so I got that red
+spotted flannel dress I wore last winter. It was moth-eaten in one or
+two places, and I made them let me have it at half-price;--made exactly
+as good a dress. But after all, Mara, I can't trim a bonnet as you can,
+and I can't come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work, nor I can't
+draw and paint as you can, and I can't sing like you; and then as to all
+those things you talk with Mr. Sewell about, why they're beyond my
+depth,--that's all I've got to say. Now, you are made to have poetry
+written to you, and all that kind of thing one reads of in novels.
+Nobody would ever think of writing poetry to me, now, or sending me
+flowers and rings, and such things. If a fellow likes me, he gives me a
+quince, or a big apple; but, then, Mara, there ain't any fellows round
+here that are fit to speak to."
+
+"I'm sure, Sally, there always is a train following you everywhere, at
+singing-school and Thursday lecture."
+
+"Yes--but what do I care for 'em?" said Sally, with a toss of her head.
+"Why they follow me, I don't see. I don't do anything to make 'em, and I
+tell 'em all that they tire me to death; and still they will hang
+round. What is the reason, do you suppose?"
+
+"What can it be?" said Mara, with a quiet kind of arch drollery which
+suffused her face, as she bent over her painting.
+
+"Well, you know I can't bear fellows--I think they are hateful."
+
+"What! even Tom Hiers?" said Mara, continuing her painting.
+
+"Tom Hiers! Do you suppose I care for him? He would insist on waiting on
+me round all last winter, taking me over in his boat to Portland, and up
+in his sleigh to Brunswick; but I didn't care for him."
+
+"Well, there's Jimmy Wilson, up at Brunswick."
+
+"What! that little snip of a clerk! You don't suppose I care for him, do
+you?--only he almost runs his head off following me round when I go up
+there shopping; he's nothing but a little dressed-up yard-stick! I never
+saw a fellow yet that I'd cross the street to have another look at. By
+the by, Mara, Miss Roxy told me Sunday that Moses was coming down from
+Umbagog this week."
+
+"Yes, he is," said Mara; "we are looking for him every day."
+
+"You must want to see him. How long is it since you saw him?"
+
+"It is three years," said Mara. "I scarcely know what he is like now. I
+was visiting in Boston when he came home from his three-years' voyage,
+and he was gone into the lumbering country when I came back. He seems
+almost a stranger to me."
+
+"He's pretty good-looking," said Sally. "I saw him on Sunday when he was
+here, but he was off on Monday, and never called on old friends. Does he
+write to you often?"
+
+"Not very," said Mara; "in fact, almost never; and when he does, there
+is so little in his letters."
+
+"Well, I tell you, Mara, you must not expect fellows to write as girls
+can. They don't do it. Now, our boys, when they write home, they tell
+the latitude and longitude, and soil and productions, and such things.
+But if you or I were only there, don't you think we should find
+something more to say? Of course we should,--fifty thousand little
+things that they never think of."
+
+Mara made no reply to this, but went on very intently with her painting.
+A close observer might have noticed a suppressed sigh that seemed to
+retreat far down into her heart. Sally did not notice it.
+
+What was in that sigh? It was the sigh of a long, deep, inner history,
+unwritten and untold--such as are transpiring daily by thousands, and of
+which we take no heed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+REBELLION
+
+
+We have introduced Mara to our readers as she appears in her seventeenth
+year, at the time when she is expecting the return of Moses as a young
+man of twenty; but we cannot do justice to the feelings which are roused
+in her heart by this expectation, without giving a chapter or two to
+tracing the history of Moses since we left him as a boy commencing the
+study of the Latin grammar with Mr. Sewell. The reader must see the
+forces that acted upon his early development, and what they have made of
+him.
+
+It is common for people who write treatises on education to give forth
+their rules and theories with a self-satisfied air, as if a human being
+were a thing to be made up, like a batch of bread, out of a given number
+of materials combined by an infallible recipe. Take your child, and do
+thus and so for a given number of years, and he comes out a thoroughly
+educated individual.
+
+But in fact, education is in many cases nothing more than a blind
+struggle of parents and guardians with the evolutions of some strong,
+predetermined character, individual, obstinate, unreceptive, and seeking
+by an inevitable law of its being to develop itself and gain free
+expression in its own way. Captain Kittridge's confidence that he would
+as soon undertake a boy as a Newfoundland pup, is good for those whose
+idea of what is to be done for a human being are only what would be done
+for a dog, namely, give food, shelter, and world-room, and leave each to
+act out his own nature without let or hindrance.
+
+But everybody takes an embryo human being with some plan of one's own
+what it shall do or be. The child's future shall shape out some darling
+purpose or plan, and fulfill some long unfulfilled expectation of the
+parent. And thus, though the wind of every generation sweeps its hopes
+and plans like forest-leaves, none are whirled and tossed with more
+piteous moans than those which come out green and fresh to shade the
+happy spring-time of the cradle. For the temperaments of children are
+often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been
+filling cradles with changelings.
+
+A meek member of the Peace Society, a tender, devout, poetical
+clergyman, receives an heir from heaven, and straightway devotes him to
+the Christian ministry. But lo! the boy proves a young war-horse,
+neighing for battle, burning for gunpowder and guns, for bowie-knives
+and revolvers, and for every form and expression of physical force;--he
+might make a splendid trapper, an energetic sea-captain, a bold, daring
+military man, but his whole boyhood is full of rebukes and disciplines
+for sins which are only the blind effort of the creature to express a
+nature which his parent does not and cannot understand. So again, the
+son that was to have upheld the old, proud merchant's time-honored firm,
+that should have been mighty in ledgers and great upon 'Change, breaks
+his father's heart by an unintelligible fancy for weaving poems and
+romances. A father of literary aspirations, balked of privileges of
+early education, bends over the cradle of his son with but one idea.
+This child shall have the full advantages of regular college-training;
+and so for years he battles with a boy abhorring study, and fitted only
+for a life of out-door energy and bold adventure,--on whom Latin forms
+and Greek quantities fall and melt aimless and useless, as snow-flakes
+on the hide of a buffalo. Then the secret agonies,--the long years of
+sorrowful watchings of those gentler nurses of humanity who receive the
+infant into their bosom out of the void unknown, and strive to read its
+horoscope through the mists of their prayers and tears!--what
+perplexities,--what confusion! Especially is this so in a community
+where the moral and religious sense is so cultivated as in New England,
+and frail, trembling, self-distrustful mothers are told that the shaping
+and ordering not only of this present life, but of an immortal destiny,
+is in their hands.
+
+On the whole, those who succeed best in the rearing of children are the
+tolerant and easy persons who instinctively follow nature and accept
+without much inquiry whatever she sends; or that far smaller class, wise
+to discern spirits and apt to adopt means to their culture and
+development, who can prudently and carefully train every nature
+according to its true and characteristic ideal.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel was a shrewd old Yankee, whose instincts taught him
+from the first, that the waif that had been so mysteriously washed out
+of the gloom of the sea into his family, was of some different class and
+lineage from that which might have filled a cradle of his own, and of a
+nature which he could not perfectly understand. So he prudently watched
+and waited, only using restraint enough to keep the boy anchored in
+society, and letting him otherwise grow up in the solitary freedom of
+his lonely seafaring life.
+
+The boy was from childhood, although singularly attractive, of a moody,
+fitful, unrestful nature,--eager, earnest, but unsteady,--with varying
+phases of imprudent frankness and of the most stubborn and unfathomable
+secretiveness. He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and
+attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as full of hitches
+as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar beauty, and a certain electrical
+power of attraction, seemed to form a constant circle of protection and
+forgiveness around him in the home of his foster-parents; and great as
+was the anxiety and pain which he often gave them, they somehow never
+felt the charge of him as a weariness.
+
+We left him a boy beginning Latin with Mr. Sewell in company with the
+little Mara. This arrangement progressed prosperously for a time, and
+the good clergyman, all whose ideas of education ran through the halls
+of a college, began to have hopes of turning out a choice scholar. But
+when the boy's ship of life came into the breakers of that narrow and
+intricate channel which divides boyhood from manhood, the difficulties
+that had always attended his guidance and management wore an intensified
+form. How much family happiness is wrecked just then and there! How many
+mothers' and sisters' hearts are broken in the wild and confused
+tossings and tearings of that stormy transition! A whole new nature is
+blindly upheaving itself, with cravings and clamorings, which neither
+the boy himself nor often surrounding friends understand.
+
+A shrewd observer has significantly characterized the period as the time
+when the boy wishes he were dead, and everybody else wishes so too. The
+wretched, half-fledged, half-conscious, anomalous creature has all the
+desires of the man, and none of the rights; has a double and triple
+share of nervous edge and intensity in every part of his nature, and no
+definitely perceived objects on which to bestow it,--and, of course, all
+sorts of unreasonable moods and phases are the result.
+
+One of the most common signs of this period, in some natures, is the
+love of contradiction and opposition,--a blind desire to go contrary to
+everything that is commonly received among the older people. The boy
+disparages the minister, quizzes the deacon, thinks the school-master an
+ass, and doesn't believe in the Bible, and seems to be rather pleased
+than otherwise with the shock and flutter that all these announcements
+create among peaceably disposed grown people. No respectable hen that
+ever hatched out a brood of ducks was more puzzled what to do with them
+than was poor Mrs. Pennel when her adopted nursling came into this
+state. Was he a boy? an immortal soul? a reasonable human being? or only
+a handsome goblin sent to torment her?
+
+"What shall we do with him, father?" said she, one Sunday, to Zephaniah,
+as he stood shaving before the little looking-glass in their bedroom.
+"He can't be governed like a child, and he won't govern himself like a
+man."
+
+Zephaniah stopped and strapped his razor reflectively.
+
+"We must cast out anchor and wait for day," he answered. "Prayer is a
+long rope with a strong hold."
+
+It was just at this critical period of life that Moses Pennel was drawn
+into associations which awoke the alarm of all his friends, and from
+which the characteristic willfulness of his nature made it difficult to
+attempt to extricate him.
+
+In order that our readers may fully understand this part of our history,
+we must give some few particulars as to the peculiar scenery of Orr's
+Island and the state of the country at this time.
+
+The coast of Maine, as we have elsewhere said, is remarkable for a
+singular interpenetration of the sea with the land, forming amid its
+dense primeval forests secluded bays, narrow and deep, into which
+vessels might float with the tide, and where they might nestle unseen
+and unsuspected amid the dense shadows of the overhanging forest.
+
+At this time there was a very brisk business done all along the coast of
+Maine in the way of smuggling. Small vessels, lightly built and swift of
+sail, would run up into these sylvan fastnesses, and there make their
+deposits and transact their business so as entirely to elude the
+vigilance of government officers.
+
+It may seem strange that practices of this kind should ever have
+obtained a strong foothold in a community peculiar for its rigid
+morality and its orderly submission to law; but in this case, as in many
+others, contempt of law grew out of weak and unworthy legislation. The
+celebrated embargo of Jefferson stopped at once the whole trade of New
+England, and condemned her thousand ships to rot at the wharves, and
+caused the ruin of thousands of families.
+
+The merchants of the country regarded this as a flagrant, high-handed
+piece of injustice, expressly designed to cripple New England commerce,
+and evasions of this unjust law found everywhere a degree of sympathy,
+even in the breasts of well-disposed and conscientious people. In
+resistance to the law, vessels were constantly fitted out which ran upon
+trading voyages to the West Indies and other places; and although the
+practice was punishable as smuggling, yet it found extensive connivance.
+From this beginning smuggling of all kinds gradually grew up in the
+community, and gained such a foothold that even after the repeal of the
+embargo it still continued to be extensively practiced. Secret
+depositories of contraband goods still existed in many of the lonely
+haunts of islands off the coast of Maine. Hid in deep forest shadows,
+visited only in the darkness of the night, were these illegal stores of
+merchandise. And from these secluded resorts they found their way, no
+one knew or cared to say how, into houses for miles around.
+
+There was no doubt that the practice, like all other illegal ones, was
+demoralizing to the community, and particularly fatal to the character
+of that class of bold, enterprising young men who would be most likely
+to be drawn into it.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel, who was made of a kind of straight-grained,
+uncompromising oaken timber such as built the Mayflower of old, had
+always borne his testimony at home and abroad against any violations of
+the laws of the land, however veiled under the pretext of righting a
+wrong or resisting an injustice, and had done what he could in his
+neighborhood to enable government officers to detect and break up these
+unlawful depositories. This exposed him particularly to the hatred and
+ill-will of the operators concerned in such affairs, and a plot was laid
+by a few of the most daring and determined of them to establish one of
+their depositories on Orr's Island, and to implicate the family of
+Pennel himself in the trade. This would accomplish two purposes, as they
+hoped,--it would be a mortification and defeat to him,--a revenge which
+they coveted; and it would, they thought, insure his silence and
+complicity for the strongest reasons.
+
+The situation and characteristics of Orr's Island peculiarly fitted it
+for the carrying out of a scheme of this kind, and for this purpose we
+must try to give our readers a more definite idea of it.
+
+The traveler who wants a ride through scenery of more varied and
+singular beauty than can ordinarily be found on the shores of any land
+whatever, should start some fine clear day along the clean sandy road,
+ribboned with strips of green grass, that leads through the flat
+pitch-pine forests of Brunswick toward the sea. As he approaches the
+salt water, a succession of the most beautiful and picturesque lakes
+seems to be lying softly cradled in the arms of wild, rocky forest
+shores, whose outlines are ever changing with the windings of the road.
+
+At a distance of about six or eight miles from Brunswick he crosses an
+arm of the sea, and comes upon the first of the interlacing group of
+islands which beautifies the shore. A ride across this island is a
+constant succession of pictures, whose wild and solitary beauty entirely
+distances all power of description. The magnificence of the evergreen
+forests,--their peculiar air of sombre stillness,--the rich
+intermingling ever and anon of groves of birch, beech, and oak, in
+picturesque knots and tufts, as if set for effect by some skillful
+landscape-gardener,--produce a sort of strange dreamy wonder; while the
+sea, breaking forth both on the right hand and the left of the road into
+the most romantic glimpses, seems to flash and glitter like some strange
+gem which every moment shows itself through the framework of a new
+setting. Here and there little secluded coves push in from the sea,
+around which lie soft tracts of green meadow-land, hemmed in and guarded
+by rocky pine-crowned ridges. In such sheltered spots may be seen neat
+white houses, nestling like sheltered doves in the beautiful solitude.
+
+When one has ridden nearly to the end of Great Island, which is about
+four miles across, he sees rising before him, from the sea, a bold
+romantic point of land, uplifting a crown of rich evergreen and forest
+trees over shores of perpendicular rock. This is Orr's Island.
+
+It was not an easy matter in the days of our past experience to guide a
+horse and carriage down the steep, wild shores of Great Island to the
+long bridge that connects it with Orr's. The sense of wild seclusion
+reaches here the highest degree; and one crosses the bridge with a
+feeling as if genii might have built it, and one might be going over it
+to fairy-land. From the bridge the path rises on to a high granite
+ridge, which runs from one end of the island to the other, and has been
+called the Devil's Back, with that superstitious generosity which seems
+to have abandoned all romantic places to so undeserving an owner.
+
+By the side of this ridge of granite is a deep, narrow chasm, running a
+mile and a half or two miles parallel with the road, and veiled by the
+darkest and most solemn shadows of the primeval forest. Here scream the
+jays and the eagles, and fish-hawks make their nests undisturbed; and
+the tide rises and falls under black branches of evergreen, from which
+depend long, light festoons of delicate gray moss. The darkness of the
+forest is relieved by the delicate foliage and the silvery trunks of
+the great white birches, which the solitude of centuries has allowed to
+grow in this spot to a height and size seldom attained elsewhere.
+
+It was this narrow, rocky cove that had been chosen by the smuggler
+Atkinson and his accomplices as a safe and secluded resort for their
+operations. He was a seafaring man of Bath, one of that class who always
+prefer uncertain and doubtful courses to those which are safe and
+reputable. He was possessed of many of those traits calculated to make
+him a hero in the eyes of young men; was dashing, free, and frank in his
+manners, with a fund of humor and an abundance of ready anecdote which
+made his society fascinating; but he concealed beneath all these
+attractions a character of hard, grasping, unscrupulous selfishness, and
+an utter destitution of moral principle.
+
+Moses, now in his sixteenth year, and supposed to be in a general way
+doing well, under the care of the minister, was left free to come and go
+at his own pleasure, unwatched by Zephaniah, whose fishing operations
+often took him for weeks from home. Atkinson hung about the boy's path,
+engaging him first in fishing or hunting enterprises; plied him with
+choice preparations of liquor, with which he would enhance the hilarity
+of their expeditions; and finally worked on his love of adventure and
+that impatient restlessness incident to his period of life to draw him
+fully into his schemes. Moses lost all interest in his lessons, often
+neglecting them for days at a time--accounting for his negligence by
+excuses which were far from satisfactory. When Mara would expostulate
+with him about this, he would break out upon her with a fierce
+irritation. Was he always going to be tied to a girl's apron-string? He
+was tired of study, and tired of old Sewell, whom he declared an old
+granny in a white wig, who knew nothing of the world. He wasn't going to
+college--it was altogether too slow for him--he was going to see life
+and push ahead for himself.
+
+Mara's life during this time was intensely wearing. A frail, slender,
+delicate girl of thirteen, she carried a heart prematurely old with the
+most distressing responsibility of mature life. Her love for Moses had
+always had in it a large admixture of that maternal and care-taking
+element which, in some shape or other, qualities the affection of woman
+to man. Ever since that dream of babyhood, when the vision of a pale
+mother had led the beautiful boy to her arms, Mara had accepted him as
+something exclusively her own, with an intensity of ownership that
+seemed almost to merge her personal identity with his. She felt, and
+saw, and enjoyed, and suffered in him, and yet was conscious of a higher
+nature in herself, by which unwillingly he was often judged and
+condemned. His faults affected her with a kind of guilty pain, as if
+they were her own; his sins were borne bleeding in her heart in silence,
+and with a jealous watchfulness to hide them from every eye but hers.
+She busied herself day and night interceding and making excuses for him,
+first to her own sensitive moral nature, and then with everybody around,
+for with one or another he was coming into constant collision. She felt
+at this time a fearful load of suspicion, which she dared not express to
+a human being.
+
+Up to this period she had always been the only confidant of Moses, who
+poured into her ear without reserve all the good and the evil of his
+nature, and who loved her with all the intensity with which he was
+capable of loving anything. Nothing so much shows what a human being is
+in moral advancement as the quality of his love. Moses Pennel's love was
+egotistic, exacting, tyrannical, and capricious--sometimes venting
+itself in expressions of a passionate fondness, which had a savor of
+protecting generosity in them, and then receding to the icy pole of
+surly petulance. For all that, there was no resisting the magnetic
+attraction with which in his amiable moods he drew those whom he liked
+to himself.
+
+Such people are not very wholesome companions for those who are
+sensitively organized and predisposed to self-sacrificing love. They
+keep the heart in a perpetual freeze and thaw, which, like the American
+northern climate, is so particularly fatal to plants of a delicate
+habit. They could live through the hot summer and the cold winter, but
+they cannot endure the three or four months when it freezes one day and
+melts the next,--when all the buds are started out by a week of genial
+sunshine, and then frozen for a fortnight. These fitful persons are of
+all others most engrossing, because you are always sure in their good
+moods that they are just going to be angels,--an expectation which no
+number of disappointments seems finally to do away. Mara believed in
+Moses's future as she did in her own existence. He was going to do
+something great and good,--that she was certain of. He would be a
+splendid man! Nobody, she thought, knew him as she did; nobody could
+know how good and generous he was _sometimes_, and how frankly he would
+confess his faults, and what noble aspirations he had!
+
+But there was no concealing from her watchful sense that Moses was
+beginning to have secrets from her. He was cloudy and murky; and at some
+of the most harmless inquiries in the world, would flash out with a
+sudden temper, as if she had touched some sore spot. Her bedroom was
+opposite to his; and she became quite sure that night after night, while
+she lay thinking of him, she heard him steal down out of the house
+between two and three o'clock, and not return till a little before
+day-dawn. Where he went, and with whom, and what he was doing, was to
+her an awful mystery,--and it was one she dared not share with a human
+being. If she told her kind old grandfather, she feared that any
+inquiry from him would only light as a spark on that inflammable spirit
+of pride and insubordination that was rising within him, and bring on an
+instantaneous explosion. Mr. Sewell's influence she could hope little
+more from; and as to poor Mrs. Pennel, such communications would only
+weary and distress her, without doing any manner of good. There was,
+therefore, only that one unfailing Confidant--the Invisible Friend to
+whom the solitary child could pour out her heart, and whose inspirations
+of comfort and guidance never fail to come again in return to true
+souls.
+
+One moonlight night, as she lay thus praying, her senses, sharpened by
+watching, discerned a sound of steps treading under her window, and then
+a low whistle. Her heart beat violently, and she soon heard the door of
+Moses's room open, and then the old chamber-stairs gave forth those
+inconsiderate creaks and snaps that garrulous old stairs always will
+when anybody is desirous of making them accomplices in a night-secret.
+Mara rose, and undrawing her curtain, saw three men standing before the
+house, and saw Moses come out and join them. Quick as thought she threw
+on her clothes and wrapping her little form in a dark cloak, with a
+hood, followed them out. She kept at a safe distance behind them,--so
+far back as just to keep them in sight. They never looked back, and
+seemed to say but little till they approached the edge of that deep belt
+of forest which shrouds so large a portion of the island. She hurried
+along, now nearer to them lest they should be lost to view in the deep
+shadows, while they went on crackling and plunging through the dense
+underbrush.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE TEMPTER
+
+
+It was well for Mara that so much of her life had been passed in wild
+forest rambles. She looked frail as the rays of moonbeam which slid down
+the old white-bearded hemlocks, but her limbs were agile and supple as
+steel; and while the party went crashing on before, she followed with
+such lightness that the slight sound of her movements was entirely lost
+in the heavy crackling plunges of the party. Her little heart was
+beating fast and hard; but could any one have seen her face, as it now
+and then came into a spot of moonshine, they might have seen it fixed in
+a deadly expression of resolve and determination. She was going after
+_him_--no matter where; she was resolved to know who and what it was
+that was leading him away, as her heart told her, to no good. Deeper and
+deeper into the shadows of the forest they went, and the child easily
+kept up with them.
+
+Mara had often rambled for whole solitary days in this lonely wood, and
+knew all its rocks and dells the whole three miles to the long bridge at
+the other end of the island. But she had never before seen it under the
+solemn stillness of midnight moonlight, which gives to the most familiar
+objects such a strange, ghostly charm. After they had gone a mile into
+the forest, she could see through the black spruces silver gleams of the
+sea, and hear, amid the whirr and sway of the pine-tops, the dash of the
+ever restless tide which pushed up the long cove. It was at the full, as
+she could discern with a rapid glance of her practiced eye, expertly
+versed in the knowledge of every change of the solitary nature around.
+
+And now the party began to plunge straight down the rocky ledge of the
+Devil's Back, on which they had been walking hitherto, into the deep
+ravine where lay the cove. It was a scrambling, precipitous way, over
+perpendicular walls of rock, whose crevices furnished anchoring-places
+for grand old hemlocks or silver-birches, and whose rough sides,
+leathery with black flaps of lichen, were all tangled and interlaced
+with thick netted bushes. The men plunged down laughing, shouting, and
+swearing at their occasional missteps, and silently as moonbeam or
+thistledown the light-footed shadow went down after them.
+
+She suddenly paused behind a pile of rock, as, through an opening
+between two great spruces, the sea gleamed out like a sheet of
+looking-glass set in a black frame. And here the child saw a small
+vessel swinging at anchor, with the moonlight full on its slack sails,
+and she could hear the gentle gurgle and lick of the green-tongued waves
+as they dashed under it toward the rocky shore.
+
+Mara stopped with a beating heart as she saw the company making for the
+schooner. The tide is high; will they go on board and sail away with him
+where she cannot follow? What could she do? In an ecstasy of fear she
+kneeled down and asked God not to let him go,--to give her at least one
+more chance to save him.
+
+For the pure and pious child had heard enough of the words of these men,
+as she walked behind them, to fill her with horror. She had never before
+heard an oath, but there came back from these men coarse, brutal tones
+and words of blasphemy that froze her blood with horror. And Moses was
+going with them! She felt somehow as if they must be a company of fiends
+bearing him to his ruin.
+
+For some time she kneeled there watching behind the rock, while Moses
+and his companions went on board the little schooner. She had no
+feeling of horror at the loneliness of her own situation, for her
+solitary life had made every woodland thing dear and familiar to her.
+She was cowering down, on a loose, spongy bed of moss, which was all
+threaded through and through with the green vines and pale pink blossoms
+of the mayflower, and she felt its fragrant breath streaming up in the
+moist moonlight. As she leaned forward to look through a rocky crevice,
+her arms rested on a bed of that brittle white moss she had often
+gathered with so much admiration, and a scarlet rock-columbine, such as
+she loved to paint, brushed her cheek,--and all these mute fair things
+seemed to strive to keep her company in her chill suspense of
+watchfulness. Two whippoorwills, from a clump of silvery birches, kept
+calling to each other in melancholy iteration, while she stayed there
+still listening, and knowing by an occasional sound of laughing, or the
+explosion of some oath, that the men were not yet gone. At last they all
+appeared again, and came to a cleared place among the dry leaves, quite
+near to the rock where she was concealed, and kindled a fire which they
+kept snapping and crackling by a constant supply of green resinous
+hemlock branches.
+
+The red flame danced and leaped through the green fuel, and leaping
+upward in tongues of flame, cast ruddy bronze reflections on the old
+pine-trees with their long branches waving with boards of white
+moss,--and by the firelight Mara could see two men in sailor's dress
+with pistols in their belts, and the man Atkinson, whom she had
+recollected as having seen once or twice at her grandfather's. She
+remembered how she had always shrunk from him with a strange instinctive
+dislike, half fear, half disgust, when he had addressed her with that
+kind of free admiration which men of his class often feel themselves at
+liberty to express to a pretty girl of her early age. He was a man that
+might have been handsome, had it not been for a certain strange
+expression of covert wickedness. It was as if some vile evil spirit,
+walking, as the Scriptures say, through dry places, had lighted on a
+comely man's body, in which he had set up housekeeping, making it look
+like a fair house abused by an unclean owner.
+
+As Mara watched his demeanor with Moses, she could think only of a
+loathsome black snake that she had once seen in those solitary
+rocks;--she felt as if his handsome but evil eye were charming him with
+an evil charm to his destruction.
+
+"Well, Mo, my boy," she heard him say,--slapping Moses on the
+shoulder,--"this is something like. We'll have a 'tempus,' as the
+college fellows say,--put down the clams to roast, and I'll mix the
+punch," he said, setting over the fire a tea-kettle which they brought
+from the ship.
+
+After their preparations were finished, all sat down to eat and drink.
+Mara listened with anxiety and horror to a conversation such as she
+never heard or conceived before. It is not often that women hear men
+talk in the undisguised manner which they use among themselves; but the
+conversation of men of unprincipled lives, and low, brutal habits,
+unchecked by the presence of respectable female society, might well
+convey to the horror-struck child a feeling as if she were listening at
+the mouth of hell. Almost every word was preceded or emphasized by an
+oath; and what struck with a death chill to her heart was, that Moses
+swore too, and seemed to show that desperate anxiety to seem _au fait_
+in the language of wickedness, which boys often do at that age, when
+they fancy that to be ignorant of vice is a mark of disgraceful
+greenness. Moses evidently was bent on showing that he was not
+green,--ignorant of the pure ear to which every such word came like the
+blast of death.
+
+He drank a great deal, too, and the mirth among them grew furious and
+terrific. Mara, horrified and shocked as she was, did not, however, lose
+that intense and alert presence of mind, natural to persons in whom
+there is moral strength, however delicate be their physical frame. She
+felt at once that these men were playing upon Moses; that they had an
+object in view; that they were flattering and cajoling him, and leading
+him to drink, that they might work out some fiendish purpose of their
+own. The man called Atkinson related story after story of wild
+adventure, in which sudden fortunes had been made by men who, he said,
+were not afraid to take "the short cut across lots." He told of
+piratical adventures in the West Indies,--of the fun of chasing and
+overhauling ships,--and gave dazzling accounts of the treasures found on
+board. It was observable that all these stories were told on the line
+between joke and earnest,--as frolics, as specimens of good fun, and
+seeing life, etc.
+
+At last came a suggestion,--What if they should start off together some
+fine day, "just for a spree," and try a cruise in the West Indies, to
+see what they could pick up? They had arms, and a gang of fine,
+whole-souled fellows. Moses had been tied to Ma'am Pennel's apron-string
+long enough. And "hark ye," said one of them, "Moses, they say old
+Pennel has lots of dollars in that old sea-chest of his'n. It would be a
+kindness to him to invest them for him in an adventure."
+
+Moses answered with a streak of the boy innocence which often remains
+under the tramping of evil men, like ribbons of green turf in the middle
+of roads:--
+
+"You don't know Father Pennel,--why, he'd no more come into it than"--
+
+A perfect roar of laughter cut short this declaration, and Atkinson,
+slapping Moses on the back, said,--
+
+"By ----, Mo! you are the jolliest green dog! I shall die a-laughing of
+your innocence some day. Why, my boy, can't you see? Pennel's money can
+be invested without asking him."
+
+"Why, he keeps it locked," said Moses.
+
+"And supposing you pick the lock?"
+
+"Not I, indeed," said Moses, making a sudden movement to rise.
+
+Mara almost screamed in her ecstasy, but she had sense enough to hold
+her breath.
+
+"Ho! see him now," said Atkinson, lying back, and holding his sides
+while he laughed, and rolled over; "you can get off anything on that
+muff,--any hoax in the world,--he's so soft! Come, come, my dear boy,
+sit down. I was only seeing how wide I could make you open those great
+black eyes of your'n,--that's all."
+
+"You'd better take care how you joke with me," said Moses, with that
+look of gloomy determination which Mara was quite familiar with of old.
+It was the rallying effort of a boy who had abandoned the first outworks
+of virtue to make a stand for the citadel. And Atkinson, like a prudent
+besieger after a repulse, returned to lie on his arms.
+
+He began talking volubly on other subjects, telling stories, and singing
+songs, and pressing Moses to drink.
+
+Mara was comforted to see that he declined drinking,--that he looked
+gloomy and thoughtful, in spite of the jokes of his companions; but she
+trembled to see, by the following conversation, how Atkinson was
+skillfully and prudently making apparent to Moses the extent to which he
+had him in his power. He seemed to Mara like an ugly spider skillfully
+weaving his web around a fly. She felt cold and faint; but within her
+there was a heroic strength.
+
+She was not going to faint; she would make herself bear up. She was
+going to do something to get Moses out of this snare,--but what? At last
+they rose.
+
+"It is past three o'clock," she heard one of them say.
+
+"I say, Mo," said Atkinson, "you must make tracks for home, or you won't
+be in bed when Mother Pennel calls you."
+
+The men all laughed at this joke, as they turned to go on board the
+schooner.
+
+When they were gone, Moses threw himself down and hid his face in his
+hands. He knew not what pitying little face was looking down upon him
+from the hemlock shadows, what brave little heart was determined to save
+him. He was in one of those great crises of agony that boys pass through
+when they first awake from the fun and frolic of unlawful enterprises to
+find themselves sold under sin, and feel the terrible logic of evil
+which constrains them to pass from the less to greater crime. He felt
+that he was in the power of bad, unprincipled, heartless men, who, if he
+refused to do their bidding, had the power to expose him. All he had
+been doing would come out. His kind old foster-parents would know it.
+Mara would know it. Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily would know the secrets of
+his life that past month. He felt as if they were all looking at him
+now. He had disgraced himself,--had sunk below his education,--had been
+false to all his better knowledge and the past expectations of his
+friends, living a mean, miserable, dishonorable life,--and now the
+ground was fast sliding from under him, and the next plunge might be
+down a precipice from which there would be no return. What he had done
+up to this hour had been done in the roystering, inconsiderate
+gamesomeness of boyhood. It had been represented to himself only as
+"sowing wild oats," "having steep times," "seeing a little of life," and
+so on; but this night he had had propositions of piracy and robbery made
+to him, and he had not dared to knock down the man that made them,--had
+not dared at once to break away from his company. He must meet him
+again,--must go on with him, or--he groaned in agony at the thought.
+
+It was a strong indication of that repressed, considerate habit of mind
+which love had wrought in the child, that when Mara heard the boy's sobs
+rising in the stillness, she did not, as she wished to, rush out and
+throw her arms around his neck and try to comfort him.
+
+But she felt instinctively that she must not do this. She must not let
+him know that she had discovered his secret by stealing after him thus
+in the night shadows. She knew how nervously he had resented even the
+compassionate glances she had cast upon him in his restless, turbid
+intervals during the past few weeks, and the fierceness with which he
+had replied to a few timid inquiries. No,--though her heart was breaking
+for him, it was a shrewd, wise little heart, and resolved not to spoil
+all by yielding to its first untaught impulses. She repressed herself as
+the mother does who refrains from crying out when she sees her
+unconscious little one on the verge of a precipice.
+
+When Moses rose and moodily began walking homeward, she followed at a
+distance. She could now keep farther off, for she knew the way through
+every part of the forest, and she only wanted to keep within sound of
+his footsteps to make sure that he was going home. When he emerged from
+the forest into the open moonlight, she sat down in its shadows and
+watched him as he walked over the open distance between her and the
+house. He went in; and then she waited a little longer for him to be
+quite retired. She thought he would throw himself on the bed, and then
+she could steal in after him. So she sat there quite in the shadows.
+
+The grand full moon was riding high and calm in the purple sky, and
+Harpswell Bay on the one hand, and the wide, open ocean on the other,
+lay all in a silver shimmer of light. There was not a sound save the
+plash of the tide, now beginning to go out, and rolling and rattling
+the pebbles up and down as it came and went, and once in a while the
+distant, mournful intoning of the whippoorwill. There were silent lonely
+ships, sailing slowly to and fro far out to sea, turning their fair
+wings now into bright light and now into shadow, as they moved over the
+glassy stillness. Mara could see all the houses on Harpswell Neck and
+the white church as clear as in the daylight. It seemed to her some
+strange, unearthly dream.
+
+As she sat there, she thought over her whole little life, all full of
+one thought, one purpose, one love, one prayer, for this being so
+strangely given to her out of that silent sea, which lay so like a still
+eternity around her,--and she revolved again what meant the vision of
+her childhood. Did it not mean that she was to watch over him and save
+him from some dreadful danger? That poor mother was lying now silent and
+peaceful under the turf in the little graveyard not far off, and _she_
+must care for her boy.
+
+A strong motherly feeling swelled out the girl's heart,--she felt that
+she _must_, she would, somehow save that treasure which had so
+mysteriously been committed to her. So, when she thought she had given
+time enough for Moses to be quietly asleep in his room, she arose and
+ran with quick footsteps across the moonlit plain to the house.
+
+The front-door was standing wide open, as was always the innocent
+fashion in these regions, with a half-angle of moonlight and shadow
+lying within its dusky depths. Mara listened a moment,--no sound: he had
+gone to bed then. "Poor boy," she said, "I hope he is asleep; how he
+must feel, poor fellow! It's all the fault of those dreadful men!" said
+the little dark shadow to herself, as she stole up the stairs past his
+room as guiltily as if she were the sinner. Once the stairs creaked, and
+her heart was in her mouth, but she gained her room and shut and bolted
+the door. She kneeled down by her little white bed, and thanked God
+that she had come in safe, and then prayed him to teach her what to do
+next. She felt chilly and shivering, and crept into bed, and lay with
+her great soft brown eyes wide open, intently thinking what she should
+do.
+
+Should she tell her grandfather? Something instinctively said No; that
+the first word from him which showed Moses he was detected would at once
+send him off with those wicked men. "He would never, never bear to have
+this known," she said. Mr. Sewell?--ah, that was worse. She herself
+shrank from letting him know what Moses had been doing; she could not
+bear to lower him so much in his eyes. He could not make allowances, she
+thought. He is good, to be sure, but he is so old and grave, and doesn't
+know how much Moses has been tempted by these dreadful men; and then
+perhaps he would tell Miss Emily, and they never would want Moses to
+come there any more.
+
+"What shall I do?" she said to herself. "I must get somebody to help me
+or tell me what to do. I can't tell grandmamma; it would only make her
+ill, and she wouldn't know what to do any more than I. Ah, I know what I
+will do,--I'll tell Captain Kittridge; he was always so kind to me; and
+he has been to sea and seen all sorts of men, and Moses won't care so
+much perhaps to have him know, because the Captain is such a funny man,
+and don't take everything so seriously. Yes, that's it. I'll go right
+down to the cove in the morning. God will bring me through, I know He
+will;" and the little weary head fell back on the pillow asleep. And as
+she slept, a smile settled over her face, perhaps a reflection from the
+face of her good angel, who always beholdeth the face of our Father in
+Heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED
+
+
+Mara was so wearied with her night walk and the agitation she had been
+through, that once asleep she slept long after the early breakfast hour
+of the family. She was surprised on awaking to hear the slow old clock
+downstairs striking eight. She hastily jumped up and looked around with
+a confused wonder, and then slowly the events of the past night came
+back upon her like a remembered dream. She dressed herself quickly, and
+went down to find the breakfast things all washed and put away, and Mrs.
+Pennel spinning.
+
+"Why, dear heart," said the old lady, "how came you to sleep so?--I
+spoke to you twice, but I could not make you hear."
+
+"Has Moses been down, grandma?" said Mara, intent on the sole thought in
+her heart.
+
+"Why, yes, dear, long ago,--and cross enough he was; that boy does get
+to be a trial,--but come, dear, I've saved some hot cakes for you,--sit
+down now and eat your breakfast."
+
+Mara made a feint of eating what her grandmother with fond officiousness
+would put before her, and then rising up she put on her sun-bonnet and
+started down toward the cove to find her old friend.
+
+The queer, dry, lean old Captain had been to her all her life like a
+faithful kobold or brownie, an unquestioning servant of all her gentle
+biddings. She dared tell him anything without diffidence or
+shamefacedness; and she felt that in this trial of her life he might
+have in his sea-receptacle some odd old amulet or spell that should be
+of power to help her. Instinctively she avoided the house, lest Sally
+should see and fly out and seize her. She took a narrow path through the
+cedars down to the little boat cove where the old Captain worked so
+merrily ten years ago, in the beginning of our story, and where she
+found him now, with his coat off, busily planing a board.
+
+"Wal', now,--if this 'ere don't beat all!" he said, looking up and
+seeing her; "why, you're looking after Sally, I s'pose? She's up to the
+house."
+
+"No, Captain Kittridge, I'm come to see _you_."
+
+"You _be_?" said the Captain, "I swow! if I ain't a lucky feller. But
+what's the matter?" he said, suddenly observing her pale face and the
+tears in her eyes. "Hain't nothin' bad happened,--hes there?"
+
+"Oh! Captain Kittridge, something dreadful; and nobody but you can help
+me."
+
+"Want to know, now!" said the Captain, with a grave face. "Well, come
+here, now, and sit down, and tell me all about it. Don't you cry,
+there's a good girl! Don't, now."
+
+Mara began her story, and went through with it in a rapid and agitated
+manner; and the good Captain listened in a fidgety state of interest,
+occasionally relieving his mind by interjecting "Do tell, now!" "I
+swan,--if that ar ain't too bad."
+
+"That ar's rediculous conduct in Atkinson. He ought to be talked to,"
+said the Captain, when she had finished, and then he whistled and put a
+shaving in his mouth, which he chewed reflectively.
+
+"Don't you be a mite worried, Mara," he said. "You did a great deal
+better to come to me than to go to Mr. Sewell or your grand'ther either;
+'cause you see these 'ere wild chaps they'll take things from me they
+wouldn't from a church-member or a minister. Folks mustn't pull 'em up
+with _too_ short a rein,--they must kind o' flatter 'em off. But that ar
+Atkinson's too rediculous for anything; and if he don't mind, I'll serve
+him out. I know a thing or two about him that I shall shake over his
+head if he don't behave. Now I don't think so much of smugglin' as some
+folks," said the Captain, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. "I
+reely don't, now; but come to goin' off piratin',--and tryin' to put a
+young boy up to robbin' his best friends,--why, there ain't no kind o'
+sense in that. It's p'ison mean of Atkinson. I shall tell him so, and I
+shall talk to Moses."
+
+"Oh! I'm afraid to have you," said Mara, apprehensively.
+
+"Why, chickabiddy," said the old Captain, "you don't understand me. I
+ain't goin' at him with no sermons,--I shall jest talk to him this way:
+Look here now, Moses, I shall say, there's Badger's ship goin' to sail
+in a fortnight for China, and they want likely fellers aboard, and I've
+got a hundred dollars that I'd like to send on a venture; if you'll take
+it and go, why, we'll share the profits. I shall talk like that, you
+know. Mebbe I sha'n't let him know what I know, and mebbe I shall; jest
+tip him a wink, you know; it depends on circumstances. But bless you,
+child, these 'ere fellers ain't none of 'em 'fraid o' me, you see,
+'cause they know I know the ropes."
+
+"And can you make that horrid man let him alone?" said Mara, fearfully.
+
+"Calculate I can. 'Spect if I's to tell Atkinson a few things I know,
+he'd be for bein' scase in our parts. Now, you see, I hain't minded
+doin' a small bit o' trade now and then with them ar fellers myself; but
+this 'ere," said the Captain, stopping and looking extremely disgusted,
+"why, it's contemptible, it's rediculous!"
+
+"Do you think I'd better tell grandpapa?" said Mara.
+
+"Don't worry your little head. I'll step up and have a talk with Pennel,
+this evening. He knows as well as I that there is times when chaps must
+be seen to, and no remarks made. Pennel knows that ar. Why, now, Mis'
+Kittridge thinks our boys turned out so well all along of her bringin'
+up, and I let her think so; keeps her sort o' in spirits, you see. But
+Lord bless ye, child, there's been times with Job, and Sam, and Pass,
+and Dass, and Dile, and all on 'em finally, when, if I hadn't jest
+pulled a rope here and turned a screw there, and said nothin' to nobody,
+they'd a-been all gone to smash. I never told Mis' Kittridge none o'
+their didos; bless you, 'twouldn't been o' no use. I never told _them_,
+neither; but I jest kind o' worked 'em off, you know; and they's all
+putty 'spectable men now, as men go, you know; not like Parson Sewell,
+but good, honest mates and ship-masters,--kind o' middlin' people, you
+know. It takes a good many o' sich to make up a world, d'ye see."
+
+"But oh, Captain Kittridge, did any of them use to swear?" said Mara, in
+a faltering voice.
+
+"Wal', they did, consid'able," said the Captain;--then seeing the
+trembling of Mara's lip, he added,--
+
+"Ef you could a-found this 'ere out any other way, it's most a pity
+you'd a-heard him; 'cause he wouldn't never have let out afore you. It
+don't do for gals to hear the fellers talk when they's alone, 'cause
+fellers,--wal', you see, fellers will be fellers, partic'larly when
+they're young. Some on 'em, they never gits over it all their lives
+finally."
+
+"But oh! Captain Kittridge, that talk last night was so dreadfully
+wicked! and Moses!--oh, it was dreadful to hear him!"
+
+"Wal', yes, it was," said the Captain, consolingly; "but don't you cry,
+and don't you break your little heart. I expect he'll come all right,
+and jine the church one of these days; 'cause there's old Pennel, he
+prays,--fact now, I think there's consid'able in some people's prayers,
+and he's one of the sort. And you pray, too; and I'm quite sure the good
+Lord _must_ hear you. I declare sometimes I wish you'd jest say a good
+word to Him for me; I should like to get the hang o' things a little
+better than I do, somehow, I reely should. I've gi'n up swearing years
+ago. Mis' Kittridge, she broke me o' that, and now I don't never go
+further than 'I vum' or 'I swow,' or somethin' o' that sort; but you see
+I'm old;--Moses is young; but then he's got eddication and friends, and
+he'll come all right. Now you jest see ef he don't!"
+
+This miscellaneous budget of personal experiences and friendly
+consolation which the good Captain conveyed to Mara may possibly make
+you laugh, my reader, but the good, ropy brown man was doing his best to
+console his little friend; and as Mara looked at him he was almost
+glorified in her eyes--he had power to save Moses, and he would do it.
+She went home to dinner that day with her heart considerably lightened.
+She refrained, in a guilty way, from even looking at Moses, who was
+gloomy and moody.
+
+Mara had from nature a good endowment of that kind of innocent hypocrisy
+which is needed as a staple in the lives of women who bridge a thousand
+awful chasms with smiling, unconscious looks, and walk, singing and
+scattering flowers, over abysses of fear, while their hearts are dying
+within them.
+
+She talked more volubly than was her wont with Mrs. Pennel, and with her
+old grandfather; she laughed and seemed in more than usual spirits, and
+only once did she look up and catch the gloomy eye of Moses. It had that
+murky, troubled look that one may see in the eye of a boy when those
+evil waters which cast up mire and dirt have once been stirred in his
+soul. They fell under her clear glance, and he made a rapid, impatient
+movement, as if it hurt him to be looked at. The evil spirit in boy or
+man cannot bear the "touch of celestial temper;" and the sensitiveness
+to eyebeams is one of the earliest signs of conscious, inward guilt.
+
+Mara was relieved, as he flung out of the house after dinner, to see the
+long, dry figure of Captain Kittridge coming up and seizing Moses by the
+button. From the window she saw the Captain assuming a confidential air
+with him; and when they had talked together a few moments, she saw Moses
+going with great readiness after him down the road to his house.
+
+In less than a fortnight, it was settled Moses was to sail for China,
+and Mara was deep in the preparations for his outfit. Once she would
+have felt this departure as the most dreadful trial of her life. Now it
+seemed to her a deliverance for him, and she worked with a cheerful
+alacrity, which seemed to Moses more than was proper, considering _he_
+was going away.
+
+For Moses, like many others of his sex, boy or man, had quietly settled
+in his own mind that the whole love of Mara's heart was to be his, to
+have and to hold, to use and to draw on, when and as he liked. He
+reckoned on it as a sort of inexhaustible, uncounted treasure that was
+his own peculiar right and property, and therefore he felt abused at
+what he supposed was a disclosure of some deficiency on her part.
+
+"You seem to be very glad to be rid of me," he said to her in a bitter
+tone one day, as she was earnestly busy in her preparations.
+
+Now the fact was, that Moses had been assiduously making himself
+disagreeable to Mara for the fortnight past, by all sorts of unkind
+sayings and doings; and he knew it too; yet he felt a right to feel very
+much abused at the thought that she could possibly want him to be going.
+If she had been utterly desolate about it, and torn her hair and sobbed
+and wailed, he would have asked what she could be crying about, and
+begged not to be bored with scenes; but as it was, this cheerful
+composure was quite unfeeling.
+
+Now pray don't suppose Moses to be a monster of an uncommon species. We
+take him to be an average specimen of a boy of a certain kind of
+temperament in the transition period of life. Everything is chaos
+within; the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the
+flesh, and "light and darkness, and mind and dust, and passion and pure
+thoughts, mingle and contend," without end or order. He wondered at
+himself sometimes that he could say such cruel things as he did to his
+faithful little friend--to one whom, after all, he did love and trust
+before all other human beings.
+
+There is no saying why it is that a man or a boy, not radically
+destitute of generous comprehensions, will often cruelly torture and
+tyrannize over a woman whom he both loves and reveres, who stands in his
+soul in his best hours as the very impersonation of all that is good and
+beautiful. It is as if some evil spirit at times possessed him, and
+compelled him to utter words which were felt at the moment to be mean
+and hateful. Moses often wondered at himself, as he lay awake nights,
+how he could have said and done the things he had, and felt miserably
+resolved to make it up somehow before he went away; but he did not.
+
+He could not say, "Mara, I have done wrong," though he every day meant
+to do it, and sometimes sat an hour in her presence, feeling murky and
+stony, as if possessed by a dumb spirit; then he would get up and fling
+stormily out of the house.
+
+Poor Mara wondered if he really would go without one kind word. She
+thought of all the years they had been together, and how he had been her
+only thought and love. What had become of her brother?--the Moses that
+once she used to know--frank, careless, not ill-tempered, and who
+sometimes seemed to love her and think she was the best little girl in
+the world? Where was he gone to--this friend and brother of her
+childhood, and would he never come back?
+
+At last came the evening before his parting; the sea-chest was all made
+up and packed; and Mara's fingers had been busy with everything, from
+more substantial garments down to all those little comforts and nameless
+conveniences that only a woman knows how to improvise. Mara thought
+certainly she should get a few kind words, as Moses looked it over. But
+he only said, "All right;" and then added that "there was a button off
+one of the shirts." Mara's busy fingers quickly replaced it, and Moses
+was annoyed at the tear that fell on the button. What was she crying for
+now? He knew very well, but he felt stubborn and cruel. Afterwards he
+lay awake many a night in his berth, and acted this last scene over
+differently. He took Mara in his arms and kissed her; he told her she
+was his best friend, his good angel, and that he was not worthy to kiss
+the hem of her garment; but the next day, when he thought of writing a
+letter to her, he didn't, and the good mood passed away. Boys do not
+acquire an ease of expression in letter-writing as early as girls, and a
+voyage to China furnished opportunities few and far between of sending
+letters.
+
+Now and then, through some sailing ship, came missives which seemed to
+Mara altogether colder and more unsatisfactory than they would have done
+could she have appreciated the difference between a boy and a girl in
+power of epistolary expression; for the power of really representing
+one's heart on paper, which is one of the first spring flowers of early
+womanhood, is the latest blossom on the slow-growing tree of manhood. To
+do Moses justice, these seeming cold letters were often written with a
+choking lump in his throat, caused by thinking over his many sins
+against his little good angel; but then that past account was so long,
+and had so much that it pained him to think of, that he dashed it all
+off in the shortest fashion, and said to himself, "One of these days
+when I see her I'll make it all up."
+
+No man--especially one that is living a rough, busy, out-of-doors
+life--can form the slightest conception of that veiled and secluded life
+which exists in the heart of a sensitive woman, whose sphere is narrow,
+whose external diversions are few, and whose mind, therefore, acts by a
+continual introversion upon itself. They know nothing how their careless
+words and actions are pondered and turned again in weary, quiet hours of
+fruitless questioning. What did he mean by this? and what did he intend
+by that?--while he, the careless buffalo, meant nothing, or has
+forgotten what it was, if he did. Man's utter ignorance of woman's
+nature is a cause of a great deal of unsuspected cruelty which he
+practices toward her.
+
+Mara found one or two opportunities of writing to Moses; but her letters
+were timid and constrained by a sort of frosty, discouraged sense of
+loneliness; and Moses, though he knew he had no earthly right to expect
+this to be otherwise, took upon him to feel as an abused individual,
+whom nobody loved--whose way in the world was destined to be lonely and
+desolate. So when, at the end of three years, he arrived suddenly at
+Brunswick in the beginning of winter, and came, all burning with
+impatience, to the home at Orr's Island, and found that Mara had gone to
+Boston on a visit, he resented it as a personal slight.
+
+He might have inquired why she should expect him, and whether her whole
+life was to be spent in looking out of the window to watch for him. He
+might have remembered that he had warned her of his approach by no
+letter. But no. "Mara didn't care for him--she had forgotten all about
+him--she was having a good time in Boston, just as likely as not with
+some train of admirers, and he had been tossing on the stormy ocean, and
+she had thought nothing of it." How many things he had meant to say! He
+had never felt so good and so affectionate. He would have confessed all
+the sins of his life to her, and asked her pardon--and she wasn't there!
+
+Mrs. Pennel suggested that he might go to Boston after her.
+
+No, he was not going to do that. He would not intrude on her pleasures
+with the memory of a rough, hard-working sailor. He was alone in the
+world, and had his own way to make, and so best go at once up among
+lumbermen, and cut the timber for the ship that was to carry Cæsar and
+his fortunes.
+
+When Mara was informed by a letter from Mrs. Pennel, expressed in the
+few brief words in which that good woman generally embodied her
+epistolary communications, that Moses had been at home, and gone to
+Umbagog without seeing her, she felt at her heart only a little closer
+stricture of cold, quiet pain, which had become a habit of her inner
+life.
+
+"He did not love her--he was cold and selfish," said the inner voice.
+And faintly she pleaded, in answer, "He is a man--he has seen the
+world--and has so much to do and think of, no wonder."
+
+In fact, during the last three years that had parted them, the great
+change of life had been consummated in both. They had parted boy and
+girl; they would meet man and woman. The time of this meeting had been
+announced.
+
+And all this is the history of that sigh, so very quiet that Sally
+Kittridge never checked the rattling flow of her conversation to observe
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY
+
+
+We have in the last three chapters brought up the history of our
+characters to the time when our story opens, when Mara and Sally
+Kittridge were discussing the expected return of Moses. Sally was
+persuaded by Mara to stay and spend the night with her, and did so
+without much fear of what her mother would say when she returned; for
+though Mrs. Kittridge still made bustling demonstrations of authority,
+it was quite evident to every one that the handsome grown-up girl had
+got the sceptre into her own hands, and was reigning in the full
+confidence of being, in one way or another, able to bring her mother
+into all her views.
+
+So Sally stayed--to have one of those long night-talks in which girls
+delight, in the course of which all sorts of intimacies and confidences,
+that shun the daylight, open like the night-blooming cereus in strange
+successions. One often wonders by daylight at the things one says very
+naturally in the dark.
+
+So the two girls talked about Moses, and Sally dilated upon his
+handsome, manly air the one Sunday that he had appeared in Harpswell
+meeting-house.
+
+"He didn't know me at all, if you'll believe it," said Sally. "I was
+standing with father when he came out, and he shook hands with him, and
+looked at me as if I'd been an entire stranger."
+
+"I'm not in the least surprised," said Mara; "you're grown so and
+altered."
+
+"Well, now, you'd hardly know him, Mara," said Sally. "He is a man--a
+real man; everything about him is different; he holds up his head in
+such a proud way. Well, he always did that when he was a boy; but when
+he speaks, he has such a deep voice! How boys do alter in a year or
+two!"
+
+"Do you think I have altered much, Sally?" said Mara; "at least, do you
+think _he_ would think so?"
+
+"Why, Mara, you and I have been together so much, I can't tell. We don't
+notice what goes on before us every day. I really should like to see
+what Moses Pennel will think when he sees you. At any rate, he can't
+order you about with such a grand air as he used to when you were
+younger."
+
+"I think sometimes he has quite forgotten about me," said Mara.
+
+"Well, if I were you, I should put him in mind of myself by one or two
+little ways," said Sally. "I'd plague him and tease him. I'd lead him
+such a life that he couldn't forget me,--that's what I would."
+
+"I don't doubt you would, Sally; and he might like you all the better
+for it. But you know that sort of thing isn't my way. People must act in
+character."
+
+"Do you know, Mara," said Sally, "I always thought Moses was hateful in
+his treatment of you? Now I'd no more marry that fellow than I'd walk
+into the fire; but it would be a just punishment for his sins to have to
+marry me! Wouldn't I serve him out, though!"
+
+With which threat of vengeance on her mind Sally Kittridge fell asleep,
+while Mara lay awake pondering,--wondering if Moses would come
+to-morrow, and what he would be like if he did come.
+
+The next morning as the two girls were wiping breakfast dishes in a room
+adjoining the kitchen, a step was heard on the kitchen-floor, and the
+first that Mara knew she found herself lifted from the floor in the
+arms of a tall dark-eyed young man, who was kissing her just as if he
+had a right to. She knew it must be Moses, but it seemed strange as a
+dream, for all she had tried to imagine it beforehand.
+
+He kissed her over and over, and then holding her off at arm's length,
+said, "Why, Mara, you have grown to be a beauty!"
+
+"And what was she, I'd like to know, when you went away, Mr. Moses?"
+said Sally, who could not long keep out of a conversation. "She was
+handsome when you were only a great ugly boy."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Sally!" said Moses, making a profound bow.
+
+"Thank me for what?" said Sally, with a toss.
+
+"For your intimation that I am a handsome young man now," said Moses,
+sitting with his arm around Mara, and her hand in his.
+
+And in truth he was as handsome now for a man as he was in the promise
+of his early childhood. All the oafishness and surly awkwardness of the
+half-boy period was gone. His great black eyes were clear and confident:
+his dark hair clustering in short curls round his well-shaped head; his
+black lashes, and fine form, and a certain confident ease of manner, set
+him off to the greatest advantage.
+
+Mara felt a peculiar dreamy sense of strangeness at this brother who was
+not a brother,--this Moses so different from the one she had known. The
+very tone of his voice, which when he left had the uncertain cracked
+notes which indicate the unformed man, were now mellowed and settled.
+Mara regarded him shyly as he talked, blushed uneasily, and drew away
+from his arm around her, as if this handsome, self-confident young man
+were being too familiar. In fact, she made apology to go out into the
+other room to call Mrs. Pennel.
+
+Moses looked after her as she went with admiration. "What a little woman
+she has grown!" he said, naïvely.
+
+"And what did you expect she would grow?" said Sally. "You didn't expect
+to find her a girl in short clothes, did you?"
+
+"Not exactly, Miss Sally," said Moses, turning his attention to her;
+"and some other people are changed too."
+
+"Like enough," said Sally, carelessly. "I should think so, since
+somebody never spoke a word to one the Sunday he was at meeting."
+
+"Oh, you remember that, do you? On my word, Sally"--
+
+"Miss Kittridge, if you please, sir," said Sally, turning round with the
+air of an empress.
+
+"Well, then, Miss Kittridge," said Moses, making a bow; "now let me
+finish my sentence. I never dreamed who you were."
+
+"Complimentary," said Sally, pouting.
+
+"Well, hear me through," said Moses; "you had grown so handsome, Miss
+Kittridge."
+
+"Oh! that indeed! I suppose you mean to say I was a fright when you
+left?"
+
+"Not at all--not at all," said Moses; "but handsome things may grow
+handsomer, you know."
+
+"I don't like flattery," said Sally.
+
+"I never flatter, Miss Kittridge," said Moses.
+
+Our young gentleman and young lady of Orr's Island went through with
+this customary little lie of civilized society with as much gravity as
+if they were practicing in the court of Versailles,--she looking out
+from the corner of her eye to watch the effect of her words, and he
+laying his hand on his heart in the most edifying gravity. They
+perfectly understood one another.
+
+But, says the reader, seems to me Sally Kittridge does all the talking!
+So she does,--so she always will,--for it is her nature to be bright,
+noisy, and restless; and one of these girls always overcrows a timid and
+thoughtful one, and makes her, for the time, seem dim and faded, as does
+rose color when put beside scarlet.
+
+Sally was a born coquette. It was as natural for her to want to flirt
+with every man she saw, as for a kitten to scamper after a pin-ball.
+Does the kitten care a fig for the pin-ball, or the dry leaves, which
+she whisks, and frisks, and boxes, and pats, and races round and round
+after? No; it's nothing but kittenhood; every hair of her fur is alive
+with it. Her sleepy green eyes, when she pretends to be dozing, are full
+of it; and though she looks wise a moment, and seems resolved to be a
+discreet young cat, let but a leaf sway--off she goes again, with a
+frisk and a rap. So, though Sally had scolded and flounced about Moses's
+inattention to Mara in advance, she contrived even in this first
+interview to keep him talking with nobody but herself;--not because she
+wanted to draw him from Mara, or meant to; not because she cared a pin
+for him; but because it was her nature, as a frisky young cat. And Moses
+let himself be drawn, between bantering and contradicting, and jest and
+earnest, at some moments almost to forget that Mara was in the room.
+
+She took her sewing and sat with a pleased smile, sometimes breaking
+into the lively flow of conversation, or eagerly appealed to by both
+parties to settle some rising quarrel.
+
+Once, as they were talking, Moses looked up and saw Mara's head, as a
+stray sunbeam falling upon the golden hair seemed to make a halo around
+her face. Her large eyes were fixed upon him with an expression so
+intense and penetrative, that he felt a sort of wincing uneasiness.
+"What makes you look at me so, Mara?" he said, suddenly.
+
+A bright flush came in her cheek as she answered, "I didn't know I was
+looking. It all seems so strange to me. I am trying to make out who and
+what you are."
+
+"It's not best to look too deep," Moses said, laughing, but with a
+slight shade of uneasiness.
+
+When Sally, late in the afternoon, declared that she must go home, she
+couldn't stay another minute, Moses rose to go with her.
+
+"What are you getting up for?" she said to Moses, as he took his hat.
+
+"To go home with you, to be sure."
+
+"Nobody asked you to," said Sally.
+
+"I'm accustomed to asking myself," said Moses.
+
+"Well, I suppose I must have you along," said Sally. "Father will be
+glad to see you, of course."
+
+"You'll be back to tea, Moses," said Mara, "will you not? Grandfather
+will be home, and want to see you."
+
+"Oh, I shall be right back," said Moses, "I have a little business to
+settle with Captain Kittridge."
+
+But Moses, however, did stay at tea with Mrs. Kittridge, who looked
+graciously at him through the bows of her black horn spectacles, having
+heard her liege lord observe that Moses was a smart chap, and had done
+pretty well in a money way.
+
+How came he to stay? Sally told him every other minute to go; and then
+when he had got fairly out of the door, called him back to tell him that
+there was something she had heard about him. And Moses of course came
+back; wanted to know what it was; and couldn't be told, it was a secret;
+and then he would be ordered off, and reminded that he promised to go
+straight home; and then when he got a little farther off she called
+after him a second time, to tell him that he would be very much
+surprised if he knew how she found it out, etc., etc.,--till at last tea
+being ready, there was no reason why he shouldn't have a cup. And so it
+was sober moonrise before Moses found himself going home.
+
+"Hang that girl!" he said to himself; "don't she know what she's about,
+though?"
+
+There our hero was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was
+about,--had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was
+gone laughed to think how many times she had made him come back.
+
+"Now, confound it all," said Moses, "I care more for our little Mara
+than a dozen of her; and what have I been fooling all this time
+for?--now Mara will think I don't love her."
+
+And, in fact, our young gentleman rather set his heart on the sensation
+he was going to make when he got home. It is flattering, after all, to
+feel one's power over a susceptible nature; and Moses, remembering how
+entirely and devotedly Mara had loved him all through childhood, never
+doubted but he was the sole possessor of uncounted treasure in her
+heart, which he could develop at his leisure and use as he pleased. He
+did not calculate for one force which had grown up in the meanwhile
+between them,--and that was the power of womanhood. He did not know the
+intensity of that kind of pride, which is the very life of the female
+nature, and which is most vivid and vigorous in the most timid and
+retiring.
+
+Our little Mara was tender, self-devoting, humble, and religious, but
+she was woman after all to the tips of her fingers,--quick to feel
+slights, and determined with the intensest determination, that no man
+should wrest from her one of those few humble rights and privileges,
+which Nature allows to woman. Something swelled and trembled in her when
+she felt the confident pressure of that bold arm around her waist,--like
+the instinct of a wild bird to fly. Something in the deep, manly voice,
+the determined, self-confident air, aroused a vague feeling of defiance
+and resistance in her which she could scarcely explain to herself. Was
+he to assume a right to her in this way without even asking? When he
+did not come to tea nor long after, and Mrs. Pennel and her grandfather
+wondered, she laughed, and said gayly,--
+
+"Oh, he knows he'll have time enough to see me. Sally seems more like a
+stranger."
+
+But when Moses came home after moonrise, determined to go and console
+Mara for his absence, he was surprised to hear the sound of a rapid and
+pleasant conversation, in which a masculine and feminine voice were
+intermingled in a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara
+sitting knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young man
+seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung on the ground,
+while he was looking up into her face, as young men often do into pretty
+faces seen by moonlight. Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of Boston to
+Mr. Moses Pennel.
+
+Moses measured the young man with his eye as if he could have shot him
+with a good will. And his temper was not at all bettered as he observed
+that he had the easy air of a man of fashion and culture, and learned by
+a few moments of the succeeding conversation, that the acquaintance had
+commenced during Mara's winter visit to Boston.
+
+"I was staying a day or two at Mr. Sewell's," he said, carelessly, "and
+the night was so fine I couldn't resist the temptation to row over."
+
+It was now Moses's turn to listen to a conversation in which he could
+bear little part, it being about persons and places and things
+unfamiliar to him; and though he could give no earthly reason why the
+conversation was not the most proper in the world,--yet he found that it
+made him angry.
+
+In the pauses, Mara inquired, prettily, how he found the Kittridges, and
+reproved him playfully for staying, in despite of his promise to come
+home. Moses answered with an effort to appear easy and playful, that
+there was no reason, it appeared, to hurry on her account, since she
+had been so pleasantly engaged.
+
+"That is true," said Mara, quietly; "but then grandpapa and grandmamma
+expected you, and they have gone to bed, as you know they always do
+after tea."
+
+"They'll keep till morning, I suppose," said Moses, rather gruffly.
+
+"Oh yes; but then as you had been gone two or three months, naturally
+they wanted to see a little of you at first."
+
+The stranger now joined in the conversation, and began talking with
+Moses about his experiences in foreign parts, in a manner which showed a
+man of sense and breeding. Moses had a jealous fear of people of
+breeding,--an apprehension lest they should look down on one whose life
+had been laid out of the course of their conventional ideas; and
+therefore, though he had sufficient ability and vigor of mind to acquit
+himself to advantage in this conversation, it gave him all the while a
+secret uneasiness. After a few moments, he rose up moodily, and saying
+that he was very much fatigued, he went into the house to retire.
+
+Mr. Adams rose to go also, and Moses might have felt in a more Christian
+frame of mind, had he listened to the last words of the conversation
+between him and Mara.
+
+"Do you remain long in Harpswell?" she asked.
+
+"That depends on circumstances," he replied. "If I do, may I be
+permitted to visit you?"
+
+"As a friend--yes," said Mara; "I shall always be happy to see you."
+
+"No more?"
+
+"No more," replied Mara.
+
+"I had hoped," he said, "that you would reconsider."
+
+"It is impossible," said she; and soft voices can pronounce that word,
+_impossible_, in a very fateful and decisive manner.
+
+"Well, God bless you, then, Miss Lincoln," he said, and was gone.
+
+Mara stood in the doorway and saw him loosen his boat from its moorings
+and float off in the moonlight, with a long train of silver sparkles
+behind.
+
+A moment after Moses was looking gloomily over her shoulder.
+
+"Who is that puppy?" he said.
+
+"He is not a puppy, but a very fine young man," said Mara.
+
+"Well, that very fine young man, then?"
+
+"I thought I told you. He is a Mr. Adams of Boston, and a distant
+connection of the Sewells. I met him when I was visiting at Judge
+Sewell's in Boston."
+
+"You seemed to be having a very pleasant time together?"
+
+"We were," said Mara, quietly.
+
+"It's a pity I came home as I did. I'm sorry I interrupted you," said
+Moses, with a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"You didn't interrupt us; he had been here almost two hours."
+
+Now Mara saw plainly enough that Moses was displeased and hurt, and had
+it been in the days of her fourteenth summer, she would have thrown her
+arms around his neck, and said, "Moses, I don't care a fig for that man,
+and I love you better than all the world." But this the young lady of
+eighteen would not do; so she wished him good-night very prettily, and
+pretended not to see anything about it.
+
+Mara was as near being a saint as human dust ever is; but--she was a
+woman saint; and therefore may be excused for a little gentle
+vindictiveness. She was, in a merciful way, rather glad that Moses had
+gone to bed dissatisfied, and rather glad that he did not know what she
+might have told him--quite resolved that he should not know at present.
+Was he to know that she liked nobody so much as him? Not he, unless he
+loved her more than all the world, and said so first. Mara was resolved
+upon that. He might go where he liked--flirt with whom he liked--come
+back as late as he pleased; never would she, by word or look, give him
+reason to think she cared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+DESIRES AND DREAMS
+
+
+Moses passed rather a restless and uneasy night on his return to the
+home-roof which had sheltered his childhood. All his life past, and all
+his life expected, seemed to boil and seethe and ferment in his
+thoughts, and to go round and round in never-ceasing circles before him.
+
+Moses was _par excellence_ proud, ambitious, and willful. These words,
+generally supposed to describe positive vices of the mind, in fact are
+only the overaction of certain very valuable portions of our nature,
+since one can conceive all three to raise a man immensely in the scale
+of moral being, simply by being applied to right objects. He who is too
+proud even to admit a mean thought--who is ambitious only of ideal
+excellence--who has an inflexible will only in the pursuit of truth and
+righteousness--may be a saint and a hero.
+
+But Moses was neither a saint nor a hero, but an undeveloped chaotic
+young man, whose pride made him sensitive and restless; whose ambition
+was fixed on wealth and worldly success; whose willfulness was for the
+most part a blind determination to compass his own points, with the
+leave of Providence or without. There was no God in his estimate of
+life--and a sort of secret unsuspected determination at the bottom of
+his heart that there should be none. He feared religion, from a
+suspicion which he entertained that it might hamper some of his future
+schemes. He did not wish to put himself under its rules, lest he might
+find them in some future time inconveniently strict.
+
+With such determinations and feelings, the Bible--necessarily an
+excessively uninteresting book to him--he never read, and satisfied
+himself with determining in a general way that it was not worth reading,
+and, as was the custom with many young men in America at that period,
+announced himself as a skeptic, and seemed to value himself not a little
+on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of
+young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the
+power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a
+celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to
+honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their
+unbelief as a misfortune.
+
+Not that Moses was, after all, without "the angel in him." He had a good
+deal of the susceptibility to poetic feeling, the power of vague and
+dreamy aspiration, the longing after the good and beautiful, which is
+God's witness in the soul. A noble sentiment in poetry, a fine scene in
+nature, had power to bring tears in his great dark eyes, and he had,
+under the influence of such things, brief inspired moments in which he
+vaguely longed to do, or be, something grand or noble. But this,
+however, was something apart from the real purpose of his life,--a sort
+of voice crying in the wilderness,--to which he gave little heed.
+Practically, he was determined with all his might, to have a good time
+in this life, whatever another might be,--if there were one; and that he
+would do it by the strength of his right arm. Wealth he saw to be the
+lamp of Aladdin, which commanded all other things. And the pursuit of
+wealth was therefore the first step in his programme.
+
+As for plans of the heart and domestic life, Moses was one of that very
+common class who had more desire to be loved than power of loving. His
+cravings and dreams were not for somebody to be devoted to, but for
+somebody who should be devoted to him. And, like most people who
+possess this characteristic, he mistook it for an affectionate
+disposition.
+
+Now the chief treasure of his heart had always been his little sister
+Mara, chiefly from his conviction that he was the one absorbing thought
+and love of her heart. He had never figured life to himself otherwise
+than with Mara at his side, his unquestioning, devoted friend. Of course
+he and his plans, his ways and wants, would always be in the future, as
+they always had been, her sole thought. These sleeping partnerships in
+the interchange of affection, which support one's heart with a basis of
+uncounted wealth, and leave one free to come and go, and buy and sell,
+without exaction or interference, are a convenience certainly, and the
+loss of them in any way is like the sudden breaking of a bank in which
+all one's deposits are laid.
+
+It had never occurred to Moses how or in what capacity he should always
+stand banker to the whole wealth of love that there was in Mara's heart,
+and what provision he should make on his part for returning this
+incalculable debt. But the interview of this evening had raised a new
+thought in his mind. Mara, as he saw that day, was no longer a little
+girl in a pink sun-bonnet. She was a woman,--a little one, it is true,
+but every inch a woman,--and a woman invested with a singular poetic
+charm of appearance, which, more than beauty, has the power of awakening
+feeling in the other sex.
+
+He felt in himself, in the experience of that one day, that there was
+something subtle and veiled about her, which set the imagination at
+work; that the wistful, plaintive expression of her dark eyes, and a
+thousand little shy and tremulous movements of her face, affected him
+more than the most brilliant of Sally Kittridge's sprightly sallies.
+Yes, there would be people falling in love with her fast enough, he
+thought even here, where she is as secluded as a pearl in an
+oyster-shell,--it seems means were found to come after her,--and then
+all the love of her heart, that priceless love, would go to another.
+
+Mara would be absorbed in some one else, would love some one else, as he
+knew she could, with heart and soul and mind and strength. When he
+thought of this, it affected him much as it would if one were turned out
+of a warm, smiling apartment into a bleak December storm. What should he
+do, if that treasure which he had taken most for granted in all his
+valuations of life should suddenly be found to belong to another? Who
+was this fellow that seemed so free to visit her, and what had passed
+between them? Was Mara in love with him, or going to be? There is no
+saying how the consideration of this question enhanced in our hero's
+opinion both her beauty and all her other good qualities.
+
+Such a brave little heart! such a good, clear little head! and such a
+pretty hand and foot! She was always so cheerful, so unselfish, so
+devoted! When had he ever seen her angry, except when she had taken up
+some childish quarrel of his, and fought for him like a little Spartan?
+Then she was pious, too. She was born religious, thought our hero, who,
+in common with many men professing skepticism for their own particular
+part, set a great value on religion in that unknown future person whom
+they are fond of designating in advance as "my wife." Yes, Moses meant
+his wife should be pious, and pray for him, while he did as he pleased.
+
+"Now there's that witch of a Sally Kittridge," he said to himself; "I
+wouldn't have such a girl for a wife. Nothing to her but foam and
+frisk,--no heart more than a bobolink! But isn't she amusing? By George!
+isn't she, though?"
+
+"But," thought Moses, "it's time I settled this matter who is to be my
+wife. I won't marry till I'm rich,--that's flat. My wife isn't to rub
+and grub. So at it I must go to raise the wind. I wonder if old Sewell
+really does know anything about my parents. Miss Emily would have it
+that there was some mystery that he had the key of; but I never could
+get any thing from him. He always put me off in such a smooth way that I
+couldn't tell whether he did or he didn't. But, now, supposing I have
+relatives, family connections, then who knows but what there may be
+property coming to me? That's an idea worth looking after, surely."
+
+There's no saying with what vividness ideas and images go through one's
+wakeful brain when the midnight moon is making an exact shadow of your
+window-sash, with panes of light, on your chamber-floor. How vividly we
+all have loved and hated and planned and hoped and feared and desired
+and dreamed, as we tossed and turned to and fro upon such watchful,
+still nights. In the stillness, the tide upon one side of the Island
+replied to the dash on the other side in unbroken symphony, and Moses
+began to remember all the stories gossips had told him of how he had
+floated ashore there, like a fragment of tropical seaweed borne landward
+by a great gale. He positively wondered at himself that he had never
+thought of it more, and the more he meditated, the more mysterious and
+inexplicable he felt. Then he had heard Miss Roxy once speaking
+something about a bracelet, he was sure he had; but afterwards it was
+hushed up, and no one seemed to know anything about it when he inquired.
+But in those days he was a boy,--he was nobody,--now he was a young man.
+He could go to Mr. Sewell, and demand as his right a fair answer to any
+questions he might ask. If he found, as was quite likely, that there was
+nothing to be known, his mind would be thus far settled,--he should
+trust only to his own resources.
+
+So far as the state of the young man's finances were concerned, it
+would be considered in those simple times and regions an auspicious
+beginning of life. The sum intrusted to him by Captain Kittridge had
+been more than doubled by the liberality of Zephaniah Pennel, and Moses
+had traded upon it in foreign parts with a skill and energy that brought
+a very fair return, and gave him, in the eyes of the shrewd, thrifty
+neighbors, the prestige of a young man who was marked for success in the
+world.
+
+He had already formed an advantageous arrangement with his grandfather
+and Captain Kittridge, by which a ship was to be built, which he should
+command, and thus the old Saturday afternoon dream of their childhood be
+fulfilled. As he thought of it, there arose in his mind a picture of
+Mara, with her golden hair and plaintive eyes and little white hands,
+reigning as a fairy queen in the captain's cabin, with a sort of wish to
+carry her off and make sure that no one else ever should get her from
+him.
+
+But these midnight dreams were all sobered down by the plain
+matter-of-fact beams of the morning sun, and nothing remained of
+immediate definite purpose except the resolve, which came strongly upon
+Moses as he looked across the blue band of Harpswell Bay, that he would
+go that morning and have a talk with Mr. Sewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+MISS EMILY
+
+
+Miss Roxy Toothache was seated by the window of the little keeping-room
+where Miss Emily Sewell sat on every-day occasions. Around her were the
+insignia of her power and sway. Her big tailor's goose was heating
+between Miss Emily's bright brass fire-irons; her great pin-cushion was
+by her side, bristling with pins of all sizes, and with broken needles
+thriftily made into pins by heads of red sealing-wax, and with needles
+threaded with all varieties of cotton, silk, and linen; her scissors
+hung martially by her side; her black bombazette work-apron was on; and
+the expression of her iron features was that of deep responsibility, for
+she was making the minister a new Sunday vest!
+
+The good soul looks not a day older than when we left her, ten years
+ago. Like the gray, weather-beaten rocks of her native shore, her strong
+features had an unchangeable identity beyond that of anything fair and
+blooming. There was of course no chance for a gray streak in her stiff,
+uncompromising mohair frisette, which still pushed up her cap-border
+bristlingly as of old, and the clear, high winds and bracing atmosphere
+of that rough coast kept her in an admirable state of preservation.
+
+Miss Emily had now and then a white hair among her soft, pretty brown
+ones, and looked a little thinner; but the round, bright spot of bloom
+on each cheek was there just as of yore,--and just as of yore she was
+thinking of her brother, and filling her little head with endless
+calculations to keep him looking fresh and respectable, and his
+housekeeping comfortable and easy, on very limited means. She was now
+officiously and anxiously attending on Miss Roxy, who was in the midst
+of the responsible operation which should conduce greatly to this end.
+
+"Does that twist work well?" she said, nervously; "because I believe
+I've got some other upstairs in my India box."
+
+Miss Roxy surveyed the article; bit a fragment off, as if she meant to
+taste it; threaded a needle and made a few cabalistical stitches; and
+then pronounced, _ex cathedrâ_, that it would do. Miss Emily gave a sigh
+of relief. After buttons and tapes and linings, and various other items
+had been also discussed, the conversation began to flow into general
+channels.
+
+"Did you know Moses Pennel had got home from Umbagog?" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"Yes. Captain Kittridge told brother so this morning. I wonder he
+doesn't call over to see us."
+
+"Your brother took a sight of interest in that boy," said Miss Roxy. "I
+was saying to Ruey, this morning, that if Moses Pennel ever did turn out
+well, he ought to have a large share of the credit."
+
+"Brother always did feel a peculiar interest in him; it was such a
+strange providence that seemed to cast in his lot among us," said Miss
+Emily.
+
+"As sure as you live, there he is a-coming to the front door," said Miss
+Roxy.
+
+"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "and here I have on this old faded chintz.
+Just so sure as one puts on any old rag, and thinks nobody will come,
+company is sure to call."
+
+"Law, I'm sure I shouldn't think of calling him company," said Miss
+Roxy.
+
+A rap at the door put an end to this conversation, and very soon Miss
+Emily introduced our hero into the little sitting-room, in the midst of
+a perfect stream of apologies relating to her old dress and the
+littered condition of the sitting-room, for Miss Emily held to the
+doctrine of those who consider any sign of human occupation and
+existence in a room as being disorder--however reputable and respectable
+be the cause of it.
+
+"Well, really," she said, after she had seated Moses by the fire, "how
+time does pass, to be sure; it don't seem more than yesterday since you
+used to come with your Latin books, and now here you are a grown man! I
+must run and tell Mr. Sewell. He will be so glad to see you."
+
+Mr. Sewell soon appeared from his study in morning-gown and slippers,
+and seemed heartily responsive to the proposition which Moses soon made
+to him to have some private conversation with him in his study.
+
+"I declare," said Miss Emily, as soon as the study-door had closed upon
+her brother and Moses, "what a handsome young man he is! and what a
+beautiful way he has with him!--so deferential! A great many young men
+nowadays seem to think nothing of their minister; but he comes to seek
+advice. Very proper. It isn't every young man that appreciates the
+privilege of having elderly friends. I declare, what a beautiful couple
+he and Mara Lincoln would make! Don't Providence seem in a peculiar way
+to have designed them for each other?"
+
+"I hope not," said Miss Roxy, with her grimmest expression.
+
+"You don't! Why not?"
+
+"I never liked him," said Miss Roxy, who had possessed herself of her
+great heavy goose, and was now thumping and squeaking it emphatically on
+the press-board. "She's a thousand times too good for Moses
+Pennel,"--thump. "I ne'er had no faith in him,"--thump. "He's dreffle
+unstiddy,"--thump. "He's handsome, but he knows it,"--thump. "He won't
+never love nobody so much as he does himself,"--thump, _fortissimo con
+spirito_.
+
+"Well, really now, Miss Roxy, you mustn't always remember the sins of
+his youth. Boys must sow their wild oats. He was unsteady for a while,
+but now everybody says he's doing well; and as to his knowing he's
+handsome, and all that, I don't see as he does. See how polite and
+deferential he was to us all, this morning; and he spoke so handsomely
+to you."
+
+"I don't want none of his politeness," said Miss Roxy, inexorably; "and
+as to Mara Lincoln, she might have better than him any day. Miss Badger
+was a-tellin' Captain Brown, Sunday noon, that she was very much admired
+in Boston."
+
+"So she was," said Miss Emily, bridling. "I never reveal secrets, or I
+might tell something,--but there has been a young man,--but I promised
+not to speak of it, and I sha'n't."
+
+"If you mean Mr. Adams," said Miss Roxy, "you needn't worry about
+keepin' that secret, 'cause that ar was all talked over atween meetin's
+a-Sunday noon; for Mis' Kittridge she used to know his aunt Jerushy, her
+that married Solomon Peters, and Mis' Captain Badger she says that he
+has a very good property, and is a professor in the Old South church in
+Boston."
+
+"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "how things do get about!"
+
+"People will talk, there ain't no use trying to help it," said Miss
+Roxy; "but it's strongly borne in on my mind that it ain't Adams, nor 't
+ain't Moses Pennel that's to marry her. I've had peculiar exercises of
+mind about that ar child,--well I have;" and Miss Roxy pulled a large
+spotted bandanna handkerchief out of her pocket, and blew her nose like
+a trumpet, and then wiped the withered corners of her eyes, which were
+humid as some old Orr's Island rock wet with sea-spray.
+
+Miss Emily had a secret love of romancing. It was one of the
+recreations of her quiet, monotonous life to build air-castles, which
+she furnished regardless of expense, and in which she set up at
+housekeeping her various friends and acquaintances, and she had always
+been bent on weaving a romance on the history of Mara and Moses Pennel.
+The good little body had done her best to second Mr. Sewell's attempts
+toward the education of the children. It was little busy Miss Emily who
+persuaded honest Zephaniah and Mary Pennel that talents such as Mara's
+ought to be cultivated, and that ended in sending her to Miss Plucher's
+school in Portland. There her artistic faculties were trained into
+creating funereal monuments out of chenille embroidery, fully equal to
+Miss Emily's own; also to painting landscapes, in which the ground and
+all the trees were one unvarying tint of blue-green; and also to
+creating flowers of a new and particular construction, which, as Sally
+Kittridge remarked, were pretty, but did not look like anything in
+heaven or earth. Mara had obediently and patiently done all these
+things; and solaced herself with copying flowers and birds and
+landscapes as near as possible like nature, as a recreation from these
+more dignified toils.
+
+Miss Emily also had been the means of getting Mara invited to Boston,
+where she saw some really polished society, and gained as much knowledge
+of the forms of artificial life as a nature so wholly and strongly
+individual could obtain. So little Miss Emily regarded Mara as her
+godchild, and was intent on finishing her up into a romance in real
+life, of which a handsome young man, who had been washed ashore in a
+shipwreck, should be the hero.
+
+What would she have said could she have heard the conversation that was
+passing in her brother's study? Little could she dream that the mystery,
+about which she had timidly nibbled for years, was now about to be
+unrolled;--but it was even so. But, upon what she does not see, good
+reader, you and I, following invisibly on tiptoe, will make our
+observations.
+
+When Moses was first ushered into Mr. Sewell's study, and found himself
+quite alone, with the door shut, his heart beat so that he fancied the
+good man must hear it. He knew well what he wanted and meant to say, but
+he found in himself all that shrinking and nervous repugnance which
+always attends the proposing of any decisive question.
+
+"I thought it proper," he began, "that I should call and express my
+sense of obligation to you, sir, for all the kindness you showed me when
+a boy. I'm afraid in those thoughtless days I did not seem to appreciate
+it so much as I do now."
+
+As Moses said this, the color rose in his cheeks, and his fine eyes grew
+moist with a sort of subdued feeling that made his face for the moment
+more than usually beautiful.
+
+Mr. Sewell looked at him with an expression of peculiar interest, which
+seemed to have something almost of pain in it, and answered with a
+degree of feeling more than he commonly showed,--
+
+"It has been a pleasure to me to do anything I could for you, my young
+friend. I only wish it could have been more. I congratulate you on your
+present prospects in life. You have perfect health; you have energy and
+enterprise; you are courageous and self-reliant, and, I trust, your
+habits are pure and virtuous. It only remains that you add to all this
+that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom."
+
+Moses bowed his head respectfully, and then sat silent a moment, as if
+he were looking through some cloud where he vainly tried to discover
+objects.
+
+Mr. Sewell continued, gravely,--
+
+"You have the greatest reason to bless the kind Providence which has
+cast your lot in such a family, in such a community. I have had some
+means in my youth of comparing other parts of the country with our New
+England, and it is my opinion that a young man could not ask a better
+introduction into life than the wholesome nurture of a Christian family
+in our favored land."
+
+"Mr. Sewell," said Moses, raising his head, and suddenly looking him
+straight in the eyes, "do you know anything of my family?"
+
+The question was so point-blank and sudden, that for a moment Mr. Sewell
+made a sort of motion as if he dodged a pistol-shot, and then his face
+assumed an expression of grave thoughtfulness, while Moses drew a long
+breath. It was out,--the question had been asked.
+
+"My son," replied Mr. Sewell, "it has always been my intention, when you
+had arrived at years of discretion, to make you acquainted with all that
+I know or suspect in regard to your life. I trust that when I tell you
+all I do know, you will see that I have acted for the best in the
+matter. It has been my study and my prayer to do so."
+
+Mr. Sewell then rose, and unlocking the cabinet, of which we have before
+made mention, in his apartment, drew forth a very yellow and time-worn
+package of papers, which he untied. From these he selected one which
+enveloped an old-fashioned miniature case.
+
+"I am going to show you," he said, "what only you and my God know that I
+possess. I have not looked at it now for ten years, but I have no doubt
+that it is the likeness of your mother."
+
+Moses took it in his hand, and for a few moments there came a mist over
+his eyes,--he could not see clearly. He walked to the window as if
+needing a clearer light.
+
+What he saw was a painting of a beautiful young girl, with large
+melancholy eyes, and a clustering abundance of black, curly hair. The
+face was of a beautiful, clear oval, with that warm brunette tint in
+which the Italian painters delight. The black eyebrows were strongly
+and clearly defined, and there was in the face an indescribable
+expression of childish innocence and shyness, mingled with a kind of
+confiding frankness, that gave the picture the charm which sometimes
+fixes itself in faces for which we involuntarily make a history. She was
+represented as simply attired in a white muslin, made low in the neck,
+and the hands and arms were singularly beautiful. The picture, as Moses
+looked at it, seemed to stand smiling at him with a childish grace,--a
+tender, ignorant innocence which affected him deeply.
+
+"My young friend," said Mr. Sewell, "I have written all that I know of
+the original of this picture, and the reasons I have for thinking her
+your mother.
+
+"You will find it all in this paper, which, if I had been providentially
+removed, was to have been given you in your twenty-first year. You will
+see in the delicate nature of the narrative that it could not properly
+have been imparted to you till you had arrived at years of
+understanding. I trust when you know all that you will be satisfied with
+the course I have pursued. You will read it at your leisure, and after
+reading I shall be happy to see you again."
+
+Moses took the package, and after exchanging salutations with Mr.
+Sewell, hastily left the house and sought his boat.
+
+When one has suddenly come into possession of a letter or paper in which
+is known to be hidden the solution of some long-pondered secret, of the
+decision of fate with regard to some long-cherished desire, who has not
+been conscious of a sort of pain,--an unwillingness at once to know what
+is therein? We turn the letter again and again, we lay it by and return
+to it, and defer from moment to moment the opening of it. So Moses did
+not sit down in the first retired spot to ponder the paper. He put it
+in the breast pocket of his coat, and then, taking up his oars, rowed
+across the bay. He did not land at the house, but passed around the
+south point of the Island, and rowed up the other side to seek a
+solitary retreat in the rocks, which had always been a favorite with him
+in his early days.
+
+The shores of the Island, as we have said, are a precipitous wall of
+rock, whose long, ribbed ledges extend far out into the sea. At high
+tide these ledges are covered with the smooth blue sea quite up to the
+precipitous shore. There was a place, however, where the rocky shore
+shelved over, forming between two ledges a sort of grotto, whose smooth
+floor of shells and many-colored pebbles was never wet by the rising
+tide. It had been the delight of Moses when a boy, to come here and
+watch the gradual rise of the tide till the grotto was entirely cut off
+from all approach, and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like
+security over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he
+had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be
+found for him when he should launch away into that blue smiling
+futurity.
+
+It was now about half-tide, and Moses left his boat and made his way
+over the ledge of rocks toward his retreat. They were all shaggy and
+slippery with yellow seaweeds, with here and there among them wide
+crystal pools, where purple and lilac and green mosses unfolded their
+delicate threads, and thousands of curious little shell-fish were
+tranquilly pursuing their quiet life. The rocks where the pellucid water
+lay were in some places crusted with barnacles, which were opening and
+shutting the little white scaly doors of their tiny houses, and drawing
+in and out those delicate pink plumes which seem to be their nerves of
+enjoyment. Moses and Mara had rambled and played here many hours of
+their childhood, amusing themselves with catching crabs and young
+lobsters and various little fish for these rocky aquariums, and then
+studying at their leisure their various ways. Now he had come hither a
+man, to learn the secret of his life.
+
+Moses stretched himself down on the clean pebbly shore of the grotto,
+and drew forth Mr. Sewell's letter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+DOLORES
+
+
+Mr. Sewell's letter ran as follows:--
+
+MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,--It has always been my intention when you arrived
+at years of maturity to acquaint you with some circumstances which have
+given me reason to conjecture your true parentage, and to let you know
+what steps I have taken to satisfy my own mind in relation to these
+conjectures. In order to do this, it will be necessary for me to go back
+to the earlier years of my life, and give you the history of some
+incidents which are known to none of my most intimate friends. I trust I
+may rely on your honor that they will ever remain as secrets with you.
+
+I graduated from Harvard University in ----. At the time I was suffering
+somewhat from an affection of the lungs, which occasioned great alarm to
+my mother, many of whose family had died of consumption. In order to
+allay her uneasiness, and also for the purpose of raising funds for the
+pursuit of my professional studies, I accepted a position as tutor in
+the family of a wealthy gentleman at St. Augustine, in Florida.
+
+I cannot do justice to myself,--to the motives which actuated me in the
+events which took place in this family, without speaking with the most
+undisguised freedom of the character of all the parties with whom I was
+connected.
+
+Don José Mendoza was a Spanish gentleman of large property, who had
+emigrated from the Spanish West Indies to Florida, bringing with him an
+only daughter, who had been left an orphan by the death of her mother
+at a very early age. He brought to this country a large number of
+slaves;--and shortly after his arrival, married an American lady: a
+widow with three children. By her he had four other children. And thus
+it will appear that the family was made up of such a variety of elements
+as only the most judicious care could harmonize. But the character of
+the father and mother was such that judicious care was a thing not to be
+expected of either.
+
+Don José was extremely ignorant and proud, and had lived a life of the
+grossest dissipation. Habits of absolute authority in the midst of a
+community of a very low moral standard had produced in him all the worst
+vices of despots. He was cruel, overbearing, and dreadfully passionate.
+His wife was a woman who had pretensions to beauty, and at times could
+make herself agreeable, and even fascinating, but she was possessed of a
+temper quite as violent and ungoverned as his own.
+
+Imagine now two classes of slaves, the one belonging to the mistress,
+and the other brought into the country by the master, and each animated
+by a party spirit and jealousy;--imagine children of different
+marriages, inheriting from their parents violent tempers and stubborn
+wills, flattered and fawned on by slaves, and alternately petted or
+stormed at, now by this parent and now by that, and you will have some
+idea of the task which I undertook in being tutor in this family.
+
+I was young and fearless in those days, as you are now, and the
+difficulties of the position, instead of exciting apprehension, only
+awakened the spirit of enterprise and adventure.
+
+The whole arrangements of the household, to me fresh from the simplicity
+and order of New England, had a singular and wild sort of novelty which
+was attractive rather than otherwise. I was well recommended in the
+family by an influential and wealthy gentleman of Boston, who
+represented my family, as indeed it was, as among the oldest and most
+respectable of Boston, and spoke in such terms of me, personally, as I
+should not have ventured to use in relation to myself. When I arrived, I
+found that two or three tutors, who had endeavored to bear rule in this
+tempestuous family, had thrown up the command after a short trial, and
+that the parents felt some little apprehension of not being able to
+secure the services of another,--a circumstance which I did not fail to
+improve in making my preliminary arrangements. I assumed an air of grave
+hauteur, was very exacting in all my requisitions and stipulations, and
+would give no promise of doing more than to give the situation a
+temporary trial. I put on an air of supreme indifference as to my
+continuance, and acted in fact rather on the assumption that I should
+confer a favor by remaining.
+
+In this way I succeeded in obtaining at the outset a position of more
+respect and deference than had been enjoyed by any of my predecessors. I
+had a fine apartment, a servant exclusively devoted to me, a horse for
+riding, and saw myself treated among the servants as a person of
+consideration and distinction.
+
+Don José and his wife both had in fact a very strong desire to retain my
+services, when after the trial of a week or two, it was found that I
+really could make their discordant and turbulent children to some extent
+obedient and studious during certain portions of the day; and in fact I
+soon acquired in the whole family that ascendancy which a well-bred
+person who respects himself, and can keep his temper, must have over
+passionate and undisciplined natures.
+
+I became the receptacle of the complaints of all, and a sort of
+confidential adviser. Don José imparted to me with more frankness than
+good taste his chagrins with regard to his wife's indolence,
+ill-temper, and bad management, and his wife in turn omitted no
+opportunity to vent complaints against her husband for similar reasons.
+I endeavored, to the best of my ability, to act a friendly part by both.
+It never was in my nature to see anything that needed to be done without
+trying to do it, and it was impossible to work at all without becoming
+so interested in my work as to do far more than I had agreed to do. I
+assisted Don José about many of his affairs; brought his neglected
+accounts into order; and suggested from time to time arrangements which
+relieved the difficulties which had been brought on by disorder and
+neglect. In fact, I became, as he said, quite a necessary of life to
+him.
+
+In regard to the children, I had a more difficult task. The children of
+Don José by his present wife had been systematically stimulated by the
+negroes into a chronic habit of dislike and jealousy toward her children
+by a former husband. On the slightest pretext, they were constantly
+running to their father with complaints; and as the mother warmly
+espoused the cause of her first children, criminations and
+recriminations often convulsed the whole family.
+
+In ill-regulated families in that region, the care of the children is
+from the first in the hands of half-barbarized negroes, whose power of
+moulding and assimilating childish minds is peculiar, so that the
+teacher has to contend constantly with a savage element in the children
+which seems to have been drawn in with the mother's milk. It is, in a
+modified way, something the same result as if the child had formed its
+manners in Dahomey or on the coast of Guinea. In the fierce quarrels
+which were carried on between the children of this family, I had
+frequent occasion to observe this strange, savage element, which
+sometimes led to expressions and actions which would seem incredible in
+civilized society.
+
+The three children by Madame Mendoza's former husband were two girls of
+sixteen and eighteen and a boy of fourteen. The four children of the
+second marriage consisted of three boys and a daughter,--the eldest
+being not more than thirteen.
+
+The natural capacity of all the children was good, although, from
+self-will and indolence, they had grown up in a degree of ignorance
+which could not have been tolerated except in a family living an
+isolated plantation life in the midst of barbarized dependents. Savage
+and untaught and passionate as they were, the work of teaching them was
+not without its interest to me. A power of control was with me a natural
+gift; and then that command of temper which is the common attribute of
+well-trained persons in the Northern states, was something so singular
+in this family as to invest its possessor with a certain awe; and my
+calm, energetic voice, and determined manner, often acted as a charm on
+their stormy natures.
+
+But there was one member of the family of whom I have not yet
+spoken,--and yet all this letter is about her,--the daughter of Don José
+by his first marriage. Poor Dolores! poor child! God grant she may have
+entered into his rest!
+
+I need not describe her. You have seen her picture. And in the wild,
+rude, discordant family, she always reminded me of the words, "a lily
+among thorns." She was in her nature unlike all the rest, and, I may
+say, unlike any one I ever saw. She seemed to live a lonely kind of life
+in this disorderly household, often marked out as the object of the
+spites and petty tyrannies of both parties. She was regarded with bitter
+hatred and jealousy by Madame Mendoza, who was sure to visit her with
+unsparing bitterness and cruelty after the occasional demonstrations of
+fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite beauty and the
+gentle softness of her manners made her such a contrast to her sisters
+as constantly excited their ill-will. Unlike them all, she was
+fastidiously neat in her personal habits, and orderly in all the little
+arrangements of life.
+
+She seemed to me in this family to be like some shy, beautiful pet
+creature in the hands of rude, unappreciated owners, hunted from quarter
+to quarter, and finding rest only by stealth. Yet she seemed to have no
+perception of the harshness and cruelty with which she was treated. She
+had grown up with it; it was the habit of her life to study peaceable
+methods of averting or avoiding the various inconveniences and
+annoyances of her lot, and secure to herself a little quiet.
+
+It not unfrequently happened, amid the cabals and storms which shook the
+family, that one party or the other took up and patronized Dolores for a
+while, more, as it would appear, out of hatred for the other than any
+real love to her. At such times it was really affecting to see with what
+warmth the poor child would receive these equivocal demonstrations of
+good-will--the nearest approaches to affection which she had ever
+known--and the bitterness with which she would mourn when they were
+capriciously withdrawn again. With a heart full of affection, she
+reminded me of some delicate, climbing plant trying vainly to ascend the
+slippery side of an inhospitable wall, and throwing its neglected
+tendrils around every weed for support.
+
+Her only fast, unfailing friend was her old negro nurse, or Mammy, as
+the children called her. This old creature, with the cunning and
+subtlety which had grown up from years of servitude, watched and waited
+upon the interests of her little mistress, and contrived to carry many
+points for her in the confused household. Her young mistress was her one
+thought and purpose in living. She would have gone through fire and
+water to serve her; and this faithful, devoted heart, blind and
+ignorant though it were, was the only unfailing refuge and solace of the
+poor hunted child.
+
+Dolores, of course, became my pupil among the rest. Like the others, she
+had suffered by the neglect and interruptions in the education of the
+family, but she was intelligent and docile, and learned with a
+surprising rapidity. It was not astonishing that she should soon have
+formed an enthusiastic attachment to me, as I was the only intelligent,
+cultivated person she had ever seen, and treated her with unvarying
+consideration and delicacy. The poor thing had been so accustomed to
+barbarous words and manners that simple politeness and the usages of
+good society seemed to her cause for the most boundless gratitude.
+
+It is due to myself, in view of what follows, to say that I was from the
+first aware of the very obvious danger which lay in my path in finding
+myself brought into close and daily relations with a young creature so
+confiding, so attractive, and so singularly circumstanced. I knew that
+it would be in the highest degree dishonorable to make the slightest
+advances toward gaining from her that kind of affection which might
+interfere with her happiness in such future relations as her father
+might arrange for her. According to the European fashion, I know that
+Dolores was in her father's hands, to be disposed of for life according
+to his pleasure, as absolutely as if she had been one of his slaves. I
+had every reason to think that his plans on this subject were matured,
+and only waited for a little more teaching and training on my part, and
+her fuller development in womanhood, to be announced to her.
+
+In looking back over the past, therefore, I have not to reproach myself
+with any dishonest and dishonorable breach of trust; for I was from the
+first upon my guard, and so much so that even the jealousy my other
+scholars never accused me of partiality. I was not in the habit of
+giving very warm praise, and was in my general management anxious
+rather to be just than conciliatory, knowing that with the kind of
+spirits I had to deal with, firmness and justice went farther than
+anything else. If I approved Dolores oftener than the rest, it was seen
+to be because she never failed in a duty; if I spent more time with her
+lessons, it was because her enthusiasm for study led her to learn longer
+ones and study more things; but I am sure there was never a look or a
+word toward her that went beyond the proprieties of my position.
+
+But yet I could not so well guard my heart. I was young and full of
+feeling. She was beautiful; and more than that, there was something in
+her Spanish nature at once so warm and simple, so artless and yet so
+unconsciously poetic, that her presence was a continual charm. How well
+I remember her now,--all her little ways,--the movements of her pretty
+little hands,--the expression of her changeful face as she recited to
+me,--the grave, rapt earnestness with which she listened to all my
+instructions!
+
+I had not been with her many weeks before I felt conscious that it was
+her presence that charmed the whole house, and made the otherwise
+perplexing and distasteful details of my situation agreeable. I had a
+dim perception that this growing passion was a dangerous thing for
+myself; but was it a reason, I asked, why I should relinquish a position
+in which I felt that I was useful, and when I could do for this lovely
+child what no one else could do? I call her a child,--she always
+impressed me as such,--though she was in her sixteenth year and had the
+early womanly development of Southern climates. She seemed to me like
+something frail and precious, needing to be guarded and cared for; and
+when reason told me that I risked my own happiness in holding my
+position, love argued on the other hand that I was her only friend, and
+that I should be willing to risk something myself for the sake of
+protecting and shielding her. For there was no doubt that my presence in
+the family was a restraint upon the passions which formerly vented
+themselves so recklessly on her, and established a sort of order in
+which she found more peace than she had ever known before.
+
+For a long time in our intercourse I was in the habit of looking on
+myself as the only party in danger. It did not occur to me that this
+heart, so beautiful and so lonely, might, in the want of all natural and
+appropriate objects of attachment, fasten itself on me unsolicited, from
+the mere necessity of loving. She seemed to me so much too beautiful,
+too perfect, to belong to a lot in life like mine, that I could not
+suppose it possible this could occur without the most blameworthy
+solicitation on my part; and it is the saddest and most affecting proof
+to me how this poor child had been starved for sympathy and love, that
+she should have repaid such cold services as mine with such an entire
+devotion. At first her feelings were expressed openly toward me, with
+the dutiful air of a good child. She placed flowers on my desk in the
+morning, and made quaint little nosegays in the Spanish fashion, which
+she gave me, and busied her leisure with various ingenious little
+knick-knacks of fancy work, which she brought me. I treated them all as
+the offerings of a child while with her, but I kept them sacredly in my
+own room. To tell the truth, I have some of the poor little things now.
+
+But after a while I could not help seeing how she loved me; and then I
+felt as if I ought to go; but how could I? The pain to myself I could
+have borne; but how could I leave her to all the misery of her bleak,
+ungenial position? She, poor thing, was so unconscious of what I
+knew,--for I was made clear-sighted by love. I tried the more strictly
+to keep to the path I had marked out for myself, but I fear I did not
+always do it; in fact, many things seemed to conspire to throw us
+together. The sisters, who were sometimes invited out to visit on
+neighboring estates, were glad enough to dispense with the presence and
+attractions of Dolores, and so she was frequently left at home to study
+with me in their absence. As to Don José, although he always treated me
+with civility, yet he had such an ingrained and deep-rooted idea of his
+own superiority of position, that I suppose he would as soon have
+imagined the possibility of his daughter's falling in love with one of
+his horses. I was a great convenience to him. I had a knack of governing
+and carrying points in his family that it had always troubled and
+fatigued him to endeavor to arrange,--and that was all. So that my
+intercourse with Dolores was as free and unwatched, and gave me as many
+opportunities of enjoying her undisturbed society, as heart could
+desire.
+
+At last came the crisis, however. After breakfast one morning, Don José
+called Dolores into his library and announced to her that he had
+concluded for her a treaty of marriage, and expected her husband to
+arrive in a few days. He expected that this news would be received by
+her with the glee with which a young girl hears of a new dress or of a
+ball-ticket, and was quite confounded at the grave and mournful silence
+in which she received it. She said no word, made no opposition, but went
+out from the room and shut herself up in her own apartment, and spent
+the day in tears and sobs.
+
+Don José, who had rather a greater regard for Dolores than for any
+creature living, and who had confidently expected to give great delight
+by the news he had imparted, was quite confounded by this turn of
+things. If there had been one word of either expostulation or argument,
+he would have blazed and stormed in a fury of passion; but as it was,
+this broken-hearted submission, though vexatious, was perplexing. He
+sent for me, and opened his mind, and begged me to talk with Dolores
+and show her the advantages of the alliance, which the poor foolish
+child, he said, did not seem to comprehend. The man was immensely rich,
+and had a splendid estate in Cuba. It was a most desirable thing.
+
+I ventured to inquire whether his person and manners were such as would
+be pleasing to a young girl, and could gather only that he was a man of
+about fifty, who had been most of his life in the military service, and
+was now desirous of making an establishment for the repose of his latter
+days, at the head of which he would place a handsome and tractable
+woman, and do well by her.
+
+I represented that it would perhaps be safer to say no more on the
+subject until Dolores had seen him, and to this he agreed. Madame
+Mendoza was very zealous in the affair, for the sake of getting clear of
+the presence of Dolores in the family, and her sisters laughed at her
+for her dejected appearance. They only wished, they said, that so much
+luck might happen to them. For myself, I endeavored to take as little
+notice as possible of the affair, though what I felt may be conjectured.
+I knew,--I was perfectly certain,--that Dolores loved me as I loved her.
+I knew that she had one of those simple and unworldly natures which
+wealth and splendor could not satisfy, and whose life would lie entirely
+in her affections. Sometimes I violently debated with myself whether
+honor required me to sacrifice her happiness as well as my own, and I
+felt the strongest temptation to ask her to be my wife and fly with me
+to the Northern states, where I did not doubt my ability to make for her
+a humble and happy home.
+
+But the sense of honor is often stronger than all reasoning, and I felt
+that such a course would be the betrayal of a trust; and I determined at
+least to command myself till I should see the character of the man who
+was destined to be her husband.
+
+Meanwhile the whole manner of Dolores was changed. She maintained a
+stony, gloomy silence, performed all her duties in a listless way, and
+occasionally, when I commented on anything in her lessons or exercises,
+would break into little flashes of petulance, most strange and unnatural
+in her. Sometimes I could feel that she was looking at me earnestly, but
+if I turned my eyes toward her, hers were instantly averted; but there
+was in her eyes a peculiar expression at times, such as I have seen in
+the eye of a hunted animal when it turned at bay,--a sort of desperate
+resistance,--which, taken in connection with her fragile form and lovely
+face, produced a mournful impression.
+
+One morning I found Dolores sitting alone in the schoolroom, leaning her
+head on her arms. She had on her wrist a bracelet of peculiar
+workmanship, which she always wore,--the bracelet which was afterwards
+the means of confirming her identity. She sat thus some moments in
+silence, and then she raised her head and began turning this bracelet
+round and round upon her arm, while she looked fixedly before her. At
+last she spoke abruptly, and said,--
+
+"Did I ever tell you that this was _my mother's_ hair? It is my mother's
+hair,--and she was the only one that ever loved me; except poor old
+Mammy, nobody else loves me,--nobody ever will."
+
+"My dear Miss Dolores," I began.
+
+"Don't call me dear," she said; "you don't care for me,--nobody
+does,--papa doesn't, and I always loved him; everybody in the house
+wants to get rid of me, whether I like to go or not. I have always tried
+to be good and do all you wanted, and I should think _you_ might care
+for me a little, but you don't."
+
+"Dolores," I said, "I do care for you more than I do for any one in the
+world; I love you more than my own soul."
+
+These were the very words I never meant to say, but somehow they seemed
+to utter themselves against my will. She looked at me for a moment as if
+she could not believe her hearing, and then the blood flushed her face,
+and she laid her head down on her arms.
+
+At this moment Madame Mendoza and the other girls came into the room in
+a clamor of admiration about a diamond bracelet which had just arrived
+as a present from her future husband. It was a splendid thing, and had
+for its clasp his miniature, surrounded by the largest brilliants.
+
+The enthusiasm of the party even at this moment could not say anything
+in favor of the beauty of this miniature, which, though painted on
+ivory, gave the impression of a coarse-featured man, with a scar across
+one eye.
+
+"No matter for the beauty," said one of the girls, "so long as it is set
+with such diamonds."
+
+"Come, Dolores," said another, giving her the present, "pull off that
+old hair bracelet, and try this on."
+
+Dolores threw the diamond bracelet from her with a vehemence so unlike
+her gentle self as to startle every one.
+
+"I shall not take off my mother's bracelet for a gift from a man I never
+knew," she said. "I hate diamonds. I wish those who like such things
+might have them."
+
+"Was ever anything so odd?" said Madame Mendoza.
+
+"Dolores always was odd," said another of the girls; "nobody ever could
+tell what she would like."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+HIDDEN THINGS
+
+
+The next day Señor Don Guzman de Cardona arrived, and the whole house
+was in a commotion of excitement. There was to be no school, and
+everything was bustle and confusion. I passed my time in my own room in
+reflecting severely upon myself for the imprudent words by which I had
+thrown one more difficulty in the way of this poor harassed child.
+
+Dolores this day seemed perfectly passive in the hands of her mother and
+sisters, who appeared disposed to show her great attention. She allowed
+them to array her in her most becoming dress, and made no objection to
+anything except removing the bracelet from her arm. "Nobody's gifts
+should take the place of her mother's," she said, and they were obliged
+to be content with her wearing of the diamond bracelet on the other arm.
+
+Don Guzman was a large, plethoric man, with coarse features and heavy
+gait. Besides the scar I have spoken of, his face was adorned here and
+there with pimples, which were not set down in the miniature. In the
+course of the first hour's study, I saw him to be a man of much the same
+stamp as Dolores's father--sensual, tyrannical, passionate. He seemed in
+his own way to be much struck with the beauty of his intended wife, and
+was not wanting in efforts to please her. All that I could see in her
+was the settled, passive paleness of despair. She played, sang,
+exhibited her embroidery and painting, at the command of Madame Mendoza,
+with the air of an automaton; and Don Guzman remarked to her father on
+the passive obedience as a proper and hopeful trait. Once only when he,
+in presenting her a flower, took the liberty of kissing her cheek, did I
+observe the flashing of her eye and a movement of disgust and
+impatience, that she seemed scarcely able to restrain.
+
+The marriage was announced to take place the next week, and a holiday
+was declared through the house. Nothing was talked of or discussed but
+the _corbeille de mariage_ which the bridegroom had brought--the
+dresses, laces, sets of jewels, and cashmere shawls. Dolores never had
+been treated with such attention by the family in her life. She rose
+immeasurably in the eyes of all as the future possessor of such wealth
+and such an establishment as awaited her. Madame Mendoza had visions of
+future visits in Cuba rising before her mind, and overwhelmed her
+daughter-in-law with flatteries and caresses, which she received in the
+same passive silence as she did everything else.
+
+For my own part, I tried to keep entirely by myself. I remained in my
+room reading, and took my daily rides, accompanied by my servant--seeing
+Dolores only at mealtimes, when I scarcely ventured to look at her. One
+night, however, as I was walking through a lonely part of the garden,
+Dolores suddenly stepped out from the shrubbery and stood before me. It
+was bright moonlight, by which her face and person were distinctly
+shown. How well I remember her as she looked then! She was dressed in
+white muslin, as she was fond of being, but it had been torn and
+disordered by the haste with which she had come through the shrubbery.
+Her face was fearfully pale, and her great, dark eyes had an unnatural
+brightness. She laid hold on my arm.
+
+"Look here," she said, "I saw you and came down to speak with you."
+
+She panted and trembled, so that for some moments she could not speak
+another word. "I want to ask you," she gasped, after a pause, "whether I
+heard you right? Did you say"--
+
+"Yes, Dolores, you did. I did say what I had no right to say, like a
+dishonorable man."
+
+"But is it true? Are you sure it is true?" she said, scarcely seeming to
+hear my words.
+
+"God knows it is," said I despairingly.
+
+"Then why don't you save me? Why do you let them sell me to this
+dreadful man? He don't love me--he never will. Can't you take me away?"
+
+"Dolores, I am a poor man. I cannot give you any of these splendors your
+father desires for you."
+
+"Do you think I care for them? I love you more than all the world
+together. And if you do really love me, why should we not be happy with
+each other?"
+
+"Dolores," I said, with a last effort to keep calm, "I am much older
+than you, and know the world, and ought not to take advantage of your
+simplicity. You have been so accustomed to abundant wealth and all it
+can give, that you cannot form an idea of what the hardships and
+discomforts of marrying a poor man would be. You are unused to having
+the least care, or making the least exertion for yourself. All the world
+would say that I acted a very dishonorable part to take you from a
+position which offers you wealth, splendor, and ease, to one of
+comparative hardship. Perhaps some day you would think so yourself."
+
+While I was speaking, Dolores turned me toward the moonlight, and fixed
+her great dark eyes piercingly upon me, as if she wanted to read my
+soul. "Is that all?" she said; "is that the only reason?"
+
+"I do not understand you," said I.
+
+She gave me such a desolate look, and answered in a tone of utter
+dejection, "Oh, I didn't know, but perhaps _you_ might not want me. All
+the rest are so glad to sell me to anybody that will take me. But you
+really do love me, don't you?" she added, laying her hand on mine.
+
+What answer I made I cannot say. I only know that every vestige of what
+is called reason and common sense left me at that moment, and that there
+followed an hour of delirium in which I--we both were _very_ happy--we
+forgot everything but each other, and we arranged all our plans for
+flight. There was fortunately a ship lying in the harbor of St.
+Augustine, the captain of which was known to me. In course of a day or
+two passage was taken, and my effects transported on board. Nobody
+seemed to suspect us. Everything went on quietly up to the day before
+that appointed for sailing. I took my usual rides, and did everything as
+much as possible in my ordinary way, to disarm suspicion, and none
+seemed to exist. The needed preparations went gayly forward. On the day
+I mentioned, when I had ridden some distance from the house, a messenger
+came post-haste after me. It was a boy who belonged specially to
+Dolores. He gave me a little hurried note. I copy it:--
+
+    "Papa has found all out, and it is dreadful. No one else knows, and
+    he means to kill you when you come back. Do, if you love me, hurry
+    and get on board the ship. I shall never get over it, if evil comes
+    on you for my sake. I shall let them do what they please with me, if
+    God will only save _you_. I will try to be good. Perhaps if I bear
+    my trials well, he will let me die soon. That is all I ask. I love
+    you, and always shall, to death and after.
+
+    DOLORES."
+
+There was the end of it all. I escaped on the ship. I read the marriage
+in the paper. Incidentally I afterwards heard of her as living in Cuba,
+but I never saw her again till I saw her in her coffin. Sorrow and
+death had changed her so much that at first the sight of her awakened
+only a vague, painful remembrance. The sight of the hair bracelet which
+I had seen on her arm brought all back, and I felt sure that my poor
+Dolores had strangely come to sleep her last sleep near me.
+
+Immediately after I became satisfied who you were, I felt a painful
+degree of responsibility for the knowledge. I wrote at once to a friend
+of mine in the neighborhood of St. Augustine, to find out any
+particulars of the Mendoza family. I learned that its history had been
+like that of many others in that region. Don José had died in a bilious
+fever, brought on by excessive dissipation, and at his death the estate
+was found to be so incumbered that the whole was sold at auction. The
+slaves were scattered hither and thither to different owners, and Madame
+Mendoza, with her children and remains of fortune, had gone to live in
+New Orleans.
+
+Of Dolores he had heard but once since her marriage. A friend had
+visited Don Guzman's estates in Cuba. He was living in great splendor,
+but bore the character of a hard, cruel, tyrannical master, and an
+overbearing man. His wife was spoken of as being in very delicate
+health,--avoiding society and devoting herself to religion.
+
+I would here take occasion to say that it was understood when I went
+into the family of Don José, that I should not in any way interfere with
+the religious faith of the children, the family being understood to
+belong to the Roman Catholic Church. There was so little like religion
+of any kind in the family, that the idea of their belonging to any faith
+savored something of the ludicrous. In the case of poor Dolores,
+however, it was different. The earnestness of her nature would always
+have made any religious form a reality to her. In her case I was glad to
+remember that the Romish Church, amid many corruptions, preserves all
+the essential beliefs necessary for our salvation, and that many holy
+souls have gone to heaven through its doors. I therefore was only
+careful to direct her principal attention to the more spiritual parts of
+her own faith, and to dwell on the great themes which all Christian
+people hold in common.
+
+Many of my persuasion would not have felt free to do this, but my
+liberty of conscience in this respect was perfect. I have seen that if
+you break the cup out of which a soul has been used to take the wine of
+the gospel, you often spill the very wine itself. And after all, these
+forms are but shadows of which the substance is Christ.
+
+I am free to say, therefore, that the thought that your poor mother was
+devoting herself earnestly to religion, although after the forms of a
+church with which I differ, was to me a source of great consolation,
+because I knew that in that way alone could a soul like hers find peace.
+
+I have never rested from my efforts to obtain more information. A short
+time before the incident which cast you upon our shore, I conversed with
+a sea-captain who had returned from Cuba. He stated that there had been
+an attempt at insurrection among the slaves of Don Guzman, in which a
+large part of the buildings and out-houses of the estate had been
+consumed by fire. On subsequent inquiry I learned that Don Guzman had
+sold his estates and embarked for Boston with his wife and family, and
+that nothing had subsequently been heard of him.
+
+Thus, my young friend, I have told you all that I know of those singular
+circumstances which have cast your lot on our shores. I do not expect at
+your time of life you will take the same view of this event that I do.
+You may possibly--very probably will--consider it a loss not to have
+been brought up as you might have been in the splendid establishment of
+Don Guzman, and found yourself heir to wealth and pleasure without
+labor or exertion. Yet I am quite sure in that case that your value as a
+human being would have been immeasurably less. I think I have seen in
+you the elements of passions, which luxury and idleness and the too
+early possession of irresponsible power, might have developed with fatal
+results. You have simply to reflect whether you would rather be an
+energetic, intelligent, self-controlled man, capable of guiding the
+affairs of life and of acquiring its prizes,--or to be the reverse of
+all this, with its prizes bought for you by the wealth of parents. I
+hope mature reflection will teach you to regard with gratitude that
+disposition of the All-Wise, which cast your lot as it has been cast.
+
+Let me ask one thing in closing. I have written for you here many things
+most painful for me to remember, because I wanted you to love and honor
+the memory of your mother. I wanted that her memory should have
+something such a charm for you as it has for me. With me, her image has
+always stood between me and all other women; but I have never even
+intimated to a living being that such a passage in my history ever
+occurred,--no, not even to my sister, who is nearer to me than any other
+earthly creature.
+
+In some respects I am a singular person in my habits, and having once
+written this, you will pardon me if I observe that it will never be
+agreeable to me to have the subject named between us. Look upon me
+always as a friend, who would regard nothing as a hardship by which he
+might serve the son of one so dear.
+
+I have hesitated whether I ought to add one circumstance more. I think I
+will do so, trusting to your good sense not to give it any undue weight.
+
+I have never ceased making inquiries in Cuba, as I found opportunity, in
+regard to your father's property, and late investigations have led me to
+the conclusion that he left a considerable sum of money in the hands of
+a notary, whose address I have, which, if your identity could be proved,
+would come in course of law to you. I have written an account of all the
+circumstances which, in my view, identify you as the son of Don Guzman
+de Cardona, and had them properly attested in legal form.
+
+This, together with your mother's picture and the bracelet, I recommend
+you to take on your next voyage, and to see what may result from the
+attempt. How considerable the sum may be which will result from this, I
+cannot say, but as Don Guzman's fortune was very large, I am in hopes it
+may prove something worth attention.
+
+At any time you may wish to call, I will have all these things ready for
+you.
+
+    I am, with warm regard,
+            Your sincere friend,
+                  THEOPHILUS SEWELL.
+
+When Moses had finished reading this letter, he laid it down on the
+pebbles beside him, and, leaning back against a rock, looked moodily out
+to sea. The tide had washed quite up to within a short distance of his
+feet, completely isolating the little grotto where he sat from all the
+surrounding scenery, and before him, passing and repassing on the blue
+bright solitude of the sea, were silent ships, going on their wondrous
+pathless ways to unknown lands. The letter had stirred all within him
+that was dreamy and poetic: he felt somehow like a leaf torn from a
+romance, and blown strangely into the hollow of those rocks. Something
+too of ambition and pride stirred within him. He had been born an heir
+of wealth and power, little as they had done for the happiness of his
+poor mother; and when he thought he might have had these two wild horses
+which have run away with so many young men, he felt, as young men all
+do, an impetuous desire for their possession, and he thought as so many
+do, "Give them to me, and I'll risk my character,--I'll risk my
+happiness."
+
+The letter opened a future before him which was something to speculate
+upon, even though his reason told him it was uncertain, and he lay there
+dreamily piling one air-castle on another,--unsubstantial as the great
+islands of white cloud that sailed through the sky and dropped their
+shadows in the blue sea.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he bethought him he must return home,
+and so climbing from rock to rock he swung himself upward on to the
+island, and sought the brown cottage. As he passed by the open window he
+caught a glimpse of Mara sewing. He walked softly up to look in without
+her seeing him. She was sitting with the various articles of his
+wardrobe around her, quietly and deftly mending his linen, singing soft
+snatches of an old psalm-tune.
+
+She seemed to have resumed quite naturally that quiet care of him and
+his, which she had in all the earlier years of their life. He noticed
+again her little hands,--they seemed a sort of wonder to him. Why had he
+never seen, when a boy, how pretty they were? And she had such dainty
+little ways of taking up and putting down things as she measured and
+clipped; it seemed so pleasant to have her handling his things; it was
+as if a good fairy were touching them, whose touch brought back peace.
+But then, he thought, by and by she will do all this for some one else.
+The thought made him angry. He really felt abused in anticipation. She
+was doing all this for him just in sisterly kindness, and likely as not
+thinking of somebody else whom she loved better all the time. It is
+astonishing how cool and dignified this consideration made our hero as
+he faced up to the window. He was, after all, in hopes she might blush,
+and look agitated at seeing him suddenly; but she did not. The foolish
+boy did not know the quick wits of a girl, and that all the while that
+he had supposed himself so sly, and been holding his breath to observe,
+Mara had been perfectly cognizant of his presence, and had been
+schooling herself to look as unconscious and natural as possible. So she
+did,--only saying,--
+
+"Oh, Moses, is that you? Where have you been all day?"
+
+"Oh, I went over to see Parson Sewell, and get my pastoral lecture, you
+know."
+
+"And did you stay to dinner?"
+
+"No; I came home and went rambling round the rocks, and got into our old
+cave, and never knew how the time passed."
+
+"Why, then you've had no dinner, poor boy," said Mara, rising suddenly.
+"Come in quick, you must be fed, or you'll get dangerous and eat
+somebody."
+
+"No, no, don't get anything," said Moses, "it's almost supper-time, and
+I'm not hungry."
+
+And Moses threw himself into a chair, and began abstractedly snipping a
+piece of tape with Mara's very best scissors.
+
+"If you please, sir, don't demolish that; I was going to stay one of
+your collars with it," said Mara.
+
+"Oh, hang it, I'm always in mischief among girls' things," said Moses,
+putting down the scissors and picking up a bit of white wax, which with
+equal unconsciousness, he began kneading in his hands, while he was
+dreaming over the strange contents of the morning's letter.
+
+"I hope Mr. Sewell didn't say anything to make you look so very gloomy,"
+said Mara.
+
+"Mr. Sewell?" said Moses, starting; "no, he didn't; in fact, I had a
+pleasant call there; and there was that confounded old sphinx of a Miss
+Roxy there. Why don't she die? She must be somewhere near a hundred
+years old by this time."
+
+"Never thought to ask her why she didn't die," said Mara; "but I presume
+she has the best of reasons for living."
+
+"Yes, that's so," said Moses; "every old toadstool, and burdock, and
+mullein lives and thrives and lasts; no danger of their dying."
+
+"You seem to be in a charitable frame of mind," said Mara.
+
+"Confound it all! I hate this world. If I could have my own way now,--if
+I could have just what I wanted, and do just as I please exactly, I
+might make a pretty good thing of it."
+
+"And pray what would you have?" said Mara.
+
+"Well, in the first place, riches."
+
+"In the first place?"
+
+"Yes, in the first place, I say; for money buys everything else."
+
+"Well, supposing so," said Mara, "for argument's sake, what would you
+buy with it?"
+
+"Position in society, respect, consideration,--and I'd have a splendid
+place, with everything elegant. I have ideas enough, only give me the
+means. And then I'd have a wife, of course."
+
+"And how much would you pay for her?" said Mara, looking quite cool.
+
+"I'd buy her with all the rest,--a girl that wouldn't look at _me_ as I
+am,--would take me for all the rest, you know,--that's the way of the
+world."
+
+"It is, is it?" said Mara. "I don't understand such matters much."
+
+"Yes; it's the way with all you girls," said Moses; "it's the way you'll
+marry when you do."
+
+"Don't be so fierce about it. I haven't done it yet," said Mara; "but
+now, really, I must go and set the supper-table when I have put these
+things away,"--and Mara gathered an armful of things together, and
+tripped singing upstairs, and arranged them in the drawer of Moses's
+room. "Will his wife like to do all these little things for him as I
+do?" she thought. "It's natural I should. I grew up with him, and love
+him, just as if he were my own brother,--he is all the brother I ever
+had. I love him more than anything else in the world, and this wife he
+talks about could do no more."
+
+"She don't care a pin about me," thought Moses; "it's only a habit she
+has got, and her strict notions of duty, that's all. She is housewifely
+in her instincts, and seizes all neglected linen and garments as her
+lawful prey,--she would do it just the same for her grandfather;" and
+Moses drummed moodily on the window-pane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+A COQUETTE
+
+
+The timbers of the ship which was to carry the fortunes of our hero were
+laid by the side of Middle Bay, and all these romantic shores could
+hardly present a lovelier scene. This beautiful sheet of water separates
+Harpswell from a portion of Brunswick. Its shores are rocky and
+pine-crowned, and display the most picturesque variety of outline. Eagle
+Island, Shelter Island, and one or two smaller ones, lie on the glassy
+surface like soft clouds of green foliage pierced through by the
+steel-blue tops of arrowy pine-trees.
+
+There were a goodly number of shareholders in the projected vessel; some
+among the most substantial men in the vicinity. Zephaniah Pennel had
+invested there quite a solid sum, as had also our friend Captain
+Kittridge. Moses had placed therein the proceeds of his recent voyage,
+which enabled him to buy a certain number of shares, and he secretly
+revolved in his mind whether the sum of money left by his father might
+not enable him to buy the whole ship. Then a few prosperous voyages, and
+his fortune was made!
+
+He went into the business of building the new vessel with all the
+enthusiasm with which he used, when a boy, to plan ships and mould
+anchors. Every day he was off at early dawn in his working-clothes, and
+labored steadily among the men till evening. No matter how early he
+rose, however, he always found that a good fairy had been before him and
+prepared his dinner, daintily sometimes adding thereto a fragrant
+little bunch of flowers. But when his boat returned home at evening, he
+no longer saw her as in the days of girlhood waiting far out on the
+farthest point of rock for his return. Not that she did not watch for it
+and run out many times toward sunset; but the moment she had made out
+that it was surely he, she would run back into the house, and very
+likely find an errand in her own room, where she would be so deeply
+engaged that it would be necessary for him to call her down before she
+could make her appearance. Then she came smiling, chatty, always
+gracious, and ready to go or to come as he requested,--the very
+cheerfulest of household fairies,--but yet for all that there was a
+cobweb invisible barrier around her that for some reason or other he
+could not break over. It vexed and perplexed him, and day after day he
+determined to whistle it down,--ride over it rough-shod,--and be as free
+as he chose with this apparently soft, unresistant, airy being, who
+seemed so accessible. Why shouldn't he kiss her when he chose, and sit
+with his arm around her waist, and draw her familiarly upon his
+knee,--this little child-woman, who was as a sister to him? Why, to be
+sure? Had she ever frowned or scolded as Sally Kittridge did when he
+attempted to pass the air-line that divides man from womanhood? Not at
+all. She had neither blushed nor laughed, nor ran away. If he kissed
+her, she took it with the most matter-of-fact composure; if he passed
+his arm around her, she let it remain with unmoved calmness; and so
+somehow he did these things less and less, and wondered why.
+
+The fact is, our hero had begun an experiment with his little friend
+that we would never advise a young man to try on one of these intense,
+quiet, soft-seeming women, whose whole life is inward. He had determined
+to find out whether she loved him before he committed himself to her;
+and the strength of a whole book of martyrs is in women to endure and
+to bear without flinching before they will surrender the gate of this
+citadel of silence. Moreover, our hero had begun his siege with
+precisely the worst weapons.
+
+For on the night that he returned and found Mara conversing with a
+stranger, the suspicion arose in his mind that somehow Mara might be
+particularly interested in him, and instead of asking her, which anybody
+might consider the most feasible step in the case, he asked Sally
+Kittridge.
+
+Sally's inborn, inherent love of teasing was up in a moment. Did she
+know anything of that Mr. Adams? Of course she did,--a young lawyer of
+one of the best Boston families,--a splendid fellow; she wished any such
+luck might happen to her! Was Mara engaged to him? What would he give to
+know? Why didn't he ask Mara? Did he expect her to reveal her friend's
+secrets? Well, she shouldn't,--report said Mr. Adams was well-to-do in
+the world, and had expectations from an uncle,--and didn't Moses think
+he was interesting in conversation? Everybody said what a conquest it
+was for an Orr's Island girl, etc., etc. And Sally said the rest with
+many a malicious toss and wink and sly twinkle of the dimples of her
+cheek, which might mean more or less, as a young man of imaginative
+temperament was disposed to view it. Now this was all done in pure
+simple love of teasing. We incline to think phrenologists have as yet
+been very incomplete in their classification of faculties, or they would
+have appointed a separate organ for this propensity of human nature.
+Certain persons, often the most kind-hearted in the world, and who would
+not give pain in any serious matter, seem to have an insatiable appetite
+for those small annoyances we commonly denominate teasing,--and Sally
+was one of this number.
+
+She diverted herself infinitely in playing upon the excitability of
+Moses,--in awaking his curiosity, and baffling it, and tormenting him
+with a whole phantasmagoria of suggestions and assertions, which played
+along so near the line of probability, that one could never tell which
+might be fancy and which might be fact.
+
+Moses therefore pursued the line of tactics for such cases made and
+provided, and strove to awaken jealousy in Mara by paying marked and
+violent attentions to Sally. He went there evening after evening,
+leaving Mara to sit alone at home. He made secrets with her, and alluded
+to them before Mara. He proposed calling his new vessel the Sally
+Kittridge; but whether all these things made Mara jealous or not, he
+could never determine. Mara had no peculiar gift for acting, except in
+this one point; but here all the vitality of nature rallied to her
+support, and enabled her to preserve an air of the most unperceiving
+serenity. If she shed any tears when she spent a long, lonesome evening,
+she was quite particular to be looking in a very placid frame when Moses
+returned, and to give such an account of the books, or the work, or
+paintings which had interested her, that Moses was sure to be vexed.
+Never were her inquiries for Sally more cordial,--never did she seem
+inspired by a more ardent affection for her.
+
+Whatever may have been the result of this state of things in regard to
+Mara, it is certain that Moses succeeded in convincing the common fame
+of that district that he and Sally were destined for each other, and the
+thing was regularly discussed at quilting frolics and tea-drinkings
+around, much to Miss Emily's disgust and Aunt Roxy's grave satisfaction,
+who declared that "Mara was altogether too good for Moses Pennel, but
+Sally Kittridge would make him stand round,"--by which expression she
+was understood to intimate that Sally had in her the rudiments of the
+same kind of domestic discipline which had operated so favorably in the
+case of Captain Kittridge.
+
+These things, of course, had come to Mara's ears. She had overheard the
+discussions on Sunday noons as the people between meetings sat over
+their doughnuts and cheese, and analyzed their neighbors' affairs, and
+she seemed to smile at them all. Sally only laughed, and declared that
+it was no such thing; that she would no more marry Moses Pennel, or any
+other fellow, than she would put her head into the fire. What did she
+want of any of them? She knew too much to get married,--that she did.
+She was going to have her liberty for one while yet to come, etc., etc.;
+but all these assertions were of course supposed to mean nothing but the
+usual declarations in such cases. Mara among the rest thought it quite
+likely that this thing was yet to be.
+
+So she struggled and tried to reason down a pain which constantly ached
+in her heart when she thought of this. She ought to have foreseen that
+it must some time end in this way. Of course she must have known that
+Moses would some time choose a wife; and how fortunate that, instead of
+a stranger, he had chosen her most intimate friend. Sally was careless
+and thoughtless, to be sure, but she had a good generous heart at the
+bottom, and she hoped she would love Moses at least as well as _she_
+did, and then she would always live with them, and think of any little
+things that Sally might forget.
+
+After all, Sally was so much more capable and efficient a person than
+herself,--so much more bustling and energetic, she would make altogether
+a better housekeeper, and doubtless a better wife for Moses. But then it
+was so hard that he did not tell her about it. Was she not his
+sister?--his confidant for all his childhood?--and why should he shut up
+his heart from her now? But then she must guard herself from being
+jealous,--that would be mean and wicked. So Mara, in her zeal of
+self-discipline, pushed on matters; invited Sally to tea to meet Moses;
+and when she came, left them alone together while she busied herself in
+hospitable cares. She sent Moses with errands and commissions to Sally,
+which he was sure to improve into protracted visits; and in short, no
+young match-maker ever showed more good-will to forward the union of two
+chosen friends than Mara showed to unite Moses and Sally.
+
+So the flirtation went on all summer, like a ship under full sail, with
+prosperous breezes; and Mara, in the many hours that her two best
+friends were together, tried heroically to persuade herself that she was
+not unhappy. She said to herself constantly that she never had loved
+Moses other than as a brother, and repeated and dwelt upon the fact to
+her own mind with a pertinacity which might have led her to suspect the
+reality of the fact, had she had experience enough to look closer. True,
+it was rather lonely, she said, but that she was used to,--she always
+had been and always should be. Nobody would ever love her in return as
+she loved; which sentence she did not analyze very closely, or she might
+have remembered Mr. Adams and one or two others, who had professed more
+for her than she had found herself able to return. That general
+proposition about nobody is commonly found, if sifted to the bottom, to
+have specific relation to somebody whose name never appears in the
+record.
+
+Nobody could have conjectured from Mara's calm, gentle cheerfulness of
+demeanor, that any sorrow lay at the bottom of her heart; she would not
+have owned it to herself.
+
+There are griefs which grow with years, which have no marked
+beginnings,--no especial dates; they are not events, but slow
+perceptions of disappointment, which bear down on the heart with a
+constant and equable pressure like the weight of the atmosphere, and
+these things are never named or counted in words among life's sorrows;
+yet through them, as through an unsuspected inward wound, life, energy,
+and vigor slowly bleed away, and the persons, never owning even to
+themselves the weight of the pressure,--standing, to all appearance,
+fair and cheerful, are still undermined with a secret wear of this inner
+current, and ready to fall with the first external pressure.
+
+There are persons often brought into near contact by the relations of
+life, and bound to each other by a love so close, that they are
+perfectly indispensable to each other, who yet act upon each other as a
+file upon a diamond, by a slow and gradual friction, the pain of which
+is so equable, so constantly diffused through life, as scarcely ever at
+any time to force itself upon the mind as a reality.
+
+Such had been the history of the affection of Mara for Moses. It had
+been a deep, inward, concentrated passion that had almost absorbed
+self-consciousness, and made her keenly alive to all the moody,
+restless, passionate changes of his nature; it had brought with it that
+craving for sympathy and return which such love ever will, and yet it
+was fixed upon a nature so different and so uncomprehending that the
+action had for years been one of pain more than pleasure. Even now, when
+she had him at home with her and busied herself with constant cares for
+him, there was a sort of disturbing, unquiet element in the history of
+every day. The longing for him to come home at night,--the wish that he
+would stay with her,--the uncertainty whether he would or would not go
+and spend the evening with Sally,--the musing during the day over all
+that he had done and said the day before, were a constant interior
+excitement. For Moses, besides being in his moods quite variable and
+changeable, had also a good deal of the dramatic element in him, and put
+on sundry appearances in the way of experiment.
+
+He would feign to have quarreled with Sally, that he might detect
+whether Mara would betray some gladness; but she only evinced concern
+and a desire to make up the difficulty. He would discuss her character
+and her fitness to make a man happy in matrimony in the style that
+young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great
+consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and
+sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal style possible, and
+caution him against trifling with her affections. Then again he would be
+lavish in his praise of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara
+would join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes he
+ventured, on the other side, to rally her on some future husband, and
+predict the days when all the attentions which she was daily bestowing
+on him would be for another; and here, as everywhere else, he found his
+little Sphinx perfectly inscrutable. Instinct teaches the grass-bird,
+who hides her eggs under long meadow grass, to creep timidly yards from
+the nest, and then fly up boldly in the wrong place; and a like instinct
+teaches shy girls all kinds of unconscious stratagems when the one
+secret of their life is approached. They may be as truthful in all other
+things as the strictest Puritan, but here they deceive by an infallible
+necessity. And meanwhile, where was Sally Kittridge in all this matter?
+Was her heart in the least touched by the black eyes and long lashes?
+Who can say? Had she a heart? Well, Sally was a good girl. When one got
+sufficiently far down through the foam and froth of the surface to find
+what was in the depths of her nature, there was abundance there of good
+womanly feeling, generous and strong, if one could but get at it.
+
+She was the best and brightest of daughters to the old Captain, whose
+accounts she kept, whose clothes she mended, whose dinner she often
+dressed and carried to him, from loving choice; and Mrs. Kittridge
+regarded her housewifely accomplishments with pride, though she never
+spoke to her otherwise than in words of criticism and rebuke, as in her
+view an honest mother should who means to keep a flourishing sprig of a
+daughter within limits of a proper humility.
+
+But as for any sentiment or love toward any person of the other sex,
+Sally, as yet, had it not. Her numerous admirers were only so many
+subjects for the exercise of her dear delight of teasing, and Moses
+Pennel, the last and most considerable, differed from the rest only in
+the fact that he was a match for her in this redoubtable art and
+science, and this made the game she was playing with him altogether more
+stimulating than that she had carried on with any other of her admirers.
+For Moses could sulk and storm for effect, and clear off as bright as
+Harpswell Bay after a thunder-storm--for effect also. Moses could play
+jealous, and make believe all those thousand-and-one shadowy nothings
+that coquettes, male and female, get up to carry their points with; and
+so their quarrels and their makings-up were as manifold as the
+sea-breezes that ruffled the ocean before the Captain's door.
+
+There is but one danger in play of this kind, and that is, that deep
+down in the breast of every slippery, frothy, elfish Undine sleeps the
+germ of an unawakened soul, which suddenly, in the course of some such
+trafficking with the outward shows and seemings of affection, may wake
+up and make of the teasing, tricksy elf a sad and earnest woman--a
+creature of loves and self-denials and faithfulness unto death--in
+short, something altogether too good, too sacred to be trifled with; and
+when a man enters the game protected by a previous attachment which
+absorbs all his nature, and the woman awakes in all her depth and
+strength to feel the real meaning of love and life, she finds that she
+has played with one stronger than she, at a terrible disadvantage.
+
+Is this mine lying dark and evil under the saucy little feet of our
+Sally? Well, we should not of course be surprised some day to find it
+so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+NIGHT TALKS
+
+
+October is come, and among the black glooms of the pine forests flare
+out the scarlet branches of the rock-maple, and the beech-groves are all
+arrayed in gold, through which the sunlight streams in subdued richness.
+October is come with long, bright, hazy days, swathing in purple mists
+the rainbow brightness of the forests, and blending the otherwise gaudy
+and flaunting colors into wondrous harmonies of splendor. And Moses
+Pennel's ship is all built and ready, waiting only a favorable day for
+her launching.
+
+And just at this moment Moses is sauntering home from Captain
+Kittridge's in company with Sally, for Mara has sent him to bring her to
+tea with them. Moses is in high spirits; everything has succeeded to his
+wishes; and as the two walk along the high, bold, rocky shore, his eye
+glances out to the open ocean, where the sun is setting, and the fresh
+wind blowing, and the white sails flying, and already fancies himself a
+sea-king, commanding his own place, and going from land to land.
+
+"There hasn't been a more beautiful ship built here these twenty years,"
+he says, in triumph.
+
+"Oho, Mr. Conceit," said Sally, "that's only because it's yours
+now--your geese are all swans. I wish you could have seen the Typhoon,
+that Ben Drummond sailed in--a real handsome fellow he was. What a pity
+there aren't more like him!"
+
+"I don't enter on the merits of Ben Drummond's beauty," said Moses; "but
+I don't believe the Typhoon was one whit superior to our ship. Besides,
+Miss Sally, I thought you were going to take it under your especial
+patronage, and let me honor it with your name."
+
+"How absurd you always will be talking about that--why don't you call it
+after Mara?"
+
+"After Mara?" said Moses. "I don't want to--it wouldn't be
+appropriate--one wants a different kind of girl to name a ship
+after--something bold and bright and dashing!"
+
+"Thank you, sir, but I prefer not to have my bold and dashing qualities
+immortalized in this way," said Sally; "besides, sir, how do I know that
+you wouldn't run me on a rock the very first thing? When I give my name
+to a ship, it must have an experienced commander," she added,
+maliciously, for she knew that Moses was specially vulnerable on this
+point.
+
+"As you please," said Moses, with heightened color. "Allow me to remark
+that he who shall ever undertake to command the 'Sally Kittridge' will
+have need of all his experience--and then, perhaps, not be able to know
+the ways of the craft."
+
+"See him now," said Sally, with a malicious laugh; "we are getting
+wrathy, are we?"
+
+"Not I," said Moses; "it would cost altogether too much exertion to get
+angry at every teasing thing you choose to say, Miss Sally. By and by I
+shall be gone, and then won't your conscience trouble you?"
+
+"My conscience is all easy, so far as you are concerned, sir; your
+self-esteem is too deep-rooted to suffer much from my poor little
+nips--they produce no more impression than a cat-bird pecking at the
+cones of that spruce-tree yonder. Now don't you put your hand where your
+heart is supposed to be--there's nobody at home there, you know. There's
+Mara coming to meet us;" and Sally bounded forward to meet Mara with all
+those demonstrations of extreme delight which young girls are fond of
+showering on each other.
+
+"It's such a beautiful evening," said Mara, "and we are all in such good
+spirits about Moses's ship, and I told him you must come down and hold
+counsel with us as to what was to be done about the launching; and the
+name, you know, that is to be decided on--are you going to let it be
+called after you?"
+
+"Not I, indeed. I should always be reading in the papers of horrible
+accidents that had happened to the 'Sally Kittridge.'"
+
+"Sally has so set her heart on my being unlucky," said Moses, "that I
+believe if I make a prosperous voyage, the disappointment would injure
+her health."
+
+"She doesn't mean what she says," said Mara; "but I think there are some
+objections in a young lady's name being given to a ship."
+
+"Then I suppose, Mara," said Moses, "that you would not have yours
+either?"
+
+"I would be glad to accommodate you in anything _but_ that," said Mara,
+quietly; but she added, "Why need the ship be named for anybody? A ship
+is such a beautiful, graceful thing, it should have a fancy name."
+
+"Well, suggest one," said Moses.
+
+"Don't you remember," said Mara, "one Saturday afternoon, when you and
+Sally and I launched your little ship down in the cove after you had
+come from your first voyage at the Banks?"
+
+"I do," said Sally. "We called that the Ariel, Mara, after that old torn
+play you were so fond of. That's a pretty name for a ship."
+
+"Why not take that?" said Mara.
+
+"I bow to the decree," said Moses. "The Ariel it shall be."
+
+"Yes; and you remember," said Sally, "Mr. Moses here promised at that
+time that he would build a ship, and take us two round the world with
+him."
+
+Moses's eyes fell upon Mara as Sally said these words with a sort of
+sudden earnestness of expression which struck her. He was really feeling
+very much about something, under all the bantering disguise of his
+demeanor, she said to herself. Could it be that he felt unhappy about
+his prospects with Sally? That careless liveliness of hers might wound
+him perhaps now, when he felt that he was soon to leave her.
+
+Mara was conscious herself of a deep undercurrent of sadness as the time
+approached for the ship to sail that should carry Moses from her, and
+she could not but think some such feeling must possess her mind. In vain
+she looked into Sally's great Spanish eyes for any signs of a lurking
+softness or tenderness concealed under her sparkling vivacity. Sally's
+eyes were admirable windows of exactly the right size and color for an
+earnest, tender spirit to look out of, but just now there was nobody at
+the casement but a slippery elf peering out in tricksy defiance.
+
+When the three arrived at the house, tea was waiting on the table for
+them. Mara fancied that Moses looked sad and preoccupied as they sat
+down to the tea-table, which Mrs. Pennel had set forth festively, with
+the best china and the finest tablecloth and the choicest sweetmeats. In
+fact, Moses did feel that sort of tumult and upheaving of the soul which
+a young man experiences when the great crisis comes which is to plunge
+him into the struggles of manhood. It is a time when he wants sympathy
+and is grated upon by uncomprehending merriment, and therefore his
+answers to Sally grew brief and even harsh at times, and Mara sometimes
+perceived him looking at herself with a singular fixedness of
+expression, though he withdrew his eyes whenever she turned hers to look
+on him. Like many another little woman, she had fixed a theory about
+her friends, into which she was steadily interweaving all the facts she
+saw. Sally _must_ love Moses, because she had known her from childhood
+as a good and affectionate girl, and it was impossible that she could
+have been going on with Moses as she had for the last six months without
+loving him. She must evidently have seen that he cared for her; and in
+how many ways had she shown that she liked his society and him! But then
+evidently she did not understand him, and Mara felt a little womanly
+self-pluming on the thought that _she_ knew him so much better. She was
+resolved that she would talk with Sally about it, and show her that she
+was disappointing Moses and hurting his feelings. Yes, she said to
+herself, Sally has a kind heart, and her coquettish desire to conceal
+from him the extent of her affection ought now to give way to the
+outspoken tenderness of real love.
+
+So Mara pressed Sally with the old-times request to stay and sleep with
+her; for these two, the only young girls in so lonely a neighborhood,
+had no means of excitement or dissipation beyond this occasional
+sleeping together--by which is meant, of course, lying awake all night
+talking.
+
+When they were alone together in their chamber, Sally let down her long
+black hair, and stood with her back to Mara brushing it. Mara sat
+looking out of the window, where the moon was making a wide sheet of
+silver-sparkling water. Everything was so quiet that the restless dash
+of the tide could be plainly heard. Sally was rattling away with her
+usual gayety.
+
+"And so the launching is to come off next Thursday. What shall you
+wear?"
+
+"I'm sure I haven't thought," said Mara.
+
+"Well, I shall try and finish my blue merino for the occasion. What fun
+it will be! I never was on a ship when it was launched, and I think it
+will be something perfectly splendid!"
+
+"But doesn't it sometimes seem sad to think that after all this Moses
+will leave us to be gone so long?"
+
+"What do I care?" said Sally, tossing back her long hair as she brushed
+it, and then stopping to examine one of her eyelashes.
+
+"Sally dear, you often speak in that way," said Mara, "but really and
+seriously, you do yourself great injustice. You could not certainly have
+been going on as you have these six months past with a man you did not
+care for."
+
+"Well, I do care for him, 'sort o','" said Sally; "but is that any
+reason I should break my heart for his going?--that's too much for any
+man."
+
+"But, Sally, you _must_ know that Moses loves you."
+
+"I'm not so sure," said Sally, freakishly tossing her head and laughing.
+
+"If he did not," said Mara, "why has he sought you so much, and taken
+every opportunity to be with you? I'm sure I've been left here alone
+hour after hour, when my only comfort was that it was because my two
+best friends loved each other, as I know they must some time love some
+one better than they do me."
+
+The most practiced self-control must fail some time, and Mara's voice
+faltered on these last words, and she put her hands over her eyes. Sally
+turned quickly and looked at her, then giving her hair a sudden fold
+round her shoulders, and running to her friend, she kneeled down on the
+floor by her, and put her arms round her waist, and looked up into her
+face with an air of more gravity than she commonly used.
+
+"Now, Mara, what a wicked, inconsistent fool I have been! Did you feel
+lonesome?--did you care? I ought to have seen that; but I'm selfish, I
+love admiration, and I love to have some one to flatter me, and run
+after me; and so I've been going on and on in this silly way. But I
+didn't know you cared--indeed, I didn't--you are such a deep little
+thing. Nobody can ever tell what you feel. I never shall forgive myself,
+if you have been lonesome, for you are worth five hundred times as much
+as I am. You really do love Moses. I don't."
+
+"I do love him as a dear brother," said Mara.
+
+"Dear fiddlestick," said Sally. "Love is love; and when a person loves
+all she can, it isn't much use to talk so. I've been a wicked sinner,
+that I have. Love? Do you suppose I would bear with Moses Pennel all his
+ins and outs and ups and downs, and be always putting him before myself
+in everything, as you do? No, I couldn't; I haven't it in me; but you
+have. He's a sinner, too, and deserves to get me for a wife. But, Mara,
+I have tormented him well--there's some comfort in that."
+
+"It's no comfort to me," said Mara. "I see his heart is set on you--the
+happiness of his life depends on you--and that he is pained and hurt
+when you give him only cold, trifling words when he needs real true
+love. It is a serious thing, dear, to have a strong man set his whole
+heart on you. It will do him a great good or a great evil, and you ought
+not to make light of it."
+
+"Oh, pshaw, Mara, you don't know these fellows; they are only playing
+games with us. If they once catch us, they have no mercy; and for one
+here's a child that isn't going to be caught. I can see plain enough
+that Moses Pennel has been trying to get me in love with him, but he
+doesn't love me. No, he doesn't," said Sally, reflectively. "He only
+wants to make a conquest of me, and I'm just the same. I want to make a
+conquest of him,--at least I have been wanting to,--but now I see it's a
+false, wicked kind of way to do as we've been doing."
+
+"And is it really possible, Sally, that you don't love him?" said Mara,
+her large, serious eyes looking into Sally's. "What! be with him so
+much,--seem to like him so much,--look at him as I have seen you
+do,--and not love him!"
+
+"I can't help my eyes; they will look so," said Sally, hiding her face
+in Mara's lap with a sort of coquettish consciousness. "I tell you I've
+been silly and wicked; but he's just the same exactly."
+
+"And you have worn his ring all summer?"
+
+"Yes, and he has worn mine; and I have a lock of his hair, and he has a
+lock of mine; yet I don't believe he cares for them a bit. Oh, his heart
+is safe enough. If he has any, it isn't with me: that I know."
+
+"But if you found it were, Sally? Suppose you found that, after all, you
+were the one love and hope of his life; that all he was doing and
+thinking was for you; that he was laboring, and toiling, and leaving
+home, so that he might some day offer you a heart and home, and be your
+best friend for life? Perhaps he dares not tell you how he really does
+feel."
+
+"It's no such thing! it's no such thing!" said Sally, lifting up her
+head, with her eyes full of tears, which she dashed angrily away. "What
+am I crying for? I hate him. I'm glad he's going away. Lately it has
+been such a trouble to me to have things go on so. I'm really getting to
+dislike him. You are the one he ought to love. Perhaps all this time you
+are the one he does love," said Sally, with a sudden energy, as if a new
+thought had dawned in her mind.
+
+"Oh, no; he does not even love me as he once did, when we were
+children," said Mara. "He is so shut up in himself, so reserved, I know
+nothing about what passes in his heart."
+
+"No more does anybody," said Sally. "Moses Pennel isn't one that says
+and does things straightforward because he feels so; but he says and
+does them to see what _you_ will do. That's his way. Nobody knows why he
+has been going on with me as he has. He has had his own reasons,
+doubtless, as I have had mine."
+
+"He has admired you very much, Sally," said Mara, "and praised you to me
+very warmly. He thinks you are so handsome. I could tell you ever so
+many things he has said about you. He knows as I do that you are a more
+enterprising, practical sort of body than I am, too. Everybody thinks
+you are engaged. I have heard it spoken of everywhere."
+
+"Everybody is mistaken, then, as usual," said Sally. "Perhaps Aunt Roxy
+was in the right of it when she said that Moses would never be in love
+with anybody but himself."
+
+"Aunt Roxy has always been prejudiced and unjust to Moses," said Mara,
+her cheeks flushing. "She never liked him from a child, and she never
+can be made to see anything good in him. I know that he has a deep
+heart,--a nature that craves affection and sympathy; and it is only
+because he is so sensitive that he is so reserved and conceals his
+feelings so much. He has a noble, kind heart, and I believe he truly
+loves you, Sally; it must be so."
+
+Sally rose from the floor and went on arranging her hair without
+speaking. Something seemed to disturb her mind. She bit her lip, and
+threw down the brush and comb violently. In the clear depths of the
+little square of looking-glass a face looked into hers, whose eyes were
+perturbed as if with the shadows of some coming inward storm; the black
+brows were knit, and the lips quivered. She drew a long breath and burst
+out into a loud laugh.
+
+"What _are_ you laughing at now?" said Mara, who stood in her white
+night-dress by the window, with her hair falling in golden waves about
+her face.
+
+"Oh, because these fellows are so funny," said Sally; "it's such fun to
+see their actions. Come now," she added, turning to Mara, "don't look so
+grave and sanctified. It's better to laugh than cry about things, any
+time. It's a great deal better to be made hard-hearted like me, and not
+care for anybody, than to be like you, for instance. The idea of any
+one's being in love is the drollest thing to me. I haven't the least
+idea how it feels. I wonder if I ever shall be in love!"
+
+"It will come to you in its time, Sally."
+
+"Oh, yes,--I suppose like the chicken-pox or the whooping cough," said
+Sally; "one of the things to be gone through with, and rather
+disagreeable while it lasts,--so I hope to put it off as long as
+possible."
+
+"Well, come," said Mara, "we must not sit up all night."
+
+After the two girls were nestled into bed and the light out, instead of
+the brisk chatter there fell a great silence between them. The full
+round moon cast the reflection of the window on the white bed, and the
+ever restless moan of the sea became more audible in the fixed
+stillness. The two faces, both young and fair, yet so different in their
+expression, lay each still on its pillow,--their wide-open eyes gleaming
+out in the shadow like mystical gems. Each was breathing softly, as if
+afraid of disturbing the other. At last Sally gave an impatient
+movement.
+
+"How lonesome the sea sounds in the night," she said. "I wish it would
+ever be still."
+
+"I like to hear it," said Mara. "When I was in Boston, for a while I
+thought I could not sleep, I used to miss it so much."
+
+There was another silence, which lasted so long that each girl thought
+the other asleep, and moved softly, but at a restless movement from
+Sally, Mara spoke again.
+
+"Sally,--you asleep?"
+
+"No,--I thought you were."
+
+"I wanted to ask you," said Mara, "did Moses ever say anything to you
+about me?--you know I told you how much he said about you."
+
+"Yes; he asked me once if you were engaged to Mr. Adams."
+
+"And what did you tell him?" said Mara, with increasing interest.
+
+"Well, I only plagued him. I sometimes made him think you were, and
+sometimes that you were not; and then again, that there was a deep
+mystery in hand. But I praised and glorified Mr. Adams, and told him
+what a splendid match it would be, and put on any little bits of
+embroidery here and there that I could lay hands on. I used to make him
+sulky and gloomy for a whole evening sometimes. In that way it was one
+of the best weapons I had."
+
+"Sally, what does make you love to tease people so?" said Mara.
+
+"Why, you know the hymn says,--
+
+    'Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+      For God hath made them so;
+    Let bears and lions growl and fight,
+      For 'tis their nature too.'
+
+That's all the account I can give of it."
+
+"But," said Mara, "I never can rest easy a moment when I see I am making
+a person uncomfortable."
+
+"Well, I don't tease anybody but the men. I don't tease father or mother
+or you,--but men are fair game; they are such thumby, blundering
+creatures, and we can confuse them so."
+
+"Take care, Sally, it's playing with edge tools; you may lose your heart
+some day in this kind of game."
+
+"Never you fear," said Sally; "but aren't you sleepy?--let's go to
+sleep."
+
+Both girls turned their faces resolutely in opposite directions, and
+remained for an hour with their large eyes looking out into the moonlit
+chamber, like the fixed stars over Harpswell Bay. At last sleep drew
+softly down the fringy curtains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL
+
+
+In the plain, simple regions we are describing,--where the sea is the
+great avenue of active life, and the pine forests are the great source
+of wealth,--ship-building is an engrossing interest, and there is no
+fête that calls forth the community like the launching of a vessel. And
+no wonder; for what is there belonging to this workaday world of ours
+that has such a never-failing fund of poetry and grace as a ship? A ship
+is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it: its white wings touch the
+regions of the unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full of the
+odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life, we fondly dream,
+moves in brighter currents than the muddy, tranquil tides of every day.
+
+Who that sees one bound outward, with her white breasts swelling and
+heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy, does not feel his own heart
+swell with a longing impulse to go with her to the far-off shores? Even
+at dingy, crowded wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities, the
+coming in of a ship is an event that never can lose its interest. But on
+these romantic shores of Maine, where all is so wild and still, and the
+blue sea lies embraced in the arms of dark, solitary forests, the sudden
+incoming of a ship from a distant voyage is a sort of romance. Who that
+has stood by the blue waters of Middle Bay, engirdled as it is by soft
+slopes of green farming land, interchanged here and there with heavy
+billows of forest-trees, or rocky, pine-crowned promontories, has not
+felt that sense of seclusion and solitude which is so delightful? And
+then what a wonder! There comes a ship from China, drifting in like a
+white cloud,--the gallant creature! how the waters hiss and foam before
+her! with what a great free, generous plash she throws out her anchors,
+as if she said a cheerful "Well done!" to some glorious work
+accomplished! The very life and spirit of strange romantic lands come
+with her; suggestions of sandal-wood and spice breathe through the
+pine-woods; she is an oriental queen, with hands full of mystical gifts;
+"all her garments smell of myrrh and cassia, out of the ivory palaces,
+whereby they have made her glad." No wonder men have loved ships like
+birds, and that there have been found brave, rough hearts that in fatal
+wrecks chose rather to go down with their ocean love than to leave her
+in the last throes of her death-agony.
+
+A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious poetry ever
+underlying its existence. Exotic ideas from foreign lands relieve the
+trite monotony of life; the ship-owner lives in communion with the whole
+world, and is less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that
+infest the routine of inland life.
+
+Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than that which was to
+start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage. Moses had risen while the
+stars were yet twinkling over their own images in Middle Bay, to go down
+and see that everything was right; and in all the houses that we know in
+the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of being ready to go
+to the launching.
+
+Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy over the provisions
+for the ample cold collation that was to be spread in a barn adjoining
+the scene,--the materials for which they were packing into baskets
+covered with nice clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat
+which lay within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn,
+her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.
+
+It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges should cross
+together in this boat with their contributions of good cheer.
+
+The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent on their quota
+of the festive preparations, in which Dame Kittridge's housewifely
+reputation was involved,--for it had been a disputed point in the
+neighborhood whether she or Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of
+course, with this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had
+been all but superhuman.
+
+The Captain skipped in and out in high feather,--occasionally pinching
+Sally's cheek, and asking if she were going as captain or mate upon the
+vessel after it was launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his
+sleeve or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father
+were on romping terms with each other from early childhood, a thing
+which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Such levity!" she said, as she saw Sally in full chase after his
+retreating figure, in order to be revenged for some sly allusions he had
+whispered in her ear.
+
+"Sally Kittridge! Sally Kittridge!" she called, "come back this minute.
+What are you about? I should think your father was old enough to know
+better."
+
+"Lawful sakes, Polly, it kind o' renews one's youth to get a new ship
+done," said the Captain, skipping in at another door. "Sort o' puts me
+in mind o' that _I_ went out cap'en in when I was jist beginning to
+court you, as somebody else is courtin' our Sally here."
+
+"Now, father," said Sally, threateningly, "what did I tell you?"
+
+"It's really _lemancholy_," said the Captain, "to think how it does
+distress gals to talk to 'em 'bout the fellers, when they ain't thinkin'
+o' nothin' else all the time. They can't even laugh without sayin'
+he-he-he!"
+
+"Now, father, you know I've told you five hundred times that I don't
+care a cent for Moses Pennel,--that he's a hateful creature," said
+Sally, looking very red and determined.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "I take that ar's the reason you've ben
+a-wearin' the ring he gin you and them ribbins you've got on your neck
+this blessed minute, and why you've giggled off to singin'-school, and
+Lord knows where with him all summer,--that ar's clear now."
+
+"But, father," said Sally, getting redder and more earnest, "I don't
+care for him really, and I've told him so. I keep telling him so, and he
+will run after me."
+
+"Haw! haw!" laughed the Captain; "he will, will he? Jist so, Sally; that
+ar's jist the way your ma there talked to me, and it kind o' 'couraged
+me along. I knew that gals always has to be read back'ard jist like the
+writin' in the Barbary States."
+
+"Captain Kittridge, will you stop such ridiculous talk?" said his
+helpmeet; "and jist carry this 'ere basket of cold chicken down to the
+landin' agin the Pennels come round in the boat; and you must step spry,
+for there's two more baskets a-comin'."
+
+The Captain shouldered the basket and walked toward the sea with it, and
+Sally retired to her own little room to hold a farewell consultation
+with her mirror before she went.
+
+You will perhaps think from the conversation that you heard the other
+night, that Sally now will cease all thought of coquettish allurement in
+her acquaintance with Moses, and cause him to see by an immediate and
+marked change her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands
+thoughtfully before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety of
+laying aside the ribbons he gave her--perhaps she will alter that
+arrangement of her hair which is one that he himself particularly
+dictated as most becoming to the character of her face. She opens a
+little drawer, which looks like a flower garden, all full of little
+knots of pink and blue and red, and various fancies of the toilet, and
+looks into it reflectively. She looses the ribbon from her hair and
+chooses another,--but Moses gave her that too, and said, she remembers,
+that when she wore that "he should know she had been thinking of him."
+Sally is Sally yet--as full of sly dashes of coquetry as a tulip is of
+streaks.
+
+"There's no reason I should make myself look like a fright because I
+don't care for him," she says; "besides, after all that he has said, he
+ought to say more,--he ought at least to give me a chance to say no,--he
+_shall_, too," said the gypsy, winking at the bright, elfish face in the
+glass.
+
+"Sally Kittridge, Sally Kittridge," called her mother, "how long will
+you stay prinkin'?--come down this minute."
+
+"Law now, mother," said the Captain, "gals must prink afore such times;
+it's as natural as for hens to dress their feathers afore a
+thunder-storm."
+
+Sally at last appeared, all in a flutter of ribbons and scarfs, whose
+bright, high colors assorted well with the ultramarine blue of her
+dress, and the vivid pomegranate hue of her cheeks. The boat with its
+white sails flapping was balancing and courtesying up and down on the
+waters, and in the stern sat Mara; her shining white straw hat trimmed
+with blue ribbons set off her golden hair and pink shell complexion. The
+dark, even penciling of her eyebrows, and the beauty of the brow above,
+the brown translucent clearness of her thoughtful eyes, made her face
+striking even with its extreme delicacy of tone. She was unusually
+animated and excited, and her cheeks had a rich bloom of that pure deep
+rose-color which flushes up in fair complexions under excitement, and
+her eyes had a kind of intense expression, for which they had always
+been remarkable. All the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature was
+looking out of them, giving that pathos which every one has felt at
+times in the silence of eyes.
+
+"Now bless that ar gal," said the Captain, when he saw her. "Our Sally
+here's handsome, but she's got the real New-Jerusalem look, she
+has--like them in the Revelations that wears the fine linen, clean and
+white."
+
+"Bless you, Captain Kittridge! don't be a-makin' a fool of yourself
+about no girl at your time o' life," said Mrs. Kittridge, speaking under
+her breath in a nipping, energetic tone, for they were coming too near
+the boat to speak very loud.
+
+"Good mornin', Mis' Pennel; we've got a good day, and a mercy it is so.
+'Member when we launched the North Star, that it rained guns all the
+mornin', and the water got into the baskets when we was a-fetchin' the
+things over, and made a sight o' pester."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Pennel, with an air of placid satisfaction, "everything
+seems to be going right about this vessel."
+
+Mrs. Kittridge and Sally were soon accommodated with seats, and
+Zephaniah Pennel and the Captain began trimming sail. The day was one of
+those perfect gems of days which are to be found only in the
+jewel-casket of October, a day neither hot nor cold, with an air so
+clear that every distant pine-tree top stood out in vivid separateness,
+and every woody point and rocky island seemed cut out in crystalline
+clearness against the sky. There was so brisk a breeze that the boat
+slanted quite to the water's edge on one side, and Mara leaned over and
+pensively drew her little pearly hand through the water, and thought of
+the days when she and Moses took this sail together--she in her pink
+sun-bonnet, and he in his round straw hat, with a tin dinner-pail
+between them; and now, to-day the ship of her childish dreams was to be
+launched. That launching was something she regarded almost with
+superstitious awe. The ship, built on one element, but designed to have
+its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, framed and fashioned
+with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true
+element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. Such was her
+thought as she looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it
+have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?--to Sally Kittridge,
+for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons beside
+her, and who would have shown her white teeth all round at such a
+suggestion, and said, "Now, Mara, who but you would have thought of
+that?"
+
+But there are souls sent into this world who seem to have always
+mysterious affinities for the invisible and the unknown--who see the
+face of everything beautiful through a thin veil of mystery and sadness.
+The Germans call this yearning of spirit home-sickness--the dim
+remembrances of a spirit once affiliated to some higher sphere, of whose
+lost brightness all things fair are the vague reminders. As Mara looked
+pensively into the water, it seemed to her that every incident of life
+came up out of its depths to meet her. Her own face reflected in a
+wavering image, sometimes shaped itself to her gaze in the likeness of
+the pale lady of her childhood, who seemed to look up at her from the
+waters with dark, mysterious eyes of tender longing. Once or twice this
+dreamy effect grew so vivid that she shivered, and drawing herself up
+from the water, tried to take an interest in a very minute account which
+Mrs. Kittridge was giving of the way to make corn-fritters which should
+taste exactly like oysters. The closing direction about the quantity of
+mace Mrs. Kittridge felt was too sacred for common ears, and therefore
+whispered it into Mrs. Pennel's bonnet with a knowing nod and a look
+from her black spectacles which would not have been bad for a priestess
+of Dodona in giving out an oracle. In this secret direction about the
+_mace_ lay the whole mystery of corn-oysters; and who can say what
+consequences might ensue from casting it in an unguarded manner before
+the world?
+
+And now the boat which has rounded Harpswell Point is skimming across to
+the head of Middle Bay, where the new ship can distinctly be discerned
+standing upon her ways, while moving clusters of people were walking up
+and down her decks or lining the shore in the vicinity. All sorts of
+gossiping and neighborly chit-chat is being interchanged in the little
+world assembling there.
+
+"I hain't seen the Pennels nor the Kittridges yet," said Aunt Ruey,
+whose little roly-poly figure was made illustrious in her best
+cinnamon-colored dyed silk. "There's Moses Pennel a-goin' up that ar
+ladder. Dear me, what a beautiful feller he is! it's a pity he ain't
+a-goin' to marry Mara Lincoln, after all."
+
+"Ruey, do hush up," said Miss Roxy, frowning sternly down from under the
+shadow of a preternatural black straw bonnet, trimmed with huge bows of
+black ribbon, which head-piece sat above her curls like a helmet. "Don't
+be a-gettin' sentimental, Ruey, whatever else you get--and talkin' like
+Miss Emily Sewell about match-makin'; I can't stand it; it rises on my
+stomach, such talk does. As to that ar Moses Pennel, folks ain't so
+certain as they thinks what he'll do. Sally Kittridge may think he's
+a-goin' to have her, because he's been a-foolin' round with her all
+summer, and Sally Kittridge may jist find she's mistaken, that's all."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "I 'member when I was a girl my old aunt, Jerushy
+Hopkins, used to be always a-dwellin' on this Scripture, and I've been
+havin' it brought up to me this mornin': 'There are three things which
+are too wonderful for me, yea, four, which I know not: the way of an
+eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in
+the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.' She used to say it as a
+kind o' caution to me when she used to think Abram Peters was bein'
+attentive to me. I've often reflected what a massy it was that ar never
+come to nothin', for he's a poor drunken critter now."
+
+"Well, for my part," said Miss Roxy, fixing her eyes critically on the
+boat that was just at the landing, "I should say the ways of a maid with
+a man was full as particular as any of the rest of 'em. Do look at Sally
+Kittridge now. There's Tom Hiers a-helpin' her out of the boat; and did
+you see the look she gin Moses Pennel as she went by him? Wal', Moses has
+got Mara on his arm anyhow; there's a gal worth six-and-twenty of the
+other. Do see them ribbins and scarfs, and the furbelows, and the way
+that ar Sally Kittridge handles her eyes. She's one that one feller
+ain't never enough for."
+
+Mara's heart beat fast when the boat touched the shore, and Moses and
+one or two other young men came to assist in their landing. Never had he
+looked more beautiful than at this moment, when flushed with excitement
+and satisfaction he stood on the shore, his straw hat off, and his black
+curls blowing in the sea-breeze. He looked at Sally with a look of frank
+admiration as she stood there dropping her long black lashes over her
+bright cheeks, and coquettishly looking out from under them, but she
+stepped forward with a little energy of movement, and took the offered
+hand of Tom Hiers, who was gazing at her too with undisguised rapture,
+and Moses, stepping into the boat, helped Mrs. Pennel on shore, and then
+took Mara on his arm, looking her over as he did so with a glance far
+less assured and direct than he had given to Sally.
+
+"You won't be afraid to climb the ladders, Mara?" said he.
+
+"Not if you help me," she said.
+
+Sally and Tom Hiers had already walked on toward the vessel, she
+ostentatiously chatting and laughing with him. Moses's brow clouded a
+little, and Mara noticed it. Moses thought he did not care for Sally; he
+knew that the little hand that was now lying on his arm was the one he
+wanted, and yet he felt vexed when he saw Sally walk off triumphantly
+with another. It was the dog-in-the-manger feeling which possesses
+coquettes of both sexes. Sally, on all former occasions, had shown a
+marked preference for him, and professed supreme indifference to Tom
+Hiers.
+
+"It's all well enough," he said to himself, and he helped Mara up the
+ladders with the greatest deference and tenderness. "This little woman
+is worth ten such girls as Sally, if one only could get her heart. Here
+we are on our ship, Mara," he said, as he lifted her over the last
+barrier and set her down on the deck. "Look over there, do you see Eagle
+Island? Did you dream when we used to go over there and spend the day
+that you ever would be on _my_ ship, as you are to-day? You won't be
+afraid, will you, when the ship starts?"
+
+"I am too much of a sea-girl to fear on anything that sails in water,"
+said Mara with enthusiasm. "What a splendid ship! how nicely it all
+looks!"
+
+"Come, let me take you over it," said Moses, "and show you my cabin."
+
+Meanwhile the graceful little vessel was the subject of various comments
+by the crowd of spectators below, and the clatter of workmen's hammers
+busy in some of the last preparations could yet be heard like a shower
+of hail-stones under her.
+
+"I hope the ways are well greased," said old Captain Eldritch. "'Member
+how the John Peters stuck in her ways for want of their being greased?"
+
+"Don't you remember the Grand Turk, that keeled over five minutes after
+she was launched?" said the quavering voice of Miss Ruey; "there was
+jist such a company of thoughtless young creatures aboard as there is
+now."
+
+"Well, there wasn't nobody hurt," said Captain Kittridge. "If Mis'
+Kittridge would let me, I'd be glad to go aboard this 'ere, and be
+launched with 'em."
+
+"I tell the Cap'n he's too old to be climbin' round and mixin' with
+young folks' frolics," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"I suppose, Cap'n Pennel, you've seen that the ways is all right," said
+Captain Broad, returning to the old subject.
+
+"Oh yes, it's all done as well as hands can do it," said Zephaniah.
+"Moses has been here since starlight this morning, and Moses has pretty
+good faculty about such matters."
+
+"Where's Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily?" said Miss Ruey. "Oh, there they are
+over on that pile of rocks; they get a pretty fair view there."
+
+Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily were sitting under a cedar-tree, with two or
+three others, on a projecting point whence they could have a clear view
+of the launching. They were so near that they could distinguish clearly
+the figures on deck, and see Moses standing with his hat off, the wind
+blowing his curls back, talking earnestly to the golden-haired little
+woman on his arm.
+
+"It is a launch into life for him," said Mr. Sewell, with suppressed
+feeling.
+
+"Yes, and he has Mara on his arm," said Miss Emily; "that's as it should
+be. Who is that that Sally Kittridge is flirting with now? Oh, Tom
+Hiers. Well! he's good enough for her. Why don't she take him?" said
+Miss Emily, in her zeal jogging her brother's elbow.
+
+"I'm sure, Emily, I don't know," said Mr. Sewell dryly; "perhaps he
+won't be taken."
+
+"Don't you think Moses looks handsome?" said Miss Emily. "I declare
+there is something quite romantic and Spanish about him; don't you think
+so, Theophilus?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," said her brother, quietly looking, externally, the
+meekest and most matter-of-fact of persons, but deep within him a voice
+sighed, "Poor Dolores, be comforted, your boy is beautiful and
+prosperous!"
+
+"There, there!" said Miss Emily, "I believe she is starting."
+
+All eyes of the crowd were now fixed on the ship; the sound of hammers
+stopped; the workmen were seen flying in every direction to gain good
+positions to see her go,--that sight so often seen on those shores, yet
+to which use cannot dull the most insensible.
+
+First came a slight, almost imperceptible, movement, then a swift
+exultant rush, a dash into the hissing water, and the air was rent with
+hurrahs as the beautiful ship went floating far out on the blue seas,
+where her fairer life was henceforth to be.
+
+Mara was leaning on Moses's arm at the instant the ship began to move,
+but in the moment of the last dizzy rush she felt his arm go tightly
+round her, holding her so close that she could hear the beating of his
+heart.
+
+"Hurrah!" he said, letting go his hold the moment the ship floated free,
+and swinging his hat in answer to the hats, scarfs, and handkerchiefs,
+which fluttered from the crowd on the shore. His eyes sparkled with a
+proud light as he stretched himself upward, raising his head and
+throwing back his shoulders with a triumphant movement. He looked like a
+young sea-king just crowned; and the fact is the less wonderful,
+therefore, that Mara felt her heart throb as she looked at him, and that
+a treacherous throb of the same nature shook the breezy ribbons
+fluttering over the careless heart of Sally. A handsome young
+sea-captain, treading the deck of his own vessel, is, in his time and
+place, a prince.
+
+Moses looked haughtily across at Sally, and then passed a half-laughing
+defiant flash of eyes between them. He looked at Mara, who could
+certainly not have known what was in her eyes at the moment,--an
+expression that made his heart give a great throb, and wonder if he saw
+aright: but it was gone a moment after, as all gathered around in a knot
+exchanging congratulations on the fortunate way in which the affair had
+gone off. Then came the launching in boats to go back to the collation
+on shore, where were high merry-makings for the space of one or two
+hours: and thus was fulfilled the first part of Moses Pennel's Saturday
+afternoon prediction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+GREEK MEETS GREEK
+
+
+Moses was now within a day or two of the time of his sailing, and yet
+the distance between him and Mara seemed greater than ever. It is
+astonishing, when two people are once started on a wrong understanding
+with each other, how near they may live, how intimate they may be, how
+many things they may have in common, how many words they may speak, how
+closely they may seem to simulate intimacy, confidence, friendship,
+while yet there lies a gulf between them that neither crosses,--a
+reserve that neither explores.
+
+Like most shy girls, Mara became more shy the more really she understood
+the nature of her own feelings. The conversation with Sally had opened
+her eyes to the secret of her own heart, and she had a guilty feeling as
+if what she had discovered must be discovered by every one else. Yes, it
+was clear she loved Moses in a way that made him, she thought, more
+necessary to her happiness than she could ever be to his,--in a way that
+made it impossible to think of him as wholly and for life devoted to
+another, without a constant inner conflict. In vain had been all her
+little stratagems practiced upon herself the whole summer long, to prove
+to herself that she was glad that the choice had fallen upon Sally. She
+saw clearly enough now that she was not glad,--that there was no woman
+or girl living, however dear, who could come for life between him and
+her, without casting on her heart the shuddering sorrow of a dim
+eclipse.
+
+But now the truth was plain to herself, her whole force was directed
+toward the keeping of her secret. "I may suffer," she thought, "but I
+will have strength not to be silly and weak. Nobody shall know,--nobody
+shall dream it,--and in the long, long time that he is away, I shall
+have strength given me to overcome."
+
+So Mara put on her most cheerful and matter-of-fact kind of face, and
+plunged into the making of shirts and knitting of stockings, and talked
+of the coming voyage with such a total absence of any concern, that
+Moses began to think, after all, there could be no depth to her
+feelings, or that the deeper ones were all absorbed by some one else.
+
+"You really seem to enjoy the prospect of my going away," said he to
+her, one morning, as she was energetically busying herself with her
+preparations.
+
+"Well, of course; you know your career must begin. You must make your
+fortune; and it is pleasant to think how favorably everything is shaping
+for you."
+
+"One likes, however, to be a little regretted," said Moses, in a tone of
+pique.
+
+"A little regretted!" Mara's heart beat at these words, but her
+hypocrisy was well practiced. She put down the rebellious throb, and
+assuming a look of open, sisterly friendliness, said, quite naturally,
+"Why, we shall all miss you, of course."
+
+"Of course," said Moses,--"one would be glad to be missed some other way
+than _of course_."
+
+"Oh, as to that, make yourself easy," said Mara. "We shall all be dull
+enough when you are gone to content the most exacting." Still she spoke,
+not stopping her stitching, and raising her soft brown eyes with a
+frank, open look into Moses's--no tremor, not even of an eyelid.
+
+"You men must have everything," she continued, gayly, "the enterprise,
+the adventure, the novelty, the pleasure of feeling that you are
+something, and can do something in the world; and besides all this, you
+want the satisfaction of knowing that we women are following in chains
+behind your triumphal car!"
+
+There was a dash of bitterness in this, which was a rare ingredient in
+Mara's conversation.
+
+Moses took the word. "And you women sit easy at home, sewing and
+singing, and forming romantic pictures of our life as like its homely
+reality as romances generally are to reality; and while we are off in
+the hard struggle for position and the means of life, you hold your
+hearts ready for the first rich man that offers a fortune ready made."
+
+"The first!" said Mara. "Oh, you naughty! sometimes we try two or
+three."
+
+"Well, then, I suppose this is from one of them," said Moses, flapping
+down a letter from Boston, directed in a masculine hand, which he had
+got at the post-office that morning.
+
+Now Mara knew that this letter was nothing in particular, but she was
+taken by surprise, and her skin was delicate as peach-blossom, and so
+she could not help a sudden blush, which rose even to her golden hair,
+vexed as she was to feel it coming. She put the letter quietly in her
+pocket, and for a moment seemed too discomposed to answer.
+
+"You do well to keep your own counsel," said Moses. "No friend so near
+as one's self, is a good maxim. One does not expect young girls to learn
+it so early, but it seems they do."
+
+"And why shouldn't they as well as young men?" said Mara. "Confidence
+begets confidence, they say."
+
+"I have no ambition to play confidant," said Moses; "although as one who
+stands to you in the relation of older brother and guardian, and just on
+the verge of a long voyage, I might be supposed anxious to know."
+
+"And I have no ambition to be confidant," said Mara, all her spirit
+sparkling in her eyes; "although when one stands to you in the relation
+of an only sister, I might be supposed perhaps to feel some interest to
+be in your confidence."
+
+The words "older brother" and "only sister" grated on the ears of both
+the combatants as a decisive sentence. Mara never looked so pretty in
+her life, for the whole force of her being was awake, glowing and
+watchful, to guard passage, door, and window of her soul, that no
+treacherous hint might escape. Had he not just reminded her that he was
+only an older brother? and what would he think if he knew the
+truth?--and Moses thought the words _only sister_ unequivocal
+declaration of how the matter stood in her view, and so he rose, and
+saying, "I won't detain you longer from your letter," took his hat and
+went out.
+
+"Are you going down to Sally's?" said Mara, coming to the door and
+looking out after him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, ask her to come home with you and spend the evening. I have ever
+so many things to tell her."
+
+"I will," said Moses, as he lounged away.
+
+"The thing is clear enough," said Moses to himself. "Why should I make a
+fool of myself any further? What possesses us men always to set our
+hearts precisely on what isn't to be had? There's Sally Kittridge likes
+me; I can see that plainly enough, for all her mincing; and why couldn't
+I have had the sense to fall in love with her? She will make a splendid,
+showy woman. She has talent and tact enough to rise to any position I
+may rise to, let me rise as high as I will. She will always have skill
+and energy in the conduct of life; and when all the froth and foam of
+youth has subsided, she will make a noble woman. Why, then, do I cling
+to this fancy? I feel that this little flossy cloud, this delicate,
+quiet little puff of thistledown, on which I have set my heart, is the
+only thing for me, and that without her my life will always be
+incomplete. I remember all our early life. It was she who sought me, and
+ran after me, and where has all that love gone to? Gone to this fellow;
+that's plain enough. When a girl like her is so comfortably cool and
+easy, it's because her heart is off somewhere else."
+
+This conversation took place about four o'clock in as fine an October
+afternoon as you could wish to see. The sun, sloping westward, turned to
+gold the thousand blue scales of the ever-heaving sea, and soft,
+pine-scented winds were breathing everywhere through the forests, waving
+the long, swaying films of heavy moss, and twinkling the leaves of the
+silver birches that fluttered through the leafy gloom. The moon, already
+in the sky, gave promise of a fine moonlight night; and the wild and
+lonely stillness of the island, and the thoughts of leaving in a few
+days, all conspired to foster the restless excitement in our hero's mind
+into a kind of romantic unrest.
+
+Now, in some such states, a man disappointed in one woman will turn to
+another, because, in a certain way and measure, her presence stills the
+craving and fills the void. It is a sort of supposititious courtship,--a
+saying to one woman, who is sympathetic and receptive, the words of
+longing and love that another will not receive. To be sure it is a game
+unworthy of any true man,--a piece of sheer, reckless, inconsiderate
+selfishness. But men do it, as they do many other unworthy things, from
+the mere promptings of present impulse, and let consequences take care
+of themselves. Moses met Sally that afternoon in just the frame to play
+the lover in this hypothetical, supposititious way, with words and looks
+and tones that came from feelings given to another. And as to Sally?
+Well, for once, Greek met Greek; for although Sally, as we showed her,
+was a girl of generous impulses, she was yet in no danger of immediate
+translation on account of superhuman goodness. In short, Sally had made
+up her mind that Moses should give her a chance to say that precious and
+golden _No_, which should enable her to count him as one of her
+captives,--and then he might go where he liked for all her.
+
+So said the wicked elf, as she looked into her own great eyes in the
+little square of mirror shaded by a misty asparagus bush; and to this
+end there were various braidings and adornings of the lustrous black
+hair, and coquettish earrings were mounted that hung glancing and
+twinkling just by the smooth outline of her glowing cheek,--and then
+Sally looked at herself in a friendly way of approbation, and nodded at
+the bright dimpled shadow with a look of secret understanding. The real
+Sally and the Sally of the looking-glass were on admirable terms with
+each other, and both of one mind about the plan of campaign against the
+common enemy. Sally thought of him as he stood kingly and triumphant on
+the deck of his vessel, his great black eyes flashing confident glances
+into hers, and she felt a rebellious rustle of all her plumage. "No,
+sir," she said to herself, "you don't do it. You shall never find me
+among your slaves,"--"that you know of," added a doubtful voice within
+her. "Never to your knowledge," she said, as she turned away. "I wonder
+if he will come here this evening," she said, as she began to work upon
+a pillow-case,--one of a set which Mrs. Kittridge had confided to her
+nimble fingers. The seam was long, straight, and monotonous, and Sally
+was restless and fidgety; her thread would catch in knots, and when she
+tried to loosen it, would break, and the needle had to be threaded over.
+Somehow the work was terribly irksome to her, and the house looked so
+still and dim and lonesome, and the tick-tock of the kitchen-clock was
+insufferable, and Sally let her work fall in her lap and looked out of
+the open window, far to the open ocean, where a fresh breeze was
+blowing toward her, and her eyes grew deep and dreamy following the
+gliding ship sails. Sally was getting romantic. Had she been reading
+novels? Novels! What can a pretty woman find in a novel equal to the
+romance that is all the while weaving and unweaving about her, and of
+which no human foresight can tell her the catastrophe? It is _novels_
+that give false views of life. Is there not an eternal novel, with all
+these false, cheating views, written in the breast of every beautiful
+and attractive girl whose witcheries make every man that comes near her
+talk like a fool? Like a sovereign princess, she never hears the truth,
+unless it be from the one manly man in a thousand, who understands both
+himself and her. From all the rest she hears only flatteries more or
+less ingenious, according to the ability of the framer. Compare, for
+instance, what Tom Brown says to little Seraphina at the party to-night,
+with what Tom Brown sober says to sober sister Maria _about_ her
+to-morrow. Tom remembers that he was a fool last night, and knows what
+he thinks and always has thought to-day; but pretty Seraphina thinks he
+adores her, so that no matter what she does he will never see a flaw,
+she is sure of that,--poor little puss! She does not know that
+philosophic Tom looks at her as he does at a glass of champagne, or a
+dose of exhilarating gas, and calculates how much it will do for him to
+take of the stimulus without interfering with his serious and settled
+plans of life, which, of course, he doesn't mean to give up for her. The
+one-thousand-and-first man in creation is he that can feel the
+fascination but will not flatter, and that tries to tell to the little
+tyrant the rare word of truth that may save her; he is, as we say, the
+one-thousand-and-first. Well, as Sally sat with her great dark eyes
+dreamily following the ship, she mentally thought over all the
+compliments Moses had paid her, expressed or understood, and those of
+all her other admirers, who had built up a sort of cloud-world around
+her, so that her little feet never rested on the soil of reality. Sally
+was shrewd and keen, and had a native mother-wit in the discernment of
+spirits, that made her feel that somehow this was all false coin; but
+still she counted it over, and it looked so pretty and bright that she
+sighed to think it was not real.
+
+"If it only had been," she thought; "if there were only any truth to the
+creature; he is so handsome,--it's a pity. But I do believe in his
+secret heart he is in love with Mara; he is in love with some one, I
+know. I have seen looks that must come from something real; but they
+were not for me. I have a kind of power over him, though," she said,
+resuming her old wicked look, "and I'll puzzle him a little, and torment
+him. He shall find his match in me," and Sally nodded to a cat-bird that
+sat perched on a pine-tree, as if she had a secret understanding with
+him, and the cat-bird went off into a perfect roulade of imitations of
+all that was going on in the late bird-operas of the season.
+
+Sally was roused from her revery by a spray of goldenrod that was thrown
+into her lap by an invisible hand, and Moses soon appeared at the
+window.
+
+"There's a plume that would be becoming to your hair," he said; "stay,
+let me arrange it."
+
+"No, no; you'll tumble my hair,--what can you know of such things?"
+
+Moses held the spray aloft, and leaned toward her with a sort of quiet,
+determined insistence.
+
+"By your leave, fair lady," he said, wreathing it in her hair, and then
+drawing back a little, he looked at her with so much admiration that
+Sally felt herself blush.
+
+"Come, now, I dare say you've made a fright of me," she said, rising and
+instinctively turning to the looking-glass; but she had too much
+coquetry not to see how admirably the golden plume suited her black
+hair, and the brilliant eyes and cheeks; she turned to Moses again, and
+courtesied, saying "Thank you, sir," dropping her eyelashes with a mock
+humility.
+
+"Come, now," said Moses; "I am sent after you to come and spend the
+evening; let's walk along the seashore, and get there by degrees."
+
+And so they set out; but the path was circuitous, for Moses was always
+stopping, now at this point and now at that, and enacting some of those
+thousand little by-plays which a man can get up with a pretty woman.
+They searched for smooth pebbles where the waves had left
+them,--many-colored, pink and crimson and yellow and brown, all smooth
+and rounded by the eternal tossings of the old sea that had made
+playthings of them for centuries, and with every pebble given and taken
+were things said which should have meant more and more, had the play
+been earnest. Had Moses any idea of offering himself to Sally? No; but
+he was in one of those fluctuating, unresisting moods of mind in which
+he was willing to lie like a chip on the tide of present emotion, and
+let it rise and fall and dash him when it liked; and Sally never had
+seemed more beautiful and attractive to him than that afternoon, because
+there was a shade of reality and depth about her that he had never seen
+before.
+
+"Come on, and let me show you my hermitage," said Moses, guiding her
+along the slippery projecting rocks, all covered with yellow tresses of
+seaweed. Sally often slipped on this treacherous footing, and Moses was
+obliged to hold her up, and instinctively he threw a meaning into his
+manner so much more than ever he had before, that by the time they had
+gained the little cove both were really agitated and excited. He felt
+that temporary delirium which is often the mesmeric effect of a strong
+womanly presence, and she felt that agitation which every woman must
+when a determined hand is striking on the great vital chord of her
+being. When they had stepped round the last point of rock they found
+themselves driven by the advancing tide up into the little lonely
+grotto,--and there they were with no lookout but the wide blue sea, all
+spread out in rose and gold under the twilight skies, with a silver moon
+looking down upon them.
+
+"Sally," said Moses, in a low, earnest whisper, "you love me,--do you
+not?" and he tried to pass his arm around her.
+
+She turned and flashed at him a look of mingled terror and defiance, and
+struck out her hands at him; then impetuously turning away and
+retreating to the other end of the grotto, she sat down on a rock and
+began to cry.
+
+Moses came toward her, and kneeling, tried to take her hand. She raised
+her head angrily, and again repulsed him.
+
+"Go!" she said. "What right had you to say that? What right had you even
+to think it?"
+
+"Sally, you do love me. It cannot but be. You are a woman; you could not
+have been with me as we have and not feel more than friendship."
+
+"Oh, you men!--your conceit passes understanding," said Sally. "You
+think we are born to be your bond slaves,--but for once you are
+mistaken, sir. I _don't_ love you; and what's more, you don't love
+me,--you know you don't; you know that you love somebody else. You love
+Mara,--you know you do; there's no truth in you," she said, rising
+indignantly.
+
+Moses felt himself color. There was an embarrassed pause, and then he
+answered,--
+
+"Sally, why should I love Mara? Her heart is all given to another,--you
+yourself know it."
+
+"I don't know it either," said Sally; "I know it isn't so."
+
+"But you gave me to understand so."
+
+"Well, sir, you put prying questions about what you ought to have asked
+her, and so what was I to do? Besides, I did want to show you how much
+better Mara could do than to take you; besides, I didn't know till
+lately. I never thought she could care much for any man more than I
+could."
+
+"And you think she loves me?" said Moses, eagerly, a flash of joy
+illuminating his face; "do you, really?"
+
+"There you are," said Sally; "it's a shame I have let you know! Yes,
+Moses Pennel, she loves you like an angel, as none of you men deserve to
+be loved,--as you in particular don't."
+
+Moses sat down on a point of rock, and looked on the ground
+discountenanced. Sally stood up glowing and triumphant, as if she had
+her foot on the neck of her oppressor and meant to make the most of it.
+
+"Now what do you think of yourself for all this summer's work?--for what
+you have just said, asking me if I didn't love you? Supposing, now, I
+had done as other girls would, played the fool and blushed, and said
+yes? Why, to-morrow you would have been thinking how to be rid of me! I
+shall save you all that trouble, sir."
+
+"Sally, I own I have been acting like a fool," said Moses, humbly.
+
+"You have done more than that,--you have acted wickedly," said Sally.
+
+"And am I the only one to blame?" said Moses, lifting his head with a
+show of resistance.
+
+"Listen, sir!" said Sally, energetically; "I have played the fool and
+acted wrong too, but there is just this difference between you and me:
+you had nothing to lose, and I a great deal; your heart, such as it was,
+was safely disposed of. But supposing you had won mine, what would you
+have done with it? That was the last thing you considered."
+
+"Go on, Sally, don't spare; I'm a vile dog, unworthy of either of you,"
+said Moses.
+
+Sally looked down on her handsome penitent with some relenting, as he
+sat quite dejected, his strong arms drooping, and his long eyelashes
+cast down.
+
+"I'll be friends with you," she said, "because, after all, I'm not so
+very much better than you. We have both done wrong, and made dear Mara
+very unhappy. But after all, I was not so much to blame as you; because,
+if there had been any reality in your love, I could have paid it
+honestly. I had a heart to give,--I have it now, and hope long to keep
+it," said Sally.
+
+"Sally, you are a right noble girl. I never knew what you were till
+now," said Moses, looking at her with admiration.
+
+"It's the first time for all these six months that we have either of us
+spoken a word of truth or sense to each other. I never did anything but
+trifle with you, and you the same. Now we've come to some plain dry
+land, we may walk on and be friends. So now help me up these rocks, and
+I will go home."
+
+"And you'll not come home with me?"
+
+"Of course not. I think you may now go home and have one talk with Mara
+without witnesses."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE BETROTHAL
+
+
+Moses walked slowly home from his interview with Sally, in a sort of
+maze of confused thought. In general, men understand women only from the
+outside, and judge them with about as much real comprehension as an
+eagle might judge a canary-bird. The difficulty of real understanding
+intensifies in proportion as the man is distinctively manly, and the
+woman womanly. There are men with a large infusion of the feminine
+element in their composition who read the female nature with more
+understanding than commonly falls to the lot of men; but in general,
+when a man passes beyond the mere outside artifices and unrealities
+which lie between the two sexes, and really touches his finger to any
+vital chord in the heart of a fair neighbor, he is astonished at the
+quality of the vibration.
+
+"I could not have dreamed there was so much in her," thought Moses, as
+he turned away from Sally Kittridge. He felt humbled as well as
+astonished by the moral lecture which this frisky elf with whom he had
+all summer been amusing himself, preached to him from the depths of a
+real woman's heart. What she said of Mara's loving him filled his eyes
+with remorseful tears,--and for the moment he asked himself whether this
+restless, jealous, exacting desire which he felt to appropriate her
+whole life and heart to himself were as really worthy of the name of
+love as the generous self-devotion with which she had, all her life,
+made all his interests her own.
+
+Was he to go to her now and tell her that he loved her, and therefore
+he had teased and vexed her,--therefore he had seemed to prefer another
+before her,--therefore he had practiced and experimented upon her
+nature? A suspicion rather stole upon him that love which expresses
+itself principally in making exactions and giving pain is not exactly
+worthy of the name. And yet he had been secretly angry with her all
+summer for being the very reverse of this; for her apparent cheerful
+willingness to see him happy with another; for the absence of all signs
+of jealousy,--all desire of exclusive appropriation. It showed, he said
+to himself, that there was no love; and now when it dawned on him that
+this might be the very heroism of self-devotion, he asked himself which
+was best worthy to be called love.
+
+"She did love him, then!" The thought blazed up through the smouldering
+embers of thought in his heart like a tongue of flame. She loved him! He
+felt a sort of triumph in it, for he was sure Sally must know, they were
+so intimate. Well, he would go to her, and tell her all, confess all his
+sins, and be forgiven.
+
+When he came back to the house, all was still evening. The moon, which
+was playing brightly on the distant sea, left one side of the brown
+house in shadow. Moses saw a light gleaming behind the curtain in the
+little room on the lower floor, which had been his peculiar sanctum
+during the summer past. He had made a sort of library of it, keeping
+there his books and papers. Upon the white curtain flitted, from time to
+time, a delicate, busy shadow; now it rose and now it stooped, and then
+it rose again--grew dim and vanished, and then came out again. His heart
+beat quick.
+
+Mara was in his room, busy, as she always had been before his
+departures, in cares for him. How many things had she made for him, and
+done and arranged for him, all his life long! things which he had taken
+as much as a matter of course as the shining of that moon. His thought
+went back to the times of his first going to sea,--he a rough, chaotic
+boy, sensitive and surly, and she the ever thoughtful good angel of a
+little girl, whose loving-kindness he had felt free to use and to abuse.
+He remembered that he made her cry there when he should have spoken
+lovingly and gratefully to her, and that the words of acknowledgment
+that ought to have been spoken, never had been said,--remained unsaid to
+that hour. He stooped low, and came quite close to the muslin curtain.
+All was bright in the room, and shadowy without; he could see her
+movements as through a thin white haze. She was packing his sea-chest;
+his things were lying about her, folded or rolled nicely. Now he saw her
+on her knees writing something with a pencil in a book, and then she
+enveloped it very carefully in silk paper, and tied it trimly, and hid
+it away at the bottom of the chest. Then she remained a moment kneeling
+at the chest, her head resting in her hands. A sort of strange, sacred
+feeling came over him as he heard a low murmur, and knew that she felt a
+Presence that he never felt or acknowledged. He felt somehow that he was
+doing her a wrong thus to be prying upon moments when she thought
+herself alone with God; a sort of vague remorse filled him; he felt as
+if she were too good for him. He turned away, and entering the front
+door of the house, stepped noiselessly along and lifted the latch of the
+door. He heard a rustle as of one rising hastily as he opened it and
+stood before Mara. He had made up his mind what to say; but when she
+stood there before him, with her surprised, inquiring eyes, he felt
+confused.
+
+"What, home so soon?" she said.
+
+"You did not expect me, then?"
+
+"Of course not,--not for these two hours; so," she said, looking about,
+"I found some mischief to do among your things. If you had waited as
+long as I expected, they would all have been quite right again, and you
+would never have known."
+
+Moses sat down and drew her toward him, as if he were going to say
+something, and then stopped and began confusedly playing with her
+work-box.
+
+"Now, please don't," said she, archly. "You know what a little old maid
+I am about my things!"
+
+"Mara," said Moses, "people have asked you to marry them, have they
+not?"
+
+"People asked me to marry them!" said Mara. "I hope not. What an odd
+question!"
+
+"You know what I mean," said Moses; "you have had offers of
+marriage--from Mr. Adams, for example."
+
+"And what if I have?"
+
+"You did not accept him, Mara?" said Moses.
+
+"No, I did not."
+
+"And yet he was a fine man, I am told, and well fitted to make you
+happy."
+
+"I believe he was," said Mara, quietly.
+
+"And why were you so foolish?"
+
+Mara was fretted at this question. She supposed Moses had come to tell
+her of his engagement to Sally, and that this was a kind of preface, and
+she answered,--
+
+"I don't know why you call it foolish. I was a true friend to Mr. Adams.
+I saw intellectually that he might have the power of making any
+reasonable woman happy. I think now that the woman will be fortunate who
+becomes his wife; but I did not wish to marry him."
+
+"Is there anybody you prefer to him, Mara?" said Moses.
+
+She started up with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+"You have no right to ask me that, though you are my brother."
+
+"I am not your brother, Mara," said Moses, rising and going toward her,
+"and that is why I ask you. I feel I have a right to ask you."
+
+"I do not understand you," she said, faintly.
+
+"I can speak plainer, then. I wish to put in my poor venture. I love
+you, Mara--not as a brother. I wish you to be my wife, if you will."
+
+While Moses was saying these words, Mara felt a sort of whirling in her
+head, and it grew dark before her eyes; but she had a strong, firm will,
+and she mastered herself and answered, after a moment, in a quiet,
+sorrowful tone, "How can I believe this, Moses? If it is true, why have
+you done as you have this summer?"
+
+"Because I was a fool, Mara,--because I was jealous of Mr.
+Adams,--because I somehow hoped, after all, that you either loved me or
+that I might make you think more of me through jealousy of another. They
+say that love always is shown by jealousy."
+
+"Not true love, I should think," said Mara. "How _could_ you do so?--it
+was cruel to her,--cruel to me."
+
+"I admit it,--anything, everything you can say. I have acted like a fool
+and a knave, if you will; but after all, Mara, I do love you. I know I
+am not worthy of you--never was--never can be; you are in all things a
+true, noble woman, and I have been unmanly."
+
+It is not to be supposed that all this was spoken without accompaniments
+of looks, movements, and expressions of face such as we cannot give, but
+such as doubled their power to the parties concerned; and the "I love
+you" had its usual conclusive force as argument, apology,
+promise,--covering, like charity, a multitude of sins.
+
+Half an hour after, you might have seen a youth and a maiden coming
+together out of the door of the brown house, and walking arm in arm
+toward the sea-beach.
+
+It was one of those wonderfully clear moonlight evenings, when the
+ocean, like a great reflecting mirror, seems to double the brightness of
+the sky,--and its vast expanse lay all around them in its stillness,
+like an eternity of waveless peace. Mara remembered that time in her
+girlhood when she had followed Moses into the woods on just such a
+night,--how she had sat there under the shadows of the trees, and looked
+over to Harpswell and noticed the white houses and the meeting-house,
+all so bright and clear in the moonlight, and then off again on the
+other side of the island where silent ships were coming and going in the
+mysterious stillness. They were talking together now with that
+outflowing fullness which comes when the seal of some great reserve has
+just been broken,--going back over their lives from day to day, bringing
+up incidents of childhood, and turning them gleefully like two children.
+
+And then Moses had all the story of his life to relate, and to tell Mara
+all he had learned of his mother,--going over with all the narrative
+contained in Mr. Sewell's letter.
+
+"You see, Mara, that it was intended that you should be my fate," he
+ended; "so the winds and waves took me up and carried me to the lonely
+island where the magic princess dwelt."
+
+"You are Prince Ferdinand," said Mara.
+
+"And you are Miranda," said he.
+
+"Ah!" she said with fervor, "how plainly we can see that our heavenly
+Father has been guiding our way! How good He is,--and how we must try to
+live for Him,--both of us."
+
+A sort of cloud passed over Moses's brow. He looked embarrassed, and
+there was a pause between them, and then he turned the conversation.
+
+Mara felt pained; it was like a sudden discord; such thoughts and
+feelings were the very breath of her life; she could not speak in
+perfect confidence and unreserve, as she then spoke, without uttering
+them; and her finely organized nature felt a sort of electric
+consciousness of repulsion and dissent. She grew abstracted, and they
+walked on in silence.
+
+"I see now, Mara, I have pained you," said Moses, "but there are a class
+of feelings that you have that I have not and cannot have. No, I cannot
+feign anything. I can understand what religion is in you, I can admire
+its results. I can be happy, if it gives you any comfort; but people are
+differently constituted. I never can feel as you do."
+
+"Oh, don't say never," said Mara, with an intensity that nearly startled
+him; "it has been the one prayer, the one hope, of my life, that you
+might have these comforts,--this peace."
+
+"I need no comfort or peace except what I shall find in you," said
+Moses, drawing her to himself, and looking admiringly at her; "but pray
+for me still. I always thought that my wife must be one of the sort of
+women who pray."
+
+"And why?" said Mara, in surprise.
+
+"Because I need to be loved a great deal, and it is only that kind who
+pray who know how to love really. If you had not prayed for me all this
+time, you never would have loved me in spite of all my faults, as you
+did, and do, and will, as I know you will," he said, folding her in his
+arms, and in his secret heart he said, "Some of this intensity, this
+devotion, which went upward to heaven, will be mine one day. She will
+worship me."
+
+"The fact is, Mara," he said, "I am a child of this world. I have no
+sympathy with things not seen. You are a half-spiritual creature,--a
+child of air; and but for the great woman's heart in you, I should feel
+that you were something uncanny and unnatural. I am selfish, I know; I
+frankly admit, I never disguised it; but I love your religion because it
+makes you love me. It is an incident to that loving, trusting nature
+which makes you all and wholly mine, as I want you to be. I want you all
+and wholly; every thought, every feeling,--the whole strength of your
+being. I don't care if I say it: I would not wish to be second in your
+heart even to God himself!"
+
+"Oh, Moses!" said Mara, almost starting away from him, "such words are
+dreadful; they will surely bring evil upon us."
+
+"I only breathed out my nature, as you did yours. Why should you love an
+unseen and distant Being more than you do one whom you can feel and see,
+who holds you in his arms, whose heart beats like your own?"
+
+"Moses," said Mara, stopping and looking at him in the clear moonlight,
+"God has always been to me not so much like a father as like a dear and
+tender mother. Perhaps it was because I was a poor orphan, and my father
+and mother died at my birth, that He has been so loving to me. I never
+remember the time when I did not feel His presence in my joys and my
+sorrows. I never had a thought of joy and sorrow that I could not say to
+Him. I never woke in the night that I did not feel that He was loving
+and watching me, and that I loved Him in return. Oh, how many, many
+things I have said to Him about you! My heart would have broken years
+ago, had it not been for Him; because, though you did not know it, you
+often seemed unkind; you hurt me very often when you did not mean to.
+His love is so much a part of my life that I cannot conceive of life
+without it. It is the very air I breathe."
+
+Moses stood still a moment, for Mara spoke with a fervor that affected
+him; then he drew her to his heart, and said,--
+
+"Oh, what could ever make you love me?"
+
+"He sent you and gave you to me," she answered, "to be mine in time and
+eternity."
+
+The words were spoken in a kind of enthusiasm so different from the
+usual reserve of Mara, that they seemed like a prophecy. That night, for
+the first time in her life, had she broken the reserve which was her
+very nature, and spoken of that which was the intimate and hidden
+history of her soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+AT A QUILTING
+
+
+"And so," said Mrs. Captain Badger to Miss Roxy Toothacre, "it seems
+that Moses Pennel ain't going to have Sally Kittridge after all,--he's
+engaged to Mara Lincoln."
+
+"More shame for him," said Miss Roxy, with a frown that made her mohair
+curls look really tremendous.
+
+Miss Roxy and Mrs. Badger were the advance party at a quilting, to be
+holden at the house of Mr. Sewell, and had come at one o'clock to do the
+marking upon the quilt, which was to be filled up by the busy fingers of
+all the women in the parish. Said quilt was to have a bordering of a
+pattern commonly denominated in those parts clam-shell, and this Miss
+Roxy was diligently marking with indigo.
+
+"What makes you say so, now?" said Mrs. Badger, a fat, comfortable,
+motherly matron, who always patronized the last matrimonial venture that
+put forth among the young people.
+
+"What business had he to flirt and gallivant all summer with Sally
+Kittridge, and make everybody think he was going to have her, and then
+turn round to Mara Lincoln at the last minute? I wish I'd been in Mara's
+place."
+
+In Miss Roxy's martial enthusiasm, she gave a sudden poke to her
+frisette, giving to it a diagonal bristle which extremely increased its
+usually severe expression; and any one contemplating her at the moment
+would have thought that for Moses Pennel, or any other young man, to
+come with tender propositions in that direction would have been indeed
+a venturesome enterprise.
+
+"I tell you what 'tis, Mis' Badger," she said, "I've known Mara since
+she was born,--I may say I fetched her up myself, for if I hadn't
+trotted and tended her them first four weeks of her life, Mis' Pennel'd
+never have got her through; and I've watched her every year since; and
+havin' Moses Pennel is the only silly thing I ever knew her to do; but
+you never can tell what a girl will do when it comes to
+marryin',--never!"
+
+"But he's a real stirrin', likely young man, and captain of a fine
+ship," said Mrs. Badger.
+
+"Don't care if he's captain of twenty ships," said Miss Roxy,
+obdurately; "he ain't a professor of religion, and I believe he's an
+infidel, and she's one of the Lord's people."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Badger, "you know the unbelievin' husband shall be
+sanctified by the believin' wife."
+
+"Much sanctifyin' he'll get," said Miss Roxy, contemptuously. "I don't
+believe he loves her any more than fancy; she's the last plaything, and
+when he's got her, he'll be tired of her, as he always was with anything
+he got ever since. I tell you, Moses Pennel is all for pride and
+ambition and the world; and his wife, when he gets used to her, 'll be
+only a circumstance,--that's all."
+
+"Come, now, Miss Roxy," said Miss Emily, who in her best silk and
+smoothly-brushed hair had just come in, "we must _not_ let you talk so.
+Moses Pennel has had long talks with brother, and he thinks him in a
+very hopeful way, and we are all delighted; and as to Mara, she is as
+fresh and happy as a little rose."
+
+"So I tell Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who had been absent from the room to
+hold private consultations with Miss Emily concerning the biscuits and
+sponge-cake for tea, and who now sat down to the quilt and began to
+unroll a capacious and very limp calico thread-case; and placing her
+spectacles awry on her little pug nose, she began a series of ingenious
+dodges with her thread, designed to hit the eye of her needle.
+
+"The old folks," she continued, "are e'en a'most tickled to
+pieces,--'cause they think it'll jist be the salvation of him to get
+Mara."
+
+"I ain't one of the sort that wants to be a-usin' up girls for the
+salvation of fellers," said Miss Roxy, severely. "Ever since he nearly
+like to have got her eat up by sharks, by giggiting her off in the boat
+out to sea when she wa'n't more'n three years old, I always have
+thought he was a misfortin' in that family, and I think so now."
+
+Here broke in Mrs. Eaton, a thrifty energetic widow of a deceased
+sea-captain, who had been left with a tidy little fortune which
+commanded the respect of the neighborhood. Mrs. Eaton had entered
+silently during the discussion, but of course had come, as every other
+woman had that afternoon, with views to be expressed upon the subject.
+
+"For my part," she said, as she stuck a decisive needle into the first
+clam-shell pattern, "I ain't so sure that all the advantage in this
+match is on Moses Pennel's part. Mara Lincoln is a good little thing,
+but she ain't fitted to help a man along,--she'll always be wantin'
+somebody to help her. Why, I 'member goin' a voyage with Cap'n Eaton,
+when I saved the ship, if anybody did,--it was allowed on all hands.
+Cap'n Eaton wasn't hearty at that time, he was jist gettin' up from a
+fever,--it was when Marthy Ann was a baby, and I jist took her and went
+to sea and took care of him. I used to work the longitude for him and
+help him lay the ship's course when his head was bad,--and when we came
+on the coast, we were kept out of harbor beatin' about nearly three
+weeks, and all the ship's tacklin' was stiff with ice, and I tell you
+the men never would have stood it through and got the ship in, if it
+hadn't been for me. I kept their mittens and stockings all the while
+a-dryin' at my stove in the cabin, and hot coffee all the while
+a-boilin' for 'em, or I believe they'd a-frozen their hands and feet,
+and never been able to work the ship in. That's the way _I_ did. Now
+Sally Kittridge is a great deal more like that than Mara."
+
+"There's no doubt that Sally is smart," said Mrs. Badger, "but then it
+ain't every one can do like you, Mrs. Eaton."
+
+"Oh no, oh no," was murmured from mouth to mouth; "Mrs. Eaton mustn't
+think she's any rule for others,--everybody knows she can do more than
+most people;" whereat the pacified Mrs. Eaton said "she didn't know as
+it was anything remarkable,--it showed what anybody might do, if they'd
+only _try_ and have resolution; but that Mara never had been brought up
+to have resolution, and her mother never had resolution before her, it
+wasn't in any of Mary Pennel's family; she knew their grandmother and
+all their aunts, and they were all a weakly set, and not fitted to get
+along in life,--they were a kind of people that somehow didn't seem to
+know how to take hold of things."
+
+At this moment the consultation was hushed up by the entrance of Sally
+Kittridge and Mara, evidently on the closest terms of intimacy, and more
+than usually demonstrative and affectionate; they would sit together and
+use each other's needles, scissors, thread, and thimbles
+interchangeably, as if anxious to express every minute the most
+overflowing confidence. Sly winks and didactic nods were covertly
+exchanged among the elderly people, and when Mrs. Kittridge entered with
+more than usual airs of impressive solemnity, several of these were
+covertly directed toward her, as a matron whose views in life must have
+been considerably darkened by the recent event.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge, however, found an opportunity to whisper under her
+breath to Miss Ruey what a relief to her it was that the affair had
+taken such a turn. She had felt uneasy all summer for fear of what might
+come. Sally was so thoughtless and worldly, she felt afraid that he
+would lead her astray. She didn't see, for her part, how a professor of
+religion like Mara could make up her mind to such an unsettled kind of
+fellow, even if he did seem to be rich and well-to-do. But then she had
+done looking for consistency; and she sighed and vigorously applied
+herself to quilting like one who has done with the world.
+
+In return, Miss Ruey sighed and took snuff, and related for the
+hundredth time to Mrs. Kittridge the great escape she once had from the
+addresses of Abraham Peters, who had turned out a "poor drunken
+creetur." But then it was only natural that Mara should be interested in
+Moses; and the good soul went off into her favorite verse:--
+
+    "The fondness of a creature's love,
+      How strong it strikes the sense!
+    Thither the warm affections move,
+      Nor can we drive them thence."
+
+In fact, Miss Ruey's sentimental vein was in quite a gushing state, for
+she more than once extracted from the dark corners of the limp calico
+thread-case we have spoken of certain long-treasured _morceaux_ of
+newspaper poetry, of a tender and sentimental cast, which she had laid
+up with true Yankee economy, in case any one should ever be in a
+situation to need them. They related principally to the union of kindred
+hearts, and the joys of reciprocated feeling and the pains of absence.
+Good Miss Ruey occasionally passed these to Mara, with glances full of
+meaning, which caused the poor old thing to resemble a sentimental
+goblin, keeping Sally Kittridge in a perfect hysterical tempest of
+suppressed laughter, and making it difficult for Mara to preserve the
+decencies of life toward her well-intending old friend. The trouble with
+poor Miss Ruey was that, while her body had grown old and crazy, her
+soul was just as juvenile as ever,--and a simple, juvenile soul
+disporting itself in a crazy, battered old body, is at great
+disadvantage. It was lucky for her, however, that she lived in the most
+sacred unconsciousness of the ludicrous effect of her little
+indulgences, and the pleasure she took in them was certainly of the most
+harmless kind. The world would be a far better and more enjoyable place
+than it is, if all people who are old and uncomely could find amusement
+as innocent and Christian-like as Miss Ruey's inoffensive thread-case
+collection of sentimental truisms.
+
+This quilting of which we speak was a solemn, festive occasion of the
+parish, held a week after Moses had sailed away; and so _piquant_ a
+morsel as a recent engagement could not, of course, fail to be served up
+for the company in every variety of garnishing which individual tastes
+might suggest.
+
+It became an ascertained fact, however, in the course of the evening
+festivities, that the minister was serenely approbative of the event;
+that Captain Kittridge was at length brought to a sense of the errors of
+his way in supposing that Sally had ever cared a pin for Moses more than
+as a mutual friend and confidant; and the great affair was settled
+without more ripples of discomposure than usually attend similar
+announcements in more refined society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+FRIENDS
+
+
+The quilting broke up at the primitive hour of nine o'clock, at which,
+in early New England days, all social gatherings always dispersed.
+Captain Kittridge rowed his helpmeet, with Mara and Sally, across the
+Bay to the island.
+
+"Come and stay with me to-night, Sally," said Mara.
+
+"I think Sally had best be at home," said Mrs. Kittridge. "There's no
+sense in girls talking all night."
+
+"There ain't sense in nothin' else, mother," said the Captain. "Next to
+sparkin', which is the Christianist thing I knows on, comes gals' talks
+'bout their sparks; they's as natural as crowsfoot and red columbines
+in the spring, and spring don't come but once a year neither,--and so
+let 'em take the comfort on't. I warrant now, Polly, you've laid awake
+nights and talked about me."
+
+"We've all been foolish once," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Well, mother, we want to be foolish too," said Sally.
+
+"Well, you and your father are too much for me," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+plaintively; "you always get your own way."
+
+"How lucky that my way is always a good one!" said Sally.
+
+"Well, you know, Sally, you are going to make the beer to-morrow," still
+objected her mother.
+
+"Oh, yes; that's another reason," said Sally. "Mara and I shall come
+home through the woods in the morning, and we can get whole apronfuls of
+young wintergreen, and besides, I know where there's a lot of sassafras
+root. We'll dig it, won't we, Mara?"
+
+"Yes; and I'll come down and help you brew," said Mara. "Don't you
+remember the beer I made when Moses came home?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I remember," said the Captain, "you sent us a couple of
+bottles."
+
+"We can make better yet now," said Mara. "The wintergreen is young, and
+the green tips on the spruce boughs are so full of strength. Everything
+is lively and sunny now."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "and I 'spect I know why things do look
+pretty lively to some folks, don't they?"
+
+"I don't know what sort of work you'll make of the beer among you," said
+Mrs. Kittridge; "but you must have it your own way."
+
+Mrs. Kittridge, who never did anything else among her tea-drinking
+acquaintances but laud and magnify Sally's good traits and domestic
+acquirements, felt constantly bound to keep up a faint show of
+controversy and authority in her dealings with her,--the fading remains
+of the strict government of her childhood; but it was, nevertheless,
+very perfectly understood, in a general way, that Sally was to do as she
+pleased; and so, when the boat came to shore, she took the arm of Mara
+and started up toward the brown house.
+
+The air was soft and balmy, and though the moon by which the troth of
+Mara and Moses had been plighted had waned into the latest hours of the
+night, still a thousand stars were lying in twinkling brightness,
+reflected from the undulating waves all around them, and the tide, as it
+rose and fell, made a sound as gentle and soft as the respiration of a
+peaceful sleeper.
+
+"Well, Mara," said Sally, after an interval of silence, "all has come
+out right. You see that it was you whom he loved. What a lucky thing
+for me that I am made so heartless, or I might not be as glad as I am."
+
+"You are not heartless, Sally," said Mara; "it's the enchanted princess
+asleep; the right one hasn't come to waken her."
+
+"Maybe so," said Sally, with her old light laugh. "If I only were sure
+he would make you happy now,--half as happy as you deserve,--I'd forgive
+him his share of this summer's mischief. The fault was just half mine,
+you see, for I witched with him. I confess it. I have my own little
+spider-webs for these great lordly flies, and I like to hear them buzz."
+
+"Take care, Sally; never do it again, or the spider-web may get round
+you," said Mara.
+
+"Never fear me," said Sally. "But, Mara, I wish I felt sure that Moses
+could make you happy. Do you really, now, when you think seriously, feel
+as if he would?"
+
+"I never thought seriously about it," said Mara; "but I know he needs
+me; that I can do for him what no one else can. I have always felt all
+my life that he was to be mine; that he was sent to me, ordained for me
+to care for and to love."
+
+"You are well mated," said Sally. "He wants to be loved very much, and
+you want to love. There's the active and passive voice, as they used to
+say at Miss Plucher's. But yet in your natures you are opposite as any
+two could well be."
+
+Mara felt that there was in these chance words of Sally more than she
+perceived. No one could feel as intensely as she could that the mind and
+heart so dear to her were yet, as to all that was most vital and real in
+her inner life, unsympathizing. To her the spiritual world was a
+reality; God an ever-present consciousness; and the line of this present
+life seemed so to melt and lose itself in the anticipation of a future
+and brighter one, that it was impossible for her to speak intimately and
+not unconsciously to betray the fact. To him there was only the life of
+this world: there was no present God; and from all thought of a future
+life he shrank with a shuddering aversion, as from something ghastly and
+unnatural. She had realized this difference more in the few days that
+followed her betrothal than all her life before, for now first the
+barrier of mutual constraint and misunderstanding having melted away,
+each spoke with an _abandon_ and unreserve which made the acquaintance
+more vitally intimate than ever it had been before. It was then that
+Mara felt that while her sympathies could follow him through all his
+plans and interests, there was a whole world of thought and feeling in
+her heart where his could not follow her; and she asked herself, Would
+it be so always? Must she walk at his side forever repressing the
+utterance of that which was most sacred and intimate, living in a
+nominal and external communion only? How could it be that what was so
+lovely and clear in its reality to her, that which was to her as
+life-blood, that which was the vital air in which she lived and moved
+and had her being, could be absolutely nothing to him? Was it really
+possible, as he said, that God had no existence for him except in a
+nominal cold belief; that the spiritual world was to him only a land of
+pale shades and doubtful glooms, from which he shrank with dread, and
+the least allusion to which was distasteful? and would this always be
+so? and if so, could she be happy?
+
+But Mara said the truth in saying that the question of personal
+happiness never entered her thoughts. She loved Moses in a way that made
+it necessary to her happiness to devote herself to him, to watch over
+and care for him; and though she knew not how, she felt a sort of
+presentiment that it was through her that he must be brought into
+sympathy with a spiritual and immortal life.
+
+All this passed through Mara's mind in the reverie into which Sally's
+last words threw her, as she sat on the door-sill and looked off into
+the starry distance and heard the weird murmur of the sea.
+
+"How lonesome the sea at night always is," said Sally. "I declare, Mara,
+I don't wonder you miss that creature, for, to tell the truth, I do a
+little bit. It was something, you know, to have somebody to come in, and
+to joke with, and to say how he liked one's hair and one's ribbons, and
+all that. I quite got up a friendship for Moses, so that I can feel how
+dull you must be;" and Sally gave a half sigh, and then whistled a tune
+as adroitly as a blackbird.
+
+"Yes," said Mara, "we two girls down on this lonely island need some one
+to connect us with the great world; and he was so full of life, and so
+certain and confident, he seemed to open a way before one out into
+life."
+
+"Well, of course, while he is gone there will be plenty to do getting
+ready to be married," said Sally. "By the by, when I was over to
+Portland the other day, Maria Potter showed me a new pattern for a
+bed-quilt, the sweetest thing you can imagine,--it is called the morning
+star. There is a great star in the centre, and little stars all
+around,--white on a blue ground. I mean to begin one for you."
+
+"I am going to begin spinning some very fine flax next week," said Mara;
+"and have I shown you the new pattern I drew for a counterpane? it is to
+be morning-glories, leaves and flowers, you know,--a pretty idea, isn't
+it?"
+
+And so, the conversation falling from the region of the sentimental to
+the practical, the two girls went in and spent an hour in discussions so
+purely feminine that we will not enlighten the reader further therewith.
+Sally seemed to be investing all her energies in the preparation of the
+wedding outfit of her friend, about which she talked with a constant and
+restless activity, and for which she formed a thousand plans, and
+projected shopping tours to Portland, Brunswick, and even to
+Boston,--this last being about as far off a venture at that time as
+Paris now seems to a Boston belle.
+
+"When you are married," said Sally, "you'll have to take me to live with
+you; that creature sha'n't have you _all_ to himself. I hate men, they
+are so exorbitant,--they spoil all our playmates; and what shall I do
+when _you_ are gone?"
+
+"You will go with Mr.--what's his name?" said Mara.
+
+"Pshaw, I don't know him. I shall be an old maid," said Sally; "and
+really there isn't much harm in that, if one could have company,--if
+somebody or other wouldn't marry all one's friends,--that's lonesome,"
+she said, winking a tear out of her black eyes and laughing. "If I were
+only a young fellow now, Mara, I'd have you myself, and that would be
+just the thing; and I'd shoot Moses, if he said a word; and I'd have
+money, and I'd have honors, and I'd carry you off to Europe, and take
+you to Paris and Rome, and nobody knows where; and we'd live in peace,
+as the story-books say."
+
+"Come, Sally, how wild you are talking," said Mara, "and the clock has
+just struck one; let's try to go to sleep."
+
+Sally put her face to Mara's and kissed her, and Mara felt a moist spot
+on her cheek,--could it be a tear?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE
+
+
+Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey Toothacre lived in a little one-story
+gambrel-roofed cottage, on the side of Harpswell Bay, just at the head
+of the long cove which we have already described. The windows on two
+sides commanded the beautiful bay and the opposite shores, and on the
+other they looked out into the dense forest, through whose deep shadows
+of white birch and pine the silver rise and fall of the sea daily
+revealed itself.
+
+The house itself was a miracle of neatness within, for the two thrifty
+sisters were worshipers of soap and sand, and these two tutelary deities
+had kept every board of the house-floor white and smooth, and also every
+table and bench and tub of household use. There was a sacred care over
+each article, however small and insignificant, which composed their
+slender household stock. The loss or breakage of one of them would have
+made a visible crack in the hearts of the worthy sisters,--for every
+plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, or glass was as intimate with them, as
+instinct with home feeling, as if it had a soul; each defect or spot had
+its history, and a cracked dish or article of furniture received as
+tender and considerate medical treatment as if it were capable of
+understanding and feeling the attention.
+
+It was now a warm, spicy day in June,--one of those which bring out the
+pineapple fragrance from the fir-shoots, and cause the spruce and
+hemlocks to exude a warm, resinous perfume. The two sisters, for a
+wonder, were having a day to themselves, free from the numerous calls
+of the vicinity for twelve miles round. The room in which they were
+sitting was bestrewn with fragments of dresses and bonnets, which were
+being torn to pieces in a most wholesale way, with a view to a general
+rejuvenescence. A person of unsympathetic temperament, and disposed to
+take sarcastic views of life, might perhaps wonder what possible object
+these two battered and weather-beaten old bodies proposed to themselves
+in this process,--whether Miss Roxy's gaunt black-straw helmet, which
+she had worn defiantly all winter, was likely to receive much lustre
+from being pressed over and trimmed with an old green ribbon which that
+energetic female had colored black by a domestic recipe; and whether
+Miss Roxy's rusty bombazette would really seem to the world any fresher
+for being ripped, and washed, and turned, for the second or third time,
+and made over with every breadth in a different situation. Probably
+after a week of efficient labor, busily expended in bleaching, dyeing,
+pressing, sewing, and ripping, an unenlightened spectator, seeing them
+come into the meeting-house, would simply think, "There are those two
+old frights with the same old things on they have worn these fifty
+years." Happily the weird sisters were contentedly ignorant of any such
+remarks, for no duchesses could have enjoyed a more quiet belief in
+their own social position, and their semi-annual spring and fall
+rehabilitation was therefore entered into with the most simple-hearted
+satisfaction.
+
+"I'm a-thinkin', Roxy," said Aunt Ruey, considerately turning and
+turning on her hand an old straw bonnet, on which were streaked all the
+marks of the former trimming in lighter lines, which revealed too
+clearly the effects of wind and weather,--"I'm a-thinkin' whether or no
+this 'ere mightn't as well be dyed and done with it as try to bleach it
+out. I've had it ten years last May, and it's kind o' losin' its
+freshness, you know. I don't believe these 'ere streaks will bleach
+out."
+
+"Never mind, Ruey," said Miss Roxy, authoritatively, "I'm goin' to do
+Mis' Badger's leg'orn, and it won't cost nothin'; so hang your'n in the
+barrel along with it,--the same smoke'll do 'em both. Mis' Badger she
+finds the brimstone, and next fall you can put it in the dye when we do
+the yarn."
+
+"That ar straw is a beautiful straw!" said Miss Ruey, in a plaintive
+tone, tenderly examining the battered old head-piece,--"I braided every
+stroke on it myself, and I don't know as I could do it ag'in. My fingers
+ain't quite so limber as they was! I don't think I shall put green
+ribbon on it ag'in; 'cause green is such a color to ruin, if a body gets
+caught out in a shower! There's these green streaks come that day I left
+my amberil at Captain Broad's, and went to meetin'. Mis' Broad she says
+to me, 'Aunt Ruey, it won't rain.' And says I to her, 'Well, Mis' Broad,
+I'll try it; though I never did leave my amberil at home but what it
+rained.' And so I went, and sure enough it rained cats and dogs, and
+streaked my bonnet all up; and them ar streaks won't bleach out, I'm
+feared."
+
+"How long is it Mis' Badger has had that ar leg'orn?"
+
+"Why, you know, the Cap'n he brought it home when he came from his
+voyage from Marseilles. That ar was when Phebe Ann was born, and she's
+fifteen year old. It was a most elegant thing when he brought it; but I
+think it kind o' led Mis' Badger on to extravagant ways,--for gettin'
+new trimmin' spring and fall so uses up money as fast as new bonnets;
+but Mis' Badger's got the money, and she's got a right to use it if she
+pleases; but if I'd a-had new trimmin's spring and fall, I shouldn't
+a-put away what I have in the bank."
+
+"Have you seen the straw Sally Kittridge is braidin' for Mara Lincoln's
+weddin' bonnet?" said Miss Ruey. "It's jist the finest thing ever you
+did see,--and the whitest. I was a-tellin' Sally that I could do as well
+once myself, but my mantle was a-fallin' on her. Sally don't seem to act
+a bit like a disap'inted gal. She is as chipper as she can be about
+Mara's weddin', and seems like she couldn't do too much. But laws,
+everybody seems to want to be a-doin' for her. Miss Emily was a-showin'
+me a fine double damask tablecloth that she was goin' to give her; and
+Mis' Pennel, she's been a-spinnin' and layin' up sheets and towels and
+tablecloths all her life,--and then she has all Naomi's things. Mis'
+Pennel was talkin' to me the other day about bleachin' 'em out 'cause
+they'd got yellow a-lyin'. I kind o' felt as if 'twas unlucky to be
+a-fittin' out a bride with her dead mother's things, but I didn't like
+to say nothin'."
+
+"Ruey," said Miss Roxy impressively, "I hain't never had but jist one
+mind about Mara Lincoln's weddin',--it's to be,--but it won't be the way
+people think. I hain't nussed and watched and sot up nights sixty years
+for nothin'. I can see beyond what most folks can,--her weddin' garments
+is bought and paid for, and she'll wear 'em, but she won't be Moses
+Pennel's wife,--now you see."
+
+"Why, whose wife will she be then?" said Miss Ruey; "'cause that ar Mr.
+Adams is married. I saw it in the paper last week when I was up to Mis'
+Badger's."
+
+Miss Roxy shut her lips with oracular sternness and went on with her
+sewing.
+
+"Who's that comin' in the back door?" said Miss Ruey, as the sound of a
+footstep fell upon her ear. "Bless me," she added, as she started up to
+look, "if folks ain't always nearest when you're talkin' about 'em. Why,
+Mara; you come down here and catched us in all our dirt! Well now, we're
+glad to see you, if we be," said Miss Ruey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE SHADOW OF DEATH
+
+
+It was in truth Mara herself who came and stood in the doorway. She
+appeared overwearied with her walk, for her cheeks had a vivid
+brightness unlike their usual tender pink. Her eyes had, too, a
+brilliancy almost painful to look upon. They seemed like ardent fires,
+in which the life was slowly burning away.
+
+"Sit down, sit down, little Mara," said Aunt Ruey. "Why, how like a
+picture you look this mornin',--one needn't ask you how you do,--it's
+plain enough that you are pretty well."
+
+"Yes, I am, Aunt Ruey," she answered, sinking into a chair; "only it is
+warm to-day, and the sun is so hot, that's all, I believe; but I am very
+tired."
+
+"So you are now, poor thing," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy, where's my
+turkey-feather fan? Oh, here 'tis; there, take it, and fan you, child;
+and maybe you'll have a glass of our spruce beer?"
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Roxy. I brought you some young wintergreen," said Mara,
+unrolling from her handkerchief a small knot of those fragrant leaves,
+which were wilted by the heat.
+
+"Thank you, I'm sure," said Miss Ruey, in delight; "you always fetch
+something, Mara,--always would, ever since you could toddle. Roxy and I
+was jist talkin' about your weddin'. I s'pose you're gettin' things well
+along down to your house. Well, here's the beer. I don't hardly know
+whether you'll think it worked enough, though. I set it Saturday
+afternoon, for all Mis' Twitchell said it was wicked for beer to work
+Sundays," said Miss Ruey, with a feeble cackle at her own joke.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Ruey; it is excellent, as your things always are. I was
+very thirsty."
+
+"I s'pose you hear from Moses pretty often now," said Aunt Ruey. "How
+kind o' providential it happened about his getting that property; he'll
+be a rich man now; and Mara, you'll come to grandeur, won't you? Well, I
+don't know anybody deserves it more,--I r'ally don't. Mis' Badger was
+a-sayin' so a-Sunday, and Cap'n Kittridge and all on 'em. I s'pose
+though we've got to lose you,--you'll be goin' off to Boston, or New
+York, or somewhere."
+
+"We can't tell what may happen, Aunt Ruey," said Mara, and there was a
+slight tremor in her voice as she spoke.
+
+Miss Roxy, who beyond the first salutations had taken no part in this
+conversation, had from time to time regarded Mara over the tops of her
+spectacles with looks of grave apprehension; and Mara, looking up, now
+encountered one of these glances.
+
+"Have you taken the dock and dandelion tea I told you about?" said the
+wise woman, rather abruptly.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Roxy, I have taken them faithfully for two weeks past."
+
+"And do they seem to set you up any?" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"No, I don't think they do. Grandma thinks I'm better, and grandpa, and
+I let them think so; but Miss Roxy, _can't_ you think of something
+else?"
+
+Miss Roxy laid aside the straw bonnet which she was ripping, and
+motioned Mara into the outer room,--the sink-room, as the sisters called
+it. It was the scullery of their little establishment,--the place where
+all dish-washing and clothes-washing was generally performed,--but the
+boards of the floor were white as snow, and the place had the odor of
+neatness. The open door looked out pleasantly into the deep forest,
+where the waters of the cove, now at high tide, could be seen glittering
+through the trees. Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the
+feathery ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in ruffling
+wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting of fallen pine needles.
+Birds were singing and calling to each other merrily from the green
+shadows of the forest,--everything had a sylvan fullness and freshness
+of life. There are moods of mind when the sight of the bloom and
+freshness of nature affects us painfully, like the want of sympathy in a
+dear friend. Mara had been all her days a child of the woods; her
+delicate life had grown up in them like one of their own cool shaded
+flowers; and there was not a moss, not a fern, not an upspringing thing
+that waved a leaf or threw forth a flower-bell, that was not a
+well-known friend to her; she had watched for years its haunts, known
+the time of its coming and its going, studied its shy and veiled habits,
+and interwoven with its life each year a portion of her own; and now she
+looked out into the old mossy woods, with their wavering spots of sun
+and shadow, with a yearning pain, as if she wanted help or sympathy to
+come from their silent recesses.
+
+She sat down on the clean, scoured door-sill, and took off her straw
+hat. Her golden-brown hair was moist with the damps of fatigue, which
+made it curl and wave in darker little rings about her forehead; her
+eyes,--those longing, wistful eyes,--had a deeper pathos of sadness than
+ever they had worn before; and her delicate lips trembled with some
+strong suppressed emotion.
+
+"Aunt Roxy," she said suddenly, "I _must_ speak to somebody. I can't go
+on and keep up without telling some one, and it had better be you,
+because you have skill and experience, and can help me if anybody can.
+I've been going on for six months now, taking this and taking that, and
+trying to get better, but it's of no use. Aunt Roxy, I feel my life
+going,--going just as steadily and as quietly every day as the sand goes
+out of your hour-glass. I want to live,--oh, I never wanted to live so
+much, and I can't,--oh, I know I can't. Can I now,--do you think I can?"
+
+Mara looked imploringly at Miss Roxy. The hard-visaged woman sat down on
+the wash-bench, and, covering her worn, stony visage with her checked
+apron, sobbed aloud.
+
+Mara was confounded. This implacably withered, sensible, dry woman,
+beneficently impassive in sickness and sorrow, weeping!--it was awful,
+as if one of the Fates had laid down her fatal distaff to weep.
+
+Mara sprung up impulsively and threw her arms round her neck.
+
+"Now don't, Aunt Roxy, don't. I didn't think you would feel bad, or I
+wouldn't have told you; but oh, you don't know how hard it is to keep
+such a secret all to one's self. I have to make believe all the time
+that I am feeling well and getting better. I really say what isn't true
+every day, because, poor grandmamma, how could I bear to see her
+distress? and grandpapa,--oh, I wish people didn't love me so! Why
+cannot they let me go? And oh, Aunt Roxy, I had a letter only yesterday,
+and he is so sure we shall be married this fall,--and I know it cannot
+be." Mara's voice gave way in sobs, and the two wept together,--the old
+grim, gray woman holding the soft golden head against her breast with a
+convulsive grasp. "Oh, Aunt Roxy, do you love me, too?" said Mara. "I
+didn't know you did."
+
+"Love ye, child?" said Miss Roxy; "yes, I love ye like my life. I ain't
+one that makes talk about things, but I do; you come into my arms fust
+of anybody's in this world,--and except poor little Hitty, I never loved
+nobody as I have you."
+
+"Ah! that was your sister, whose grave I have seen," said Mara, speaking
+in a soothing, caressing tone, and putting her little thin hand against
+the grim, wasted cheek, which was now moist with tears.
+
+"Jes' so, child, she died when she was a year younger than you be; she
+was not lost, for God took her. Poor Hitty! her life jest dried up like
+a brook in August,--jest so. Well, she was hopefully pious, and it was
+better for her."
+
+"Did she go like me, Aunt Roxy?" said Mara.
+
+"Well, yes, dear; she did begin jest so, and I gave her everything I
+could think of; and we had doctors for her far and near; but _'twasn't
+to be_,--that's all we could say; she was called, and her time was
+come."
+
+"Well, now, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, "at any rate, it's a relief to speak
+out to some one. It's more than two months that I have felt every day
+more and more that there was no hope,--life has hung on me like a
+weight. I have had to _make_ myself keep up, and make myself do
+everything, and no one knows how it has tried me. I am so tired all the
+time, I could cry; and yet when I go to bed nights I can't sleep, I lie
+in such a hot, restless way; and then before morning I am drenched with
+cold sweat, and feel so weak and wretched. I force myself to eat, and I
+force myself to talk and laugh, and it's all pretense; and it wears me
+out,--it would be better if I stopped trying,--it would be better to
+give up and act as weak as I feel; but how can I let them know?"
+
+"My dear child," said Aunt Roxy, "the truth is the kindest thing we can
+give folks in the end. When folks know jest where they are, why they can
+walk; you'll all be supported; you must trust in the Lord. I have been
+more'n forty years with sick rooms and dyin' beds, and I never knew it
+fail that those that trusted in the Lord was brought through."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Roxy, it is so hard for me to give up,--to give up hoping to
+live. There were a good many years when I thought I should love to
+depart,--not that I was really unhappy, but I longed to go to heaven,
+though I knew it was selfish, when I knew how lonesome I should leave my
+friends. But now, oh, life has looked so bright; I have clung to it so;
+I do now. I lie awake nights and pray, and try to give it up and be
+resigned, and I can't. Is it wicked?"
+
+"Well, it's natur' to want to live," said Miss Roxy. "Life is sweet, and
+in a gen'l way we was made to live. Don't worry; the Lord'll bring you
+right when His time comes. Folks isn't always supported jest when they
+want to be, nor _as_ they want to be; but yet they're supported fust and
+last. Ef I was to tell you how as I has hope in your case, I shouldn't
+be a-tellin' you the truth. I hasn't much of any; only all things is
+possible with God. If you could kind o' give it all up and rest easy in
+His hands, and keep a-doin' what you can,--why, while there's life
+there's hope, you know; and if you are to be made well, you will be all
+the sooner."
+
+"Aunt Roxy, it's all right; I know it's all right. God knows best; He
+will do what is best; I know that; but my heart bleeds, and is sore. And
+when I get his letters,--I got one yesterday,--it brings it all back
+again. Everything is going on so well; he says he has done more than all
+he ever hoped; his letters are full of jokes, full of spirit. Ah, he
+little knows,--and how can I tell him?"
+
+"Child, you needn't yet. You can jest kind o' prepare his mind a
+little."
+
+"Aunt Roxy, have you spoken of my case to any one,--have you told what
+you know of me?"
+
+"No, child, I hain't said nothin' more than that you was a little weakly
+now and then."
+
+"I have such a color every afternoon," said Mara. "Grandpapa talks about
+my roses, and Captain Kittridge jokes me about growing so handsome;
+nobody seems to realize how I feel. I have kept up with all the strength
+I had. I have tried to shake it off, and to feel that nothing was the
+matter,--really there is nothing much, only this weakness. This morning
+I thought it would do me good to walk down here. I remember times when I
+could ramble whole days in the woods, but I was so tired before I got
+half way here that I had to stop a long while and rest. Aunt Roxy, if
+you would only tell grandpapa and grandmamma just how things are, and
+what the danger is, and let them stop talking to me about wedding
+things,--for really and truly I am too unwell to keep up any longer."
+
+"Well, child, I will," said Miss Roxy. "Your grandfather will be
+supported, and hold you up, for he's one of the sort as has the secret
+of the Lord,--I remember him of old. Why, the day your father and mother
+was buried he stood up and sung old China, and his face was wonderful to
+see. He seemed to be standin' with the world under his feet and heaven
+opening. He's a master Christian, your grandfather is; and now you jest
+go and lie down in the little bedroom, and rest you a bit, and by and
+by, in the cool of the afternoon, I'll walk along home with you."
+
+Miss Roxy opened the door of a little room, whose white fringy
+window-curtains were blown inward by breezes from the blue sea, and laid
+the child down to rest on a clean sweet-smelling bed with as deft and
+tender care as if she were not a bony, hard-visaged, angular female, in
+a black mohair frisette.
+
+She stopped a moment wistfully before a little profile head, of a kind
+which resembles a black shadow on a white ground. "That was Hitty!" she
+said.
+
+Mara had often seen in the graveyard a mound inscribed to this young
+person, and heard traditionally of a young and pretty sister of Miss
+Roxy who had died very many years before. But the grave was overgrown
+with blackberry-vines, and gray moss had grown into the crevices of the
+slab which served for a tombstone, and never before that day had she
+heard Miss Roxy speak of her. Miss Roxy took down the little black
+object and handed it to Mara. "You can't tell much by that, but she was
+a most beautiful creatur'. Well, it's all best as it is." Mara saw
+nothing but a little black shadow cast on white paper, yet she was
+affected by the perception how bright, how beautiful, was the image in
+the memory of that seemingly stern, commonplace woman, and how of all
+that in her mind's eye she saw and remembered, she could find no outward
+witness but this black block. "So some day my friends will speak of me
+as a distant shadow," she said, as with a sigh she turned her head on
+the pillow.
+
+Miss Roxy shut the door gently as she went out, and betrayed the
+unwonted rush of softer feelings which had come over her only by being
+more dictatorial and commanding than usual in her treatment of her
+sister, who was sitting in fidgety curiosity to know what could have
+been the subject of the private conference.
+
+"I s'pose Mara wanted to get some advice about makin' up her weddin'
+things," said Miss Ruey, with a sort of humble quiver, as Miss Roxy
+began ripping and tearing fiercely at her old straw bonnet, as if she
+really purposed its utter and immediate demolition.
+
+"No she didn't, neither," said Miss Roxy, fiercely. "I declare, Ruey,
+you are silly; your head is always full of weddin's, weddin's,
+weddin's--nothin' else--from mornin' till night, and night till mornin'.
+I tell you there's other things have got to be thought of in this world
+besides weddin' clothes, and it would be well, if people would think
+more o' gettin' their weddin' garments ready for the kingdom of heaven.
+That's what Mara's got to think of; for, mark my words, Ruey, there is
+no marryin' and givin' in marriage for her in this world."
+
+"Why, bless me, Roxy, now you don't say so!" said Miss Ruey; "why I knew
+she was kind o' weakly and ailin', but"--
+
+"Kind o' weakly and ailin'!" said Miss Roxy, taking up Miss Ruey's words
+in a tone of high disgust, "I should rather think she was; and more'n
+that, too: she's marked for death, and that before long, too. It may be
+that Moses Pennel'll never see her again--he never half knew what she
+was worth--maybe he'll know when he's lost her, that's one comfort!"
+
+"But," said Miss Ruey, "everybody has been a-sayin' what a beautiful
+color she was a-gettin' in her cheeks."
+
+"Color in her cheeks!" snorted Miss Roxy; "so does a rock-maple get
+color in September and turn all scarlet, and what for? why, the frost
+has been at it, and its time is out. That's what your bright colors
+stand for. Hain't you noticed that little gravestone cough, jest the
+faintest in the world, and it don't come from a cold, and it hangs on. I
+tell you you can't cheat me, she's goin' jest as Mehitabel went, jest as
+Sally Ann Smith went, jest as Louisa Pearson went. I could count now on
+my fingers twenty girls that have gone that way. Nobody saw 'em goin'
+till they was gone."
+
+"Well, now, I don't think the old folks have the least idea on't," said
+Miss Ruey. "Only last Saturday Mis' Pennel was a-talkin' to me about the
+sheets and tablecloths she's got out a-bleachin'; and she said that the
+weddin' dress was to be made over to Mis' Mosely's in Portland, 'cause
+Moses he's so particular about havin' things genteel."
+
+"Well, Master Moses'll jest have to give up his particular notions,"
+said Miss Roxy, "and come down in the dust, like all the rest on us,
+when the Lord sends an east wind and withers our gourds. Moses Pennel's
+one of the sort that expects to drive all before him with the strong
+arm, and sech has to learn that things ain't to go as they please in the
+Lord's world. Sech always has to come to spots that they can't get over
+nor under nor round, to have their own way, but jest has to give right
+up square."
+
+"Well, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, "how does the poor little thing take it?
+Has she got reconciled?"
+
+"Reconciled! Ruey, how you do ask questions!" said Miss Roxy, fiercely
+pulling a bandanna silk handkerchief out of her pocket, with which she
+wiped her eyes in a defiant manner. "Reconciled! It's easy enough to
+talk, Ruey, but how would you like it, when everything was goin' smooth
+and playin' into your hands, and all the world smooth and shiny, to be
+took short up? I guess you wouldn't be reconciled. That's what I guess."
+
+"Dear me, Roxy, who said I should?" said Miss Ruey. "I wa'n't blamin'
+the poor child, not a grain."
+
+"Well, who said you was, Ruey?" answered Miss Roxy, in the same high
+key.
+
+"You needn't take my head off," said Aunt Ruey, roused as much as her
+adipose, comfortable nature could be. "You've been a-talkin' at me ever
+since you came in from the sink-room, as if I was to blame; and snappin'
+at me as if I hadn't a right to ask civil questions; and I won't stan'
+it," said Miss Ruey. "And while I'm about it, I'll say that you always
+have snubbed me and contradicted and ordered me round. I won't bear it
+no longer."
+
+"Come, Ruey, don't make a fool of yourself at your time of life," said
+Miss Roxy. "Things is bad enough in this world without two lone sisters
+and church-members turnin' agin each other. You must take me as I am,
+Ruey; my bark's worse than my bite, as you know."
+
+Miss Ruey sank back pacified into her usual state of pillowy dependence;
+it was so much easier to be good-natured than to contend. As for Miss
+Roxy, if you have ever carefully examined a chestnut-burr, you will
+remember that, hard as it is to handle, no plush of downiest texture can
+exceed the satin smoothness of the fibres which line its heart. There
+are a class of people in New England who betray the uprising of the
+softer feelings of our nature only by an increase of outward asperity--a
+sort of bashfulness and shyness leaves them no power of expression for
+these unwonted guests of the heart--they hurry them into inner chambers
+and slam the doors upon them, as if they were vexed at their appearance.
+
+Now if poor Miss Roxy had been like you, my dear young lady--if her soul
+had been encased in a round, rosy, and comely body, and looked out of
+tender blue eyes shaded by golden hair, probably the grief and love she
+felt would have shown themselves only in bursts of feeling most graceful
+to see, and engaging the sympathy of all; but this same soul, imprisoned
+in a dry, angular body, stiff and old, and looking out under beetling
+eyebrows, over withered high cheek-bones, could only utter itself by a
+passionate tempest--unlovely utterance of a lovely impulse--dear only to
+Him who sees with a Father's heart the real beauty of spirits. It is our
+firm faith that bright solemn angels in celestial watchings were
+frequent guests in the homely room of the two sisters, and that passing
+by all accidents of age and poverty, withered skins, bony features, and
+grotesque movements and shabby clothing, they saw more real beauty there
+than in many a scented boudoir where seeming angels smile in lace and
+satin.
+
+"Ruey," said Miss Roxy, in a more composed voice, while her hard, bony
+hands still trembled with excitement, "this 'ere's been on my mind a
+good while. I hain't said nothin' to nobody, but I've seen it a-comin'.
+I always thought that child wa'n't for a long life. Lives is run in
+different lengths, and nobody can say what's the matter with some folks,
+only that their thread's run out; there's more on one spool and less on
+another. I thought, when we laid Hitty in the grave, that I shouldn't
+never set my heart on nothin' else--but we can't jest say we will or we
+won't. Ef we are to be sorely afflicted at any time, the Lord lets us
+set our hearts before we know it. This 'ere's a great affliction to me,
+Ruey, but I must jest shoulder my cross and go through with it. I'm
+goin' down to-night to tell the old folks, and to make arrangements so
+that the poor little lamb may have the care she needs. She's been
+a-keepin' up so long, 'cause she dreaded to let 'em know, but this 'ere
+has got to be looked right in the face, and I hope there'll be grace
+given to do it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE VICTORY
+
+
+Meanwhile Mara had been lying in the passive calm of fatigue and
+exhaustion, her eyes fixed on the window, where, as the white curtain
+drew inward, she could catch glimpses of the bay. Gradually her eyelids
+fell, and she dropped into that kind of half-waking doze, when the outer
+senses are at rest, and the mind is all the more calm and clear for
+their repose. In such hours a spiritual clairvoyance often seems to lift
+for a while the whole stifling cloud that lies like a confusing mist
+over the problem of life, and the soul has sudden glimpses of things
+unutterable which lie beyond. Then the narrow straits, that look so full
+of rocks and quicksands, widen into a broad, clear passage, and one
+after another, rosy with a celestial dawn, and ringing silver bells of
+gladness, the isles of the blessed lift themselves up on the horizon,
+and the soul is flooded with an atmosphere of light and joy. As the
+burden of Christian fell off at the cross and was lost in the sepulchre,
+so in these hours of celestial vision the whole weight of life's anguish
+is lifted, and passes away like a dream; and the soul, seeing the
+boundless ocean of Divine love, wherein all human hopes and joys and
+sorrows lie so tenderly upholden, comes and casts the one little drop of
+its personal will and personal existence with gladness into that
+Fatherly depth. Henceforth, with it, God and Saviour is no more word of
+mine and thine, for in that hour the child of earth feels himself heir
+of all things: "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is
+God's."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The child is asleep," said Miss Roxy, as she stole on tiptoe into the
+room when their noon meal was prepared. A plate and knife had been laid
+for her, and they had placed for her a tumbler of quaint old engraved
+glass, reputed to have been brought over from foreign parts, and which
+had been given to Miss Roxy as her share in the effects of the
+mysterious Mr. Swadkins. Tea also was served in some egg-like India
+china cups, which saw the light only on the most high and festive
+occasions.
+
+"Hadn't you better wake her?" said Miss Ruey; "a cup of hot tea would do
+her so much good."
+
+Miss Ruey could conceive of few sorrows or ailments which would not be
+materially better for a cup of hot tea. If not the very elixir of life,
+it was indeed the next thing to it.
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, after laying her hand for a moment with great
+gentleness on that of the sleeping girl, "she don't wake easy, and she's
+tired; and she seems to be enjoying it so. The Bible says, 'He giveth
+his beloved sleep,' and I won't interfere. I've seen more good come of
+sleep than most things in my nursin' experience," said Miss Roxy, and
+she shut the door gently, and the two sisters sat down to their noontide
+meal.
+
+"How long the child does sleep!" said Miss Ruey as the old clock struck
+four.
+
+"It was too much for her, this walk down here," said Aunt Roxy. "She's
+been doin' too much for a long time. I'm a-goin' to put an end to that.
+Well, nobody needn't say Mara hain't got resolution. I never see a
+little thing have more. She always did have, when she was the leastest
+little thing. She was always quiet and white and still, but she did
+whatever she sot out to."
+
+At this moment, to their surprise, the door opened, and Mara came in,
+and both sisters were struck with a change that had passed over her. It
+was more than the result of mere physical repose. Not only had every
+sign of weariness and bodily languor vanished, but there was about her
+an air of solemn serenity and high repose that made her seem, as Miss
+Ruey afterwards said, "like an angel jest walked out of the big Bible."
+
+"Why, dear child, how you have slept, and how bright and rested you
+look," said Miss Ruey.
+
+"I am rested," said Mara; "oh how much! And happy," she added, laying
+her little hand on Miss Roxy's shoulder. "I thank you, dear friend, for
+all your kindness to me. I am sorry I made you feel so sadly; but now
+you mustn't feel so any more, for all is well--yes, all is well. I see
+now that it is so. I have passed beyond sorrow--yes, forever."
+
+Soft-hearted Miss Ruey here broke into audible sobbing, hiding her face
+in her hands, and looking like a tumbled heap of old faded calico in a
+state of convulsion.
+
+"Dear Aunt Ruey, you mustn't," said Mara, with a voice of gentle
+authority. "We mustn't any of us feel so any more. There is no harm
+done, no real evil is coming, only a good which we do not understand. I
+am perfectly satisfied--perfectly at rest now. I was foolish and weak to
+feel as I did this morning, but I shall not feel so any more. I shall
+comfort you all. Is it anything so dreadful for me to go to heaven? How
+little while it will be before you all come to me! Oh, how
+little--little while!"
+
+"I told you, Mara, that you'd be supported in the Lord's time," said
+Miss Roxy, who watched her with an air of grave and solemn attention.
+"First and last, folks allers is supported; but sometimes there is a
+long wrestlin'. The Lord's give you the victory early."
+
+"Victory!" said the girl, speaking as in a deep muse, and with a
+mysterious brightness in her eyes; "yes, that is the word--it _is_ a
+victory--no other word expresses it. Come, Aunt Roxy, we will go home. I
+am not afraid now to tell grandpapa and grandmamma. God will care for
+them; He will wipe away all tears."
+
+"Well, though, you mus'n't think of goin' till you've had a cup of tea,"
+said Aunt Ruey, wiping her eyes. "I've kep' the tea-pot hot by the fire,
+and you must eat a little somethin', for it's long past dinner-time."
+
+"Is it?" said Mara. "I had no idea I had slept so long--how thoughtful
+and kind you are!"
+
+"I do wish I could only do more for you," said Miss Ruey. "I don't seem
+to get reconciled no ways; it seems dreffle hard--dreffle; but I'm glad
+you _can_ feel so;" and the good old soul proceeded to press upon the
+child not only the tea, which she drank with feverish relish, but every
+hoarded dainty which their limited housekeeping commanded.
+
+It was toward sunset before Miss Roxy and Mara started on their walk
+homeward. Their way lay over the high stony ridge which forms the
+central part of the island. On one side, through the pines, they looked
+out into the boundless blue of the ocean, and on the other caught
+glimpses of Harpswell Bay as it lay glorified in the evening light. The
+fresh cool breeze blowing landward brought with it an invigorating
+influence, which Mara felt through all her feverish frame. She walked
+with an energy to which she had long been a stranger. She said little,
+but there was a sweetness, a repose, in her manner contrasting
+singularly with the passionate melancholy which she had that morning
+expressed.
+
+Miss Roxy did not interrupt her meditations. The nature of her
+profession had rendered her familiar with all the changing mental and
+physical phenomena that attend the development of disease and the
+gradual loosening of the silver cords of a present life. Certain
+well-understood phrases everywhere current among the mass of the people
+in New England, strikingly tell of the deep foundations of religious
+earnestness on which its daily life is built. "A triumphant death" was a
+matter often casually spoken of among the records of the neighborhood;
+and Miss Roxy felt that there was a vague and solemn charm about its
+approach. Yet the soul of the gray, dry woman was hot within her, for
+the conversation of the morning had probed depths in her own nature of
+whose existence she had never before been so conscious. The roughest and
+most matter-of-fact minds have a craving for the ideal somewhere; and
+often this craving, forbidden by uncomeliness and ungenial surroundings
+from having any personal history of its own, attaches itself to the
+fortune of some other one in a kind of strange disinterestedness. Some
+one young and beautiful is to live the life denied to them--to be the
+poem and the romance; it is the young mistress of the poor black
+slave--the pretty sister of the homely old spinster--or the clever son
+of the consciously ill-educated father. Something of this unconscious
+personal investment had there been on the part of Miss Roxy in the
+nursling whose singular loveliness she had watched for so many years,
+and on whose fair virgin orb she had marked the growing shadow of a
+fatal eclipse, and as she saw her glowing and serene, with that peculiar
+brightness that she felt came from no earthly presence or influence, she
+could scarcely keep the tears from her honest gray eyes.
+
+When they arrived at the door of the house, Zephaniah Pennel was sitting
+in it, looking toward the sunset.
+
+"Why, reely," he said, "Miss Roxy, we thought you must a-run away with
+Mara; she's been gone a'most all day."
+
+"I expect she's had enough to talk with Aunt Roxy about," said Mrs.
+Pennel. "Girls goin' to get married have a deal to talk about, what with
+patterns and contrivin' and makin' up. But come in, Miss Roxy; we're
+glad to see you."
+
+Mara turned to Miss Roxy, and gave her a look of peculiar meaning. "Aunt
+Roxy," she said, "you must tell them what we have been talking about
+to-day;" and then she went up to her room and shut the door.
+
+Miss Roxy accomplished her task with a matter-of-fact distinctness to
+which her business-like habits of dealing with sickness and death had
+accustomed her, yet with a sympathetic tremor in her voice which
+softened the hard directness of her words. "You can take her over to
+Portland, if you say so, and get Dr. Wilson's opinion," she said, in
+conclusion. "It's best to have all done that can be, though in my mind
+the case is decided."
+
+The silence that fell between the three was broken at last by the sound
+of a light footstep descending the stairs, and Mara entered among them.
+
+She came forward and threw her arms round Mrs. Pennel's neck, and kissed
+her; and then turning, she nestled down in the arms of her old
+grandfather, as she had often done in the old days of childhood, and
+laid her hand upon his shoulder. There was no sound for a few moments
+but one of suppressed weeping; but _she_ did not weep--she lay with
+bright calm eyes, as if looking upon some celestial vision.
+
+"It is not so very sad," she said at last, in a gentle voice, "that I
+should go there; you are going, too, and grandmamma; we are all going;
+and we shall be forever with the Lord. Think of it! think of it!"
+
+Many were the words spoken in that strange communing; and before Miss
+Roxy went away, a calmness of solemn rest had settled down on all. The
+old family Bible was brought forth, and Zephaniah Pennel read from it
+those strange words of strong consolation, which take the sting from
+death and the victory from the grave:--
+
+"And I heard a great voice out of heaven. Behold the tabernacle of God
+is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people;
+and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe
+away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,
+neither sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+OPEN VISION
+
+
+As Miss Roxy was leaving the dwelling of the Pennels, she met Sally
+Kittridge coming toward the house, laughing and singing, as was her
+wont. She raised her long, lean forefinger with a gesture of warning.
+
+"What's the matter now, Aunt Roxy? You look as solemn as a hearse."
+
+"None o' your jokin' now, Miss Sally; there _is_ such a thing as serious
+things in this 'ere world of our'n, for all you girls never seems to
+know it."
+
+"What is the matter, Aunt Roxy?--has anything happened?--is anything the
+matter with Mara?"
+
+"Matter enough. I've known it a long time," said Miss Roxy. "She's been
+goin' down for three months now; and she's got that on her that will
+carry her off before the year's out."
+
+"Pshaw, Aunt Roxy! how lugubriously you old nurses always talk! I hope
+now you haven't been filling Mara's head with any such notions--people
+can be frightened into anything."
+
+"Sally Kittridge, don't be a-talkin' of what you don't know nothin'
+about! It stands to reason that a body that was bearin' the heat and
+burden of the day long before you was born or thought on in this world
+_should_ know a thing or two more'n you. Why, I've laid you on your
+stomach and trotted you to trot up the wind many a day, and I was pretty
+experienced then, and it ain't likely that I'm a-goin' to take sa'ce
+from you. Mara Pennel is a gal as has every bit and grain as much
+resolution and ambition as you have, for all you flap your wings and
+crow so much louder, and she's one of the close-mouthed sort, that don't
+make no talk, and she's been a-bearin' up and bearin' up, and comin' to
+me on the sly for strengthenin' things. She's took camomile and
+orange-peel, and snake-root and boneset, and dash-root and
+dandelion--and there hain't nothin' done her no good. She told me to-day
+she couldn't keep up no longer, and I've been a-tellin' Mis' Pennel and
+her grand'ther. I tell you it has been a solemn time; and if you're
+goin' in, don't go in with none o' your light triflin' ways, 'cause 'as
+vinegar upon nitre is he that singeth songs on a heavy heart,' the
+Scriptur' says."
+
+"Oh, Miss Roxy, do tell me truly," said Sally, much moved. "What do you
+think is the matter with Mara? I've noticed myself that she got tired
+easy, and that she was short-breathed--but she seemed so cheerful. Can
+anything really be the matter?"
+
+"It's consumption, Sally Kittridge," said Miss Roxy, "neither more nor
+less; that ar is the long and the short. They're going to take her over
+to Portland to see Dr. Wilson--it won't do no harm, and it won't do no
+good."
+
+"You seem to be determined she shall die," said Sally in a tone of
+pique.
+
+"Determined, am I? Is it I that determines that the maple leaves shall
+fall next October? Yet I know they will--folks can't help knowin' what
+they know, and shuttin' one's eyes won't alter one's road. I s'pose you
+think 'cause you're young and middlin' good-lookin' that you have
+feelin's and I hasn't; well, you're mistaken, that's all. I don't
+believe there's one person in the world that would go farther or do more
+to save Mara Pennel than I would,--and yet I've been in the world long
+enough to see that livin' ain't no great shakes neither. Ef one is
+hopefully prepared in the days of their youth, why they escape a good
+deal, ef they get took cross-lots into heaven."
+
+Sally turned away thoughtfully into the house; there was no one in the
+kitchen, and the tick of the old clock sounded lonely and sepulchral.
+She went upstairs to Mara's room; the door was ajar. Mara was sitting at
+the open window that looked forth toward the ocean, busily engaged in
+writing. The glow of evening shone on the golden waves of her hair, and
+tinged the pearly outline of her cheek. Sally noticed the translucent
+clearness of her complexion, and the deep burning color and the
+transparency of the little hands, which seemed as if they might transmit
+the light like Sèvres porcelain. She was writing with an expression of
+tender calm, and sometimes stopping to consult an open letter that Sally
+knew came from Moses.
+
+So fair and sweet and serene she looked that a painter might have chosen
+her for an embodiment of twilight, and one might not be surprised to see
+a clear star shining out over her forehead. Yet in the tender serenity
+of the face there dwelt a pathos of expression that spoke of struggles
+and sufferings past, like the traces of tears on the face of a restful
+infant that has grieved itself to sleep.
+
+Sally came softly in on tiptoe, threw her arms around her, and kissed
+her, with a half laugh, then bursting into tears, sobbed upon her
+shoulder.
+
+"Dear Sally, what is the matter?" said Mara, looking up.
+
+"Oh, Mara, I just met Miss Roxy, and she told me"--
+
+Sally only sobbed passionately.
+
+"It is very sad to make all one's friends so unhappy," said Mara, in a
+soothing voice, stroking Sally's hair. "You don't know how much I have
+suffered dreading it. Sally, it is a long time since I began to expect
+and dread and fear. My time of anguish was then--then when I first felt
+that it could be possible that I should not live after all. There was a
+long time I dared not even think of it; I could not even tell such a
+fear to myself; and I did far more than I felt able to do to convince
+myself that I was not weak and failing. I have been often to Miss Roxy,
+and once, when nobody knew it, I went to a doctor in Brunswick, but then
+I was afraid to tell him half, lest he should say something about me,
+and it should get out; and so I went on getting worse and worse, and
+feeling every day as if I could not keep up, and yet afraid to lie down
+for fear grandmamma would suspect me. But this morning it was pleasant
+and bright, and something came over me that said I _must_ tell somebody,
+and so, as it was cool and pleasant, I walked up to Aunt Roxy's and told
+her. I thought, you know, that she knew the most, and would feel it the
+least; but oh, Sally, she has such a feeling heart, and loves me so; it
+is strange she should."
+
+"Is it?" said Sally, tightening her clasp around Mara's neck; and then
+with a hysterical shadow of gayety she said, "I suppose you think that
+you are such a hobgoblin that nobody could be expected to do that. After
+all, though, I should have as soon expected roses to bloom in a juniper
+clump as love from Aunt Roxy."
+
+"Well, she does love me," said Mara. "No mother could be kinder. Poor
+thing, she really sobbed and cried when I told her. I was very tired,
+and she told me she would take care of me, and tell grandpapa and
+grandmamma,--_that_ had been lying on my heart as such a dreadful thing
+to do,--and she laid me down to rest on her bed, and spoke so lovingly
+to me! I wish you could have seen her. And while I lay there, I fell
+into a strange, sweet sort of rest. I can't describe it; but since then
+everything has been changed. I wish I could tell any one how I saw
+things then."
+
+"Do try to tell me, Mara," said Sally, "for I need comfort too, if there
+is any to be had."
+
+"Well, then, I lay on the bed, and the wind drew in from the sea and
+just lifted the window-curtain, and I could see the sea shining and hear
+the waves making a pleasant little dash, and then my head seemed to
+swim. I thought I was walking out by the pleasant shore, and everything
+seemed so strangely beautiful, and grandpapa and grandmamma were there,
+and Moses had come home, and you were there, and we were all so happy.
+And then I felt a sort of strange sense that something was coming--some
+great trial or affliction--and I groaned and clung to Moses, and asked
+him to put his arm around me and hold me.
+
+"Then it seemed to be not by our seashore that this was happening, but
+by the Sea of Galilee, just as it tells about it in the Bible, and there
+were fishermen mending their nets, and men sitting counting their money,
+and I saw Jesus come walking along, and heard him say to this one and
+that one, 'Leave all and follow me,' and it seemed that the moment he
+spoke they did it, and then he came to me, and I felt his eyes in my
+very soul, and he said, 'Wilt _thou_ leave _all_ and follow me?' I
+cannot tell now what a pain I felt--what an anguish. I wanted to leave
+all, but my heart felt as if it were tied and woven with a thousand
+threads, and while I waited he seemed to fade away, and I found myself
+then alone and unhappy, wishing that I could, and mourning that I had
+not; and then something shone out warm like the sun, and I looked up,
+and he stood there looking pitifully, and he said again just as he did
+before, 'Wilt thou leave all and follow me?' Every word was so gentle
+and full of pity, and I looked into his eyes and could not look away;
+they drew me, they warmed me, and I felt a strange, wonderful sense of
+his greatness and sweetness. It seemed as if I felt within me cord after
+cord breaking, I felt so free, so happy; and I said, 'I will, I will,
+with all my heart;' and I woke then, so happy, so sure of God's love.
+
+"I saw so clearly how his love is in everything, and these words came
+into my mind as if an angel had spoken them, 'God shall wipe away all
+tears from their eyes.' Since then I cannot be unhappy. I was so myself
+only this morning, and now I wonder that any one can have a grief when
+God is so loving and good, and cares so sweetly for us all. Why, Sally,
+if I could see Christ and hear him speak, I could not be more certain
+that he will make this sorrow such a blessing to us all that we shall
+never be able to thank him enough for it."
+
+"Oh Mara," said Sally, sighing deeply, while her cheek was wet with
+tears, "it is beautiful to hear you talk; but there is one that I am
+sure will not and cannot feel so."
+
+"God will care for him," said Mara; "oh, I am sure of it; He is love
+itself, and He values his love in us, and He never, never would have
+brought such a trial, if it had not been the true and only way to our
+best good. We shall not shed one needless tear. Yes, if God loved us so
+that he spared not his own Son, he will surely give us all the good here
+that we possibly can have without risking our eternal happiness."
+
+"You are writing to Moses, now?" said Sally.
+
+"Yes, I am answering his letter; it is so full of spirit and life and
+hope--but all hope in this world--all, all earthly, as much as if there
+was no God and no world to come. Sally, perhaps our Father saw that I
+could not have strength to live with him and keep my faith. I should be
+drawn by him earthward instead of drawing him heavenward; and so this is
+in mercy to us both."
+
+"And are you telling him the whole truth, Mara?"
+
+"Not all, no," said Mara; "he could not bear it at once. I only tell him
+that my health is failing, and that my friends are seriously alarmed,
+and then I speak as if it were doubtful, in my mind, what the result
+might be."
+
+"I don't think you can make him feel as you do. Moses Pennel has a
+tremendous will, and he never yielded to any one. You bend, Mara, like
+the little blue harebells, and so the storm goes over you; but he will
+stand up against it, and it will wrench and shatter him. I am afraid,
+instead of making him better, it will only make him bitter and
+rebellious."
+
+"He has a Father in heaven who knows how to care for him," said Mara. "I
+am persuaded--I feel certain that he will be blessed in the end; not
+perhaps in the time and way I should have chosen, but in the end. I have
+always felt that he was mine, ever since he came a little shipwrecked
+boy to me--a little girl. And now I have given him up to his Saviour and
+my Saviour--to his God and my God--and I am perfectly at peace. All will
+be well."
+
+Mara spoke with a look of such solemn, bright assurance as made her, in
+the dusky, golden twilight, seem like some serene angel sent down to
+comfort, rather than a hapless mortal just wrenched from life and hope.
+
+Sally rose up and kissed her silently. "Mara," she said, "I shall come
+to-morrow to see what I can do for you. I will not interrupt you now.
+Good-by, dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are no doubt many, who have followed this history so long as it
+danced like a gay little boat over sunny waters, and who would have
+followed it gayly to the end, had it closed with ringing of
+marriage-bells, who turn from it indignantly, when they see that its
+course runs through the dark valley. This, they say, is an imposition, a
+trick upon our feelings. We want to read only stories which end in joy
+and prosperity.
+
+But have we then settled it in our own mind that there is no such thing
+as a fortunate issue in a history which does not terminate in the way of
+earthly success and good fortune? Are we Christians or heathen? It is
+now eighteen centuries since, as we hold, the "highly favored among
+women" was pronounced to be one whose earthly hopes were all cut off in
+the blossom,--whose noblest and dearest in the morning of his days went
+down into the shadows of death.
+
+Was Mary the highly-favored among women, and was Jesus indeed the
+blessed,--or was the angel mistaken? If they were these, if we are
+Christians, it ought to be a settled and established habit of our souls
+to regard something else as prosperity than worldly success and happy
+marriages. That life is a success which, like the life of Jesus, in its
+beginning, middle, and close, has borne a perfect witness to the truth
+and the highest form of truth. It is true that God has given to us, and
+inwoven in our nature a desire for a perfection and completeness made
+manifest to our senses in this mortal life. To see the daughter bloom
+into youth and womanhood, the son into manhood, to see them marry and
+become themselves parents, and gradually ripen and develop in the
+maturities of middle life, gradually wear into a sunny autumn, and so be
+gathered in fullness of time to their fathers,--such, one says, is the
+programme which God has made us to desire; such the ideal of happiness
+which he has interwoven with our nerves, and for which our heart and our
+flesh crieth out; to which every stroke of a knell is a violence, and
+every thought of an early death is an abhorrence.
+
+But the life of Christ and his mother sets the foot on this lower ideal
+of happiness, and teaches us that there is something higher. His
+ministry began with declaring, "Blessed are they that mourn." It has
+been well said that prosperity was the blessing of the Old Testament,
+and adversity of the New. Christ came to show us a nobler style of
+living and bearing; and so far as he had a personal and earthly life, he
+buried it as a corner-stone on which to erect a new immortal style of
+architecture.
+
+Of his own, he had nothing, neither houses, nor lands, nor family ties,
+nor human hopes, nor earthly sphere of success; and as a human life, it
+was all a sacrifice and a defeat. He was rejected by his countrymen,
+whom the passionate anguish of his love and the unwearied devotion of
+his life could not save from an awful doom. He was betrayed by weak
+friends, prevailed against by slanderers, overwhelmed with an
+ignominious death in the morning of youth, and his mother stood by his
+cross, and she was the only woman whom God ever called highly favored in
+this world.
+
+This, then, is the great and perfect ideal of what God honors. Christ
+speaks of himself as bread to be eaten,--bread, simple, humble,
+unpretending, vitally necessary to human life, made by the bruising and
+grinding of the grain, unostentatiously having no life or worth of its
+own except as it is absorbed into the life of others and lives in them.
+We wished in this history to speak of a class of lives formed on the
+model of Christ, and like his, obscure and unpretending, like his,
+seeming to end in darkness and defeat, but which yet have this
+preciousness and value that the dear saints who live them come nearest
+in their mission to the mission of Jesus. They are made, not for a
+career and history of their own, but to be bread of life to others. In
+every household or house have been some of these, and if we look on
+their lives and deaths with the unbaptized eyes of nature, we shall see
+only most mournful and unaccountable failure, when, if we could look
+with the eye of faith, we should see that their living and dying has
+been bread of life to those they left behind. Fairest of these, and
+least developed, are the holy innocents who come into our households to
+smile with the smile of angels, who sleep in our bosoms, and win us with
+the softness of tender little hands, and pass away like the lamb that
+was slain before they have ever learned the speech of mortals. Not vain
+are even these silent lives of Christ's lambs, whom many an earth-bound
+heart has been roused to follow when the Shepherd bore them to the
+higher pastures. And so the daughter who died so early, whose
+wedding-bells were never rung except in heaven,--the son who had no
+career of ambition or a manly duty except among the angels,--the patient
+sufferers, whose only lot on earth seemed to be to endure, whose life
+bled away drop by drop in the shadows of the sick-room--all these are
+among those whose life was like Christ's in that they were made, not for
+themselves, but to become bread to us.
+
+It is expedient for us that they go away. Like their Lord, they come to
+suffer, and to die; they take part in his sacrifice; their life is
+incomplete without their death, and not till they are gone away does the
+Comforter fully come to us.
+
+It is a beautiful legend which one sees often represented in the
+churches of Europe, that when the grave of the mother of Jesus was
+opened, it was found full of blossoming lilies,--fit emblem of the
+thousand flowers of holy thought and purpose which spring up in our
+hearts from the memory of our sainted dead.
+
+Cannot many, who read these lines, bethink them of such rooms that have
+been the most cheerful places in the family,--when the heart of the
+smitten one seemed the band that bound all the rest together,--and have
+there not been dying hours which shed such a joy and radiance on all
+around, that it was long before the mourners remembered to mourn? Is it
+not a misuse of words to call such a heavenly translation _death_? and
+to call most things that are lived out on this earth _life_?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE LAND OF BEULAH
+
+
+It is now about a month after the conversation which we have recorded,
+and during that time the process which was to loose from this present
+life had been going on in Mara with a soft, insensible, but steady
+power. When she ceased to make efforts beyond her strength, and allowed
+herself that languor and repose which nature claimed, all around her
+soon became aware how her strength was failing; and yet a cheerful
+repose seemed to hallow the atmosphere around her. The sight of her
+every day in family worship, sitting by in such tender tranquillity,
+with such a smile on her face, seemed like a present inspiration. And
+though the aged pair knew that she was no more for this world, yet she
+was comforting and inspiring to their view as the angel who of old
+rolled back the stone from the sepulchre and sat upon it. They saw in
+her eyes, not death, but the solemn victory which Christ gives over
+death.
+
+Bunyan has no more lovely poem than the image he gives of that land of
+pleasant waiting which borders the river of death, where the chosen of
+the Lord repose, while shining messengers, constantly passing and
+repassing, bear tidings from the celestial shore, opening a way between
+earth and heaven. It was so, that through the very thought of Mara an
+influence of tenderness and tranquillity passed through the whole
+neighborhood, keeping hearts fresh with sympathy, and causing thought
+and conversation to rest on those bright mysteries of eternal joy which
+were reflected on her face.
+
+Sally Kittridge was almost a constant inmate of the brown house, ever
+ready in watching and waiting; and one only needed to mark the
+expression of her face to feel that a holy charm was silently working
+upon her higher and spiritual nature. Those great, dark, sparkling eyes
+that once seemed to express only the brightness of animal vivacity, and
+glittered like a brook in unsympathetic gayety, had in them now
+mysterious depths, and tender, fleeting shadows, and the very tone of
+her voice had a subdued tremor. The capricious elf, the tricksy sprite,
+was melting away in the immortal soul, and the deep pathetic power of a
+noble heart was being born. Some influence sprung of sorrow is necessary
+always to perfect beauty in womanly nature. We feel its absence in many
+whose sparkling wit and high spirits give grace and vivacity to life,
+but in whom we vainly seek for some spot of quiet tenderness and
+sympathetic repose. Sally was, ignorantly to herself, changing in the
+expression of her face and the tone of her character, as she ministered
+in the daily wants which sickness brings in a simple household.
+
+For the rest of the neighborhood, the shelves and larder of Mrs. Pennel
+were constantly crowded with the tributes which one or another sent in
+for the invalid. There was jelly of Iceland moss sent across by Miss
+Emily, and brought by Mr. Sewell, whose calls were almost daily. There
+were custards and preserves, and every form of cake and other
+confections in which the housekeeping talent of the neighbors delighted,
+and which were sent in under the old superstition that sick people must
+be kept eating at all hazards.
+
+At church, Sunday after Sunday, the simple note requested the prayers of
+the church and congregation for Mara Lincoln, who was, as the note
+phrased it, drawing near her end, that she and all concerned might be
+prepared for the great and last change. One familiar with New England
+customs must have remembered with what a plaintive power the reading of
+such a note, from Sunday to Sunday, has drawn the thoughts and
+sympathies of a congregation to some chamber of sickness; and in a
+village church, where every individual is known from childhood to every
+other, the power of this simple custom is still greater.
+
+Then the prayers of the minister would dwell on the case, and thanks
+would be rendered to God for the great light and peace with which he had
+deigned to visit his young handmaid; and then would follow a prayer that
+when these sad tidings should reach a distant friend who had gone down
+to do business on the great waters, they might be sanctified to his
+spiritual and everlasting good. Then on Sunday noons, as the people ate
+their dinners together in a room adjoining the church, all that she said
+and did was talked over and over,--how quickly she had gained the
+victory of submission, the peace of a will united with God's, mixed with
+harmless gossip of the sick chamber,--as to what she ate and how she
+slept, and who had sent her gruel with raisins in it, and who jelly with
+wine, and how she had praised this and eaten that twice with a relish,
+but how the other had seemed to disagree with her. Thereafter would come
+scraps of nursing information, recipes against coughing, specifics
+against short breath, speculations about watchers, how soon she would
+need them, and long legends of other death-beds where the fear of death
+had been slain by the power of an endless life.
+
+Yet through all the gossip, and through much that might have been called
+at other times commonplace cant of religion, there was spread a tender
+earnestness, and the whole air seemed to be enchanted with the fragrance
+of that fading rose. Each one spoke more gently, more lovingly to each,
+for the thought of her.
+
+It was now a bright September morning, and the early frosts had changed
+the maples in the pine-woods to scarlet, and touched the white birches
+with gold, when one morning Miss Roxy presented herself at an early hour
+at Captain Kittridge's.
+
+They were at breakfast, and Sally was dispensing the tea at the head of
+the table, Mrs. Kittridge having been prevailed on to abdicate in her
+favor.
+
+"It is such a fine morning," she said, looking out at the window, which
+showed a waveless expanse of ocean. "I do hope Mara has had a good
+night."
+
+"I'm a-goin' to make her some jelly this very forenoon," said Mrs.
+Kittridge. "Aunt Roxy was a-tellin' me yesterday that she was a-goin'
+down to stay at the house regular, for she needed so much done now."
+
+"It's 'most an amazin' thing we don't hear from Moses Pennel," said
+Captain Kittridge. "If he don't make haste, he may never see her."
+
+"There's Aunt Roxy at this minute," said Sally.
+
+In truth, the door opened at this moment, and Aunt Roxy entered with a
+little blue bandbox and a bundle tied up in a checked handkerchief.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Roxy," said Mrs. Kittridge, "you are on your way, are you? Do
+sit down, right here, and get a cup of strong tea."
+
+"Thank you," said Aunt Roxy, "but Ruey gave me a humming cup before I
+came away."
+
+"Aunt Roxy, have they heard anything from Moses?" said the Captain.
+
+"No, father, I know they haven't," said Sally. "Mara has written to him,
+and so has Mr. Sewell, but it is very uncertain whether he ever got the
+letters."
+
+"It's most time to be a-lookin' for him home," said the Captain. "I
+shouldn't be surprised to see him any day."
+
+At this moment Sally, who sat where she could see from the window, gave
+a sudden start and a half scream, and rising from the table, darted
+first to the window and then to the door, whence she rushed out eagerly.
+
+"Well, what now?" said the Captain.
+
+"I am sure I don't know what's come over her," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+rising to look out.
+
+"Why, Aunt Roxy, do look; I believe to my soul that ar's Moses Pennel!"
+
+And so it was. He met Sally, as she ran out, with a gloomy brow and
+scarcely a look even of recognition; but he seized her hand and wrung it
+in the stress of his emotion so that she almost screamed with the pain.
+
+"Tell me, Sally," he said, "tell me the truth. I dared not go home
+without I knew. Those gossiping, lying reports are always exaggerated.
+They are dreadful exaggerations,--they frighten a sick person into the
+grave; but you have good sense and a hopeful, cheerful temper,--you must
+see and know how things are. Mara is not so very--very"--He held Sally's
+hand and looked at her with a burning eagerness. "Say, what do you think
+of her?"
+
+"We all think that we cannot long keep her with us," said Sally. "And
+oh, Moses, I am so glad you have come."
+
+"It's false,--it must be false," he said, violently; "nothing is more
+deceptive than these ideas that doctors and nurses pile on when a
+sensitive person is going down a little. I know Mara; everything depends
+on the mind with her. I shall wake her up out of this dream. She is not
+to die. She shall not die,--I come to save her."
+
+"Oh, if you could!" said Sally, mournfully.
+
+"It cannot be; it is not to be," he said again, as if to convince
+himself. "No such thing is to be thought of. Tell me, Sally, have you
+tried to keep up the cheerful side of things to her,--have you?"
+
+"Oh, you cannot tell, Moses, how it is, unless you see her. She is
+cheerful, happy; the only really joyous one among us."
+
+"Cheerful! joyous! happy! She does not believe, then, these frightful
+things? I thought she would keep up; she is a brave little thing."
+
+"No, Moses, she does believe. She has given up all hope of life,--all
+wish to live; and oh, she is so lovely,--so sweet,--so dear."
+
+Sally covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Moses stood still,
+looking at her a moment in a confused way, and then he answered,--
+
+"Come, get your bonnet, Sally, and go with me. You must go in and tell
+them; tell her that I am come, you know."
+
+"Yes, I will," said Sally, as she ran quickly back to the house.
+
+Moses stood listlessly looking after her. A moment after she came out of
+the door again, and Miss Roxy behind. Sally hurried up to Moses.
+
+"Where's that black old raven going?" said Moses, in a low voice,
+looking back on Miss Roxy, who stood on the steps.
+
+"What, Aunt Roxy?" said Sally; "why, she's going up to nurse Mara, and
+take care of her. Mrs. Pennel is so old and infirm she needs somebody to
+depend on."
+
+"I can't bear her," said Moses. "I always think of sick-rooms and
+coffins and a stifling smell of camphor when I see her. I never could
+endure her. She's an old harpy going to carry off my dove."
+
+"Now, Moses, you must _not_ talk so. She loves Mara dearly, the poor
+old soul, and Mara loves her, and there is no earthly thing she would
+not do for her. And she knows what to do for sickness better than you or
+I. I have found out one thing, that it isn't mere love and good-will
+that is needed in a sick-room; it needs knowledge and experience."
+
+Moses assented in gloomy silence, and they walked on together the way
+that they had so often taken laughing and chatting. When they came
+within sight of the house, Moses said,--
+
+"Here she came running to meet us; do you remember?"
+
+"Yes," said Sally.
+
+"I was never half worthy of her. I never said half what I ought to," he
+added. "She _must_ live! I must have one more chance."
+
+When they came up to the house, Zephaniah Pennel was sitting in the
+door, with his gray head bent over the leaves of the great family Bible.
+
+He rose up at their coming, and with that suppression of all external
+signs of feeling for which the New Englander is remarkable, simply shook
+the hand of Moses, saying,--
+
+"Well, my boy, we are glad you have come."
+
+Mrs. Pennel, who was busied in some domestic work in the back part of
+the kitchen, turned away and hid her face in her apron when she saw him.
+There fell a great silence among them, in the midst of which the old
+clock ticked loudly and importunately, like the inevitable approach of
+fate.
+
+"I will go up and see her, and get her ready," said Sally, in a whisper
+to Moses. "I'll come and call you."
+
+Moses sat down and looked around on the old familiar scene; there was
+the great fireplace where, in their childish days, they had sat together
+winter nights,--her fair, spiritual face enlivened by the blaze, while
+she knit and looked thoughtfully into the coals; there she had played
+checkers, or fox and geese, with him; or studied with him the Latin
+lessons; or sat by, grave and thoughtful, hemming his toyship sails,
+while he cut the moulds for his anchors, or tried experiments on
+pulleys; and in all these years he could not remember one selfish
+action,--one unlovely word,--and he thought to himself, "I hoped to
+possess this angel as a mortal wife! God forgive my presumption."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+THE MEETING
+
+
+Sally found Mara sitting in an easy-chair that had been sent to her by
+the provident love of Miss Emily. It was wheeled in front of her room
+window, from whence she could look out upon the wide expanse of the
+ocean. It was a gloriously bright, calm morning, and the water lay clear
+and still, with scarce a ripple, to the far distant pearly horizon. She
+seemed to be looking at it in a kind of calm ecstasy, and murmuring the
+words of a hymn:--
+
+    "Nor wreck nor ruin there is seen,
+      There not a wave of trouble rolls,
+    But the bright rainbow round the throne
+      Peals endless peace to all their souls."
+
+Sally came softly behind her on tiptoe to kiss her. "Good-morning, dear,
+how do you find yourself?"
+
+"Quite well," was the answer.
+
+"Mara, is not there anything you want?"
+
+"There might be many things; but His will is mine."
+
+"You want to see Moses?"
+
+"Very much; but I shall see him as soon as it is best for us both."
+
+"Mara,--he is come."
+
+The quick blood flushed over the pale, transparent face as a virgin
+glacier flushes at sunrise, and she looked up eagerly. "Come!"
+
+"Yes, he is below-stairs wanting to see you."
+
+She seemed about to speak eagerly, and then checked herself and mused a
+moment. "Poor, poor boy!" she said. "Yes, Sally, let him come at once."
+
+There were a few dazzling, dreamy minutes when Moses first held that
+frail form in his arms, which but for its tender, mortal warmth, might
+have seemed to him a spirit. It was no spirit, but a woman whose heart
+he could feel thrilling against his own; who seemed to him like some
+frail, fluttering bird; but somehow, as he looked into her clear,
+transparent face, and pressed her thin little hands in his, the
+conviction stole over him overpoweringly that she was indeed fading away
+and going from him,--drawn from him by that mysterious, irresistible
+power against which human strength, even in the strongest, has no
+chance.
+
+It is dreadful to a strong man who has felt the influence of his
+strength,--who has always been ready with a resource for every
+emergency, and a weapon for every battle,--when first he meets that
+mighty invisible power by which a beloved life--a life he would give his
+own blood to save--melts and dissolves like smoke before his eyes.
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara," he groaned, "this is too dreadful, too cruel; it is
+cruel."
+
+"You will think so at first, but not always," she said, soothingly. "You
+will live to see a joy come out of this sorrow."
+
+"Never, Mara, never. I cannot believe that kind of talk. I see no love,
+no mercy in it. Of course, if there is any life after death you will be
+happy; if there is a heaven you will be there; but can this dim,
+unsubstantial, cloudy prospect make you happy in leaving me and giving
+up one's lover? Oh, Mara, you cannot love as I do, or you could not"--
+
+"Moses, I have suffered,--oh, very, very much. It was many months ago
+when I first thought that I must give everything up,--when I thought
+that we must part; but Christ helped me; he showed me his wonderful
+love,--the love that surrounds us all our life, that follows us in all
+our wanderings, and sustains us in all our weaknesses,--and then I felt
+that whatever He wills for us is in love; oh, believe it,--believe it
+for my sake, for your own."
+
+"Oh, I cannot, I cannot," said Moses; but as he looked at the bright,
+pale face, and felt how the tempest of his feelings shook the frail
+form, he checked himself. "I do wrong to agitate you so, Mara. I will
+try to be calm."
+
+"And to pray?" she said, beseechingly.
+
+He shut his lips in gloomy silence.
+
+"Promise me," she said.
+
+"I have prayed ever since I got your first letter, and I see it does no
+good," he answered. "Our prayers cannot alter fate."
+
+"Fate! there is no fate," she answered; "there is a strong and loving
+Father who guides the way, though we know it not. We cannot resist His
+will; but it is all love,--pure, pure love."
+
+At this moment Sally came softly into the room. A gentle air of womanly
+authority seemed to express itself in that once gay and giddy face, at
+which Moses, in the midst of his misery, marveled.
+
+"You must not stay any longer now," she said; "it would be too much for
+her strength; this is enough for this morning."
+
+Moses turned away, and silently left the room, and Sally said to Mara,--
+
+"You must lie down now, and rest."
+
+"Sally," said Mara, "promise me one thing."
+
+"Well, Mara; of course I will."
+
+"Promise to love him and care for him when I am gone; he will be so
+lonely."
+
+"I will do all I can, Mara," said Sally, soothingly; "so now you must
+take a little wine and lie down. You know what you have so often said,
+that all will yet be well with him."
+
+"Oh, I know it, I am sure," said Mara, "but oh, his sorrow shook my very
+heart."
+
+"You must not talk another word about it," said Sally, peremptorily, "Do
+you know Aunt Roxy is coming to see you? I see her out of the window
+this very moment."
+
+And Sally assisted to lay her friend on the bed, and then, administering
+a stimulant, she drew down the curtains, and, sitting beside her, began
+repeating, in a soft monotonous tone, the words of a favorite hymn:--
+
+    "The Lord my shepherd is,
+      I shall be well supplied;
+    Since He is mine, and I am His,
+      What can I want beside?"
+
+Before she had finished, Mara was asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+CONSOLATION
+
+
+Moses came down from the chamber of Mara in a tempest of contending
+emotions. He had all that constitutional horror of death and the
+spiritual world which is an attribute of some particularly strong and
+well-endowed physical natures, and he had all that instinctive
+resistance of the will which such natures offer to anything which
+strikes athwart their cherished hopes and plans. To be wrenched suddenly
+from the sphere of an earthly life and made to confront the unclosed
+doors of a spiritual world on the behalf of the one dearest to him, was
+to him a dreary horror uncheered by one filial belief in God. He felt,
+furthermore, that blind animal irritation which assails one under a
+sudden blow, whether of the body or of the soul,--an anguish of
+resistance, a vague blind anger.
+
+Mr. Sewell was sitting in the kitchen,--he had called to see Mara, and
+waited for the close of the interview above. He rose and offered his
+hand to Moses, who took it in gloomy silence, without a smile or word.
+
+"'My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord,'" said Mr.
+Sewell.
+
+"I cannot bear that sort of thing," said Moses abruptly, and almost
+fiercely. "I beg your pardon, sir, but it irritates me."
+
+"Do you not believe that afflictions are sent for our improvement?" said
+Mr. Sewell.
+
+"No! how can I? What improvement will there be to me in taking from me
+the angel who guided me to all good, and kept me from all evil; the one
+pure motive and holy influence of my life? If you call this the
+chastening of a loving father, I must say it looks more to me like the
+caprice of an evil spirit."
+
+"Had you ever thanked the God of your life for this gift, or felt your
+dependence on him to keep it? Have you not blindly idolized the creature
+and forgotten Him who gave it?" said Mr. Sewell.
+
+Moses was silent a moment.
+
+"I cannot believe there is a God," he said. "Since this fear came on me
+I have prayed,--yes, and humbled myself; for I know I have not always
+been what I ought. I promised if he would grant me this one thing, I
+would seek him in future; but it did no good,--it's of no use to pray. I
+would have been good in this way, if she might be spared, and I cannot
+in any other."
+
+"My son, our Lord and Master will have no such conditions from us," said
+Mr. Sewell. "We must submit unconditionally. _She_ has done it, and her
+peace is as firm as the everlasting hills. God's will is a great current
+that flows in spite of us; if we go with it, it carries us to endless
+rest,--if we resist, we only wear our lives out in useless struggles."
+
+Moses stood a moment in silence, and then, turning away without a word,
+hurried from the house. He strode along the high rocky bluff, through
+tangled junipers and pine thickets, till he came above the rocky cove
+which had been his favorite retreat on so many occasions. He swung
+himself down over the cliffs into the grotto, where, shut in by the high
+tide, he felt himself alone. There he had read Mr. Sewell's letter, and
+dreamed vain dreams of wealth and worldly success, now all to him so
+void. He felt to-day, as he sat there and watched the ships go by, how
+utterly nothing all the wealth in the world was, in the loss of that one
+heart. Unconsciously, even to himself, sorrow was doing her ennobling
+ministry within him, melting off in her fierce fires trivial ambitions
+and low desires, and making him feel the sole worth and value of love.
+That which in other days had seemed only as one good thing among many
+now seemed the _only_ thing in life. And he who has learned the
+paramount value of love has taken one step from an earthly to a
+spiritual existence.
+
+But as he lay there on the pebbly shore, hour after hour glided by, his
+whole past life lived itself over to his eye; he saw a thousand actions,
+he heard a thousand words, whose beauty and significance never came to
+him till now. And alas! he saw so many when, on his part, the responsive
+word that should have been spoken, and the deed that should have been
+done, was forever wanting. He had all his life carried within him a
+vague consciousness that he had not been to Mara what he should have
+been, but he had hoped to make amends for all in that future which lay
+before him,--that future now, alas! dissolving and fading away like the
+white cloud-islands which the wind was drifting from the sky. A voice
+seemed saying in his ears, "Ye know that when he would have inherited a
+blessing he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though
+he sought it carefully with tears." Something that he had never felt
+before struck him as appalling in the awful fixedness of all past deeds
+and words,--the unkind words once said, which no tears could unsay,--the
+kind ones suppressed, to which no agony of wishfulness could give a past
+reality. There were particular times in their past history that he
+remembered so vividly, when he saw her so clearly,--doing some little
+thing for him, and shyly watching for the word of acknowledgment, which
+he did not give. Some willful wayward demon withheld him at the moment,
+and the light on the little wishful face slowly faded. True, all had
+been a thousand times forgiven and forgotten between them, but it is the
+ministry of these great vital hours of sorrow to teach us that nothing
+in the soul's history ever dies or is forgotten, and when the beloved
+one lies stricken and ready to pass away, comes the judgment-day of
+love, and all the dead moments of the past arise and live again.
+
+He lay there musing and dreaming till the sun grew low in the afternoon
+sky, and the tide that isolated the little grotto had gone far out into
+the ocean, leaving long, low reefs of sunken rocks, all matted and
+tangled with the yellow hair of the seaweed, with little crystal pools
+of salt water between. He heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and
+Captain Kittridge came slowly picking his way round among the shingle
+and pebbles.
+
+"Wal', now, I thought I'd find ye here!" he said: "I kind o' thought I
+wanted to see ye,--ye see."
+
+Moses looked up half moody, half astonished, while the Captain seated
+himself upon a fragment of rock and began brushing the knees of his
+trousers industriously, until soon the tears rained down from his eyes
+upon his dry withered hands.
+
+"Wal', now ye see, I can't help it, darned if I can; knowed her ever
+since she's that high. She's done me good, she has. Mis' Kittridge has
+been pretty faithful. I've had folks here and there talk to me
+consid'able, but Lord bless you, I never had nothin' go to my heart like
+this 'ere--Why to look on her there couldn't nobody doubt but what there
+was somethin' in religion. You never knew half what she did for you,
+Moses Pennel, you didn't know that the night you was off down to the
+long cove with Skipper Atkinson, that 'ere blessed child was a-follerin'
+you, but she was, and she come to me next day to get me to do somethin'
+for you. That was how your grand'ther and I got ye off to sea so quick,
+and she such a little thing then; that ar child was the savin' of ye,
+Moses Pennel."
+
+Moses hid his head in his hands with a sort of groan.
+
+"Wal', wal'," said the Captain, "I don't wonder now ye feel so,--I don't
+see how ye can stan' it no ways--only by thinkin' o' where she's goin'
+to--Them ar bells in the Celestial City must all be a-ringin' for
+her,--there'll be joy that side o' the river I reckon, when she gets
+acrost. If she'd jest leave me a hem o' her garment to get in by, I'd be
+glad; but she was one o' the sort that was jest _made_ to go to heaven.
+She only stopped a few days in our world, like the robins when they's
+goin' south; but there'll be a good many fust and last that'll get into
+the kingdom for love of her. She never said much to me, but she kind o'
+drew me. Ef ever I should get in there, it'll be _she_ led me. But come,
+now, Moses, ye oughtn't fur to be a-settin' here catchin' cold--jest
+come round to our house and let Sally gin you a warm cup o' tea--do
+come, now."
+
+"Thank you, Captain," said Moses, "but I will go home; I must see her
+again to-night."
+
+"Wal', don't let her see you grieve too much, ye know; we must be a
+little sort o' manly, ye know, 'cause her body's weak, if her heart is
+strong."
+
+Now Moses was in a mood of dry, proud, fierce, self-consuming sorrow,
+least likely to open his heart or seek sympathy from any one; and no
+friend or acquaintance would probably have dared to intrude on his
+grief. But there are moods of the mind which cannot be touched or
+handled by one on an equal level with us that yield at once to the
+sympathy of something below. A dog who comes with his great honest,
+sorrowful face and lays his mute paw of inquiry on your knee, will
+sometimes open floodgates of sober feeling, that have remained closed to
+every human touch;--the dumb simplicity and ignorance of his sympathy
+makes it irresistible. In like manner the downright grief of the
+good-natured old Captain, and the child-like ignorance with which he
+ventured upon a ministry of consolation from which a more cultivated
+person would have shrunk away, were irresistibly touching. Moses grasped
+the dry, withered hand and said, "Thank you, thank you, Captain
+Kittridge; you're a true friend."
+
+"Wal', I be, that's a fact, Moses. Lord bless me, I ain't no great--I
+ain't nobody--I'm jest an old last-year's mullein-stalk in the Lord's
+vineyard; but that 'ere blessed little thing allers had a good word for
+me. She gave me a hymn-book and marked some hymns in it, and read 'em to
+me herself, and her voice was jest as sweet as the sea of a warm
+evening. Them hymns come to me kind o' powerful when I'm at my work
+planin' and sawin'. Mis' Kittridge, she allers talks to me as ef I was a
+terrible sinner; and I suppose I be, but this 'ere blessed child, she's
+so kind o' good and innocent, she thinks I'm good; kind o' takes it for
+granted I'm one o' the Lord's people, ye know. It kind o' makes me want
+to be, ye know."
+
+The Captain here produced from his coat-pocket a much worn hymn-book,
+and showed Moses where leaves were folded down. "Now here's this 'ere,"
+he said; "you get her to say it to you," he added, pointing to the
+well-known sacred idyl which has refreshed so many hearts:--
+
+    "There is a land of pure delight
+      Where saints immortal reign;
+    Eternal day excludes the night,
+      And pleasures banish pain.
+
+    "There everlasting spring abides,
+      And never-fading flowers;
+    Death like a narrow sea divides
+      This happy land from ours."
+
+"Now that ar beats everything," said the Captain, "and we must kind o'
+think of it for her, 'cause she's goin' to see all that, and ef it's our
+loss it's her gain, ye know."
+
+"I know," said Moses; "our grief is selfish."
+
+"Jest so. Wal', we're selfish critters, we be," said the Captain; "but
+arter all, 't ain't as ef we was heathen and didn't know where they was
+a-goin' to. We jest ought to be a-lookin' about and tryin' to foller
+'em, ye know."
+
+"Yes, yes, I do know," said Moses; "it's easy to say, but hard to do."
+
+"But law, man, she prays for you; she did years and years ago, when you
+was a boy and she a girl. You know it tells in the Revelations how the
+angels has golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of saints. I
+tell ye Moses, you ought to get into heaven, if no one else does. I
+expect you are pretty well known among the angels by this time. I tell
+ye what 'tis, Moses, fellers think it a mighty pretty thing to be
+a-steppin' high, and a-sayin' they don't believe the Bible, and all that
+ar, so long as the world goes well. This 'ere old Bible--why it's jest
+like yer mother,--ye rove and ramble, and cut up round the world without
+her a spell, and mebbe think the old woman ain't so fashionable as some;
+but when sickness and sorrow comes, why, there ain't nothin' else to go
+back to. Is there, now?"
+
+Moses did not answer, but he shook the hand of the Captain and turned
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+LAST WORDS
+
+
+The setting sun gleamed in at the window of Mara's chamber, tinted with
+rose and violet hues from a great cloud-castle that lay upon the smooth
+ocean over against the window. Mara was lying upon the bed, but she
+raised herself upon her elbow to look out.
+
+"Dear Aunt Roxy," she said, "raise me up and put the pillows behind me,
+so that I can see out--it is splendid."
+
+Aunt Roxy came and arranged the pillows, and lifted the girl with her
+long, strong arms, then stooping over her a moment she finished her
+arrangements by softly smoothing the hair from her forehead with a
+caressing movement most unlike her usual precise business-like
+proceedings.
+
+"I love you, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, looking up with a smile.
+
+Aunt Roxy made a strange wry face, which caused her to look harder than
+usual. She was choked with tenderness, and had only this uncomely way of
+showing it.
+
+"Law now, Mara, I don't see how ye can; I ain't nothin' but an old
+burdock-bush; love ain't for me."
+
+"Yes it is too," said Mara, drawing her down and kissing her withered
+cheek, "and you sha'n't call yourself an old burdock. God sees that you
+are beautiful, and in the resurrection everybody will see it."
+
+"I was always homely as an owl," said Miss Roxy, unconsciously speaking
+out what had lain like a stone at the bottom of even her sensible heart.
+"I always had sense to know it, and knew my sphere. Homely folks would
+like to say pretty things, and to have pretty things said to them, but
+they never do. I made up my mind pretty early that my part in the
+vineyard was to have hard work and no posies."
+
+"Well, you will have all the more in heaven; I love you dearly, and I
+like your looks, too. You look kind and true and good, and that's beauty
+in the country where we are going."
+
+Miss Roxy sprang up quickly from the bed, and turning her back began to
+arrange the bottles on the table with great zeal.
+
+"Has Moses come in yet?" said Mara.
+
+"No, there ain't nobody seen a thing of him since he went out this
+morning."
+
+"Poor boy!" said Mara, "it is too hard upon him. Aunt Roxy, please pick
+some roses off the bush from under the window and put in the vases;
+let's have the room as sweet and cheerful as we can. I hope God will let
+me live long enough to comfort him. It is not so very terrible, if one
+would only think so, to cross that river. All looks so bright to me now
+that I have forgotten how sorrow seemed. Poor Moses! he will have a hard
+struggle, but he will get the victory, too. I am very weak to-night, but
+to-morrow I shall feel better, and I shall sit up, and perhaps I can
+paint a little on that flower I was doing for him. We will not have
+things look sickly or deathly. There, Aunt Roxy, he has come in; I hear
+his step."
+
+"I didn't hear it," said Miss Roxy, surprised at the acute senses which
+sickness had etherealized to an almost spirit-like intensity. "Shall I
+call him?"
+
+"Yes, do," said Mara. "He can sit with me a little while to-night."
+
+The light in the room was a strange dusky mingling of gold and gloom,
+when Moses stole softly in. The great cloud-castle that a little while
+since had glowed like living gold from turret and battlement, now dim,
+changed for the most part to a sombre gray, enlivened with a dull glow
+of crimson; but there was still a golden light where the sun had sunk
+into the sea. Moses saw the little thin hand stretched out to him.
+
+"Sit down," she said; "it has been such a beautiful sunset. Did you
+notice it?"
+
+He sat down by the bed, leaning his forehead on his hand, but saying
+nothing.
+
+She drew her fingers through his dark hair. "I am so glad to see you,"
+she said. "It is such a comfort to me that you have come; and I hope it
+will be to you. You know I shall be better to-morrow than I am to-night,
+and I hope we shall have some pleasant days together yet. We mustn't
+reject what little we may have, because it cannot be more."
+
+"Oh, Mara," said Moses, "I would give my life, if I could take back the
+past. I have never been worthy of you; never knew your worth; never made
+you happy. You always lived for me, and I lived for myself. I deserve to
+lose you, but it is none the less bitter."
+
+"Don't say lose. Why must you? I cannot think of losing you. I know I
+shall not. God has given you to me. You will come to me and be mine at
+last. I feel sure of it."
+
+"You don't know me," said Moses.
+
+"Christ does, though," she said; "and He has promised to care for you.
+Yes, you will live to see many flowers grow out of my grave. You cannot
+think so now; but it will be so--believe me."
+
+"Mara," said Moses, "I never lived through such a day as this. It seems
+as if every moment of my life had been passing before me, and every
+moment of yours. I have seen how true and loving in thought and word and
+deed you have been, and I have been doing nothing but take. You have
+given love as the skies give rain, and I have drunk it up like the hot
+dusty earth."
+
+Mara knew in her own heart that this was all true, and she was too real
+to use any of the terms of affected humiliation which many think a kind
+of spiritual court language. She looked at him and answered, "Moses, I
+always knew I loved most. It was my nature; God gave it to me, and it
+was a gift for which I give him thanks--not a merit. I knew you had a
+larger, wider nature than mine,--a wider sphere to live in, and that you
+could not live in your heart as I did. Mine was all thought and feeling,
+and the narrow little duties of this little home. Yours went all round
+the world."
+
+"But, oh Mara--oh, my angel! to think I should lose you when I am just
+beginning to know your worth. I always had a sort of superstitious
+feeling,--a sacred presentiment about you,--that my spiritual life, if
+ever I had any, would come through you. It seemed if there ever was such
+a thing as God's providence, which some folks believe in, it was in
+leading me to you, and giving you to me. And now, to have all
+lashed--all destroyed--It makes me feel as if all was blind chance; no
+guiding God; for if he wanted me to be good, he would spare you."
+
+Mara lay with her large eyes fixed on the now faded sky. The dusky
+shadows had dropped like a black crape veil around her pale face. In a
+few moments she repeated to herself, as if she were musing upon them,
+those mysterious words of Him who liveth and was dead, "Except a corn of
+wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; if it die, it
+bringeth forth much fruit."
+
+"Moses," she said, "for all I know you have loved me dearly, yet I have
+felt that in all that was deepest and dearest to me, I was alone. You
+did not come near to me, nor touch me where I feel most deeply. If I had
+lived to be your wife, I cannot say but this distance in our spiritual
+nature might have widened. You know, what we live with we get used to;
+it grows an old story. Your love to me might have grown old and worn
+out. If we lived together in the commonplace toils of life, you would
+see only a poor threadbare wife. I might have lost what little charm I
+ever had for you; but I feel that if I die, this will not be. There is
+something sacred and beautiful in death; and I may have more power over
+you, when I seem to be gone, than I should have had living."
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara, don't say that."
+
+"Dear Moses, it is so. Think how many lovers marry, and how few lovers
+are left in middle life; and how few love and reverence living friends
+as they do the dead. There are only a very few to whom it is given to do
+that."
+
+Something in the heart of Moses told him that this was true. In this one
+day--the sacred revealing light of approaching death--he had seen more
+of the real spiritual beauty and significance of Mara's life than in
+years before, and felt upspringing in his heart, from the deep pathetic
+influence of the approaching spiritual world a new and stronger power of
+loving. It may be that it is not merely a perception of love that we
+were not aware of before, that wakes up when we approach the solemn
+shadows with a friend. It may be that the soul has compressed and
+unconscious powers which are stirred and wrought upon as it looks over
+the borders into its future home,--its loves and its longings so swell
+and beat, that they astonish itself. We are greater than we know, and
+dimly feel it with every approach to the great hereafter. "It doth not
+yet appear what we shall be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what 'tis," said Aunt Roxy, opening the door, "all
+the strength this 'ere girl spends a-talkin' to-night, will be so much
+taken out o' the whole cloth to-morrow."
+
+Moses started up. "I ought to have thought of that, Mara."
+
+"Ye see," said Miss Roxy, "she's been through a good deal to-day, and
+she must be got to sleep at some rate or other to-night. 'Lord, if he
+sleep he shall do well,' the Bible says, and it's one of my best nussin'
+maxims."
+
+"And a good one, too, Aunt Roxy," said Mara. "Good-night, dear boy; you
+see we must all mind Aunt Roxy."
+
+Moses bent down and kissed her, and felt her arms around his neck.
+
+"Let not your heart be troubled," she whispered. In spite of himself
+Moses felt the storm that had risen in his bosom that morning soothed by
+the gentle influences which Mara breathed upon it. There is a
+sympathetic power in all states of mind, and they who have reached the
+deep secret of eternal rest have a strange power of imparting calm to
+others.
+
+It was in the very crisis of the battle that Christ said to his
+disciples, "_My peace I give unto you_," and they that are made one with
+him acquire like precious power of shedding round them repose, as
+evening flowers shed odors. Moses went to his pillow sorrowful and
+heart-stricken, but bitter or despairing he could not be with the
+consciousness of that present angel in the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+THE PEARL
+
+
+The next morning rose calm and bright with that wonderful and mystical
+stillness and serenity which glorify autumn days. It was impossible that
+such skies could smile and such gentle airs blow the sea into one great
+waving floor of sparkling sapphires without bringing cheerfulness to
+human hearts. You must be very despairing indeed, when Nature is doing
+her best, to look her in the face sullen and defiant. So long as there
+is a drop of good in your cup, a penny in your exchequer of happiness, a
+bright day reminds you to look at it, and feel that all is not gone yet.
+
+So felt Moses when he stood in the door of the brown house, while Mrs.
+Pennel was clinking plates and spoons as she set the breakfast-table,
+and Zephaniah Pennel in his shirt-sleeves was washing in the back-room,
+while Miss Roxy came downstairs in a business-like fashion, bringing
+sundry bowls, plates, dishes, and mysterious pitchers from the
+sick-room.
+
+"Well, Aunt Roxy, you ain't one that lets the grass grow under your
+feet," said Mrs. Pennel. "How is the dear child, this morning?"
+
+"Well, she had a better night than one could have expected," said Miss
+Roxy, "and by the time she's had her breakfast, she expects to sit up a
+little and see her friends." Miss Roxy said this in a cheerful tone,
+looking encouragingly at Moses, whom she began to pity and patronize,
+now she saw how real was his affliction.
+
+After breakfast Moses went to see her; she was sitting up in her white
+dressing-gown, looking so thin and poorly, and everything in the room
+was fragrant with the spicy smell of the monthly roses, whose late buds
+and blossoms Miss Roxy had gathered for the vases. She seemed so
+natural, so calm and cheerful, so interested in all that went on around
+her, that one almost forgot that the time of her stay must be so short.
+She called Moses to come and look at her drawings, and paintings of
+flowers and birds,--full of reminders they were of old times,--and then
+she would have her pencils and colors, and work a little on a bunch of
+red rock-columbine, that she had begun to do for him; and she chatted of
+all the old familiar places where flowers grew, and of the old talks
+they had had there, till Moses quite forgot himself; forgot that he was
+in a sick room, till Aunt Roxy, warned by the deepening color on Mara's
+cheeks, interposed her "nussing" authority, that she must do no more
+that day.
+
+Then Moses laid her down, and arranged her pillows so that she could
+look out on the sea, and sat and read to her till it was time for her
+afternoon nap; and when the evening shadows drew on, he marveled with
+himself how the day had gone.
+
+Many such there were, all that pleasant month of September, and he was
+with her all the time, watching her wants and doing her
+bidding,--reading over and over with a softened modulation her favorite
+hymns and chapters, arranging her flowers, and bringing her home wild
+bouquets from all her favorite wood-haunts, which made her sick-room
+seem like some sylvan bower. Sally Kittridge was there too, almost every
+day, with always some friendly offering or some helpful deed of
+kindness, and sometimes they two together would keep guard over the
+invalid while Miss Roxy went home to attend to some of her own more
+peculiar concerns. Mara seemed to rule all around her with calm
+sweetness and wisdom, speaking unconsciously only the speech of heaven,
+talking of spiritual things, not in an excited rapture or wild ecstasy,
+but with the sober certainty of waking bliss. She seemed like one of the
+sweet friendly angels one reads of in the Old Testament, so lovingly
+companionable, walking and talking, eating and drinking, with mortals,
+yet ready at any unknown moment to ascend with the flame of some
+sacrifice and be gone. There are those (a few at least) whose blessing
+it has been to have kept for many days, in bonds of earthly fellowship,
+a perfected spirit in whom the work of purifying love was wholly done,
+who lived in calm victory over sin and sorrow and death, ready at any
+moment to be called to the final mystery of joy.
+
+Yet it must come at last, the moment when heaven claims its own, and it
+came at last in the cottage on Orr's Island. There came a day when the
+room so sacredly cheerful was hushed to a breathless stillness; the bed
+was then all snowy white, and that soft still sealed face, the parted
+waves of golden hair, the little hands folded over the white robe, all
+had a sacred and wonderful calm, a rapture of repose that seemed to say
+"it is done."
+
+They who looked on her wondered; it was a look that sunk deep into every
+heart; it hushed down the common cant of those who, according to country
+custom, went to stare blindly at the great mystery of death,--for all
+that came out of that chamber smote upon their breasts and went away in
+silence, revolving strangely whence might come that unearthly beauty,
+that celestial joy.
+
+Once more, in that very room where James and Naomi Lincoln had lain side
+by side in their coffins, sleeping restfully, there was laid another
+form, shrouded and coffined, but with such a fairness and tender purity,
+such a mysterious fullness of joy in its expression, that it seemed more
+natural to speak of that rest as some higher form of life than of
+death.
+
+Once more were gathered the neighborhood; all the faces known in this
+history shone out in one solemn picture, of which that sweet restful
+form was the centre. Zephaniah Pennel and Mary his wife, Moses and
+Sally, the dry form of Captain Kittridge and the solemn face of his
+wife, Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, Miss Emily and Mr. Sewell; but their
+faces all wore a tender brightness, such as we see falling like a thin
+celestial veil over all the faces in an old Florentine painting. The
+room was full of sweet memories, of words of cheer, words of assurance,
+words of triumph, and the mysterious brightness of that young face
+forbade them to weep. Solemnly Mr. Sewell read,--
+
+"He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away
+tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take
+away from off all the earth; for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall
+be said in that day, Lo this is our God; we have waited for him, and he
+will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad
+and rejoice in his salvation."
+
+Then the prayer trembled up to heaven with thanksgiving, for the early
+entrance of that fair young saint into glory, and then the same old
+funeral hymn, with its mournful triumph:--
+
+    "Why should we mourn departed friends,
+      Or shake at death's alarms,
+    'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends
+      To call them to his arms."
+
+Then in a few words Mr. Sewell reminded them how that hymn had been sung
+in this room so many years ago, when that frail, fluttering orphan soul
+had been baptized into the love and care of Jesus, and how her whole
+life, passing before them in its simplicity and beauty, had come to so
+holy and beautiful a close; and when, pointing to the calm sleeping face
+he asked, "Would we call her back?" there was not a heart at that moment
+that dared answer, Yes. Even he that should have been her bridegroom
+could not at that moment have unsealed the holy charm, and so they bore
+her away, and laid the calm smiling face beneath the soil, by the side
+of poor Dolores.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I had a beautiful dream last night," said Zephaniah Pennel, the next
+morning after the funeral, as he opened his Bible to conduct family
+worship.
+
+"What was it?" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"Well, ye see, I thought I was out a-walkin' up and down, and lookin'
+and lookin' for something that I'd lost. What it was I couldn't quite
+make out, but my heart felt heavy as if it would break, and I was
+lookin' all up and down the sands by the seashore, and somebody said I
+was like the merchantman, seeking goodly pearls. I said I had lost my
+pearl--my pearl of great price--and then I looked up, and far off on the
+beach, shining softly on the wet sands, lay my pearl. I thought it was
+Mara, but it seemed a great pearl with a soft moonlight on it; and I was
+running for it when some one said 'hush,' and I looked and I saw _Him_
+a-coming--Jesus of Nazareth, jist as he walked by the sea of Galilee. It
+was all dark night around Him, but I could see Him by the light that
+came from his face, and the long hair was hanging down on his shoulders.
+He came and took up my pearl and put it on his forehead, and it shone
+out like a star, and shone into my heart, and I felt happy; and he
+looked at me steadily, and rose and rose in the air, and melted in the
+clouds, and I awoke so happy, and so calm!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+FOUR YEARS AFTER
+
+
+It was a splendid evening in July, and the sky was filled high with
+gorgeous tabernacles of purple and gold, the remains of a grand
+thunder-shower which had freshened the air and set a separate jewel on
+every needle leaf of the old pines.
+
+Four years had passed since the fair Pearl of Orr's Island had been laid
+beneath the gentle soil, which every year sent monthly tributes of
+flowers to adorn her rest, great blue violets, and starry flocks of
+ethereal eye-brights in spring, and fringy asters, and goldenrod in
+autumn. In those days, the tender sentiment which now makes the
+burial-place a cultivated garden was excluded by the rigid spiritualism
+of the Puritan life, which, ever jealous of that which concerned the
+body, lest it should claim what belonged to the immortal alone, had
+frowned on all watching of graves, as an earthward tendency, and
+enjoined the flight of faith with the spirit, rather than the yearning
+for its cast-off garments.
+
+But Sally Kittridge, being lonely, found something in her heart which
+could only be comforted by visits to that grave. So she had planted
+there roses and trailing myrtle, and tended and watered them; a
+proceeding which was much commented on Sunday noons, when people were
+eating their dinners and discussing their neighbors.
+
+It is possible good Mrs. Kittridge might have been much scandalized by
+it, had she been in a condition to think on the matter at all; but a
+very short time after the funeral she was seized with a paralytic
+shock, which left her for a while as helpless as an infant; and then she
+sank away into the grave, leaving Sally the sole care of the old
+Captain.
+
+A cheerful home she made, too, for his old age, adorning the house with
+many little tasteful fancies unknown in her mother's days; reading the
+Bible to him and singing Mara's favorite hymns, with a voice as sweet as
+the spring blue-bird. The spirit of the departed friend seemed to hallow
+the dwelling where these two worshiped her memory, in simple-hearted
+love. Her paintings, framed in quaint woodland frames of moss and
+pine-cones by Sally's own ingenuity, adorned the walls. Her books were
+on the table, and among them many that she had given to Moses.
+
+"I am going to be a wanderer for many years," he said in parting, "keep
+these for me until I come back."
+
+And so from time to time passed long letters between the two
+friends,--each telling to the other the same story,--that they were
+lonely, and that their hearts yearned for the communion of one who could
+no longer be manifest to the senses. And each spoke to the other of a
+world of hopes and memories buried with her, "Which," each so constantly
+said, "no one could understand but you." Each, too, was firm in the
+faith that buried love must have no earthly resurrection. Every letter
+strenuously insisted that they should call each other brother and
+sister, and under cover of those names the letters grew longer and more
+frequent, and with every chance opportunity came presents from the
+absent brother, which made the little old cottage quaintly suggestive
+with smell of spice and sandal-wood.
+
+But, as we said, this is a glorious July evening,--and you may discern
+two figures picking their way over those low sunken rocks, yellowed with
+seaweed, of which we have often spoken. They are Moses and Sally going
+on an evening walk to that favorite grotto retreat, which has so often
+been spoken of in the course of this history.
+
+Moses has come home from long wanderings. It is four years since they
+parted, and now they meet and have looked into each other's eyes, not as
+of old, when they met in the first giddy flush of youth, but as fully
+developed man and woman. Moses and Sally had just risen from the
+tea-table, where she had presided with a thoughtful housewifery gravity,
+just pleasantly dashed with quaint streaks of her old merry willfulness,
+while the old Captain, warmed up like a rheumatic grasshopper in a fine
+autumn day, chirruped feebly, and told some of his old stories, which
+now he told every day, forgetting that they had ever been heard before.
+Somehow all three had been very happy; the more so, from a shadowy sense
+of some sympathizing presence which was rejoicing to see them together
+again, and which, stealing soft-footed and noiseless everywhere, touched
+and lighted up every old familiar object with sweet memories.
+
+And so they had gone out together to walk; to walk towards the grotto
+where Sally had caused a seat to be made, and where she declared she had
+passed hours and hours, knitting, sewing, or reading.
+
+"Sally," said Moses, "do you know I am tired of wandering? I am coming
+home now. I begin to want a home of my own." This he said as they sat
+together on the rustic seat and looked off on the blue sea.
+
+"Yes, you must," said Sally. "How lovely that ship looks, just coming in
+there."
+
+"Yes, they are beautiful," said Moses abstractedly; and Sally rattled on
+about the difference between sloops and brigs; seeming determined that
+there should be no silence, such as often comes in ominous gaps between
+two friends who have long been separated, and have each many things to
+say with which the other is not familiar.
+
+"Sally!" said Moses, breaking in with a deep voice on one of these
+monologues. "Do you remember some presumptuous things I once said to
+you, in this place?"
+
+Sally did not answer, and there was a dead silence in which they could
+hear the tide gently dashing on the weedy rocks.
+
+"You and I are neither of us what we were then, Sally," said Moses. "We
+are as different as if we were each another person. We have been trained
+in another life,--educated by a great sorrow,--is it not so?"
+
+"I know it," said Sally.
+
+"And why should we two, who have a world of thoughts and memories which
+no one can understand but the other,--why should we, each of us, go on
+alone? If we must, why then, Sally, I must leave you, and I must write
+and receive no more letters, for I have found that you are becoming so
+wholly necessary to me, that if any other should claim you, I could not
+feel as I ought. Must I go?"
+
+Sally's answer is not on record; but one infers what it was from the
+fact that they sat there very late, and before they knew it, the tide
+rose up and shut them in, and the moon rose up in full glory out of the
+water, and still they sat and talked, leaning on each other, till a
+cracked, feeble voice called down through the pine-trees above, like a
+hoarse old cricket,--
+
+"Children, be you there?"
+
+"Yes, father," said Sally, blushing and conscious.
+
+"Yes, all right," said the deep bass of Moses. "I'll bring her back when
+I've done with her, Captain."
+
+"Wal',--wal'; I was gettin' consarned; but I see I don't need to. I hope
+you won't get no colds nor nothin'."
+
+They did not; but in the course of a month there was a wedding at the
+brown house of the old Captain, which everybody in the parish was glad
+of, and was voted without dissent to be just the thing.
+
+Miss Roxy, grimly approbative, presided over the preparations, and all
+the characters of our story appeared, and more, having on their
+wedding-garments. Nor was the wedding less joyful, that all felt the
+presence of a heavenly guest, silent and loving, seeing and blessing
+all, whose voice seemed to say in every heart,--
+
+"He turneth the shadow of death into morning."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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+
+Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Pearl of Orr's Island
+       A Story of the Coast of Maine
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: March 6, 2010 [EBook #31522]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i-ii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE</h2>
+
+<h1>PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND</h1>
+
+
+<h3>A Story of the Coast of Maine</h3>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>HARRIET BEECHER STOWE<br /><br /></h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h4>BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br />
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br /><br />
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br />
+1896</h4>
+
+<div><a name="vignette" id="vignette"></a></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 315px;">
+<img src="images/vignette.jpg" width="315" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg iii-iv]</a></span><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1862 and 1890,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.<br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1896,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO.<br /></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i><br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.<br /></i>
+Electrotyped and Printed by H.O. Houghton &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<div><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a></div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="383" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="toc">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#INTRODUCTORY_NOTE">Introductory Note</a></span></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>CHAPTER</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Naomi</span></td>
+<td align='right'>1</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mara</span></td>
+<td align='right'>5</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Baptism and the Burial</span></td>
+<td align='right'>9</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey</span></td>
+<td align='right'>15</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Kittridges</span></td>
+<td align='right'>25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Grandparents</span></td>
+<td align='right'>36</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">From the Sea</span></td>
+<td align='right'>47</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Seen and the Unseen</span></td>
+<td align='right'>58</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Moses</span></td>
+<td align='right'>74</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Minister</span></td>
+<td align='right'>85</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Little Adventurers</span></td>
+<td align='right'>99</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sea Tales</span></td>
+<td align='right'>110</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Boy and Girl</span></td>
+<td align='right'>120</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Enchanted Island</span></td>
+<td align='right'>132</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Home Coming</span></td>
+<td align='right'>143</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Natural and the Spiritual</span></td>
+<td align='right'>154</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lessons</span></td>
+<td align='right'>165</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Sally</span></td>
+<td align='right'>175</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Eighteen</span></td>
+<td align='right'>179</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Rebellion</span></td>
+<td align='right'>186</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Tempter</span></td>
+<td align='right'>198</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Friend in Need</span></td>
+<td align='right'>208</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Beginning of the Story</span></td>
+<td align='right'>218</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Desires and Dreams</span></td>
+<td align='right'>229</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Miss Emily</span></td>
+<td align='right'>235</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Dolores</span></td>
+<td align='right'>245</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hidden Things</span></td>
+<td align='right'>258</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Coquette</span></td>
+<td align='right'>270</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Night Talks</span></td>
+<td align='right'>279</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Launch of the Ariel</span></td>
+<td align='right'>290</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Greek meets Greek</span></td>
+<td align='right'>303</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Betrothal</span></td>
+<td align='right'>315</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">At a Quilting</span></td>
+<td align='right'>323</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Friends</span></td>
+<td align='right'>329</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Toothacre Cottage</span></td>
+<td align='right'>335</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">XXXVI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Shadow of Death</span></td>
+<td align='right'>339</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">XXXVII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Victory</span></td>
+<td align='right'>351</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">XXXVIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Open Vision</span></td>
+<td align='right'>358</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">XXXIX.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Land of Beulah</span></td>
+<td align='right'>368</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XL">XL.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Meeting</span></td>
+<td align='right'>376</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLI">XLI.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Consolation</span></td>
+<td align='right'>380</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLII">XLII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Last Words</span></td>
+<td align='right'>387</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIII">XLIII.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Pearl</span></td>
+<td align='right'>393</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_XLIV">XLIV.</a></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Four Years After</span></td>
+<td align='right'>398</td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><a name="tn" id="tn"></a>The <a href="#frontis">frontispiece</a> (Mara, page <a href="#Page_376">376</a>) was drawn by W.L. Taylor. The
+<a href="#vignette">vignette</a> was etched by Charles H. Woodbury.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTORY_NOTE" id="INTRODUCTORY_NOTE"></a>INTRODUCTORY NOTE</h2>
+
+
+<p>The publication of <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>, though much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
+more than an incident in an author's career, seems to have
+determined Mrs. Stowe more surely in her purpose to devote
+herself to literature. During the summer following
+its appearance, she was in Andover, making over the house
+which she and her husband were to occupy upon leaving
+Brunswick; and yet, busy as she was, she was writing articles
+for <i>The Independent</i> and <i>The National Era</i>. The
+following extract from a letter written at that time, July
+29, 1852, intimates that she already was sketching the
+outline of the story which later grew into <i>The Pearl of
+Orr's Island</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to have so much to fill my time, and yet there
+is my Maine story waiting. However, I am composing it
+every day, only I greatly need living studies for the filling
+in of my sketches. There is old Jonas, my "fish father,"
+a sturdy, independent fisherman farmer, who in his youth
+sailed all over the world and made up his mind about
+everything. In his old age he attends prayer-meetings and
+reads the <i>Missionary Herald</i>. He also has plenty of money
+in an old brown sea-chest. He is a great heart with an
+inflexible will and iron muscles. I must go to Orr's Island
+and see him again." The story seems to have remained in
+her mind, for we are told by her son that she worked upon
+it by turns with <i>The Minister's Wooing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, until eight years later, after <i>The
+Minister's Wooing</i> had been published and <i>Agnes of Sorrento</i>
+was well begun, that she took up her old story in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+earnest and set about making it into a short serial. It
+would seem that her first intention was to confine herself
+to a sketch of the childhood of her chief characters, with a
+view to delineating the influences at work upon them; but,
+as she herself expressed it, "Out of the simple history of
+the little Pearl of Orr's Island as it had shaped itself in her
+mind, rose up a Captain Kittridge with his garrulous yarns,
+and Misses Roxy and Ruey, given to talk, and a whole
+pigeon roost of yet undreamed of fancies and dreams which
+would insist on being written." So it came about that the
+story as originally planned came to a stopping place at the
+end of Chapter XVII., as the reader may see when he reaches
+that place. The childish life of her characters ended there,
+and a lapse of ten years was assumed before their story was
+taken up again in the next chapter. The book when published
+had no chapter headings. These have been supplied
+in the present edition.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PEARL_OF_ORRS_ISLAND" id="THE_PEARL_OF_ORRS_ISLAND"></a>THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>NAOMI</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath,
+in the State of Maine, might have been seen, on a certain
+autumnal afternoon, a one-horse wagon, in which two persons
+were sitting. One was an old man, with the peculiarly
+hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes the
+seafaring population of the New England shores. A clear
+blue eye, evidently practiced in habits of keen observation,
+white hair, bronzed, weather-beaten cheeks, and a face
+deeply lined with the furrows of shrewd thought and anxious
+care, were points of the portrait that made themselves
+felt at a glance.</p>
+
+<p>By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of a
+marked and peculiar personal appearance. Her hair was
+black, and smoothly parted on a broad forehead, to which
+a pair of penciled dark eyebrows gave a striking and definite
+outline. Beneath, lay a pair of large black eyes, remarkable
+for tremulous expression of melancholy and timidity.
+The cheek was white and bloodless as a snowberry, though
+with the clear and perfect oval of good health; the mouth
+was delicately formed, with a certain sad quiet in its lines,
+which indicated a habitually repressed and sensitive nature.</p>
+
+<p>The dress of this young person, as often happens in New
+England, was, in refinement and even elegance, a marked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+contrast to that of her male companion and to the humble
+vehicle in which she rode. There was not only the most
+fastidious neatness, but a delicacy in the choice of colors,
+an indication of elegant tastes in the whole arrangement,
+and the quietest suggestion in the world of an acquaintance
+with the usages of fashion, which struck one oddly
+in those wild and dreary surroundings. On the whole, she
+impressed one like those fragile wild-flowers which in April
+cast their fluttering shadows from the mossy crevices of
+the old New England granite,&mdash;an existence in which
+colorless delicacy is united to a sort of elastic hardihood
+of life, fit for the rocky soil and harsh winds it is born to
+encounter.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery of the road along which the two were riding
+was wild and bare. Only savins and mulleins, with their
+dark pyramids or white spires of velvet leaves, diversified
+the sandy wayside; but out at sea was a wide sweep of
+blue, reaching far to the open ocean, which lay rolling,
+tossing, and breaking into white caps of foam in the
+bright sunshine. For two or three days a northeast storm
+had been raging, and the sea was in all the commotion
+which such a general upturning creates.</p>
+
+<p>The two travelers reached a point of elevated land,
+where they paused a moment, and the man drew up the
+jogging, stiff-jointed old farm-horse, and raised himself
+upon his feet to look out at the prospect.</p>
+
+<p>There might be seen in the distance the blue Kennebec
+sweeping out toward the ocean through its picturesque
+rocky shores, docked with cedars and other dusky evergreens,
+which were illuminated by the orange and flame-colored
+trees of Indian summer. Here and there scarlet
+creepers swung long trailing garlands over the faces of the
+dark rock, and fringes of goldenrod above swayed with
+the brisk blowing wind that was driving the blue waters
+seaward, in face of the up-coming ocean tide,&mdash;a conflict<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+which caused them to rise in great foam-crested waves.
+There are two channels into this river from the open sea,
+navigable for ships which are coming in to the city of
+Bath; one is broad and shallow, the other narrow and
+deep, and these are divided by a steep ledge of rocks.</p>
+
+<p>Where the spectators of this scene were sitting, they
+could see in the distance a ship borne with tremendous
+force by the rising tide into the mouth of the river, and
+encountering a northwest wind which had succeeded the
+gale, as northwest winds often do on this coast. The
+ship, from what might be observed in the distance, seemed
+struggling to make the wider channel, but was constantly
+driven off by the baffling force of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"There she is, Naomi," said the old fisherman, eagerly,
+to his companion, "coming right in." The young woman
+was one of the sort that never start, and never exclaim,
+but with all deeper emotions grow still. The color slowly
+mounted into her cheek, her lips parted, and her eyes
+dilated with a wide, bright expression; her breathing came
+in thick gasps, but she said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The old fisherman stood up in the wagon, his coarse,
+butternut-colored coat-flaps fluttering and snapping in the
+breeze, while his interest seemed to be so intense in the
+efforts of the ship that he made involuntary and eager
+movements as if to direct her course. A moment passed,
+and his keen, practiced eye discovered a change in her
+movements, for he cried out involuntarily,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Don't</i> take the narrow channel to-day!" and a moment
+after, "O Lord! O Lord! have mercy,&mdash;there they
+go! Look! look! look!"</p>
+
+<p>And, in fact, the ship rose on a great wave clear out of
+the water, and the next second seemed to leap with a desperate
+plunge into the narrow passage; for a moment there
+was a shivering of the masts and the rigging, and she went
+down and was gone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They're split to pieces!" cried the fisherman. "Oh,
+my poor girl&mdash;my poor girl&mdash;they're gone! O Lord,
+have mercy!"</p>
+
+<p>The woman lifted up no voice, but, as one who has been
+shot through the heart falls with no cry, she fell back,&mdash;a
+mist rose up over her great mournful eyes,&mdash;she had
+fainted.</p>
+
+<p>The story of this wreck of a home-bound ship just entering
+the harbor is yet told in many a family on this
+coast. A few hours after, the unfortunate crew were
+washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in which they
+had attired themselves that morning to go to their sisters,
+wives, and mothers.</p>
+
+<p>This is the first scene in our story.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>MARA</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>Down near the end of Orr's Island, facing the open
+ocean, stands a brown house of the kind that the natives
+call "lean-to," or "linter,"&mdash;one of those large, comfortable
+structures, barren in the ideal, but rich in the practical,
+which the workingman of New England can always
+command. The waters of the ocean came up within a rod
+of this house, and the sound of its moaning waves was
+even now filling the clear autumn starlight. Evidently
+something was going on within, for candles fluttered and
+winked from window to window, like fireflies in a dark
+meadow, and sounds as of quick footsteps, and the flutter
+of brushing garments, might be heard.</p>
+
+<p>Something unusual is certainly going on within the
+dwelling of Zephaniah Pennel to-night.</p>
+
+<p>Let us enter the dark front-door. We feel our way to
+the right, where a solitary ray of light comes from the
+chink of a half-opened door. Here is the front room of
+the house, set apart as its place of especial social hilarity
+and sanctity,&mdash;the "best room," with its low studded
+walls, white dimity window-curtains, rag carpet, and polished
+wood chairs. It is now lit by the dim gleam of a
+solitary tallow candle, which seems in the gloom to make
+only a feeble circle of light around itself, leaving all the
+rest of the apartment in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the room, stretched upon a table, and
+covered partially by a sea-cloak, lies the body of a man of
+twenty-five,&mdash;lies, too, evidently as one of whom it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+written, "He shall return to his house no more, neither
+shall his place know him any more." A splendid manhood
+has suddenly been called to forsake that lifeless form, leaving
+it, like a deserted palace, beautiful in its desolation.
+The hair, dripping with the salt wave, curled in glossy
+abundance on the finely-formed head; the flat, broad brow;
+the closed eye, with its long black lashes; the firm, manly
+mouth; the strongly-moulded chin,&mdash;all, all were sealed
+with that seal which is never to be broken till the great
+resurrection day.</p>
+
+<p>He was lying in a full suit of broadcloth, with a white
+vest and smart blue neck-tie, fastened with a pin, in which
+was some braided hair under a crystal. All his clothing,
+as well as his hair, was saturated with sea-water, which
+trickled from time to time, and struck with a leaden and
+dropping sound into a sullen pool which lay under the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>This was the body of James Lincoln, ship-master of the
+brig Flying Scud, who that morning had dressed himself
+gayly in his state-room to go on shore and meet his wife,&mdash;singing
+and jesting as he did so.</p>
+
+<p>This is all that you have to learn in the room below;
+but as we stand there, we hear a trampling of feet in the
+apartment above,&mdash;the quick yet careful opening and
+shutting of doors,&mdash;and voices come and go about the
+house, and whisper consultations on the stairs. Now comes
+the roll of wheels, and the Doctor's gig drives up to the
+door; and, as he goes creaking up with his heavy boots,
+we will follow and gain admission to the dimly-lighted
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Two gossips are sitting in earnest, whispering conversation
+over a small bundle done up in an old flannel petticoat.
+To them the doctor is about to address himself
+cheerily, but is repelled by sundry signs and sounds which
+warn him not to speak. Moderating his heavy boots as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+well as he is able to a pace of quiet, he advances for a
+moment, and the petticoat is unfolded for him to glance at
+its contents; while a low, eager, whispered conversation,
+attended with much head-shaking, warns him that his first
+duty is with somebody behind the checked curtains of a
+bed in the farther corner of the room. He steps on tiptoe,
+and draws the curtain; and there, with closed eye, and
+cheek as white as wintry snow, lies the same face over
+which passed the shadow of death when that ill-fated ship
+went down.</p>
+
+<p>This woman was wife to him who lies below, and within
+the hour has been made mother to a frail little human
+existence, which the storm of a great anguish has driven
+untimely on the shores of life,&mdash;a precious pearl cast up
+from the past eternity upon the wet, wave-ribbed sand of
+the present. Now, weary with her moanings, and beaten
+out with the wrench of a double anguish, she lies with
+closed eyes in that passive apathy which precedes deeper
+shadows and longer rest.</p>
+
+<p>Over against her, on the other side of the bed, sits an
+aged woman in an attitude of deep dejection, and the old
+man we saw with her in the morning is standing with an
+anxious, awestruck face at the foot of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor feels the pulse of the woman, or rather lays
+an inquiring finger where the slightest thread of vital current
+is scarcely throbbing, and shakes his head mournfully.
+The touch of his hand rouses her,&mdash;her large wild, melancholy
+eyes fix themselves on him with an inquiring glance,
+then she shivers and moans,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!&mdash;Jamie, Jamie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!" said the doctor, "cheer up, my girl,
+you've got a fine little daughter,&mdash;the Lord mingles mercies
+with his afflictions."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes closed, her head moved with a mournful but
+decided dissent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A moment after she spoke in the sad old words of the
+Hebrew Scripture,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Call her not Naomi; call her Mara, for the Almighty
+hath dealt very bitterly with me."</p>
+
+<p>And as she spoke, there passed over her face the sharp
+frost of the last winter; but even as it passed there broke
+out a smile, as if a flower had been thrown down from
+Paradise, and she said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Not my will, but thy will," and so was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey were soon left alone in the
+chamber of death.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll make a beautiful corpse," said Aunt Roxy, surveying
+the still, white form contemplatively, with her head
+in an artistic attitude.</p>
+
+<p>"She was a pretty girl," said Aunt Ruey; "dear me,
+what a Providence! I 'member the wedd'n down in that
+lower room, and what a handsome couple they were."</p>
+
+<p>"They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in
+their deaths they were not divided," said Aunt Roxy, sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>"What was it she said, did ye hear?" said Aunt Ruey.</p>
+
+<p>"She called the baby 'Mary.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! sure enough, her mother's name afore her. What
+a still, softly-spoken thing she always was!"</p>
+
+<p>"A pity the poor baby didn't go with her," said Aunt
+Roxy; "seven-months' children are so hard to raise."</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a pity," said the other.</p>
+
+<p>But babies will live, and all the more when everybody
+says that it is a pity they should. Life goes on as inexorably
+in this world as death. It was ordered by <span class="smcap">the Will</span>
+above that out of these two graves should spring one frail,
+trembling autumn flower,&mdash;the "Mara" whose poor little
+roots first struck deep in the salt, bitter waters of our
+mortal life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>Now, I cannot think of anything more unlikely and
+uninteresting to make a story of than that old brown "linter"
+house of Captain Zephaniah Pennel, down on the
+south end of Orr's Island.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah and Mary Pennel, like Zacharias and Elizabeth,
+are a pair of worthy, God-fearing people, walking in
+all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless;
+but that is no great recommendation to a world gaping
+for sensation and calling for something stimulating.
+This worthy couple never read anything but the Bible, the
+"Missionary Herald," and the "Christian Mirror,"&mdash;never
+went anywhere except in the round of daily business.
+He owned a fishing-smack, in which he labored after the
+apostolic fashion; and she washed, and ironed, and scrubbed,
+and brewed, and baked, in her contented round, week in
+and out. The only recreation they ever enjoyed was the
+going once a week, in good weather, to a prayer-meeting in
+a little old brown school-house, about a mile from their
+dwelling; and making a weekly excursion every Sunday,
+in their fishing craft, to the church opposite, on Harpswell
+Neck.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure, Zephaniah had read many wide leaves of
+God's great book of Nature, for, like most Maine sea-captains,
+he had been wherever ship can go,&mdash;to all usual
+and unusual ports. His hard, shrewd, weather-beaten visage
+had been seen looking over the railings of his brig in
+the port of Genoa, swept round by its splendid crescent of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+palaces and its snow-crested Apennines. It had looked out
+in the Lagoons of Venice at that wavy floor which in evening
+seems a sea of glass mingled with fire, and out of which
+rise temples, and palaces, and churches, and distant silvery
+Alps, like so many fabrics of dreamland. He had been
+through the Skagerrack and Cattegat,&mdash;into the Baltic,
+and away round to Archangel, and there chewed a bit of
+chip, and considered and calculated what bargains it was
+best to make. He had walked the streets of Calcutta in
+his shirt-sleeves, with his best Sunday vest, backed with
+black glazed cambric, which six months before came from
+the hands of Miss Roxy, and was pronounced by her to be
+as good as any tailor could make; and in all these places
+he was just Zephaniah Pennel,&mdash;a chip of old Maine,&mdash;thrifty,
+careful, shrewd, honest, God-fearing, and carrying
+an instinctive knowledge of men and things under a face of
+rustic simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>It was once, returning from one of his voyages, that he
+found his wife with a black-eyed, curly-headed little creature,
+who called him papa, and climbed on his knee, nestled
+under his coat, rifled his pockets, and woke him every
+morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and
+jabbering unintelligible dialects in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"We will call this child Naomi, wife," he said, after
+consulting his old Bible; "for that means pleasant, and
+I'm sure I never see anything beat her for pleasantness.
+I never knew as children was so engagin'!"</p>
+
+<p>It was to be remarked that Zephaniah after this made
+shorter and shorter voyages, being somehow conscious of
+a string around his heart which pulled him harder and
+harder, till one Sunday, when the little Naomi was five
+years old, he said to his wife,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I ain't a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but
+I can't help thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of
+heaven is like a merchantman seeking goodly pearls, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+when he hath found one pearl of great price, for joy thereof
+he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that
+pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last
+week," he said, folding his daughter's little quiet head
+under his coat, "'cause it seems to me the Lord's given us
+this pearl of great price, and it's enough for us. I don't
+want to be rambling round the world after riches. We'll
+have a little farm down on Orr's Island, and I'll have a
+little fishing-smack, and we'll live and be happy together."</p>
+
+<p>And so Mary, who in those days was a pretty young
+married woman, felt herself rich and happy,&mdash;no duchess
+richer or happier. The two contentedly delved and toiled,
+and the little Naomi was their princess. The wise men of
+the East at the feet of an infant, offering gifts, gold, frankincense,
+and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in
+every house where there is a young child. All the hard
+and the harsh, and the common and the disagreeable, is for
+the parents,&mdash;all the bright and beautiful for their child.</p>
+
+<p>When the fishing-smack went to Portland to sell mackerel,
+there came home in Zephaniah's fishy coat pocket
+strings of coral beads, tiny gaiter boots, brilliant silks and
+ribbons for the little fairy princess,&mdash;his Pearl of the
+Island; and sometimes, when a stray party from the neighboring
+town of Brunswick came down to explore the romantic
+scenery of the solitary island, they would be startled
+by the apparition of this still, graceful, dark-eyed child
+exquisitely dressed in the best and brightest that the shops
+of a neighboring city could afford,&mdash;sitting like some tropical
+bird on a lonely rock, where the sea came dashing up
+into the edges of arbor vit&aelig;, or tripping along the wet
+sands for shells and seaweed.</p>
+
+<p>Many children would have been spoiled by such unlimited
+indulgence; but there are natures sent down into this
+harsh world so timorous, and sensitive, and helpless in
+themselves, that the utmost stretch of indulgence and kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>ness
+is needed for their development,&mdash;like plants which
+the warmest shelf of the green-house and the most careful
+watch of the gardener alone can bring into flower. The
+pale child, with her large, lustrous, dark eyes, and sensitive
+organization, was nursed and brooded into a beautiful
+womanhood, and then found a protector in a high-spirited,
+manly young ship-master, and she became his wife.</p>
+
+<p>And now we see in the best room&mdash;the walls lined with
+serious faces&mdash;men, women, and children, that have come
+to pay the last tribute of sympathy to the living and the
+dead. The house looked so utterly alone and solitary in
+that wild, sea-girt island, that one would have as soon expected
+the sea-waves to rise and walk in, as so many neighbors;
+but they had come from neighboring points, crossing
+the glassy sea in their little crafts, whose white sails looked
+like millers' wings, or walking miles from distant parts of
+the island.</p>
+
+<p>Some writer calls a funeral one of the amusements of
+a New England population. Must we call it an amusement
+to go and see the acted despair of Medea? or the dying
+agonies of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur? It is something of
+the same awful interest in life's tragedy, which makes an
+untaught and primitive people gather to a funeral,&mdash;a
+tragedy where there is no acting,&mdash;and one which each
+one feels must come at some time to his own dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, here was a roomful. Not only Aunt
+Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who by a prescriptive right presided
+over all the births, deaths, and marriages of the neighborhood,
+but there was Captain Kittridge, a long, dry, weather-beaten
+old sea-captain, who sat as if tied in a double bow-knot,
+with his little fussy old wife, with a great Leghorn
+bonnet, and eyes like black glass beads shining through
+in the bows of her horn spectacles, and her hymn-book in
+her hand ready to lead the psalm. There were aunts,
+uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased; and in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+midst stood two coffins, where the two united in death lay
+sleeping tenderly, as those to whom rest is good. All was
+still as death, except a chance whisper from some busy
+neighbor, or a creak of an old lady's great black fan, or the
+fizz of a fly down the window-pane, and then a stifled
+sound of deep-drawn breath and weeping from under a
+cloud of heavy black crape veils, that were together in the
+group which country-people call the mourners.</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of autumn sunlight streamed through the white
+curtains, and fell on a silver baptismal vase that stood on
+the mother's coffin, as the minister rose and said, "The
+ordinance of baptism will now be administered." A few
+moments more, and on a baby brow had fallen a few drops
+of water, and the little pilgrim of a new life had been
+called Mara in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
+Ghost,&mdash;the minister slowly repeating thereafter those
+beautiful words of Holy Writ, "A father of the fatherless
+is God in his holy habitation,"&mdash;as if the baptism of that
+bereaved one had been a solemn adoption into the infinite
+heart of the Lord.</p>
+
+<p>With something of the quaint pathos which distinguishes
+the primitive and Biblical people of that lonely shore, the
+minister read the passage in Ruth from which the name of
+the little stranger was drawn, and which describes the return
+of the bereaved Naomi to her native land. His voice
+trembled, and there were tears in many eyes as he read,
+"And it came to pass as she came to Bethlehem, all the
+city was moved about them; and they said, Is this Naomi?
+And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi; call me
+Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with
+me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home
+again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord
+hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>Deep, heavy sobs from the mourners were for a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+moments the only answer to these sad words, till the minister
+raised the old funeral psalm of New England,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Why do we mourn departing friends,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or shake at Death's alarms?</span><br />
+'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To call them to his arms.</span><br />
+<br />
+"Are we not tending upward too,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As fast as time can move?</span><br />
+And should we wish the hours more slow<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That bear us to our love?"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The words rose in old "China,"&mdash;that strange, wild
+warble, whose quaintly blended harmonies might have been
+learned of moaning seas or wailing winds, so strange and
+grand they rose, full of that intense pathos which rises
+over every defect of execution; and as they sung, Zephaniah
+Pennel straightened his tall form, before bowed on
+his hands, and looked heavenward, his cheeks wet with
+tears, but something sublime and immortal shining upward
+through his blue eyes; and at the last verse he came forward
+involuntarily, and stood by his dead, and his voice
+rose over all the others as he sung,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Then let the last loud trumpet sound,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bid the dead arise!</span><br />
+Awake, ye nations under ground!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ye saints, ascend the skies!"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The sunbeam through the window-curtain fell on his silver
+hair, and they that looked beheld his face as it were the
+face of an angel; he had gotten a sight of the city whose
+foundation is jasper, and whose every gate is a separate
+pearl.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>The sea lay like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt,
+lonely shores of Orr's Island. Tall, kingly spruces
+wore their regal crowns of cones high in air, sparkling with
+diamonds of clear exuded gum; vast old hemlocks of primeval
+growth stood darkling in their forest shadows, their
+branches hung with long hoary moss; while feathery
+larches, turned to brilliant gold by autumn frosts, lighted
+up the darker shadows of the evergreens. It was one of
+those hazy, calm, dissolving days of Indian summer, when
+everything is so quiet that the faintest kiss of the wave on
+the beach can be heard, and white clouds seem to faint into
+the blue of the sky, and soft swathing bands of violet vapor
+make all earth look dreamy, and give to the sharp, clear-cut
+outlines of the northern landscape all those mysteries
+of light and shade which impart such tenderness to Italian
+scenery.</p>
+
+<p>The funeral was over; the tread of many feet, bearing
+the heavy burden of two broken lives, had been to the
+lonely graveyard, and had come back again,&mdash;each footstep
+lighter and more unconstrained as each one went his
+way from the great old tragedy of Death to the common
+cheerful walks of Life.</p>
+
+<p>The solemn black clock stood swaying with its eternal
+"tick-tock, tick-tock," in the kitchen of the brown house
+on Orr's Island. There was there that sense of a stillness
+that can be felt,&mdash;such as settles down on a dwelling
+when any of its inmates have passed through its doors for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+the last time, to go whence they shall not return. The
+best room was shut up and darkened, with only so much
+light as could fall through a little heart-shaped hole in the
+window-shutter,&mdash;for except on solemn visits, or prayer
+meetings, or weddings, or funerals, that room formed no
+part of the daily family scenery.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen was clean and ample, with a great open fireplace
+and wide stone hearth, and oven on one side, and
+rows of old-fashioned splint-bottomed chairs against the
+wall. A table scoured to snowy whiteness, and a little
+work-stand whereon lay the Bible, the "Missionary Herald"
+and the "Weekly Christian Mirror," before named, formed
+the principal furniture. One feature, however, must not
+be forgotten,&mdash;a great sea-chest, which had been the companion
+of Zephaniah through all the countries of the earth.
+Old, and battered, and unsightly it looked, yet report said
+that there was good store within of that which men for the
+most part respect more than anything else; and, indeed, it
+proved often when a deed of grace was to be done,&mdash;when
+a woman was suddenly made a widow in a coast gale, or
+a fishing-smack was run down in the fogs off the banks,
+leaving in some neighboring cottage a family of orphans,&mdash;in
+all such cases, the opening of this sea-chest was an
+event of good omen to the bereaved; for Zephaniah had
+a large heart and a large hand, and was apt to take it out
+full of silver dollars when once it went in. So the ark of
+the covenant could not have been looked on with more
+reverence than the neighbors usually showed to Captain
+Pennel's sea-chest.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon sun is shining in a square of light through
+the open kitchen-door, whence one dreamily disposed might
+look far out to sea, and behold ships coming and going in
+every variety of shape and size.</p>
+
+<p>But Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who for the present
+were sole occupants of the premises, were not people of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+dreamy kind, and consequently were not gazing off to sea,
+but attending to very terrestrial matters that in all cases
+somebody must attend to. The afternoon was warm and
+balmy, but a few smouldering sticks were kept in the great
+chimney, and thrust deep into the embers was a mongrel
+species of snub-nosed tea-pot, which fumed strongly of catnip-tea,
+a little of which gracious beverage Miss Roxy was
+preparing in an old-fashioned cracked India china tea-cup,
+tasting it as she did so with the air of a connoisseur.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently this was for the benefit of a small something
+in long white clothes, that lay face downward under a little
+blanket of very blue new flannel, and which something
+Aunt Roxy, when not otherwise engaged, constantly patted
+with a gentle tattoo, in tune to the steady trot of her knee.
+All babies knew Miss Roxy's tattoo on their backs, and
+never thought of taking it in ill part. On the contrary, it
+had a vital and mesmeric effect of sovereign force against
+colic, and all other disturbers of the nursery; and never
+was infant known so pressed with those internal troubles
+which infants cry about, as not speedily to give over and
+sink to slumber at this soothing appliance.</p>
+
+<p>At a little distance sat Aunt Ruey, with a quantity of
+black crape strewed on two chairs about her, very busily
+employed in getting up a mourning-bonnet, at which she
+snipped, and clipped, and worked, zealously singing, in a
+high cracked voice, from time to time, certain verses of a
+funeral psalm.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey Toothacre were two brisk old
+bodies of the feminine gender and singular number, well
+known in all the region of Harpswell Neck and Middle
+Bay, and such was their fame that it had even reached the
+town of Brunswick, eighteen miles away.</p>
+
+<p>They were of that class of females who might be denominated,
+in the Old Testament language, "cunning women,"&mdash;that
+is, gifted with an infinite diversity of practical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+"faculty," which made them an essential requisite in every
+family for miles and miles around. It was impossible to
+say what they could not do: they could make dresses, and
+make shirts and vests and pantaloons, and cut out boys'
+jackets, and braid straw, and bleach and trim bonnets, and
+cook and wash, and iron and mend, could upholster and
+quilt, could nurse all kinds of sicknesses, and in default of
+a doctor, who was often miles away, were supposed to be
+infallible medical oracles. Many a human being had been
+ushered into life under their auspices,&mdash;trotted, chirruped
+in babyhood on their knees, clothed by their handiwork in
+garments gradually enlarging from year to year, watched by
+them in the last sickness, and finally arrayed for the long
+repose by their hands.</p>
+
+<p>These universally useful persons receive among us the
+title of "aunt" by a sort of general consent, showing the
+strong ties of relationship which bind them to the whole
+human family. They are nobody's aunts in particular, but
+aunts to human nature generally. The idea of restricting
+their usefulness to any one family, would strike dismay
+through a whole community. Nobody would be so unprincipled
+as to think of such a thing as having their services
+more than a week or two at most. Your country factotum
+knows better than anybody else how absurd it would be</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"To give to a part what was meant for mankind."</p></div>
+
+<p>Nobody knew very well the ages of these useful sisters.
+In that cold, clear, severe climate of the North, the roots of
+human existence are hard to strike; but, if once people do
+take to living, they come in time to a place where they
+seem never to grow any older, but can always be found,
+like last year's mullein stalks, upright, dry, and seedy,
+warranted to last for any length of time.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy Toothacre, who sits trotting the baby, is a
+tall, thin, angular woman, with sharp black eyes, and hair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+once black, but now well streaked with gray. These ravages
+of time, however, were concealed by an ample mohair
+frisette of glossy blackness woven on each side into a heap
+of stiff little curls, which pushed up her cap border in
+rather a bristling and decisive way. In all her movements
+and personal habits, even to her tone of voice and manner
+of speaking, Miss Roxy was vigorous, spicy, and decided.
+Her mind on all subjects was made up, and she spoke generally
+as one having authority; and who should, if she
+should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sibyl in
+all the most awful straits and mysteries of life? How
+many births, and weddings, and deaths had come and gone
+under her jurisdiction! And amid weeping or rejoicing,
+was not Miss Roxy still the master-spirit,&mdash;consulted,
+referred to by all?&mdash;was not her word law and precedent?
+Her younger sister, Miss Ruey, a pliant, cozy, easy-to-be-entreated
+personage, plump and cushiony, revolved around
+her as a humble satellite. Miss Roxy looked on Miss Ruey
+as quite a frisky young thing, though under her ample
+frisette of carroty hair her head might be seen white with
+the same snow that had powdered that of her sister. Aunt
+Ruey had a face much resembling the kind of one you may
+see, reader, by looking at yourself in the convex side of a
+silver milk-pitcher. If you try the experiment, this description
+will need no further amplification.</p>
+
+<p>The two almost always went together, for the variety
+of talent comprised in their stock could always find employment
+in the varying wants of a family. While one
+nursed the sick, the other made clothes for the well; and
+thus they were always chippering and chatting to each
+other, like a pair of antiquated house-sparrows, retailing
+over harmless gossips, and moralizing in that gentle jogtrot
+which befits serious old women. In fact, they had
+talked over everything in Nature, and said everything they
+could think of to each other so often, that the opinions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+one were as like those of the other as two sides of a pea-pod.
+But as often happens in cases of the sort, this was
+not because the two were in all respects exactly alike, but
+because the stronger one had mesmerized the weaker into
+consent.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy was the master-spirit of the two, and, like
+the great coining machine of a mint, came down with her
+own sharp, heavy stamp on every opinion her sister put
+out. She was matter-of-fact, positive, and declarative to
+the highest degree, while her sister was naturally inclined
+to the elegiac and the pathetic, indulging herself in sentimental
+poetry, and keeping a store thereof in her thread-case,
+which she had cut from the "Christian Mirror." Miss
+Roxy sometimes, in her brusque way, popped out observations
+on life and things, with a droll, hard quaintness that
+took one's breath a little, yet never failed to have a sharp
+crystallization of truth,&mdash;frosty though it were. She was
+one of those sensible, practical creatures who tear every
+veil, and lay their fingers on every spot in pure business-like
+good-will; and if we shiver at them at times, as at
+the first plunge of a cold bath, we confess to an invigorating
+power in them after all.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now," said Miss Roxy, giving a decisive push to
+the tea-pot, which buried it yet deeper in the embers,
+"ain't it all a strange kind o' providence that this 'ere little
+thing is left behind so; and then their callin' on her
+by such a strange, mournful kind of name,&mdash;Mara. I
+thought sure as could be 'twas Mary, till the minister read
+the passage from Scriptur'. Seems to me it's kind o' odd.
+I'd call it Maria, or I'd put an Ann on to it. Mara-ann,
+now, wouldn't sound so strange."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a Scriptur' name, sister," said Aunt Ruey, "and
+that ought to be enough for us."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know," said Aunt Roxy. "Now there
+was Miss Jones down on Mure P'int called her twins Tig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>lath-Pileser
+and Shalmaneser,&mdash;Scriptur' names both, but
+I never liked 'em. The boys used to call 'em, Tiggy and
+Shally, so no mortal could guess they was Scriptur'."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Aunt Ruey, drawing a sigh which caused
+her plump proportions to be agitated in gentle waves,
+"'tain't much matter, after all, <i>what</i> they call the little
+thing, for 'tain't 'tall likely it's goin' to live,&mdash;cried
+and worried all night, and kep' a-suckin' my cheek and
+my night-gown, poor little thing! This 'ere's a baby that
+won't get along without its mother. What Mis' Pennel's
+a-goin' to do with it when we is gone, I'm sure I don't
+know. It comes kind o' hard on old people to be broke
+o' their rest. If it's goin' to be called home, it's a pity,
+as I said, it didn't go with its mother"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And save the expense of another funeral," said Aunt
+Roxy. "Now when Mis' Pennel's sister asked her what
+she was going to do with Naomi's clothes, I couldn't help
+wonderin' when she said she should keep 'em for the
+child."</p>
+
+<p>"She had a sight of things, Naomi did," said Aunt
+Ruey. "Nothin' was never too much for her. I don't
+believe that Cap'n Pennel ever went to Bath or Portland
+without havin' it in his mind to bring Naomi somethin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and she had a faculty of puttin' of 'em on," said
+Miss Roxy, with a decisive shake of the head. "Naomi
+was a still girl, but her faculty was uncommon; and I tell
+you, Ruey, 'tain't everybody hes faculty as hes things."</p>
+
+<p>"The poor Cap'n," said Miss Ruey, "he seemed greatly
+supported at the funeral, but he's dreadful broke down
+since. I went into Naomi's room this morning, and there
+the old man was a-sittin' by her bed, and he had a pair of
+her shoes in his hand,&mdash;you know what a leetle bit of a
+foot she had. I never saw nothin' look so kind o' solitary
+as that poor old man did!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Roxy, "she was a master-hand for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+keepin' things, Naomi was; her drawers is just a sight;
+she's got all the little presents and things they ever give
+her since she was a baby, in one drawer. There's a little
+pair of red shoes there that she had when she wa'n't more'n
+five year old. You 'member, Ruey, the Cap'n brought 'em
+over from Portland when we was to the house a-makin'
+Mis' Pennel's figured black silk that he brought from Calcutty.
+You 'member they cost just five and sixpence;
+but, law! the Cap'n he never grudged the money when
+'twas for Naomi. And so she's got all her husband's
+keepsakes and things just as nice as when he give 'em to
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"It's real affectin'," said Miss Ruey, "I can't all the
+while help a-thinkin' of the Psalm,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"'So fades the lovely blooming flower,&mdash;<br />
+Frail, smiling solace of an hour;<br />
+So quick our transient comforts fly,<br />
+And pleasure only blooms to die.'"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Miss Roxy; "and, Ruey, I was a-thinkin'
+whether or no it wa'n't best to pack away them things,
+'cause Naomi hadn't fixed no baby drawers, and we seem
+to want some."</p>
+
+<p>"I was kind o' hintin' that to Mis' Pennel this morning,"
+said Ruey, "but she can't seem to want to have 'em
+touched."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we may just as well come to such things first as
+last," said Aunt Roxy; "'cause if the Lord takes our
+friends, he does take 'em; and we can't lose 'em and have
+'em too, and we may as well give right up at first, and
+done with it, that they are gone, and we've got to do without
+'em, and not to be hangin' on to keep things just as
+they was."</p>
+
+<p>"So I was a-tellin' Mis' Pennel," said Miss Ruey, "but
+she'll come to it by and by. I wish the baby might live,
+and kind o' grow up into her mother's place."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I wish it might, but there'd
+be a sight o' trouble fetchin' on it up. Folks can do pretty
+well with children when they're young and spry, if they
+do get 'em up nights; but come to grandchildren, it's
+pretty tough."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a-thinkin', sister," said Miss Ruey, taking off her
+spectacles and rubbing her nose thoughtfully, "whether or
+no cow's milk ain't goin' to be too hearty for it, it's such
+a pindlin' little thing. Now, Mis' Badger she brought up
+a seven-months' child, and she told me she gave it nothin'
+but these 'ere little seed cookies, wet in water, and it
+throve nicely,&mdash;and the seed is good for wind."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't tell me none of Mis' Badger's stories," said
+Miss Roxy, "I don't believe in 'em. Cows is the Lord's
+ordinances for bringing up babies that's lost their mothers;
+it stands to reason they should be,&mdash;and babies that can't
+eat milk, why they can't be fetched up; but babies can eat
+milk, and this un will if it lives, and if it can't it won't
+live." So saying, Miss Roxy drummed away on the little
+back of the party in question, authoritatively, as if to
+pound in a wholesome conviction at the outset.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," said Miss Ruey, holding up a strip of black
+crape, and looking through it from end to end so as to test
+its capabilities, "I hope the Cap'n and Mis' Pennel'll get
+some support at the prayer-meetin' this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the right place to go to," said Miss Roxy, with
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Pennel said this mornin' that she was just beat
+out tryin' to submit; and the more she said, 'Thy will be
+done,' the more she didn't seem to feel it."</p>
+
+<p>"Them's common feelin's among mourners, Ruey.
+These 'ere forty years that I've been round nussin', and
+layin'-out, and tendin' funerals, I've watched people's exercises.
+People's sometimes supported wonderfully just at
+the time, and maybe at the funeral; but the three or four<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+weeks after, most everybody, if they's to say what they
+feel, is unreconciled."</p>
+
+<p>"The Cap'n, he don't say nothin'," said Miss Ruey.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he don't, but he looks it in his eyes," said Miss
+Roxy; "he's one of the kind o' mourners as takes it deep;
+that kind don't cry; it's a kind o' dry, deep pain; them's
+the worst to get over it,&mdash;sometimes they just says nothin',
+and in about six months they send for you to nuss
+'em in consumption or somethin'. Now, Mis' Pennel, she
+can cry and she can talk,&mdash;well, she'll get over it; but
+<i>he</i> won't get no support unless the Lord reaches right
+down and lifts him up over the world. I've seen that
+happen sometimes, and I tell you, Ruey, that sort makes
+powerful Christians."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the old pair entered the door. Zephaniah
+Pennel came and stood quietly by the pillow where
+the little form was laid, and lifted a corner of the blanket.
+The tiny head was turned to one side, showing the soft,
+warm cheek, and the little hand was holding tightly a morsel
+of the flannel blanket. He stood swallowing hard for
+a few moments. At last he said, with deep humility, to
+the wise and mighty woman who held her, "I'll tell you
+what it is, Miss Roxy, I'll give all there is in my old chest
+yonder if you'll only make her&mdash;live."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE KITTRIDGES</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>It did live. The little life, so frail, so unprofitable in
+every mere material view, so precious in the eyes of love,
+expanded and flowered at last into fair childhood. Not
+without much watching and weariness. Many a night the
+old fisherman walked the floor with the little thing in his
+arms, talking to it that jargon of tender nonsense which
+fairies bring as love-gifts to all who tend a cradle. Many
+a day the good little old grandmother called the aid of gossips
+about her, trying various experiments of catnip, and
+sweet fern, and bayberry, and other teas of rustic reputation
+for baby frailties.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of three years, the two graves in the lonely
+graveyard were sodded and cemented down by smooth velvet
+turf, and playing round the door of the brown houses
+was a slender child, with ways and manners so still and
+singular as often to remind the neighbors that she was not
+like other children,&mdash;a bud of hope and joy,&mdash;but the
+outcome of a great sorrow,&mdash;a pearl washed ashore by a
+mighty, uprooting tempest. They that looked at her remembered
+that her father's eye had never beheld her, and
+her baptismal cup had rested on her mother's coffin.</p>
+
+<p>She was small of stature, beyond the wont of children of
+her age, and moulded with a fine waxen delicacy that won
+admiration from all eyes. Her hair was curly and golden,
+but her eyes were dark like her mother's, and the lids
+drooped over them in that manner which gives a peculiar
+expression of dreamy wistfulness. Every one of us must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+remember eyes that have a strange, peculiar expression of
+pathos and desire, as if the spirit that looked out of them
+were pressed with vague remembrances of a past, or but
+dimly comprehended the mystery of its present life. Even
+when the baby lay in its cradle, and its dark, inquiring
+eyes would follow now one object and now another, the
+gossips would say the child was longing for something, and
+Miss Roxy would still further venture to predict that that
+child always would long and never would know exactly
+what she was after.</p>
+
+<p>That dignitary sits at this minute enthroned in the
+kitchen corner, looking majestically over the press-board
+on her knee, where she is pressing the next year's Sunday
+vest of Zephaniah Pennel. As she makes her heavy tailor's
+goose squeak on the work, her eyes follow the little delicate
+fairy form which trips about the kitchen, busily and
+silently arranging a little grotto of gold and silver shells
+and seaweed. The child sings to herself as she works in
+a low chant, like the prattle of a brook, but ever and anon
+she rests her little arms on a chair and looks through the
+open kitchen-door far, far off where the horizon line of the
+blue sea dissolves in the blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>"See that child now, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who sat
+stitching beside her; "do look at her eyes. She's as handsome
+as a pictur', but 't ain't an ordinary look she has
+neither; she seems a contented little thing; but what
+makes her eyes always look so kind o' wishful?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wa'n't her mother always a-longin' and a-lookin' to
+sea, and watchin' the ships, afore she was born?" said
+Miss Roxy; "and didn't her heart break afore she was
+born? Babies like that is marked always. They don't
+know what ails 'em, nor nobody."</p>
+
+<p>"It's her mother she's after," said Miss Ruey.</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord only knows," said Miss Roxy; "but them
+kind o' children always seem homesick to go back where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+they come from. They're mostly grave and old-fashioned
+like this 'un. If they gets past seven years, why they
+live; but it's always in 'em to long; they don't seem to be
+really unhappy neither, but if anything's ever the matter
+with 'em, it seems a great deal easier for 'em to die than
+to live. Some say it's the mothers longin' after 'em makes
+'em feel so, and some say it's them longin' after their
+mothers; but dear knows, Ruey, what anything is or what
+makes anything. Children's mysterious, that's my mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Mara, dear," said Miss Ruey, interrupting the child's
+steady lookout, "what you thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me want somefin'," said the little one.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what she's always sayin'," said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"Me want somebody to pay wis'," continued the little
+one.</p>
+
+<p>"Want somebody to play with," said old Dame Pennel,
+as she came in from the back-room with her hands yet
+floury with kneading bread; "sure enough, she does. Our
+house stands in such a lonesome place, and there ain't any
+children. But I never saw such a quiet little thing&mdash;always
+still and always busy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take her down with me to Cap'n Kittridge's,"
+said Miss Roxy, "and let her play with their little girl;
+she'll chirk her up, I'll warrant. She's a regular little
+witch, Sally is, but she'll chirk her up. It ain't good for
+children to be so still and old-fashioned; children ought to
+be children. Sally takes to Mara just 'cause she's so different."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, you may," said Dame Pennel; "to be sure
+<i>he</i> can't bear her out of his sight a minute after he comes
+in; but after all, old folks can't be company for children."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, that afternoon, the little Mara was arrayed
+in a little blue flounced dress, which stood out like a balloon,
+made by Miss Roxy in first-rate style, from a French
+fashion-plate; her golden hair was twined in manifold curls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+by Dame Pennel, who, restricted in her ideas of ornamentation,
+spared, nevertheless, neither time nor money to
+enhance the charms of this single ornament to her dwelling.
+Mara was her picture-gallery, who gave her in the twenty-four
+hours as many Murillos or Greuzes as a lover of art
+could desire; and as she tied over the child's golden curls
+a little flat hat, and saw her go dancing off along the sea-sands,
+holding to Miss Roxy's bony finger, she felt she had
+in her what galleries of pictures could not buy.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good mile to the one story, gambrel-roofed
+cottage where lived Captain Kittridge,&mdash;the long, lean,
+brown man, with his good wife of the great Leghorn bonnet,
+round, black bead eyes, and psalm-book, whom we
+told you of at the funeral. The Captain, too, had followed
+the sea in his early life, but being not, as he expressed it,
+"very rugged," in time changed his ship for a tight little
+cottage on the seashore, and devoted himself to boat-building,
+which he found sufficiently lucrative to furnish his
+brown cottage with all that his wife's heart desired, besides
+extra money for knick-knacks when she chose to go
+up to Brunswick or over to Portland to shop.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain himself was a welcome guest at all the firesides
+round, being a chatty body, and disposed to make the
+most of his foreign experiences, in which he took the usual
+advantages of a traveler. In fact, it was said, whether
+slanderously or not, that the Captain's yarns were spun to
+order; and as, when pressed to relate his foreign adventures,
+he always responded with, "What would you like
+to hear?" it was thought that he fabricated his article to
+suit his market. In short, there was no species of experience,
+finny, fishy, or aquatic,&mdash;no legend of strange and
+unaccountable incident of fire or flood,&mdash;no romance of
+foreign scenery and productions, to which his tongue was
+not competent, when he had once seated himself in a double
+bow-knot at a neighbor's evening fireside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His good wife, a sharp-eyed, literal body, and a vigorous
+church-member, felt some concern of conscience on the
+score of these narrations; for, being their constant auditor,
+she, better than any one else, could perceive the variations
+and discrepancies of text which showed their mythical
+character, and oftentimes her black eyes would snap and
+her knitting-needles rattle with an admonitory vigor as he
+went on, and sometimes she would unmercifully come in
+at the end of a narrative with,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, the Cap'n's told them ar stories till he
+begins to b'lieve 'em himself, I think."</p>
+
+<p>But works of fiction, as we all know, if only well gotten
+up, have always their advantages in the hearts of listeners
+over plain, homely truth; and so Captain Kittridge's yarns
+were marketable fireside commodities still, despite the skepticisms
+which attended them.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon sunbeams at this moment are painting the
+gambrel-roof with a golden brown. It is September again,
+as it was three years ago when our story commenced, and
+the sea and sky are purple and amethystine with its Italian
+haziness of atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>The brown house stands on a little knoll, about a hundred
+yards from the open ocean. Behind it rises a ledge
+of rocks, where cedars and hemlocks make deep shadows
+into which the sun shoots golden shafts of light, illuminating
+the scarlet feathers of the sumach, which throw themselves
+jauntily forth from the crevices; while down below,
+in deep, damp, mossy recesses, rise ferns which autumn
+has just begun to tinge with yellow and brown. The little
+knoll where the cottage stood had on its right hand a
+tiny bay, where the ocean water made up amid picturesque
+rocks&mdash;shaggy and solemn. Here trees of the primeval
+forest, grand and lordly, looked down silently into the
+waters which ebbed and flowed daily into this little pool.
+Every variety of those beautiful evergreens which feather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+the coast of Maine, and dip their wings in the very spray
+of its ocean foam, found here a representative. There were
+aspiring black spruces, crowned on the very top with heavy
+coronets of cones; there were balsamic firs, whose young
+buds breathe the scent of strawberries; there were cedars,
+black as midnight clouds, and white pines with their swaying
+plumage of needle-like leaves, strewing the ground beneath
+with a golden, fragrant matting; and there were the
+gigantic, wide-winged hemlocks, hundreds of years old,
+and with long, swaying, gray beards of moss, looking white
+and ghostly under the deep shadows of their boughs. And
+beneath, creeping round trunk and matting over stones,
+were many and many of those wild, beautiful things which
+embellish the shadows of these northern forests. Long,
+feathery wreaths of what are called ground-pines ran here
+and there in little ruffles of green, and the prince's pine
+raised its oriental feather, with a mimic cone on the top, as
+if it conceived itself to be a grown-up tree. Whole patches
+of partridge-berry wove their evergreen matting, dotted
+plentifully with brilliant scarlet berries. Here and there,
+the rocks were covered with a curiously inwoven tapestry
+of moss, overshot with the exquisite vine of the Linnea
+borealis, which in early spring rings its two fairy bells on
+the end of every spray; while elsewhere the wrinkled
+leaves of the mayflower wove themselves through and
+through deep beds of moss, meditating silently thoughts of
+the thousand little cups of pink shell which they had it in
+hand to make when the time of miracles should come round
+next spring.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, in short, could be more quaintly fresh, wild,
+and beautiful than the surroundings of this little cove
+which Captain Kittridge had thought fit to dedicate to his
+boat-building operations,&mdash;where he had set up his tar-kettle
+between two great rocks above the highest tide-mark,
+and where, at the present moment, he had a boat upon the
+stocks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge, at this hour, was sitting in her clean
+kitchen, very busily engaged in ripping up a silk dress,
+which Miss Roxy had engaged to come and make into a
+new one; and, as she ripped, she cast now and then an eye
+at the face of a tall, black clock, whose solemn tick-tock
+was the only sound that could be heard in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>By her side, on a low stool, sat a vigorous, healthy girl
+of six years, whose employment evidently did not please
+her, for her well-marked black eyebrows were bent in a
+frown, and her large black eyes looked surly and wrathful,
+and one versed in children's grievances could easily see
+what the matter was,&mdash;she was turning a sheet! Perhaps,
+happy young female reader, you don't know what
+that is,&mdash;most likely not; for in these degenerate days
+the strait and narrow ways of self-denial, formerly thought
+so wholesome for little feet, are quite grass-grown with
+neglect. Childhood nowadays is unceasingly f&ecirc;ted and caressed,
+the principal difficulty of the grown people seeming
+to be to discover what the little dears want,&mdash;a thing not
+always clear to the little dears themselves. But in old
+times, turning sheets was thought a most especial and
+wholesome discipline for young girls; in the first place,
+because it took off the hands of their betters a very uninteresting
+and monotonous labor; and in the second place,
+because it was such a long, straight, unending turnpike,
+that the youthful travelers, once started thereupon, could
+go on indefinitely, without requiring guidance and direction
+of their elders. For these reasons, also, the task was
+held in special detestation by children in direct proportion
+to their amount of life, and their ingenuity and love of
+variety. A dull child took it tolerably well; but to a
+lively, energetic one, it was a perfect torture.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see the use of sewing up sheets one side, and
+ripping up the other," at last said Sally, breaking the monotonous
+tick-tock of the clock by an observation which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+has probably occurred to every child in similar circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally Kittridge, if you say another word about that ar
+sheet, I'll whip you," was the very explicit rejoinder;
+and there was a snap of Mrs. Kittridge's black eyes, that
+seemed to make it likely that she would keep her word.
+It was answered by another snap from the six-year-old eyes,
+as Sally comforted herself with thinking that when she was
+a woman she'd speak her mind out in pay for all this.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment a burst of silvery child-laughter rang
+out, and there appeared in the doorway, illuminated by
+the afternoon sunbeams, the vision of Miss Roxy's tall,
+lank figure, with the little golden-haired, blue-robed fairy,
+hanging like a gay butterfly upon the tip of a thorn-bush.
+Sally dropped the sheet and clapped her hands, unnoticed
+by her mother, who rose to pay her respects to the "cunning
+woman" of the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Miss Roxy, I was 'mazin' afraid you
+wer'n't a-comin'. I'd just been an' got my silk ripped
+up, and didn't know how to get a step farther without
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was finishin' up Cap'n Pennel's best pantaloons,"
+said Miss Roxy; "and I've got 'em along so, Ruey
+can go on with 'em; and I told Mis' Pennel I must come
+to you, if 'twas only for a day; and I fetched the little
+girl down, 'cause the little thing's so kind o' lonesome
+like. I thought Sally could play with her, and chirk her
+up a little."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Sally," said Mrs. Kittridge, "stick in your
+needle, fold up your sheet, put your thimble in your work-pocket,
+and then you may take the little Mara down to the
+cove to play; but be sure you don't let her go near the tar,
+nor wet her shoes. D'ye hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am," said Sally, who had sprung up in light
+and radiance, like a translated creature, at this unexpected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+turn of fortune, and performed the welcome orders with a
+celerity which showed how agreeable they were; and then,
+stooping and catching the little one in her arms, disappeared
+through the door, with the golden curls fluttering
+over her own crow-black hair.</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, that Sally, at that moment, was as happy
+as human creature could be, with a keenness of happiness
+that children who have never been made to turn sheets of
+a bright afternoon can never realize. The sun was yet an
+hour high, as she saw, by the flash of her shrewd, time-keeping
+eye, and she could bear her little prize down to
+the cove, and collect unknown quantities of gold and silver
+shells, and starfish, and salad-dish shells, and white pebbles
+for her, besides quantities of well turned shavings,
+brown and white, from the pile which constantly was falling
+under her father's joiner's bench, and with which she
+would make long extemporaneous tresses, so that they
+might play at being mermaids, like those that she had
+heard her father tell about in some of his sea-stories.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, railly, Sally, what you got there?" said Captain
+Kittridge, as he stood in his shirt-sleeves peering over his
+joiner's bench, to watch the little one whom Sally had
+dumped down into a nest of clean white shavings. "Wal',
+wal', I should think you'd a-stolen the big doll I see in a
+shop-window the last time I was to Portland. So this is
+Pennel's little girl?&mdash;poor child!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father, and we want some nice shavings."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay a bit, I'll make ye a few a-purpose," said the old
+man, reaching his long, bony arm, with the greatest ease,
+to the farther part of his bench, and bringing up a board,
+from which he proceeded to roll off shavings in fine satin
+rings, which perfectly delighted the hearts of the children,
+and made them dance with glee; and, truth to say, reader,
+there are coarser and homelier things in the world than a
+well turned shaving.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There, go now," he said, when both of them stood
+with both hands full; "go now and play; and mind you
+don't let the baby wet her feet, Sally; them shoes o' hern
+must have cost five-and-sixpence at the very least."</p>
+
+<p>That sunny hour before sundown seemed as long to Sally
+as the whole seam of the sheet; for childhood's joys are
+all pure gold; and as she ran up and down the white
+sands, shouting at every shell she found, or darted up into
+the overhanging forest for checkerberries and ground-pine,
+all the sorrows of the morning came no more into her
+remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>The little Mara had one of those sensitive, excitable
+natures, on which every external influence acts with immediate
+power. Stimulated by the society of her energetic,
+buoyant little neighbor, she no longer seemed wishful or
+pensive, but kindled into a perfect flame of wild delight,
+and gamboled about the shore like a blue and gold-winged
+fly; while her bursts of laughter made the squirrels and
+blue jays look out inquisitively from their fastnesses in the
+old evergreens. Gradually the sunbeams faded from the
+pines, and the waves of the tide in the little cove came
+in, solemnly tinted with purple, flaked with orange and
+crimson, borne in from a great rippling sea of fire, into
+which the sun had just sunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy on us&mdash;them children!" said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He's</i> bringin' 'em along," said Mrs. Kittridge, as she
+looked out of the window and saw the tall, lank form of
+the Captain, with one child seated on either shoulder, and
+holding on by his head.</p>
+
+<p>The two children were both in the highest state of excitement,
+but never was there a more marked contrast of
+nature. The one seemed a perfect type of well-developed
+childish health and vigor, good solid flesh and bones, with
+glowing skin, brilliant eyes, shining teeth, well-knit, supple
+limbs,&mdash;vigorously and healthily beautiful; while the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+other appeared one of those aerial mixtures of cloud and fire,
+whose radiance seems scarcely earthly. A physiologist,
+looking at the child, would shake his head, seeing one of
+those perilous organizations, all nerve and brain, which
+come to life under the clear, stimulating skies of America,
+and, burning with the intensity of lighted phosphorus,
+waste themselves too early.</p>
+
+<p>The little Mara seemed like a fairy sprite, possessed
+with a wild spirit of glee. She laughed and clapped her
+hands incessantly, and when set down on the kitchen-floor
+spun round like a little elf; and that night it was late and
+long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled in
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Company jist sets this 'ere child crazy," said Miss
+Roxy; "it's jist her lonely way of livin'; a pity Mis'
+Pennel hadn't another child to keep company along with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Pennel oughter be trainin' of her up to work,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge. "Sally could oversew and hem when
+she wa'n't more'n three years old; nothin' straightens out
+children like work. Mis' Pennel she just keeps that ar
+child to look at."</p>
+
+<p>"All children ain't alike, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss
+Roxy, sententiously. "This 'un ain't like your Sally.
+'A hen and a bumble-bee can't be fetched up alike, fix it
+how you will!'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>GRANDPARENTS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>Zephaniah Pennel came back to his house in the
+evening, after Miss Roxy had taken the little Mara away.
+He looked for the flowery face and golden hair as he came
+towards the door, and put his hand in his vest-pocket,
+where he had deposited a small store of very choice shells
+and sea curiosities, thinking of the widening of those dark,
+soft eyes when he should present them.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mara?" was the first inquiry after he had
+crossed the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Roxy's been an' taken her down to Cap'n Kittridge's
+to spend the night," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy's
+gone to help Mis' Kittridge to turn her spotted gray and
+black silk. We was talking this mornin' whether 'no
+'t would turn, 'cause <i>I</i> thought the spot was overshot, and
+wouldn't make up on the wrong side; but Roxy she says
+it's one of them ar Calcutty silks that has two sides to
+'em, like the one you bought Miss Pennel, that we made
+up for her, you know;" and Miss Ruey arose and gave a
+finishing snap to the Sunday pantaloons, which she had
+been left to "finish off,"&mdash;which snap said, as plainly as
+words could say that there was a good job disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah stood looking as helpless as animals of the
+male kind generally do when appealed to with such prolixity
+on feminine details; in reply to it all, only he asked
+meekly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Pennel? Why, she's up chamber. She'll be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+down in a minute, she said; she thought she'd have time
+afore supper to get to the bottom of the big chist, and see
+if that 'ere vest pattern ain't there, and them sticks o'
+twist for the button-holes, 'cause Roxy she says she never
+see nothin' so rotten as that 'ere twist we've been a-workin'
+with, that Mis' Pennel got over to Portland; it's a clear
+cheat, and Mis' Pennel she give more'n half a cent a stick
+more for 't than what Roxy got for her up to Brunswick;
+so you see these 'ere Portland stores charge up, and their
+things want lookin' after."</p>
+
+<p>Here Mrs. Pennel entered the room, "the Captain" addressing
+her eagerly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How came you to let Aunt Roxy take Mara off so far,
+and be gone so long?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, law me, Captain Pennel! the little thing seems
+kind o' lonesome. Chil'en want chil'en; Miss Roxy says
+she's altogether too sort o' still and old-fashioned, and
+must have child's company to chirk her up, and so she
+took her down to play with Sally Kittridge; there's no
+manner of danger or harm in it, and she'll be back to-morrow
+afternoon, and Mara will have a real good time."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', now, really," said the good man, "but it's
+'mazin' lonesome."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Pennel, you're gettin' to make an idol of that
+'ere child," said Miss Ruey. "We have to watch our
+hearts. It minds me of the hymn,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"'The fondness of a creature's love,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How strong it strikes the sense,&mdash;</span><br />
+Thither the warm affections move,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor can we call them hence.'"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey's mode of getting off poetry, in a sort of high-pitched
+canter, with a strong thump on every accented syllable,
+might have provoked a smile in more sophisticated
+society, but Zephaniah listened to her with deep gravity,
+and answered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'm 'fraid there's truth in what you say, Aunt Ruey.
+When her mother was called away, I thought that was a
+warning I never should forget; but now I seem to be like
+Jonah,&mdash;I'm restin' in the shadow of my gourd, and my
+heart is glad because of it. I kind o' trembled at the
+prayer meetin' when we was a-singin',&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"'The dearest idol I have known,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whate'er that idol be,</span><br />
+Help me to tear it from Thy throne,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And worship only Thee.'"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "Roxy says if the Lord should
+take us up short on our prayers, it would make sad work
+with us sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow," said Mrs. Pennel, "it seems to me just her
+mother over again. She don't look like her. I think her
+hair and complexion comes from the Badger blood; my
+mother had that sort o' hair and skin,&mdash;but then she has
+ways like Naomi,&mdash;and it seems as if the Lord had kind
+o' given Naomi back to us; so I hope she's goin' to be
+spared to us."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures&mdash;gentle, trustful,
+and hopeful, because not very deep; she was one of the
+little children of the world whose faith rests on child-like
+ignorance, and who know not the deeper needs of deeper
+natures; such see only the sunshine and forget the storm.</p>
+
+<p>This conversation had been going on to the accompaniment
+of a clatter of plates and spoons and dishes, and the
+fizzling of sausages, prefacing the evening meal, to which
+all now sat down after a lengthened grace from Zephaniah.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a tremendous gale a-brewin'," he said, as they
+sat at table. "I noticed the clouds to-night as I was comin'
+home, and somehow I felt kind o' as if I wanted all
+our folks snug in-doors."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, law, husband, Cap'n Kittridge's house is as good
+as ours, if it does blow. You never can seem to remember<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+that houses don't run aground or strike on rocks in
+storms."</p>
+
+<p>"The Cap'n puts me in mind of old Cap'n Jeduth
+Scranton," said Miss Ruey, "that built that queer house
+down by Middle Bay. The Cap'n he would insist on
+havin' on't jist like a ship, and the closet-shelves had
+holes for the tumblers and dishes, and he had all his tables
+and chairs battened down, and so when it came a gale, they
+say the old Cap'n used to sit in his chair and hold on to
+hear the wind blow."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I tell you," said Captain, "those that has followed
+the seas hears the wind with different ears from
+lands-people. When you lie with only a plank between
+you and eternity, and hear the voice of the Lord on the
+waters, it don't sound as it does on shore."</p>
+
+<p>And in truth, as they were speaking, a fitful gust swept
+by the house, wailing and screaming and rattling the windows,
+and after it came the heavy, hollow moan of the surf
+on the beach, like the wild, angry howl of some savage
+animal just beginning to be lashed into fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough, the wind is rising," said Miss Ruey, getting
+up from the table, and flattening her snub nose against
+the window-pane. "Dear me, how dark it is! Mercy on
+us, how the waves come in!&mdash;all of a sheet of foam. I
+pity the ships that's comin' on coast such a night."</p>
+
+<p>The storm seemed to have burst out with a sudden fury,
+as if myriads of howling demons had all at once been
+loosened in the air. Now they piped and whistled with
+eldritch screech round the corners of the house&mdash;now they
+thundered down the chimney&mdash;and now they shook the
+door and rattled the casement&mdash;and anon mustering their
+forces with wild ado, seemed to career over the house, and
+sail high up into the murky air. The dash of the rising
+tide came with successive crash upon crash like the discharge
+of heavy artillery, seeming to shake the very house,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+and the spray borne by the wind dashed whizzing against
+the window-panes.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah, rising from supper, drew up the little stand
+that had the family Bible on it, and the three old time-worn
+people sat themselves as seriously down to evening
+worship as if they had been an extensive congregation.
+They raised the old psalm-tune which our fathers called
+"Complaint," and the cracked, wavering voices of the
+women, with the deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain,
+rose in the uproar of the storm with a ghostly, strange
+wildness, like the scream of the curlew or the wailing of
+the wind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor let our sun go down at noon:</span><br />
+Thy years are an eternal day,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And must thy children die so soon!"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey valued herself on singing a certain weird and
+exalted part which in ancient days used to be called counter,
+and which wailed and gyrated in unimaginable heights
+of the scale, much as you may hear a shrill, fine-voiced
+wind over a chimney-top; but altogether, the deep and
+earnest gravity with which the three filled up the pauses
+in the storm with their quaint minor key, had something
+singularly impressive. When the singing was over,
+Zephaniah read to the accompaniment of wind and sea,
+the words of poetry made on old Hebrew shores, in the
+dim, gray dawn of the world:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of
+glory thundereth; the Lord is upon many waters. The
+voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; the Lord shaketh
+the wilderness of Kadesh. The Lord sitteth upon the
+floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King forever. The Lord will
+give strength to his people; yea, the Lord will bless his
+people with peace."</p>
+
+<p>How natural and home-born sounded this old piece of
+Oriental poetry in the ears of the three! The wilderness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+of Kadesh, with its great cedars, was doubtless Orr's Island,
+where even now the goodly fellowship of black-winged
+trees were groaning and swaying, and creaking as the breath
+of the Lord passed over them.</p>
+
+<p>And the three old people kneeling by their smouldering
+fireside, amid the general uproar, Zephaniah began in the
+words of a prayer which Moses the man of God made long
+ago under the shadows of Egyptian pyramids: "Lord, thou
+hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before
+the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst
+formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to
+everlasting, thou art God."</p>
+
+<p>We hear sometimes in these days that the Bible is no
+more inspired of God than many other books of historic
+and poetic merit. It is a fact, however, that the Bible answers
+a strange and wholly exceptional purpose by thousands
+of firesides on all shores of the earth; and, till some
+other book can be found to do the same thing, it will not
+be surprising if a belief of its Divine origin be one of the
+ineffaceable ideas of the popular mind. It will be a long
+while before a translation from Homer or a chapter in the
+Koran, or any of the beauties of Shakespeare, will be read
+in a stormy night on Orr's Island with the same sense of
+a Divine presence as the Psalms of David, or the prayer of
+Moses, the man of God.</p>
+
+<p>Boom! boom! "What's that?" said Zephaniah, starting,
+as they rose up from prayer. "Hark! again, that's
+a gun,&mdash;there's a ship in distress."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor souls," said Miss Ruey; "it's an awful night!"</p>
+
+<p>The captain began to put on his sea-coat.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't a-goin' out?" said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go out along the beach a spell, and see if I can
+hear any more of that ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy on us; the wind'll blow you over!" said Aunt
+Ruey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I rayther think I've stood wind before in my day," said
+Zephaniah, a grim smile stealing over his weather-beaten
+cheeks. In fact, the man felt a sort of secret relationship
+to the storm, as if it were in some manner a family connection&mdash;a
+wild, roystering cousin, who drew him out by a
+rough attraction of comradeship.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, at any rate," said Mrs. Pennel, producing a
+large tin lantern perforated with many holes, in which she
+placed a tallow candle, "take this with you, and don't stay
+out long."</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen door opened, and the first gust of wind took
+off the old man's hat and nearly blew him prostrate. He
+came back and shut the door. "I ought to have known
+better," he said, knotting his pocket-handkerchief over his
+head, after which he waited for a momentary lull, and went
+out into the storm.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey looked through the window-pane, and saw
+the light go twinkling far down into the gloom, and ever
+and anon came the mournful boom of distant guns.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly there is a ship in trouble somewhere," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"He never can be easy when he hears these guns," said
+Mrs. Pennel; "but what can he do, or anybody, in such
+a storm, the wind blowing right on to shore?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if Cap'n Kittridge should be out
+on the beach, too," said Miss Ruey; "but laws, he ain't
+much more than one of these 'ere old grasshoppers you see
+after frost comes. Well, any way, there <i>ain't</i> much help
+in man if a ship comes ashore in such a gale as this, such
+a dark night too."</p>
+
+<p>"It's kind o' lonesome to have poor little Mara away
+such a night as this is," said Mrs. Pennel; "but who
+would a-thought it this afternoon, when Aunt Roxy took
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I 'member my grandmother had a silver cream-pitcher<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+that come ashore in a storm on Mare P'int," said Miss
+Ruey, as she sat trotting her knitting-needles. "Grand'ther
+found it, half full of sand, under a knot of seaweed
+way up on the beach. It had a coat of arms on it,&mdash;might
+have belonged to some grand family, that pitcher;
+in the Toothacre family yet."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember when I was a girl," said Mrs. Pennel,
+"seeing the hull of a ship that went on Eagle Island; it
+run way up in a sort of gully between two rocks, and lay
+there years. They split pieces off it sometimes to make
+fires, when they wanted to make a chowder down on the
+beach."</p>
+
+<p>"My aunt, Lois Toothacre, that lives down by Middle
+Bay," said Miss Ruey, "used to tell about a dreadful
+blow they had once in time of the equinoctial storm; and
+what was remarkable, she insisted that she heard a baby
+cryin' out in the storm,&mdash;she heard it just as plain as
+could be."</p>
+
+<p>"Laws a-mercy," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously, "it was
+nothing but the wind,&mdash;it always screeches like a child
+crying; or maybe it was the seals; seals will cry just like
+babes."</p>
+
+<p>"So they told her; but no,&mdash;she insisted she knew the
+difference,&mdash;it <i>was</i> a baby. Well, what do you think,
+when the storm cleared off, they found a baby's cradle
+washed ashore sure enough!"</p>
+
+<p>"But they didn't find any baby," said Mrs. Pennel,
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"No; they searched the beach far and near, and that
+cradle was all they found. Aunt Lois took it in&mdash;it was
+a very good cradle, and she took it to use, but every time
+there came up a gale, that ar cradle would rock, rock, jist
+as if somebody was a-sittin' by it; and you could stand
+across the room and see there wa'n't nobody there."</p>
+
+<p>"You make me all of a shiver," said Mrs. Pennel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This, of course, was just what Miss Ruey intended, and
+she went on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', you see they kind o' got used to it; they found
+there wa'n't no harm come of its rockin', and so they
+didn't mind; but Aunt Lois had a sister Cerinthy that
+was a weakly girl, and had the janders. Cerinthy was one
+of the sort that's born with veils over their faces, and can
+see sperits; and one time Cerinthy was a-visitin' Lois after
+her second baby was born, and there came up a blow, and
+Cerinthy comes out of the keepin'-room, where the cradle
+was a-standin', and says, 'Sister,' says she, 'who's that
+woman sittin' rockin' the cradle?' and Aunt Lois says she,
+'Why, there ain't nobody. That ar cradle always will
+rock in a gale, but I've got used to it, and don't mind it.'
+'Well,' says Cerinthy, 'jist as true as you live, I just saw
+a woman with a silk gown on, and long black hair a-hangin'
+down, and her face was pale as a sheet, sittin' rockin' that
+ar cradle, and she looked round at me with her great black
+eyes kind o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped
+down over the cradle.' 'Well,' says Lois, 'I ain't goin'
+to have no such doin's in my house,' and she went right
+in and took up the baby, and the very next day she jist
+had the cradle split up for kindlin'; and that night, if
+you'll believe, when they was a-burnin' of it, they heard,
+jist as plain as could be, a baby scream, scream, screamin'
+round the house; but after that they never heard it no
+more."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like such stories," said Dame Pennel, "'specially
+to-night, when Mara's away. I shall get to hearing
+all sorts of noises in the wind. I wonder when Cap'n
+Pennel will be back."</p>
+
+<p>And the good woman put more wood on the fire, and
+as the tongues of flame streamed up high and clear, she
+approached her face to the window-pane and started back
+with half a scream, as a pale, anxious visage with sad dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+eyes seemed to approach her. It took a moment or two
+for her to discover that she had seen only the reflection of
+her own anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without
+having converted the window into a sort of dark mirror.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey meanwhile began solacing herself by singing,
+in her chimney-corner, a very favorite sacred melody, which
+contrasted oddly enough with the driving storm and howling
+sea:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Haste, my beloved, haste away,<br />
+Cut short the hours of thy delay;<br />
+Fly like the bounding hart or roe,<br />
+Over the hills where spices grow."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The tune was called "Invitation,"&mdash;one of those profusely
+florid in runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted
+the ears of a former generation; and Miss Ruey,
+innocently unconscious of the effect of old age on her voice,
+ran them up and down, and out and in, in a way that would
+have made a laugh, had there been anybody there to notice
+or to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember singin' that ar to Mary Jane Wilson the
+very night she died," said Aunt Ruey, stopping. "She
+wanted me to sing to her, and it was jist between two and
+three in the mornin'; there was jist the least red streak of
+daylight, and I opened the window and sat there and sung,
+and when I come to 'over the hills where spices grow,' I
+looked round and there was a change in Mary Jane, and I
+went to the bed, and says she very bright, 'Aunt Ruey,
+the Beloved has come,' and she was gone afore I could
+raise her up on her pillow. I always think of Mary Jane
+at them words; if ever there was a broken-hearted crittur
+took home, it was her."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Mrs. Pennel caught sight through the
+window of the gleam of the returning lantern, and in a
+moment Captain Pennel entered, dripping with rain and
+spray.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cap'n! you're e'en a'most drowned," said Aunt
+Ruey.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been gone? You must have been
+a great ways," said Mrs. Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have been down to Cap'n Kittridge's. I met
+Kittridge out on the beach. We heard the guns plain
+enough, but couldn't see anything. I went on down to
+Kittridge's to get a look at little Mara."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she's all well enough?" said Mrs. Pennel, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, well enough. Miss Roxy showed her to me
+in the trundle-bed, 'long with Sally. The little thing was
+lying smiling in her sleep, with her cheek right up against
+Sally's. I took comfort looking at her. I couldn't help
+thinking: 'So he giveth his beloved sleep!'"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM THE SEA</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>During the night and storm, the little Mara had lain
+sleeping as quietly as if the cruel sea, that had made her
+an orphan from her birth, were her kind-tempered old
+grandfather singing her to sleep, as he often did,&mdash;with
+a somewhat hoarse voice truly, but with ever an undertone
+of protecting love. But toward daybreak, there came very
+clear and bright into her childish mind a dream, having
+that vivid distinctness which often characterizes the dreams
+of early childhood.</p>
+
+<p>She thought she saw before her the little cove where she
+and Sally had been playing the day before, with its broad
+sparkling white beach of sand curving round its blue sea-mirror,
+and studded thickly with gold and silver shells.
+She saw the boat of Captain Kittridge upon the stocks, and
+his tar-kettle with the smouldering fires flickering under
+it; but, as often happens in dreams, a certain rainbow
+vividness and clearness invested everything, and she and
+Sally were jumping for joy at the beautiful things they
+found on the beach.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, there stood before them a woman, dressed in
+a long white garment. She was very pale, with sweet,
+serious dark eyes, and she led by the hand a black-eyed
+boy, who seemed to be crying and looking about as for
+something lost. She dreamed that she stood still, and the
+woman came toward her, looking at her with sweet, sad
+eyes, till the child seemed to feel them in every fibre of
+her frame. The woman laid her hand on her head as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+in blessing, and then put the boy's hand in hers, and said,
+"Take him, Mara, he is a playmate for you;" and with
+that the little boy's face flashed out into a merry laugh.
+The woman faded away, and the three children remained
+playing together, gathering shells and pebbles of a wonderful
+brightness. So vivid was this vision, that the little
+one awoke laughing with pleasure, and searched under her
+pillows for the strange and beautiful things that she had
+been gathering in dreamland.</p>
+
+<p>"What's Mara looking after?" said Sally, sitting up in
+her trundle-bed, and speaking in the patronizing motherly
+tone she commonly used to her little playmate.</p>
+
+<p>"All gone, pitty boy&mdash;all gone!" said the child, looking
+round regretfully, and shaking her golden head; "pitty
+lady all gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"How queer she talks!" said Sally, who had awakened
+with the project of building a sheet-house with her fairy
+neighbor, and was beginning to loosen the upper sheet and
+dispose the pillows with a view to this species of architecture.
+"Come, Mara, let's make a pretty house!" she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Pitty boy out dere&mdash;out dere!" said the little one,
+pointing to the window, with a deeper expression than ever
+of wishfulness in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Sally Kittridge, get up this minute!" said the
+voice of her mother, entering the door at this moment;
+"and here, put these clothes on to Mara, the child mustn't
+run round in her best; it's strange, now, Mary Pennel
+never thinks of such things."</p>
+
+<p>Sally, who was of an efficient temperament, was preparing
+energetically to second these commands of her mother,
+and endue her little neighbor with a coarse brown stuff
+dress, somewhat faded and patched, which she herself had
+outgrown when of Mara's age; with shoes, which had been
+coarsely made to begin with, and very much battered by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+time; but, quite to her surprise, the child, generally so
+passive and tractable, opposed a most unexpected and desperate
+resistance to this operation. She began to cry and
+to sob and shake her curly head, throwing her tiny hands
+out in a wild species of freakish opposition, which had,
+notwithstanding, a quaint and singular grace about it,
+while she stated her objections in all the little English at
+her command.</p>
+
+<p>"Mara don't want&mdash;Mara want pitty boo des&mdash;and
+<i>pitty</i> shoes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, was ever anything like it?" said Mrs. Kittridge
+to Miss Roxy, as they both were drawn to the door by the
+outcry; "here's this child won't have decent every-day
+clothes put on her,&mdash;she must be kept dressed up like a
+princess. Now, that ar's French calico!" said Mrs. Kittridge,
+holding up the controverted blue dress, "and that
+ar never cost a cent under five-and-sixpence a yard; it
+takes a yard and a half to make it, and it must have been
+a good day's work to make it up; call that three-and-sixpence
+more, and with them pearl buttons and thread and
+all, that ar dress never cost less than a dollar and seventy-five,
+and here she's goin' to run out every day in it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!" said Miss Roxy, who had taken the sobbing
+fair one in her lap, "you know, Mis' Kittridge, this
+'ere's a kind o' pet lamb, an old-folks' darling, and things
+be with her as they be, and we can't make her over, and
+she's such a nervous little thing we mustn't cross her."
+Saying which, she proceeded to dress the child in her own
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had a good large checked apron, I wouldn't
+mind putting that on her!" added Miss Roxy, after she
+had arrayed the child.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's one," said Mrs. Kittridge; "that may save her
+clothes some."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy began to put on the wholesome garment;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+but, rather to her mortification, the little fairy began to
+weep again in a most heart-broken manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want che't apon."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't Mara want nice checked apron?" said Miss
+Roxy, in that extra cheerful tone by which children are to
+be made to believe they have mistaken their own mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want it!" with a decided wave of the little
+hand; "I's too pitty to wear che't apon."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! well!" said Mrs. Kittridge, rolling up her eyes,
+"did I ever! no, I never did. If there ain't depraved
+natur' a-comin' out early. Well, if she says she's pretty
+now, what'll it be when she's fifteen?"</p>
+
+<p>"She'll learn to tell a lie about it by that time," said
+Miss Roxy, "and say she thinks she's horrid. The child
+<i>is</i> pretty, and the truth comes uppermost with her now."</p>
+
+<p>"Haw! haw! haw!" burst with a great crash from Captain
+Kittridge, who had come in behind, and stood silently
+listening during this conversation; "that's musical now;
+come here, my little maid, you <i>are</i> too pretty for checked
+aprons, and no mistake;" and seizing the child in his long
+arms, he tossed her up like a butterfly, while her sunny
+curls shone in the morning light.</p>
+
+<p>"There's one comfort about the child, Miss Kittridge,"
+said Aunt Roxy: "she's one of them that dirt won't stick
+to. I never knew her to stain or tear her clothes,&mdash;she
+always come in jist so nice."</p>
+
+<p>"She ain't much like Sally, then!" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+"That girl'll run through more clothes! Only last week
+she walked the crown out of my old black straw bonnet,
+and left it hanging on the top of a blackberry-bush."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', wal'," said Captain Kittridge, "as to dressin'
+this 'ere child,&mdash;why, ef Pennel's a mind to dress her in
+cloth of gold, it's none of our business! He's rich enough
+for all he wants to do, and so let's eat our breakfast and
+mind our own business."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Captain Kittridge took the two children
+down to the cove, to investigate the state of his boat and
+tar-kettle, set high above the highest tide-mark. The sun
+had risen gloriously, the sky was of an intense, vivid blue,
+and only great snowy islands of clouds, lying in silver
+banks on the horizon, showed vestiges of last night's storm.
+The whole wide sea was one glorious scene of forming and
+dissolving mountains of blue and purple, breaking at the
+crest into brilliant silver. All round the island the waves
+were constantly leaping and springing into jets and columns
+of brilliant foam, throwing themselves high up, in
+silvery cataracts, into the very arms of the solemn evergreen
+forests which overhung the shore.</p>
+
+<p>The sands of the little cove seemed harder and whiter
+than ever, and were thickly bestrewn with the shells and
+seaweed which the upturnings of the night had brought
+in. There lay what might have been fringes and fragments
+of sea-gods' vestures,&mdash;blue, crimson, purple, and
+orange seaweeds, wreathed in tangled ropes of kelp and
+sea-grass, or lying separately scattered on the sands. The
+children ran wildly, shouting as they began gathering sea-treasures;
+and Sally, with the air of an experienced hand
+in the business, untwisted the coils of rosy seaweed, from
+which every moment she disengaged some new treasure,
+in some rarer shell or smoother pebble.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, the child shook out something from a knotted
+mass of sea-grass, which she held up with a perfect shriek
+of delight. It was a bracelet of hair, fastened by a brilliant
+clasp of green, sparkling stones, such as she had never
+seen before. She redoubled her cries of delight, as she
+saw it sparkle between her and the sun, calling upon her
+father.</p>
+
+<p>"Father! father! do come here, and see what I've
+found!"</p>
+
+<p>He came quickly, and took the bracelet from the child's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+hand; but, at the same moment, looking over her head, he
+caught sight of an object partially concealed behind a projecting
+rock. He took a step forward, and uttered an
+exclamation,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! sure enough! poor things!"</p>
+
+<p>There lay, bedded in sand and seaweed, a woman with
+a little boy clasped in her arms! Both had been carefully
+lashed to a spar, but the child was held to the bosom of
+the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot that mortal
+hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand,
+into which had streamed the woman's long, dark hair,
+which sparkled with glittering morsels of sand and pebbles,
+and with those tiny, brilliant, yellow shells which are so
+numerous on that shore.</p>
+
+<p>The woman was both young and beautiful. The forehead,
+damp with ocean-spray, was like sculptured marble,&mdash;the
+eyebrows dark and decided in their outline; but the
+long, heavy, black fringes had shut down, as a solemn curtain,
+over all the history of mortal joy or sorrow that those
+eyes had looked upon. A wedding-ring gleamed on the
+marble hand; but the sea had divorced all human ties, and
+taken her as a bride to itself. And, in truth, it seemed
+to have made to her a worthy bed, for she was all folded
+and inwreathed in sand and shells and seaweeds, and a
+great, weird-looking leaf of kelp, some yards in length, lay
+twined around her like a shroud. The child that lay in
+her bosom had hair, and face, and eyelashes like her own,
+and his little hands were holding tightly a portion of the
+black dress which she wore.</p>
+
+<p>"Cold,&mdash;cold,&mdash;stone dead!" was the muttered exclamation
+of the old seaman, as he bent over the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"She must have struck her head there," he mused, as
+he laid his finger on a dark, bruised spot on her temple.
+He laid his hand on the child's heart, and put one finger
+under the arm to see if there was any lingering vital heat,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+and then hastily cut the lashings that bound the pair to the
+spar, and with difficulty disengaged the child from the cold
+clasp in which dying love had bound him to a heart which
+should beat no more with mortal joy or sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Sally, after the first moment, had run screaming toward
+the house, with all a child's forward eagerness, to be the
+bearer of news; but the little Mara stood, looking anxiously,
+with a wishful earnestness of face.</p>
+
+<p>"Pitty boy,&mdash;pitty boy,&mdash;come!" she said often; but
+the old man was so busy, he scarcely regarded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Cap'n Kittridge, do tell!" said Miss Roxy,
+meeting him in all haste, with a cap-border stiff in air,
+while Dame Kittridge exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you don't! Well, well! didn't I say that was
+a ship last night? And what a solemnizing thought it was
+that souls might be goin' into eternity!"</p>
+
+<p>"We must have blankets and hot bottles, right away,"
+said Miss Roxy, who always took the earthly view of matters,
+and who was, in her own person, a personified humane
+society. "Miss Kittridge, you jist dip out your dishwater
+into the smallest tub, and we'll put him in. Stand away,
+Mara! Sally, you take her out of the way! We'll fetch
+this child to, perhaps. I've fetched 'em to, when they's
+seemed to be dead as door-nails!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge, you're sure the woman's dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, yes; she had a blow right on her temple here.
+There's no bringing her to till the resurrection."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, you jist go and get Cap'n Pennel to come
+down and help you, and get the body into the house, and
+we'll attend to layin' it out by and by. Tell Ruey to
+come down."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Roxy issued her orders with all the military vigor
+and precision of a general in case of a sudden attack. It
+was her habit. Sickness and death were her opportunities;
+where they were, she felt herself at home, and she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+addressed herself to the task before her with undoubting
+faith.</p>
+
+<p>Before many hours a pair of large, dark eyes slowly
+emerged from under the black-fringed lids of the little
+drowned boy,&mdash;they rolled dreamily round for a moment,
+and dropped again in heavy languor.</p>
+
+<p>The little Mara had, with the quiet persistence which
+formed a trait in her baby character, dragged stools and
+chairs to the back of the bed, which she at last succeeded
+in scaling, and sat opposite to where the child lay, grave
+and still, watching with intense earnestness the process that
+was going on. At the moment when the eyes had opened,
+she stretched forth her little arms, and said, eagerly,
+"Pitty boy, come,"&mdash;and then, as they closed again, she
+dropped her hands with a sigh of disappointment. Yet,
+before night, the little stranger sat up in bed, and laughed
+with pleasure at the treasures of shells and pebbles which
+the children spread out on the bed before him.</p>
+
+<p>He was a vigorous, well-made, handsome child, with
+brilliant eyes and teeth, but the few words that he spoke
+were in a language unknown to most present. Captain
+Kittridge declared it to be Spanish, and that a call which
+he most passionately and often repeated was for his mother.
+But he was of that happy age when sorrow can be easily
+effaced, and the efforts of the children called forth joyous
+smiles. When his playthings did not go to his liking, he
+showed sparkles of a fiery, irascible spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The little Mara seemed to appropriate him in feminine
+fashion, as a chosen idol and graven image. She gave him
+at once all her slender stock of infantine treasures, and
+seemed to watch with an ecstatic devotion his every movement,&mdash;often
+repeating, as she looked delightedly around,
+"Pitty boy, come."</p>
+
+<p>She had no words to explain the strange dream of
+the morning; it lay in her, struggling for expression, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+giving her an interest in the new-comer as in something
+belonging to herself. Whence it came,&mdash;whence come
+multitudes like it, which spring up as strange, enchanted
+flowers, every now and then in the dull, material pathway
+of life,&mdash;who knows? It may be that our present faculties
+have among them a rudimentary one, like the germs
+of wings in the chrysalis, by which the spiritual world
+becomes sometimes an object of perception; there may be
+natures in which the walls of the material are so fine and
+translucent that the spiritual is seen through them as
+through a glass darkly. It may be, too, that the love
+which is stronger than death has a power sometimes to
+make itself heard and felt through the walls of our mortality,
+when it would plead for the defenseless ones it has
+left behind. All these things <i>may</i> be,&mdash;who knows?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"There," said Miss Roxy, coming out of the keeping-room
+at sunset; "I wouldn't ask to see a better-lookin'
+corpse. That ar woman was a sight to behold this morning.
+I guess I shook a double handful of stones and them
+little shells out of her hair,&mdash;now she reely looks beautiful.
+Captain Kittridge has made a coffin out o' some
+cedar-boards he happened to have, and I lined it with
+bleached cotton, and stuffed the pillow nice and full, and
+when we come to get her in, she reely will look lovely."</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose, Mis' Kittridge, you'll have the funeral to-morrow,&mdash;it's
+Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, Aunt Roxy,&mdash;I think everybody must
+want to improve such a dispensation. Have you took little
+Mara in to look at the corpse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no," said Miss Roxy; "Mis' Pennel's gettin'
+ready to take her home."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's an opportunity we ought to improve," said
+Mrs. Kittridge, "to learn children what death is. I think
+we can't begin to solemnize their minds too young."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At this moment Sally and the little Mara entered the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, children," said Mrs. Kittridge, taking a
+hand of either one, and leading them to the closed door of
+the keeping-room; "I've got somethin' to show you."</p>
+
+<p>The room looked ghostly and dim,&mdash;the rays of light
+fell through the closed shutter on an object mysteriously
+muffled in a white sheet.</p>
+
+<p>Sally's bright face expressed only the vague curiosity of
+a child to see something new; but the little Mara resisted
+and hung back with all her force, so that Mrs. Kittridge
+was obliged to take her up and hold her.</p>
+
+<p>She folded back the sheet from the chill and wintry
+form which lay so icily, lonely, and cold. Sally walked
+around it, and gratified her curiosity by seeing it from
+every point of view, and laying her warm, busy hand on
+the lifeless and cold one; but Mara clung to Mrs. Kittridge,
+with eyes that expressed a distressed astonishment.
+The good woman stooped over and placed the child's little
+hand for a moment on the icy forehead. The little one
+gave a piercing scream, and struggled to get away; and as
+soon as she was put down, she ran and hid her face in
+Aunt Roxy's dress, sobbing bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"That child'll grow up to follow vanity," said Mrs.
+Kittridge; "her little head is full of dress now, and she
+hates anything serious,&mdash;it's easy to see that."</p>
+
+<p>The little Mara had no words to tell what a strange,
+distressful chill had passed up her arm and through her
+brain, as she felt that icy cold of death,&mdash;that cold so
+different from all others. It was an impression of fear and
+pain that lasted weeks and months, so that she would start
+out of sleep and cry with a terror which she had not yet a
+sufficiency of language to describe.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to forget, Mis' Kittridge, that this 'ere child
+ain't rugged like our Sally," said Aunt Roxy, as she raised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+the little Mara in her arms. "She was a seven-months'
+baby, and hard to raise at all, and a shivery, scary little
+creature."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, she ought to be hardened," said Dame
+Kittridge. "But Mary Pennel never had no sort of idea
+of bringin' up children; 'twas jist so with Naomi,&mdash;the
+girl never had no sort o' resolution, and she just died for
+want o' resolution,&mdash;that's what came of it. I tell ye,
+children's got to learn to take the world as it is; and 'tain't
+no use bringin' on 'em up too tender. Teach 'em to begin
+as they've got to go out,&mdash;that's my maxim."</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Kittridge," said Aunt Roxy, "there's reason in
+all things, and there's difference in children. 'What's
+one's meat's another's pison.' You couldn't fetch up Mis'
+Pennel's children, and she couldn't fetch up your'n,&mdash;so
+let's say no more 'bout it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm always a-tellin' my wife that ar," said Captain
+Kittridge; "she's always wantin' to make everybody over
+after her pattern."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge, I don't think <i>you</i> need to speak,"
+resumed his wife. "When such a loud providence is
+a-knockin' at <i>your</i> door, I think you'd better be a-searchin'
+your own heart,&mdash;here it is the eleventh hour, and you
+hain't come into the Lord's vineyard yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! come, come, Mis' Kittridge, don't twit a feller
+afore folks," said the Captain. "I'm goin' over to Harpswell
+Neck this blessed minute after the minister to 'tend
+the funeral,&mdash;so we'll let <i>him</i> preach."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>Life on any shore is a dull affair,&mdash;ever degenerating
+into commonplace; and this may account for the eagerness
+with which even a great calamity is sometimes accepted in
+a neighborhood, as affording wherewithal to stir the deeper
+feelings of our nature. Thus, though Mrs. Kittridge was
+by no means a hard-hearted woman, and would not for the
+world have had a ship wrecked on her particular account,
+yet since a ship had been wrecked and a body floated
+ashore at her very door, as it were, it afforded her no
+inconsiderable satisfaction to dwell on the details and to
+arrange for the funeral.</p>
+
+<p>It was something to talk about and to think of, and
+likely to furnish subject-matter for talk for years to come
+when she should go out to tea with any of her acquaintances
+who lived at Middle Bay, or Maquoit, or Harpswell Neck.
+For although in those days,&mdash;the number of light-houses
+being much smaller than it is now,&mdash;it was no uncommon
+thing for ships to be driven on shore in storms, yet this
+incident had undeniably more that was stirring and romantic
+in it than any within the memory of any tea-table
+gossip in the vicinity. Mrs. Kittridge, therefore, looked
+forward to the funeral services on Sunday afternoon as to
+a species of solemn f&ecirc;te, which imparted a sort of consequence
+to her dwelling and herself. Notice of it was to be
+given out in "meeting" after service, and she might expect
+both keeping-room and kitchen to be full. Mrs. Pennel
+had offered to do her share of Christian and neighborly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+kindness, in taking home to her own dwelling the little
+boy. In fact, it became necessary to do so in order to
+appease the feelings of the little Mara, who clung to the
+new acquisition with most devoted fondness, and wept
+bitterly when he was separated from her even for a few
+moments. Therefore, in the afternoon of the day when
+the body was found, Mrs. Pennel, who had come down to
+assist, went back in company with Aunt Ruey and the two
+children.</p>
+
+<p>The September evening set in brisk and chill, and the
+cheerful fire that snapped and roared up the ample chimney
+of Captain Kittridge's kitchen was a pleasing feature. The
+days of our story were before the advent of those sullen
+gnomes, the "air-tights," or even those more sociable and
+cheery domestic genii, the cooking-stoves. They were the
+days of the genial open kitchen-fire, with the crane, the
+pot-hooks, and trammels,&mdash;where hissed and boiled the
+social tea-kettle, where steamed the huge dinner-pot, in
+whose ample depths beets, carrots, potatoes, and turnips
+boiled in jolly sociability with the pork or corned beef
+which they were destined to flank at the coming meal.</p>
+
+<p>On the present evening, Miss Roxy sat bolt upright, as
+was her wont, in one corner of the fireplace, with her spectacles
+on her nose, and an unwonted show of candles on
+the little stand beside her, having resumed the task of the
+silk dress which had been for a season interrupted. Mrs.
+Kittridge, with her spectacles also mounted, was carefully
+and warily "running-up breadths," stopping every few
+minutes to examine her work, and to inquire submissively
+of Miss Roxy if "it will do?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Kittridge sat in the other corner busily whittling
+on a little boat which he was shaping to please Sally,
+who sat on a low stool by his side with her knitting, evidently
+more intent on what her father was producing than
+on the evening task of "ten bouts," which her mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+exacted before she could freely give her mind to anything
+on her own account. As Sally was rigorously sent to bed
+exactly at eight o'clock, it became her to be diligent if she
+wished to do anything for her own amusement before that
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>And in the next room, cold and still, was lying that
+faded image of youth and beauty which the sea had so
+strangely given up. Without a name, without a history,
+without a single accompaniment from which her past could
+even be surmised,&mdash;there she lay, sealed in eternal silence.</p>
+
+<p>"It's strange," said Captain Kittridge, as he whittled
+away,&mdash;"it's very strange we don't find anything more
+of that ar ship. I've been all up and down the beach
+a-lookin'. There was a spar and some broken bits of
+boards and timbers come ashore down on the beach, but
+nothin' to speak of."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be known till the sea gives up its dead," said
+Miss Roxy, shaking her head solemnly, "and there'll be
+a great givin' up then, I'm a-thinkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Kittridge, with an emphatic
+nod.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Sally, "how many, many things there
+must be at the bottom of the sea,&mdash;so many ships are
+sunk with all their fine things on board. Why don't people
+contrive some way to go down and get them?"</p>
+
+<p>"They do, child," said Captain Kittridge; "they have
+diving-bells, and men go down in 'em with caps over their
+faces, and long tubes to get the air through, and they walk
+about on the bottom of the ocean."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever go down in one, father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, child, to be sure; and strange enough it
+was, to be sure. There you could see great big sea critters,
+with ever so many eyes and long arms, swimming
+right up to catch you, and all you could do would be to
+muddy the water on the bottom, so they couldn't see you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I never heard of that, Cap'n Kittridge," said his wife,
+drawing herself up with a reproving coolness.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', Mis' Kittridge, you hain't heard of everything
+that ever happened," said the Captain, imperturbably,
+"though you <i>do</i> know a sight."</p>
+
+<p>"And how does the bottom of the ocean look, father?"
+said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, child, why trees and bushes grow there, just as
+they do on land; and great plants,&mdash;blue and purple and
+green and yellow, and lots of great pearls lie round. I've
+seen 'em big as chippin'-birds' eggs."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge!" said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I have, and big as robins' eggs, too, but them was off
+the coast of Ceylon and Malabar, and way round the Equator,"
+said the Captain, prudently resolved to throw his
+romance to a sufficient distance.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity you didn't get a few of them pearls," said
+his wife, with an indignant appearance of scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"I did get lots on 'em, and traded 'em off to the Nabobs
+in the interior for Cashmere shawls and India silks and
+sich," said the Captain, composedly; "and brought 'em
+home and sold 'em at a good figure, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father!" said Sally, earnestly, "I wish you had
+saved just one or two for us."</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, child, I wish now I had," said the Captain,
+good-naturedly. "Why, when I was in India, I went up
+to Lucknow, and Benares, and round, and saw all the Nabobs
+and Biggums,&mdash;why, they don't make no more of
+gold and silver and precious stones than we do of the shells
+we find on the beach. Why, I've seen one of them fellers
+with a diamond in his turban as big as my fist."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge, what are you telling?" said his wife
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Fact,&mdash;as big as my fist," said the Captain, obdurately;
+"and all the clothes he wore was jist a stiff crust<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+of pearls and precious stones. I tell you, he looked like
+something in the Revelations,&mdash;a real New Jerusalem
+look he had."</p>
+
+<p>"I call that ar talk wicked, Cap'n Kittridge, usin' Scriptur'
+that ar way," said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, don't it tell about all sorts of gold and precious
+stones in the Revelations?" said the Captain; "that's all
+I meant. Them ar countries off in Asia ain't like our'n,&mdash;stands
+to reason they shouldn't be; them's Scripture
+countries, and everything is different there."</p>
+
+<p>"Father, didn't you ever get any of those splendid
+things?" said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, yes, child. Why, I had a great green ring, an
+emerald, that one of the princes giv' me, and ever so many
+pearls and diamonds. I used to go with 'em rattlin' loose
+in my vest pocket. I was young and gay in them days,
+and thought of bringin' of 'em home for the gals, but
+somehow I always got opportunities for swappin' of 'em
+off for goods and sich. That ar shawl your mother keeps
+in her camfire chist was what I got for one on 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," said Mrs. Kittridge, "there's never any
+catchin' you, 'cause you've been where we haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"You've caught me once, and that ought'r do," said
+the Captain, with unruffled good-nature. "I tell you,
+Sally, your mother was the handsomest gal in Harpswell
+in them days."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you was too old for such nonsense,
+Cap'n," said Mrs. Kittridge, with a toss of her head, and
+a voice that sounded far less inexorable than her former
+admonition. In fact, though the old Captain was as unmanageable
+under his wife's fireside <i>r&eacute;gime</i> as any brisk old
+cricket that skipped and sang around the hearth, and though
+he hopped over all moral boundaries with a cheerful alertness
+of conscience that was quite discouraging, still there
+was no resisting the spell of his inexhaustible good-nature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By this time he had finished the little boat, and to
+Sally's great delight, began sailing it for her in a pail of
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," said Mrs. Kittridge, "what's to be done
+with that ar child. I suppose the selectmen will take care
+on't; it'll be brought up by the town."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder," said Miss Roxy, "if Cap'n Pennel
+should adopt it."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think so," said Mrs. Kittridge. "'Twould
+be taking a great care and expense on their hands at their
+time of life."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't want no better fun than to bring up that
+little shaver," said Captain Kittridge; "he's a bright un,
+I promise you."</p>
+
+<p>"You, Cap'n Kittridge! I wonder you can talk so," said
+his wife. "It's an awful responsibility, and I wonder you
+don't think whether or no you're fit for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, down here on the shore, I'd as lives undertake
+a boy as a Newfoundland pup," said the Captain. "Plenty
+in the sea to eat, drink, and wear. That ar young un may
+be the staff of their old age yet."</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said Miss Roxy, "I think they'll adopt it
+to be company for little Mara; they're bound up in her,
+and the little thing pines bein' alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they make a real graven image of that ar child,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge, "and fairly bow down to her and worship
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's natural," said Miss Roxy. "Besides, the
+little thing is cunnin'; she's about the cunnin'est little
+crittur that I ever saw, and has such enticin' ways."</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, as the reader may perceive, that Miss
+Roxy had been thawed into an unusual attachment for the
+little Mara, and this affection was beginning to spread a
+warming element though her whole being. It was as if a
+rough granite rock had suddenly awakened to a passionate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+consciousness of the beauty of some fluttering white anemone
+that nestled in its cleft, and felt warm thrills running
+through all its veins at every tender motion and
+shadow. A word spoken against the little one seemed to
+rouse her combativeness. Nor did Dame Kittridge bear
+the child the slightest ill-will, but she was one of those
+naturally care-taking people whom Providence seems to
+design to perform the picket duties for the rest of society,
+and who, therefore, challenge everybody and everything to
+stand and give an account of themselves. Miss Roxy herself
+belonged to this class, but sometimes found herself so
+stoutly overhauled by the guns of Mrs. Kittridge's battery,
+that she could only stand modestly on the defensive.</p>
+
+<p>One of Mrs. Kittridge's favorite hobbies was education,
+or, as she phrased it, the "fetchin' up" of children, which
+she held should be performed to the letter of the old stiff
+rule. In this manner she had already trained up six sons,
+who were all following their fortunes upon the seas, and,
+on this account, she had no small conceit of her abilities;
+and when she thought she discerned a lamb being left to
+frisk heedlessly out of bounds, her zeal was stirred to bring
+it under proper sheepfold regulations.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Sally, it's eight o'clock," said the good woman.</p>
+
+<p>Sally's dark brows lowered over her large, black eyes,
+and she gave an appealing look to her father.</p>
+
+<p>"Law, mother, let the child sit up a quarter of an hour
+later, jist for once."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge, if I was to hear to you, there'd never
+be no rule in this house. Sally, you go 'long this minute,
+and be sure you put your knittin' away in its place."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain gave a humorous nod of submissive good-nature
+to his daughter as she went out. In fact, putting
+Sally to bed was taking away his plaything, and leaving
+him nothing to do but study faces in the coals, or watch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+the fleeting sparks which chased each other in flocks up
+the sooty back of the chimney.</p>
+
+<p>It was Saturday night, and the morrow was Sunday,&mdash;never
+a very pleasant prospect to the poor Captain, who,
+having, unfortunately, no spiritual tastes, found it very
+difficult to get through the day in compliance with his
+wife's views of propriety, for he, alas! soared no higher in
+his aims.</p>
+
+<p>"I b'lieve, on the hull, Polly, I'll go to bed, too,"
+said he, suddenly starting up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, father, your clean shirt is in the right-hand corner
+of the upper drawer, and your Sunday clothes on the
+back of the chair by the bed."</p>
+
+<p>The fact was that the Captain promised himself the
+pleasure of a long conversation with Sally, who nestled in
+the trundle-bed under the paternal couch, to whom he
+could relate long, many-colored yarns, without the danger
+of interruption from her mother's sharp, truth-seeking voice.</p>
+
+<p>A moralist might, perhaps, be puzzled exactly what
+account to make of the Captain's disposition to romancing
+and embroidery. In all real, matter-of-fact transactions,
+as between man and man, his word was as good as another's,
+and he was held to be honest and just in his dealings.
+It was only when he mounted the stilts of foreign
+travel that his paces became so enormous. Perhaps, after
+all, a rude poetic and artistic faculty possessed the man.
+He might have been a humbler phase of the "mute, inglorious
+Milton." Perhaps his narrations required the privileges
+and allowances due to the inventive arts generally.
+Certain it was that, in common with other artists, he required
+an atmosphere of sympathy and confidence in which
+to develop himself fully; and, when left alone with children,
+his mind ran such riot, that the bounds between the
+real and unreal became foggier than the banks of Newfoundland.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two women sat up, and the night wore on apace,
+while they kept together that customary vigil which it was
+thought necessary to hold over the lifeless casket from
+which an immortal jewel had recently been withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>"I re'lly did hope," said Mrs. Kittridge, mournfully,
+"that this 'ere solemn Providence would have been sent
+home to the Cap'n's mind; but he seems jist as light and
+triflin' as ever."</p>
+
+<p>"There don't nobody see these 'ere things unless they's
+effectually called," said Miss Roxy, "and the Cap'n's time
+ain't come."</p>
+
+<p>"It's gettin' to be t'ward the eleventh hour," said Mrs.
+Kittridge, "as I was a-tellin' him this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Roxy, "you know</p>
+
+<p>
+"'While the lamp holds out to burn,<br />
+The vilest sinner may return.'"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know that," said Mrs. Kittridge, rising and
+taking up the candle. "Don't you think, Aunt Roxy, we
+may as well give a look in there at the corpse?"</p>
+
+<p>It was past midnight as they went together into the
+keeping-room. All was so still that the clash of the rising
+tide and the ticking of the clock assumed that solemn and
+mournful distinctness which even tones less impressive take
+on in the night-watches. Miss Roxy went mechanically
+through with certain arrangements of the white drapery
+around the cold sleeper, and uncovering the face and bust
+for a moment, looked critically at the still, unconscious
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Not one thing to let us know who or what she is," she
+said; "that boy, if he lives, would give a good deal to
+know, some day."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it one's duty to do about this bracelet?"
+said Mrs. Kittridge, taking from a drawer the article in
+question, which had been found on the beach in the morning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I s'pose it belongs to the child, whatever it's
+worth," said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"Then if the Pennels conclude to take him, I may as
+well give it to them," said Mrs. Kittridge, laying it back
+in the drawer.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy folded the cloth back over the face, and the
+two went out into the kitchen. The fire had sunk low&mdash;the
+crickets were chirruping gleefully. Mrs. Kittridge
+added more wood, and put on the tea-kettle that their
+watching might be refreshed by the aid of its talkative and
+inspiring beverage. The two solemn, hard-visaged women
+drew up to each other by the fire, and insensibly their
+very voices assumed a tone of drowsy and confidential
+mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"If this 'ere poor woman was hopefully pious, and could
+see what was goin' on here," said Mrs. Kittridge, "it
+would seem to be a comfort to her that her child has fallen
+into such good hands. It seems a'most a pity she couldn't
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know she don't?" said Miss Roxy,
+brusquely.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you know the hymn," said Mrs. Kittridge, quoting
+those somewhat saddusaical lines from the popular
+psalm-book:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"'The living know that they must die,<br />
+But all the dead forgotten lie&mdash;<br />
+<i>Their memory and their senses gone,<br />
+Alike unknowing and unknown</i>.'"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know 'bout that," said Miss Roxy, flavoring
+her cup of tea; "hymn-book ain't Scriptur', and I'm
+pretty sure that ar ain't true always;" and she nodded her
+head as if she could say more if she chose.</p>
+
+<p>Now Miss Roxy's reputation of vast experience in all
+the facts relating to those last fateful hours, which are the
+only certain event in every human existence, caused her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+to be regarded as a sort of Delphic oracle in such matters,
+and therefore Mrs. Kittridge, not without a share of the
+latent superstition to which each human heart must confess
+at some hours, drew confidentially near to Miss Roxy, and
+asked if she had anything particular on her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Roxy, "I ain't one
+of the sort as likes to make a talk of what I've seen, but
+mebbe if I was, I've seen some things <i>as</i> remarkable as
+anybody. I tell you, Mis' Kittridge, folks don't tend the
+sick and dyin' bed year in and out, at all hours, day and
+night, and not see some remarkable things; that's my
+opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Roxy, did you ever see a sperit?"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't say as I have, and I won't say as I haven't,"
+said Miss Roxy; "only as I have seen some remarkable
+things."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, in which Mrs. Kittridge stirred her
+tea, looking intensely curious, while the old kitchen-clock
+seemed to tick with one of those fits of loud insistence
+which seem to take clocks at times when all is still, as
+if they had something that they were getting ready to say
+pretty soon, if nobody else spoke.</p>
+
+<p>But Miss Roxy evidently had something to say, and so
+she began:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Kittridge, this 'ere's a very particular subject to
+be talkin' of. I've had opportunities to observe that most
+haven't, and I don't care if I jist say to you, that I'm
+pretty sure spirits that has left the body do come to their
+friends sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>The clock ticked with still more <i>empressement</i>, and
+Mrs. Kittridge glared through the horn bows of her glasses
+with eyes of eager curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you remember Cap'n Titcomb's wife, that died
+fifteen years ago when her husband had gone to Archangel;
+and you remember that he took her son John out with him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>&mdash;and
+of all her boys, John was the one she was particular
+sot on."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and John died at Archangel; I remember that."</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' so," said Miss Roxy, laying her hand on Mrs.
+Kittridge's; "he died at Archangel the very day his mother
+died, and jist the hour, for the Cap'n had it down in his
+log-book."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say so!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do. Well, now," said Miss Roxy, sinking her
+voice, "this 'ere was remarkable. Mis' Titcomb was one
+of the fearful sort, tho' one of the best women that ever
+lived. Our minister used to call her 'Mis' Muchafraid'&mdash;you
+know, in the 'Pilgrim's Progress'&mdash;but he was satisfied
+with her evidences, and told her so; she used to say
+she was 'afraid of the dark valley,' and she told our minister
+so when he went out, that ar last day he called; and
+his last words, as he stood with his hand on the knob of
+the door, was 'Mis' Titcomb, the Lord will find ways to
+bring you thro' the dark valley.' Well, she sunk away
+about three o'clock in the morning. I remember the time,
+'cause the Cap'n's chronometer watch that he left with her
+lay on the stand for her to take her drops by. I heard her
+kind o' restless, and I went up, and I saw she was struck
+with death, and she looked sort o' anxious and distressed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Aunt Roxy,' says she, 'it's so dark, who will go
+with me?' and in a minute her whole face brightened up,
+and says she, 'John is going with me,' and she jist gave
+the least little sigh and never breathed no more&mdash;she jist
+died as easy as a bird. I told our minister of it next morning,
+and he asked if I'd made a note of the hour, and I
+told him I had, and says he, 'You did right, Aunt Roxy.'"</p>
+
+<p>"What did he seem to think of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he didn't seem inclined to speak freely. 'Miss
+Roxy,' says he, 'all natur's in the Lord's hands, and
+there's no saying why he uses this or that; them that's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+strong enough to go by faith, he lets 'em, but there's no
+saying what he won't do for the weak ones.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Wa'n't the Cap'n overcome when you told him?" said
+Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed he was; he was jist as white as a sheet."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy now proceeded to pour out another cup of
+tea, and having mixed and flavored it, she looked in a
+weird and sibylline manner across it, and inquired,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Kittridge, do you remember that ar Mr. Wadkins
+that come to Brunswick twenty years ago, in President
+Averill's days?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I remember the pale, thin, long-nosed gentleman
+that used to sit in President Averill's pew at church.
+Nobody knew who he was, or where he came from. The
+college students used to call him Thaddeus of Warsaw.
+Nobody knew who he was but the President, 'cause he
+could speak all the foreign tongues&mdash;one about as well as
+another; but the President he knew his story, and said he
+was a good man, and he used to stay to the sacrament regular,
+I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Miss Roxy, "he used to live in a room all
+alone, and keep himself. Folks said he was quite a gentleman,
+too, and fond of reading."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard Cap'n Atkins tell," said Mrs. Kittridge, "how
+they came to take him up on the shores of Holland. You
+see, when he was somewhere in a port in Denmark, some
+men come to him and offered him a pretty good sum of
+money if he'd be at such a place on the coast of Holland
+on such a day, and take whoever should come. So the
+Cap'n he went, and sure enough on that day there come
+a troop of men on horseback down to the beach with this
+man, and they all bid him good-by, and seemed to make
+much of him, but he never told 'em nothin' on board ship,
+only he seemed kind o' sad and pinin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Roxy; "Ruey and I we took care o'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+that man in his last sickness, and we watched with him
+the night he died, and there was something quite remarkable."</p>
+
+<p>"Do tell now," said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see," said Miss Roxy, "he'd been low and
+poorly all day, kind o' tossin' and restless, and a little
+light-headed, and the Doctor said he thought he wouldn't
+last till morning, and so Ruey and I we set up with him,
+and between twelve and one Ruey said she thought she'd
+jist lop down a few minutes on the old sofa at the foot of
+the bed, and I made me a cup of tea like as I'm a-doin'
+now, and set with my back to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Mrs. Kittridge, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see he kept a-tossin' and throwin' off the
+clothes, and I kept a-gettin' up to straighten 'em; and
+once he threw out his arms, and something bright fell out
+on to the pillow, and I went and looked, and it was a likeness
+that he wore by a ribbon round his neck. It was a
+woman&mdash;a real handsome one&mdash;and she had on a low-necked
+black dress, of the cut they used to call Marie
+Louise, and she had a string of pearls round her neck, and
+her hair curled with pearls in it, and very wide blue eyes.
+Well, you see, I didn't look but a minute before he seemed
+to wake up, and he caught at it and hid it in his clothes.
+Well, I went and sat down, and I grew kind o' sleepy
+over the fire; but pretty soon I heard him speak out very
+clear, and kind o' surprised, in a tongue I didn't understand,
+and I looked round."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy here made a pause, and put another lump of
+sugar into her tea.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Mrs. Kittridge, ready to burst with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, I don't like to tell about these 'ere things,
+and you mustn't never speak about it; but as sure as you
+live, Polly Kittridge, I see that ar very woman standin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+at the back of the bed, right in the partin' of the curtains,
+jist as she looked in the pictur'&mdash;blue eyes and curly hair
+and pearls on her neck, and black dress."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do?" said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Do? Why, I jist held my breath and looked, and in
+a minute it kind o' faded away, and I got up and went to
+the bed, but the man was gone. He lay there with the
+pleasantest smile on his face that ever you see; and I woke
+up Ruey, and told her about it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge drew a long breath. "What do you
+think it was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I know what I think, but I
+don't think best to tell. I told Doctor Meritts, and he
+said there were more things in heaven and earth than folks
+knew about&mdash;and so I think."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Meanwhile, on this same evening, the little Mara frisked
+like a household fairy round the hearth of Zephaniah Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was a strong-limbed, merry-hearted little urchin,
+and did full justice to the abundant hospitalities of Mrs.
+Pennel's tea-table; and after supper little Mara employed
+herself in bringing apronful after apronful of her choicest
+treasures, and laying them down at his feet. His great
+black eyes flashed with pleasure, and he gamboled about
+the hearth with his new playmate in perfect forgetfulness,
+apparently, of all the past night of fear and anguish.</p>
+
+<p>When the great family Bible was brought out for prayers,
+and little Mara composed herself on a low stool by her
+grandmother's side, he, however, did not conduct himself
+as a babe of grace. He resisted all Miss Ruey's efforts to
+make him sit down beside her, and stood staring with his
+great, black, irreverent eyes during the Bible-reading, and
+laughed out in the most inappropriate manner when the
+psalm-singing began, and seemed disposed to mingle incoherent
+remarks of his own even in the prayers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This is a pretty self-willed youngster," said Miss Ruey,
+as they rose from the exercises, "and I shouldn't think
+he'd been used to religious privileges."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," said Zephaniah Pennel; "but who can
+say but what this providence is a message of the Lord to
+us&mdash;such as Pharaoh's daughter sent about Moses, 'Take
+this child, and bring him up for me'?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to take him, if I thought I was capable," said
+Mrs. Pennel, timidly. "It seems a real providence to give
+Mara some company; the poor child pines so for want
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, Mary, if you say so, we will bring him up
+with our little Mara," said Zephaniah, drawing the child
+toward him. "May the Lord bless him!" he added, laying
+his great brown hands on the shining black curls of
+the child.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>MOSES</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>Sunday morning rose clear and bright on Harpswell
+Bay. The whole sea was a waveless, blue looking-glass,
+streaked with bands of white, and flecked with sailing
+cloud-shadows from the skies above. Orr's Island, with
+its blue-black spruces, its silver firs, its golden larches, its
+scarlet sumachs, lay on the bosom of the deep like a great
+many-colored gem on an enchanted mirror. A vague,
+dreamlike sense of rest and Sabbath stillness seemed to
+brood in the air. The very spruce-trees seemed to know
+that it was Sunday, and to point solemnly upward with
+their dusky fingers; and the small tide-waves that chased
+each other up on the shelly beach, or broke against projecting
+rocks, seemed to do it with a chastened decorum,
+as if each blue-haired wave whispered to his brother, "Be
+still&mdash;be still."</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Sunday it was along all the beautiful shores of
+Maine&mdash;netted in green and azure by its thousand islands,
+all glorious with their majestic pines, all musical and silvery
+with the caresses of the sea-waves, that loved to wander
+and lose themselves in their numberless shelly coves
+and tiny beaches among their cedar shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Not merely as a burdensome restraint, or a weary endurance,
+came the shadow of that Puritan Sabbath. It
+brought with it all the sweetness that belongs to rest, all
+the sacredness that hallows home, all the memories of patient
+thrift, of sober order, of chastened yet intense family
+feeling, of calmness, purity, and self-respecting dignity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+which distinguish the Puritan household. It seemed a
+solemn pause in all the sights and sounds of earth. And
+he whose moral nature was not yet enough developed to
+fill the blank with visions of heaven was yet wholesomely
+instructed by his weariness into the secret of his own
+spiritual poverty.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah Pennel, in his best Sunday clothes, with his
+hard visage glowing with a sort of interior tenderness, ministered
+this morning at his family-altar&mdash;one of those
+thousand priests of God's ordaining that tend the sacred
+fire in as many families of New England. He had risen
+with the morning star and been forth to meditate, and
+came in with his mind softened and glowing. The trance-like
+calm of earth and sea found a solemn answer with
+him, as he read what a poet wrote by the sea-shores of the
+Mediterranean, ages ago: "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O
+Lord my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with
+honor and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as
+with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a
+curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh
+upon the wings of the wind. The trees of the Lord are
+full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted;
+where the birds make their nests; as for the stork, the
+fir-trees are her house. O Lord, how manifold are thy
+works! in wisdom hast thou made them all."</p>
+
+<p>Ages ago the cedars that the poet saw have rotted into
+dust, and from their cones have risen generations of others,
+wide-winged and grand. But the words of that poet have
+been wafted like seed to our days, and sprung up in
+flowers of trust and faith in a thousand households.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now," said Miss Ruey, when the morning rite
+was over, "Mis' Pennel, I s'pose you and the Cap'n will
+be wantin' to go to the meetin', so don't you gin yourse'ves
+a mite of trouble about the children, for I'll stay at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+home with 'em. The little feller was starty and fretful in
+his sleep last night, and didn't seem to be quite well."</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder, poor dear," said Mrs. Pennel; "it's a
+wonder children can forget as they do."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Miss Ruey; "you know them lines in the
+'English Reader,'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+'Gay hope is theirs by fancy led,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Least pleasing when possessed;</span><br />
+The tear forgot as soon as shed,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sunshine of the breast.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Them lines all'ys seemed to me affectin'."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey's sentiment was here interrupted by a loud
+cry from the bedroom, and something between a sneeze and
+a howl.</p>
+
+<p>"Massy! what is that ar young un up to!" she exclaimed,
+rushing into the adjoining bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>There stood the young Master Hopeful of our story,
+with streaming eyes and much-bedaubed face, having just,
+after much labor, succeeded in making Miss Ruey's snuff-box
+fly open, which he did with such force as to send the
+contents in a perfect cloud into eyes, nose, and mouth.
+The scene of struggling and confusion that ensued cannot
+be described. The washings, and wipings, and sobbings,
+and exhortings, and the sympathetic sobs of the little Mara,
+formed a small tempest for the time being that was rather
+appalling.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this 'ere's a youngster that's a-goin' to make
+work," said Miss Ruey, when all things were tolerably restored.
+"Seems to make himself at home first thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little dear," said Mrs. Pennel, in the excess of
+loving-kindness, "I hope he will; he's welcome, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to my snuff-box," said Miss Ruey, who had felt
+herself attacked in a very tender point.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got the notion of lookin' into things pretty early,"
+said Captain Pennel, with an indulgent smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, Aunt Ruey," said Mrs. Pennel, when this disturbance
+was somewhat abated, "I feel kind o' sorry to
+deprive you of your privileges to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! never mind me," said Miss Ruey, briskly.
+"I've got the big Bible, and I can sing a hymn or two by
+myself. My voice ain't quite what it used to be, but then
+I get a good deal of pleasure out of it." Aunt Ruey, it
+must be known, had in her youth been one of the foremost
+leaders in the "singers' seats," and now was in the habit
+of speaking of herself much as a retired <i>prima donna</i>
+might, whose past successes were yet in the minds of her
+generation.</p>
+
+<p>After giving a look out of the window, to see that the
+children were within sight, she opened the big Bible at the
+story of the ten plagues of Egypt, and adjusting her horn
+spectacles with a sort of sideway twist on her little pug
+nose, she seemed intent on her Sunday duties. A moment
+after she looked up and said, "I don't know but I must
+send a message by you over to Mis' Deacon Badger, about
+a worldly matter, if 'tis Sunday; but I've been thinkin',
+Mis' Pennel, that there'll have to be clothes made up for
+this 'ere child next week, and so perhaps Roxy and I had
+better stop here a day or two longer, and you tell Mis'
+Badger that we'll come to her a Wednesday, and so she'll
+have time to have that new press-board done,&mdash;the old
+one used to pester me so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll remember," said Mrs. Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a'most impossible to prevent one's thoughts
+wanderin' Sundays," said Aunt Ruey; "but I couldn't
+help a-thinkin' I could get such a nice pair o' trousers out
+of them old Sunday ones of the Cap'n's in the garret. I
+was a-lookin' at 'em last Thursday, and thinkin' what a
+pity 'twas you hadn't nobody to cut down for; but this
+'ere young un's going to be such a tearer, he'll want somethin'
+real stout; but I'll try and put it out of my mind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+till Monday. Mis' Pennel, you'll be sure to ask Mis'
+Titcomb how Harriet's toothache is, and whether them
+drops cured her that I gin her last Sunday; and ef you'll
+jist look in a minute at Major Broad's, and tell 'em to use
+bayberry wax for his blister, it's so healin'; and do jist
+ask if Sally's baby's eye-tooth has come through yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Aunt Ruey, I'll try to remember all," said Mrs.
+Pennel, as she stood at the glass in her bedroom, carefully
+adjusting the respectable black silk shawl over her shoulders,
+and tying her neat bonnet-strings.</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose," said Aunt Ruey, "that the notice of the
+funeral'll be gin out after sermon."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think so," said Mrs. Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>"It's another loud call," said Miss Ruey, "and I hope
+it will turn the young people from their thoughts of dress
+and vanity,&mdash;there's Mary Jane Sanborn was all took up
+with gettin' feathers and velvet for her fall bonnet. I
+don't think I shall get no bonnet this year till snow comes.
+My bonnet's respectable enough,&mdash;don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Aunt Ruey, it looks very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll have the pork and beans and brown-bread
+all hot on table agin you come back," said Miss Ruey,
+"and then after dinner we'll all go down to the funeral
+together. Mis' Pennel, there's one thing on my mind,&mdash;what
+you goin' to call this 'ere boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Father and I've been thinkin' that over," said Mrs.
+Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't think of giv'n him the Cap'n's name?" said
+Aunt Ruey.</p>
+
+<p>"He must have a name of his own," said Captain Pennel.
+"Come here, sonny," he called to the child, who
+was playing just beside the door.</p>
+
+<p>The child lowered his head, shook down his long black
+curls, and looked through them as elfishly as a Skye terrier,
+but showed no inclination to come.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One thing he hasn't learned, evidently," said Captain
+Pennel, "and that is to mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" he said, turning to the boy with a little of
+the tone he had used of old on the quarter-deck, and taking
+his small hand firmly.</p>
+
+<p>The child surrendered, and let the good man lift him on
+his knee and stroke aside the clustering curls; the boy
+then looked fixedly at him with his great gloomy black
+eyes, his little firm-set mouth and bridled chin,&mdash;a perfect
+little miniature of proud manliness.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name, little boy?"</p>
+
+<p>The great eyes continued looking in the same solemn
+quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Law, he don't understand a word," said Zephaniah,
+putting his hand kindly on the child's head; "our tongue
+is all strange to him. Kittridge says he's a Spanish child;
+may be from the West Indies; but nobody knows,&mdash;we
+never shall know his name."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I dare say it was some Popish nonsense or
+other," said Aunt Ruey; "and now he's come to a land of
+Christian privileges, we ought to give him a good Scripture
+name, and start him well in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's call him Moses," said Zephaniah, "because we
+drew him out of the water."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, did I ever!" said Miss Ruey; "there's something
+in the Bible to fit everything, ain't there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I like Moses, because I had a brother of that name,"
+said Mrs. Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>The child had slid down from his protector's knee,
+and stood looking from one to the other gravely while
+this discussion was going on. What change of destiny
+was then going on for him in this simple formula of adoption,
+none could tell; but, surely, never orphan stranded
+on a foreign shore found home with hearts more true and
+loving.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, wife, I suppose we must be goin'," said Zephaniah.</p>
+
+<p>About a stone's throw from the open door, the little
+fishing-craft lay courtesying daintily on the small tide-waves
+that came licking up the white pebbly shore. Mrs.
+Pennel seated herself in the end of the boat, and a pretty
+placid picture she was, with her smooth, parted hair, her
+modest, cool, drab bonnet, and her bright hazel eyes, in
+which was the Sabbath calm of a loving and tender heart.
+Zephaniah loosed the sail, and the two children stood on
+the beach and saw them go off. A pleasant little wind
+carried them away, and back on the breeze came the sound
+of Zephaniah's Sunday-morning psalm:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Lord, in the morning thou shalt hear<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My voice ascending high;</span><br />
+To thee will I direct my prayer,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To thee lift up mine eye.</span><br />
+<br />
+"Unto thy house will I resort.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To taste thy mercies there;</span><br />
+I will frequent thy holy court,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And worship in thy fear."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The surface of the glassy bay was dotted here and there
+with the white sails of other little craft bound for the same
+point and for the same purpose. It was as pleasant a sight
+as one might wish to see.</p>
+
+<p>Left in charge of the house, Miss Ruey drew a long
+breath, took a consoling pinch of snuff, sang "Bridgewater"
+in an uncommonly high key, and then began reading in
+the prophecies. With her good head full of the "daughter
+of Zion" and the house of Israel and Judah, she was
+recalled to terrestrial things by loud screams from the barn,
+accompanied by a general flutter and cackling among the
+hens.</p>
+
+<p>Away plodded the good soul, and opening the barn-door
+saw the little boy perched on the top of the hay-mow,
+screaming and shrieking,&mdash;his face the picture of dismay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>&mdash;while poor little Mara's cries came in a more muffled
+manner from some unexplored lower region. In fact, she
+was found to have slipped through a hole in the hay-mow
+into the nest of a very domestic sitting-hen, whose clamors
+at the invasion of her family privacy added no little to the
+general confusion.</p>
+
+<p>The little princess, whose nicety as to her dress and sensitiveness
+as to anything unpleasant about her pretty person
+we have seen, was lifted up streaming with tears and
+broken eggs, but otherwise not seriously injured, having
+fallen on the very substantial substratum of hay which
+Dame Poulet had selected as the foundation of her domestic
+hopes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, did I ever!" said Miss Ruey, when she
+had ascertained that no bones were broken; "if that ar
+young un isn't a limb! I declare for't I pity Mis' Pennel,&mdash;she
+don't know what she's undertook. How upon
+'arth the critter managed to get Mara on to the hay, I'm
+sure I can't tell,&mdash;that ar little thing never got into no
+such scrapes before."</p>
+
+<p>Far from seeming impressed with any wholesome remorse
+of conscience, the little culprit frowned fierce defiance at
+Miss Ruey, when, after having repaired the damages of
+little Mara's toilet, she essayed the good old plan of shutting
+him into the closet. He fought and struggled so
+fiercely that Aunt Ruey's carroty frisette came off in the
+skirmish, and her head-gear, always rather original, assumed
+an aspect verging on the supernatural. Miss Ruey
+thought of Philistines and Moabites, and all the other terrible
+people she had been reading about that morning, and
+came as near getting into a passion with the little elf as so
+good-humored and Christian an old body could possibly do.
+Human virtue is frail, and every one has some vulnerable
+point. The old Roman senator could not control himself
+when his beard was invaded, and the like sensitiveness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+resides in an old woman's cap; and when young master
+irreverently clawed off her Sunday best, Aunt Ruey, in her
+confusion of mind, administered a sound cuff on either ear.</p>
+
+<p>Little Mara, who had screamed loudly through the
+whole scene, now conceiving that her precious new-found
+treasure was endangered, flew at poor Miss Ruey with
+both little hands; and throwing her arms round her "boy,"
+as she constantly called him, she drew him backward, and
+looked defiance at the common enemy. Miss Ruey was
+dumb-struck.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare for't, I b'lieve he's bewitched her," she
+said, stupefied, having never seen anything like the martial
+expression which now gleamed from those soft brown eyes.
+"Why, Mara dear,&mdash;putty little Mara."</p>
+
+<p>But Mara was busy wiping away the angry tears that
+stood on the hot, glowing cheeks of the boy, and offering
+her little rosebud of a mouth to kiss him, as she stood on
+tiptoe.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy,&mdash;no kie,&mdash;Mara's boy," she said; "Mara
+love boy;" and then giving an angry glance at Aunt Ruey,
+who sat much disheartened and confused, she struck out
+her little pearly hand, and cried, "Go way,&mdash;go way,
+naughty!"</p>
+
+<p>The child jabbered unintelligibly and earnestly to Mara,
+and she seemed to have the air of being perfectly satisfied
+with his view of the case, and both regarded Miss Ruey
+with frowning looks. Under these peculiar circumstances,
+the good soul began to bethink her of some mode of compromise,
+and going to the closet took out a couple of slices
+of cake, which she offered to the little rebels with pacificatory
+words.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was appeased at once, and ran to Aunt Ruey; but
+the boy struck the cake out of her hand, and looked at her
+with steady defiance. The little one picked it up, and
+with much chippering and many little feminine man&oelig;uvres,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+at last succeeded in making him taste it, after which appetite
+got the better of his valorous resolutions,&mdash;he ate and
+was comforted; and after a little time, the three were on
+the best possible footing. And Miss Ruey having smoothed
+her hair, and arranged her frisette and cap, began to reflect
+upon herself as the cause of the whole disturbance. If she
+had not let them run while she indulged in reading and
+singing, this would not have happened. So the toilful
+good soul kept them at her knee for the next hour or two,
+while they looked through all the pictures in the old family
+Bible.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The evening of that day witnessed a crowded funeral in
+the small rooms of Captain Kittridge. Mrs. Kittridge was
+in her glory. Solemn and lugubrious to the last degree,
+she supplied in her own proper person the want of the
+whole corps of mourners, who generally attract sympathy
+on such occasions. But what drew artless pity from all
+was the unconscious orphan, who came in, led by Mrs.
+Pennel by the one hand, and with the little Mara by the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The simple rite of baptism administered to the wondering
+little creature so strongly recalled that other scene three
+years before, that Mrs. Pennel hid her face in her handkerchief,
+and Zephaniah's firm hand shook a little as he took
+the boy to offer him to the rite. The child received the
+ceremony with a look of grave surprise, put up his hand
+quickly and wiped the holy drops from his brow, as if they
+annoyed him; and shrinking back, seized hold of the gown
+of Mrs. Pennel. His great beauty, and, still more, the
+air of haughty, defiant firmness with which he regarded the
+company, drew all eyes, and many were the whispered
+comments.</p>
+
+<p>"Pennel'll have his hands full with that ar chap," said
+Captain Kittridge to Miss Roxy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge darted an admonitory glance at her husband,
+to remind him that she was looking at him, and immediately
+he collapsed into solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>The evening sunbeams slanted over the blackberry bushes
+and mullein stalks of the graveyard, when the lonely voyager
+was lowered to the rest from which she should not rise
+till the heavens be no more. As the purple sea at that
+hour retained no trace of the ships that had furrowed its
+waves, so of this mortal traveler no trace remained, not
+even in that infant soul that was to her so passionately
+dear.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MINISTER</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>Mrs. Kittridge's advantages and immunities resulting
+from the shipwreck were not yet at an end. Not only
+had one of the most "solemn providences" known within
+the memory of the neighborhood fallen out at her door,&mdash;not
+only had the most interesting funeral that had occurred
+for three or four years taken place in her parlor, but she
+was still further to be distinguished in having the minister
+to tea after the performances were all over. To this end
+she had risen early, and taken down her best china tea-cups,
+which had been marked with her and her husband's
+joint initials in Canton, and which only came forth on high
+and solemn occasions. In view of this probable distinction,
+on Saturday, immediately after the discovery of the
+calamity, Mrs. Kittridge had found time to rush to her
+kitchen, and make up a loaf of pound-cake and some
+doughnuts, that the great occasion which she foresaw might
+not find her below her reputation as a forehanded housewife.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fine golden hour when the minister and funeral
+train turned away from the grave. Unlike other funerals,
+there was no draught on the sympathies in favor of mourners&mdash;no
+wife, or husband, or parent, left a heart in that
+grave; and so when the rites were all over, they turned
+with the more cheerfulness back into life, from the contrast
+of its freshness with those shadows into which, for
+the hour, they had been gazing.</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Theophilus Sewell was one of the few minis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>ters
+who preserved the costume of a former generation,
+with something of that imposing dignity with which, in
+earlier times, the habits of the clergy were invested. He
+was tall and majestic in stature, and carried to advantage
+the powdered wig and three-cornered hat, the broad-skirted
+coat, knee-breeches, high shoes, and plated buckles of the
+ancient costume. There was just a sufficient degree of the
+formality of olden times to give a certain quaintness to all
+he said and did. He was a man of a considerable degree
+of talent, force, and originality, and in fact had been held
+in his day to be one of the most promising graduates of
+Harvard University. But, being a good man, he had proposed
+to himself no higher ambition than to succeed to the
+pulpit of his father in Harpswell.</p>
+
+<p>His parish included not only a somewhat scattered seafaring
+population on the mainland, but also the care of
+several islands. Like many other of the New England
+clergy of those times, he united in himself numerous different
+offices for the benefit of the people whom he served.
+As there was neither lawyer nor physician in the town, he
+had acquired by his reading, and still more by his experience,
+enough knowledge in both these departments to
+enable him to administer to the ordinary wants of a very
+healthy and peaceable people.</p>
+
+<p>It was said that most of the deeds and legal conveyances
+in his parish were in his handwriting, and in the medical
+line his authority was only rivaled by that of Miss Roxy,
+who claimed a very obvious advantage over him in a certain
+class of cases, from the fact of her being a woman,
+which was still further increased by the circumstance that
+the good man had retained steadfastly his bachelor estate.
+"So, of course," Miss Roxy used to say, "poor man! what
+could he know about a woman, you know?"</p>
+
+<p>This state of bachelorhood gave occasion to much surmising;
+but when spoken to about it, he was accustomed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+to remark with gallantry, that he should have too much
+regard for any lady whom he could think of as a wife, to
+ask her to share his straitened circumstances. His income,
+indeed, consisted of only about two hundred dollars a year;
+but upon this he and a very brisk, cheerful maiden sister
+contrived to keep up a thrifty and comfortable establishment,
+in which everything appeared to be pervaded by a
+spirit of quaint cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the man might be seen to be an original in his
+way, and all the springs of his life were kept oiled by a
+quiet humor, which sometimes broke out in playful sparkles,
+despite the gravity of the pulpit and the awfulness
+of the cocked hat. He had a placid way of amusing himself
+with the quaint and picturesque side of life, as it
+appeared in all his visitings among a very primitive, yet
+very shrewd-minded people.</p>
+
+<p>There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of
+mingling in the affairs of this life as spectators as well as
+actors. It does not, of course, suppose any coldness of
+nature or want of human interest or sympathy&mdash;nay, it
+often exists most completely with people of the tenderest
+human feeling. It rather seems to be a kind of distinct
+faculty working harmoniously with all the others; but he
+who possesses it needs never to be at a loss for interest or
+amusement; he is always a spectator at a tragedy or comedy,
+and sees in real life a humor and a pathos beyond
+anything he can find shadowed in books.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell sometimes, in his pastoral visitations, took
+a quiet pleasure in playing upon these simple minds, and
+amusing himself with the odd harmonies and singular resolutions
+of chords which started out under his fingers.
+Surely he had a right to something in addition to his limited
+salary, and this innocent, unsuspected entertainment
+helped to make up the balance for his many labors.</p>
+
+<p>His sister was one of the best-hearted and most unsus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>picious
+of the class of female idolaters, and worshiped her
+brother with the most undoubting faith and devotion&mdash;wholly
+ignorant of the constant amusement she gave him
+by a thousand little feminine peculiarities, which struck
+him with a continual sense of oddity. It was infinitely
+diverting to him to see the solemnity of her interest in his
+shirts and stockings, and Sunday clothes, and to listen to
+the subtle distinctions which she would draw between best
+and second-best, and every-day; to receive her somewhat
+prolix admonition how he was to demean himself in respect
+of the wearing of each one; for Miss Emily Sewell was a
+gentlewoman, and held rigidly to various traditions of gentility
+which had been handed down in the Sewell family,
+and which afforded her brother too much quiet amusement
+to be disturbed. He would not have overthrown one of
+her quiddities for the world; it would be taking away a
+part of his capital in existence.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily was a trim, genteel little person, with dancing
+black eyes, and cheeks which had the roses of youth
+well dried into them. It was easy to see that she had been
+quite pretty in her days; and her neat figure, her brisk
+little vivacious ways, her unceasing good-nature and kindness
+of heart, still made her an object both of admiration
+and interest in the parish. She was great in drying herbs
+and preparing recipes; in knitting and sewing, and cutting
+and contriving; in saving every possible snip and chip
+either of food or clothing; and no less liberal was she in
+bestowing advice and aid in the parish, where she moved
+about with all the sense of consequence which her brother's
+position warranted.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of his bachelorhood caused his relations to the
+female part of his flock to be even more shrouded in sacredness
+and mystery than is commonly the case with the great
+man of the parish; but Miss Emily delighted to act as
+interpreter. She was charmed to serve out to the willing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+ears of his parish from time to time such scraps of information
+as regarded his life, habits, and opinions as might
+gratify their ever new curiosity. Instructed by her, all
+the good wives knew the difference between his very best
+long silk stocking and his second best, and how carefully
+the first had to be kept under lock and key, where he
+could not get at them; for he was understood, good as he
+was, to have concealed in him all the thriftless and pernicious
+inconsiderateness of the male nature, ready at any
+moment to break out into unheard-of improprieties. But
+the good man submitted himself to Miss Emily's rule, and
+suffered himself to be led about by her with an air of half
+whimsical consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge that day had felt the full delicacy of the
+compliment when she ascertained by a hasty glance, before
+the first prayer, that the good man had been brought out
+to her funeral in all his very best things, not excepting the
+long silk stockings, for she knew the second-best pair by
+means of a certain skillful darn which Miss Emily had once
+shown her, which commemorated the spot where a hole
+had been. The absence of this darn struck to Mrs. Kittridge's
+heart at once as a delicate attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Simpkins," said Mrs. Kittridge to her pastor, as
+they were seated at the tea-table, "told me that she wished
+when you were going home that you would call in to see
+Mary Jane; she couldn't come out to the funeral on account
+of a dreffle sore throat. I was tellin' on her to gargle
+it with blackberry-root tea&mdash;don't you think that is a
+good gargle, Mr. Sewell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think it a very good gargle," replied the minister,
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma'sh rosemary is the gargle that I always use," said
+Miss Roxy; "it cleans out your throat so."</p>
+
+<p>"Marsh rosemary is a very excellent gargle," said Mr.
+Sewell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, brother, don't you think that rose leaves and
+vitriol is a good gargle?" said little Miss Emily; "I
+always thought that you liked rose leaves and vitriol for
+a gargle."</p>
+
+<p>"So I do," said the imperturbable Mr. Sewell, drinking
+his tea with the air of a sphinx.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, you'll have to tell which on 'em will be
+most likely to cure Mary Jane," said Captain Kittridge,
+"or there'll be a pullin' of caps, I'm thinkin'; or else the
+poor girl will have to drink them all, which is generally
+the way."</p>
+
+<p>"There won't any of them cure Mary Jane's throat,"
+said the minister, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, brother!" "Why, Mr. Sewell!" "Why, you
+don't!" burst in different tones from each of the women.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you said that blackberry-root tea was good,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"I understood that you 'proved of ma'sh rosemary,"
+said Miss Roxy, touched in her professional pride.</p>
+
+<p>"And I am sure, brother, that I have heard you say,
+often and often, that there wasn't a better gargle than rose
+leaves and vitriol," said Miss Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right, ladies, all of you. I think these
+are all good gargles&mdash;excellent ones."</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you said that they didn't do any good?"
+said all the ladies in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>"No, they don't&mdash;not the least in the world," said Mr.
+Sewell; "but they are all excellent gargles, and as long as
+people must have gargles, I think one is about as good as
+another."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you have got it," said Captain Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Brother, you do say the strangest things," said Miss
+Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say," said Miss Roxy, "it is a new idea
+to me, long as I've been nussin', and I nussed through one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+season of scarlet fever when sometimes there was five died
+in one house; and if ma'sh rosemary didn't do good then,
+I should like to know what did."</p>
+
+<p>"So would a good many others," said the minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Law, now, Miss Roxy, you mus'n't mind him. Do
+you know that I believe he says these sort of things just
+to hear us talk? Of course he wouldn't think of puttin'
+his experience against yours."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Emily, with a view of
+summoning a less controverted subject, "what a beautiful
+little boy that was, and what a striking providence that
+brought him into such a good family!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Kittridge; "but I'm sure I don't see
+what Mary Pennel is goin' to do with that boy, for she
+ain't got no more government than a twisted tow-string."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the Cap'n, he'll lend a hand," said Miss Roxy,
+"it won't be easy gettin' roun' him; Cap'n bears a pretty
+steady hand when he sets out to drive."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Emily, "I do think that bringin'
+up children is the most awful responsibility, and I always
+wonder when I hear that any one dares to undertake it."</p>
+
+<p>"It requires a great deal of resolution, certainly," said
+Mrs. Kittridge; "I'm sure I used to get a'most discouraged
+when my boys was young: they was a reg'lar set of
+wild ass's colts," she added, not perceiving the reflection
+on their paternity.</p>
+
+<p>But the countenance of Mr. Sewell was all aglow with
+merriment, which did not break into a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "strikes me
+that you're gettin' pussonal."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I ain't neither," said the literal Mrs. Kittridge,
+ignorant of the cause of the amusement which she saw
+around her; "but you wa'n't no help to me, you know;
+you was always off to sea, and the whole wear and tear
+on't came on me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, Polly, all's well that ends well; don't you
+think so, Mr. Sewell?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't much experience in these matters," said Mr.
+Sewell, politely.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, that's what he hasn't, for he never will
+have a child round the house that he don't turn everything
+topsy-turvy for them," said Miss Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"But I was going to remark," said Mr. Sewell, "that a
+friend of mine said once, that the woman that had brought
+up six boys deserved a seat among the martyrs; and that
+is rather my opinion."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', Polly, if you git up there, I hope you'll keep a
+seat for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge, what levity!" said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't begin it, anyhow," said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily interposed, and led the conversation back to
+the subject. "What a pity it is," she said, "that this poor
+child's family can never know anything about him. There
+may be those who would give all the world to know what
+has become of him; and when he comes to grow up, how
+sad he will feel to have no father and mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sister," said Mr. Sewell, "you cannot think that a child
+brought up by Captain Pennel and his wife would ever feel
+as without father and mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, brother, to be sure not. There's no doubt
+he will have everything done for him that a child could.
+But then it's a loss to lose one's real home."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be a gracious deliverance," said Mr. Sewell&mdash;"who
+knows? We may as well take a cheerful view, and
+think that some kind wave has drifted the child away from
+an unfortunate destiny to a family where we are quite sure
+he will be brought up industriously and soberly, and in
+the fear of God."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I never thought of that," said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily, looking at her brother, saw that he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+speaking with a suppressed vehemence, as if some inner
+fountain of recollection at the moment were disturbed. But
+Miss Emily knew no more of the deeper parts of her brother's
+nature than a little bird that dips its beak into the
+sunny waters of some spring knows of its depths of coldness
+and shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Pennel was a-sayin' to me," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+"that I should ask you what was to be done about the
+bracelet they found. We don't know whether 'tis real
+gold and precious stones, or only glass and pinchbeck.
+Cap'n Kittridge he thinks it's real; and if 'tis, why then
+the question is, whether or no to try to sell it, or keep it
+for the boy agin he grows up. It may help find out who
+and what he is."</p>
+
+<p>"And why should he want to find out?" said Mr.
+Sewell. "Why should he not grow up and think himself
+the son of Captain and Mrs. Pennel? What better lot
+could a boy be born to?"</p>
+
+<p>"That may be, brother, but it can't be kept from him.
+Everybody knows how he was found, and you may be sure
+every bird of the air will tell him, and he'll grow up restless
+and wanting to know. Mis' Kittridge, have you got
+the bracelet handy?"</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, little Miss Emily was just dying with
+curiosity to set her dancing black eyes upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," said Mrs. Kittridge, taking it from a
+drawer.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bracelet of hair, of some curious foreign workmanship.
+A green enameled serpent, studded thickly with
+emeralds and with eyes of ruby, was curled around the
+clasp. A crystal plate covered a wide flat braid of hair, on
+which the letters "D.M." were curiously embroidered in a
+cipher of seed pearls. The whole was in style and workmanship
+quite different from any jewelry which ordinarily
+meets one's eye.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But what was remarkable was the expression in Mr.
+Sewell's face when this bracelet was put into his hand.
+Miss Emily had risen from table and brought it to him,
+leaning over him as she did so, and he turned his head a
+little to hold it in the light from the window, so that only
+she remarked the sudden expression of blank surprise and
+startled recognition which fell upon it. He seemed like a
+man who chokes down an exclamation; and rising hastily,
+he took the bracelet to the window, and standing with his
+back to the company, seemed to examine it with the
+minutest interest. After a few moments he turned and
+said, in a very composed tone, as if the subject were of no
+particular interest,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is a singular article, so far as workmanship is concerned.
+The value of the gems in themselves is not great
+enough to make it worth while to sell it. It will be worth
+more as a curiosity than anything else. It will doubtless
+be an interesting relic to keep for the boy when he grows
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Sewell, you keep it," said Mrs. Kittridge;
+"the Pennels told me to give it into your care."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall commit it to Emily here; women have a native
+sympathy with anything in the jewelry line. She'll be
+sure to lay it up so securely that she won't even know
+where it is herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Brother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Emily," said Mr. Sewell, "your hens will all
+go to roost on the wrong perch if you are not at home to
+see to them; so, if the Captain will set us across to Harpswell,
+I think we may as well be going."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's your hurry?" said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Mr. Sewell, "firstly, there's the hens;
+secondly, the pigs; and lastly, the cow. Besides I shouldn't
+wonder if some of Emily's admirers should call on her
+this evening,&mdash;never any saying when Captain Broad may
+come in."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, brother, you are too bad," said Miss Emily, as
+she bustled about her bonnet and shawl. "Now, that's
+all made up out of whole cloth. Captain Broad called last
+week a Monday, to talk to you about the pews, and hardly
+spoke a word to me. You oughtn't to say such things,
+'cause it raises reports."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, then, I won't again," said her brother. "I
+believe, after all, it was Captain Badger that called twice."</p>
+
+<p>"Brother!"</p>
+
+<p>"And left you a basket of apples the second time."</p>
+
+<p>"Brother, you know he only called to get some of my
+hoarhound for Mehitable's cough."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I remember."</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't take care," said Miss Emily, "I'll tell
+where you call."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Miss Emily, you must not mind him," said
+Miss Roxy; "we all know his ways."</p>
+
+<p>And now took place the grand leave-taking, which consisted
+first of the three women's standing in a knot and all
+talking at once, as if their very lives depended upon saying
+everything they could possibly think of before they
+separated, while Mr. Sewell and Captain Kittridge stood
+patiently waiting with the resigned air which the male sex
+commonly assume on such occasions; and when, after two
+or three "Come, Emily's," the group broke up only to form
+again on the door-step, where they were at it harder than
+ever, and a third occasion of the same sort took place at the
+bottom of the steps, Mr. Sewell was at last obliged by main
+force to drag his sister away in the middle of a sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily watched her brother shrewdly all the way
+home, but all traces of any uncommon feeling had passed
+away; and yet, with the restlessness of female curiosity,
+she felt quite sure that she had laid hold of the end of some
+skein of mystery, could she only find skill enough to unwind
+it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She took up the bracelet, and held it in the fading evening
+light, and broke into various observations with regard
+to the singularity of the workmanship. Her brother seemed
+entirely absorbed in talking with Captain Kittridge about
+the brig Anna Maria, which was going to be launched from
+Pennel's wharf next Wednesday. But she, therefore,
+internally resolved to lie in wait for the secret in that confidential
+hour which usually preceded going to bed. Therefore,
+as soon as she had arrived at their quiet dwelling,
+she put in operation the most seducing little fire that ever
+crackled and snapped in a chimney, well knowing that nothing
+was more calculated to throw light into any hidden
+or concealed chamber of the soul than that enlivening blaze,
+which danced so merrily on her well-polished andirons, and
+made the old chintz sofa and the time-worn furniture so
+rich in remembrances of family comfort.</p>
+
+<p>She then proceeded to divest her brother of his wig and
+his dress-coat, and to induct him into the flowing ease of
+a study-gown, crowning his well-shaven head with a black
+cap, and placing his slippers before the corner of a sofa
+nearest the fire. She observed him with satisfaction sliding
+into his seat, and then she trotted to a closet with a glass
+door in the corner of the room, and took down an old,
+quaintly-shaped silver cup, which had been an heirloom in
+their family, and was the only piece of plate which their
+modern domestic establishment could boast; and with this,
+down cellar she tripped, her little heels tapping lightly on
+each stair, and the hum of a song coming back after her as
+she sought the cider-barrel. Up again she came, and set
+the silver cup, with its clear amber contents, down by the
+fire, and then busied herself in making just the crispest,
+nicest square of toast to be eaten with it; for Miss Emily
+had conceived the idea that some little ceremony of this sort
+was absolutely necessary to do away all possible ill effects
+from a day's labor, and secure an uninterrupted night's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+repose. Having done all this, she took her knitting-work,
+and stationed herself just opposite to her brother.</p>
+
+<p>It was fortunate for Miss Emily that the era of daily
+journals had not yet arisen upon the earth, because if it had,
+after all her care and pains, her brother would probably
+have taken up the evening paper, and holding it between
+his face and her, have read an hour or so in silence; but
+Mr. Sewell had not this resort. He knew perfectly well
+that he had excited his sister's curiosity on a subject
+where he could not gratify it, and therefore he took refuge
+in a kind of mild, abstracted air of quietude which bid
+defiance to all her little suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>After in vain trying every indirect form, Miss Emily
+approached the subject more pointedly. "I thought that
+you looked very much interested in that poor woman to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"She had an interesting face," said her brother, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it like anybody that you ever saw?" said Miss
+Emily.</p>
+
+<p>Her brother did not seem to hear her, but, taking the
+tongs, picked up the two ends of a stick that had just fallen
+apart, and arranged them so as to make a new blaze.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily was obliged to repeat her question, whereat
+he started as one awakened out of a dream, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, he didn't know but she did; there were a
+good many women with black eyes and black hair,&mdash;Mrs.
+Kittridge, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I don't think that she looked like Mrs. Kittridge
+in the least," said Miss Emily, warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well! I didn't say she did," said her brother,
+looking drowsily at his watch; "why, Emily, it's getting
+rather late."</p>
+
+<p>"What made you look so when I showed you that bracelet?"
+said Miss Emily, determined now to push the war to
+the heart of the enemy's country.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look how?" said her brother, leisurely moistening a
+bit of toast in his cider.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I never saw anybody look more wild and astonished
+than you did for a minute or two."</p>
+
+<p>"I did, did I?" said her brother, in the same indifferent
+tone. "My dear child, what an active imagination you
+have. Did you ever look through a prism, Emily?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, Theophilus; what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you should, you would see everybody and
+everything with a nice little bordering of rainbow around
+them; now the rainbow isn't on the things, but in the
+prism."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what's that to the purpose?" said Miss Emily,
+rather bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, just this: you women are so nervous and excitable,
+that you are very apt to see your friends and the
+world in general with some coloring just as unreal. I am
+sorry for you, childie, but really I can't help you to get up
+a romance out of this bracelet. Well, good-night, Emily;
+take good care of yourself and go to bed;" and Mr. Sewell
+went to his room, leaving poor Miss Emily almost persuaded
+out of the sight of her own eyes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>LITTLE ADVENTURERS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>The little boy who had been added to the family of
+Zephaniah Pennel and his wife soon became a source of
+grave solicitude to that mild and long-suffering woman.
+For, as the reader may have seen, he was a resolute, self-willed
+little elf, and whatever his former life may have
+been, it was quite evident that these traits had been developed
+without any restraint.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel, whose whole domestic experience had consisted
+in rearing one very sensitive and timid daughter,
+who needed for her development only an extreme of tenderness,
+and whose conscientiousness was a law unto herself,
+stood utterly confounded before the turbulent little
+spirit to which her loving-kindness had opened so ready an
+asylum, and she soon discovered that it is one thing to take
+a human being to bring up, and another to know what to
+do with it after it is taken.</p>
+
+<p>The child had the instinctive awe of Zephaniah which his
+manly nature and habits of command were fitted to inspire,
+so that morning and evening, when he was at home, he
+was demure enough; but while the good man was away all
+day, and sometimes on fishing excursions which often lasted
+a week, there was a chronic state of domestic warfare&mdash;a
+succession of skirmishes, pitched battles, long treaties, with
+divers articles of capitulation, ending, as treaties are apt to
+do, in open rupture on the first convenient opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel sometimes reflected with herself mournfully,
+and with many self-disparaging sighs, what was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+reason that young master somehow contrived to keep her
+far more in awe of him than he was of her. Was she not
+evidently, as yet at least, bigger and stronger than he, able
+to hold his rebellious little hands, to lift and carry him,
+and to shut him up, if so she willed, in a dark closet, and
+even to administer to him that discipline of the birch which
+Mrs. Kittridge often and forcibly recommended as the great
+secret of her family prosperity? Was it not her duty, as
+everybody told her, to break his will while he was young?&mdash;a
+duty which hung like a millstone round the peaceable
+creature's neck, and weighed her down with a distressing
+sense of responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mrs. Pennel was one of the people to whom self-sacrifice
+is constitutionally so much a nature, that self-denial
+for her must have consisted in standing up for her
+own rights, or having her own way when it crossed the
+will and pleasure of any one around her. All she wanted
+of a child, or in fact of any human creature, was something
+to love and serve. We leave it entirely to theologians to
+reconcile such facts with the theory of total depravity; but
+it is a fact that there are a considerable number of women
+of this class. Their life would flow on very naturally if
+it might consist only in giving, never in withholding&mdash;only
+in praise, never in blame&mdash;only in acquiescence, never
+in conflict; and the chief comfort of such women in religion
+is that it gives them at last an object for love without
+criticism, and for whom the utmost degree of self-abandonment
+is not idolatry, but worship.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel would gladly have placed herself and all she
+possessed at the disposition of the children; they might
+have broken her china, dug in the garden with her silver
+spoons, made turf alleys in her best room, drummed on her
+mahogany tea-table, filled her muslin drawer with their
+choicest shells and seaweed; only Mrs. Pennel knew that
+such kindness was no kindness, and that in the dreadful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+word responsibility, familiar to every New England mother's
+ear, there lay an awful summons to deny and to conflict
+where she could so much easier have conceded.</p>
+
+<p>She saw that the tyrant little will would reign without
+mercy, if it reigned at all; and ever present with her was
+the uneasy sense that it was her duty to bring this erratic
+little comet within the laws of a well-ordered solar system,&mdash;a
+task to which she felt about as competent as to make
+a new ring for Saturn. Then, too, there was a secret feeling,
+if the truth must be told, of what Mrs. Kittridge
+would think about it; for duty is never more formidable
+than when she gets on the cap and gown of a neighbor;
+and Mrs. Kittridge, with her resolute voice and declamatory
+family government, had always been a secret source of
+uneasiness to poor Mrs. Pennel, who was one of those sensitive
+souls who can feel for a mile or more the sphere of
+a stronger neighbor. During all the years that they had
+lived side by side, there had been this shadowy, unconfessed
+feeling on the part of poor Mrs. Pennel, that Mrs.
+Kittridge thought her deficient in her favorite virtue of
+"resolution," as, in fact, in her inmost soul she knew she
+was;&mdash;but who wants to have one's weak places looked
+into by the sharp eyes of a neighbor who is strong precisely
+where we are weak? The trouble that one neighbor may
+give to another, simply by living within a mile of one, is
+incredible; but until this new accession to her family, Mrs.
+Pennel had always been able to comfort herself with the
+idea that the child under her particular training was as
+well-behaved as any of those of her more demonstrative
+friend. But now, all this consolation had been put to
+flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge without most
+humiliating recollections.</p>
+
+<p>On Sundays, when those sharp black eyes gleamed upon
+her through the rails of the neighboring pew, her very soul
+shrank within her, as she recollected all the compromises<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+and defeats of the week before. It seemed to her that
+Mrs. Kittridge saw it all,&mdash;how she had ingloriously
+bought peace with gingerbread, instead of maintaining it
+by rightful authority,&mdash;how young master had sat up
+till nine o'clock on divers occasions, and even kept little
+Mara up for his lordly pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>How she trembled at every movement of the child in
+the pew, dreading some patent and open impropriety which
+should bring scandal on her government! This was the
+more to be feared, as the first effort to initiate the youthful
+neophyte in the decorums of the sanctuary had proved anything
+but a success,&mdash;insomuch that Zephaniah Pennel
+had been obliged to carry him out from the church; therefore,
+poor Mrs. Pennel was thankful every Sunday when
+she got her little charge home without any distinct scandal
+and breach of the peace.</p>
+
+<p>But, after all, he was such a handsome and engaging
+little wretch, attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so
+full of saucy drolleries, that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that
+everything and everybody conspired to help her spoil him.
+There are two classes of human beings in this world: one
+class seem made to give love, and the other to take it.
+Now Mrs. Pennel and Mara belonged to the first class, and
+little Master Moses to the latter.</p>
+
+<p>It was, perhaps, of service to the little girl to give to
+her delicate, shrinking, highly nervous organization the
+constant support of a companion so courageous, so richly
+blooded, and highly vitalized as the boy seemed to be.
+There was a fervid, tropical richness in his air that gave
+one a sense of warmth in looking at him, and made his
+Oriental name seem in good-keeping. He seemed an exotic
+that might have waked up under fervid Egyptian suns, and
+been found cradled among the lotus blossoms of old Nile;
+and the fair golden-haired girl seemed to be gladdened by
+his companionship, as if he supplied an element of vital<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+warmth to her being. She seemed to incline toward him
+as naturally as a needle to a magnet.</p>
+
+<p>The child's quickness of ear and the facility with which
+he picked up English were marvelous to observe. Evidently,
+he had been somewhat accustomed to the sound of
+it before, for there dropped out of his vocabulary, after he
+began to speak, phrases which would seem to betoken a
+longer familiarity with its idioms than could be equally
+accounted for by his present experience. Though the English
+evidently was not his native language, there had yet
+apparently been some effort to teach it to him, although
+the terror and confusion of the shipwreck seemed at first
+to have washed every former impression from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>But whenever any attempt was made to draw him to
+speak of the past, of his mother, or of where he came from,
+his brow lowered gloomily, and he assumed that kind of
+moody, impenetrable gravity, which children at times will
+so strangely put on, and which baffle all attempts to look
+within them. Zephaniah Pennel used to call it putting
+up his dead-lights. Perhaps it was the dreadful association
+of agony and terror connected with the shipwreck, that
+thus confused and darkened the mirror of his mind the
+moment it was turned backward; but it was thought wisest
+by his new friends to avoid that class of subjects altogether&mdash;indeed,
+it was their wish that he might forget the past
+entirely, and remember them as his only parents.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey came duly, as appointed, to
+initiate the young pilgrim into the habiliments of a Yankee
+boy, endeavoring, at the same time, to drop into his mind
+such seeds of moral wisdom as might make the internal
+economy in time correspond to the exterior. But Miss
+Roxy declared that "of all the children that ever she see,
+he beat all for finding out new mischief,&mdash;the moment
+you'd make him understand he mustn't do one thing, he
+was right at another."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of his exploits, however, had very nearly been the
+means of cutting short the materials of our story in the
+outset.</p>
+
+<p>It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the three women,
+being busy together with their stitching, had tied a sun-bonnet
+on little Mara, and turned the two loose upon the
+beach to pick up shells. All was serene, and quiet, and
+retired, and no possible danger could be apprehended. So
+up and down they trotted, till the spirit of adventure which
+ever burned in the breast of little Moses caught sight of a
+small canoe which had been moored just under the shadow
+of a cedar-covered rock. Forthwith he persuaded his little
+neighbor to go into it, and for a while they made themselves
+very gay, rocking it from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>The tide was going out, and each retreating wave washed
+the boat up and down, till it came into the boy's curly
+head how beautiful it would be to sail out as he had seen
+men do,&mdash;and so, with much puffing and earnest tugging
+of his little brown hands, the boat at last was loosed from
+her moorings and pushed out on the tide, when both children
+laughed gayly to find themselves swinging and balancing
+on the amber surface, and watching the rings and
+sparkles of sunshine and the white pebbles below. Little
+Moses was glorious,&mdash;his adventures had begun,&mdash;and
+with a fairy-princess in his boat, he was going to stretch
+away to some of the islands of dreamland. He persuaded
+Mara to give him her pink sun-bonnet, which he placed
+for a pennon on a stick at the end of the boat, while he
+made a vehement dashing with another, first on one side of
+the boat and then on the other,&mdash;spattering the water in
+diamond showers, to the infinite amusement of the little
+maiden.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the tide waves danced them out and still
+outward, and as they went farther and farther from shore,
+the more glorious felt the boy. He had got Mara all to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+himself, and was going away with her from all grown people,
+who wouldn't let children do as they pleased,&mdash;who
+made them sit still in prayer-time, and took them to meeting,
+and kept so many things which they must not touch,
+or open, or play with. Two white sea-gulls came flying
+toward the children, and they stretched their little arms in
+welcome, nothing doubting but these fair creatures were
+coming at once to take passage with them for fairy-land.
+But the birds only dived and shifted and veered, turning
+their silvery sides toward the sun, and careering in circles
+round the children. A brisk little breeze, that came hurrying
+down from the land, seemed disposed to favor their
+unsubstantial enterprise,&mdash;for your winds, being a fanciful,
+uncertain tribe of people, are always for falling in with
+anything that is contrary to common sense. So the wind
+trolled them merrily along, nothing doubting that there
+might be time, if they hurried, to land their boat on the
+shore of some of the low-banked red clouds that lay in the
+sunset, where they could pick up shells,&mdash;blue and pink
+and purple,&mdash;enough to make them rich for life. The
+children were all excitement at the rapidity with which
+their little bark danced and rocked, as it floated outward
+to the broad, open ocean; at the blue, freshening waves, at
+the silver-glancing gulls, at the floating, white-winged ships,
+and at vague expectations of going rapidly somewhere,
+to something more beautiful still. And what is the happiness
+of the brightest hours of grown people more than this?</p>
+
+<p>"Roxy," said Aunt Ruey innocently, "seems to me I
+haven't heard nothin' o' them children lately. They're
+so still, I'm 'fraid there's some mischief."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Ruey, you jist go and give a look at 'em," said
+Miss Roxy. "I declare, that boy! I never know what
+he will do next; but there didn't seem to be nothin' to
+get into out there but the sea, and the beach is so shelving,
+a body can't well fall into that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Alas! good Miss Roxy, the children are at this moment
+tilting up and down on the waves, half a mile out to sea,
+as airily happy as the sea-gulls; and little Moses now
+thinks, with glorious scorn, of you and your press-board,
+as of grim shadows of restraint and bondage that shall
+never darken his free life more.</p>
+
+<p>Both Miss Roxy and Mrs. Pennel were, however, startled
+into a paroxysm of alarm when poor Miss Ruey came
+screaming, as she entered the door,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As sure as you're alive, them chil'en are off in the
+boat,&mdash;they're out to sea, sure as I'm alive! What
+shall we do? The boat'll upset, and the sharks'll get 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy ran to the window, and saw dancing and
+courtesying on the blue waves the little pinnace, with its
+fanciful pink pennon fluttered gayly by the indiscreet and
+flattering wind.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Mrs. Pennel ran to the shore, and stretched her
+arms wildly, as if she would have followed them across the
+treacherous blue floor that heaved and sparkled between
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara, Mara! Oh, my poor little girl! Oh, poor
+children!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if ever I see such a young un as that," soliloquized
+Miss Roxy from the chamber-window; "there they
+be, dancin' and giggitin' about; they'll have the boat upset
+in a minit, and the sharks are waitin' for 'em, no
+doubt. <i>I</i> b'lieve that ar young un's helped by the Evil
+One,&mdash;not a boat round, else I'd push off after 'em.
+Well, I don't see but we must trust in the Lord,&mdash;there
+don't seem to be much else to trust to," said the spinster,
+as she drew her head in grimly.</p>
+
+<p>To say the truth, there was some reason for the terror of
+these most fearful suggestions; for not far from the place
+where the children embarked was Zephaniah's fish-drying
+ground, and multitudes of sharks came up with every rising<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+tide, allured by the offal that was here constantly thrown
+into the sea. Two of these prowlers, outward-bound from
+their quest, were even now assiduously attending the little
+boat, and the children derived no small amusement from
+watching their motions in the pellucid water,&mdash;the boy
+occasionally almost upsetting the boat by valorous plunges
+at them with his stick. It was the most exhilarating and
+piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and
+little Mara laughed in chorus at every lunge that he made.</p>
+
+<p>What would have been the end of it all, it is difficult to
+say, had not some mortal power interfered before they had
+sailed finally away into the sunset. But it so happened, on
+this very afternoon, Rev. Mr. Sewell was out in a boat, busy
+in the very apostolic employment of catching fish, and looking
+up from one of the contemplative pauses which his
+occupation induced, he rubbed his eyes at the apparition
+which presented itself. A tiny little shell of a boat came
+drifting toward him, in which was a black-eyed boy, with
+cheeks like a pomegranate and lustrous tendrils of silky
+dark hair, and a little golden-haired girl, white as a water-lily,
+and looking ethereal enough to have risen out of the
+sea-foam. Both were in the very sparkle and effervescence
+of that fanciful glee which bubbles up from the golden,
+untried fountains of early childhood. Mr. Sewell, at a
+glance, comprehended the whole, and at once overhauling
+the tiny craft, he broke the spell of fairy-land, and constrained
+the little people to return to the confines, dull and
+dreary, of real and actual life.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that
+joyous trance of forbidden pleasure which shadowed with
+so many fears the wiser and more far-seeing heads and
+hearts of the grown people; nor was there enough language
+yet in common between the two classes to make the little
+ones comprehend the risk they had run. Perhaps so do
+our elder brothers, in our Father's house, look anxiously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+out when we are sailing gayly over life's sea,&mdash;over unknown
+depths,&mdash;amid threatening monsters,&mdash;but want
+words to tell us why what seems so bright is so dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Duty herself could not have worn a more rigid aspect
+than Miss Roxy, as she stood on the beach, press-board in
+hand; for she had forgotten to lay it down in the eagerness
+of her anxiety. She essayed to lay hold of the little hand
+of Moses to pull him from the boat, but he drew back,
+and, looking at her with a world of defiance in his great
+eyes, jumped magnanimously upon the beach. The spirit
+of Sir Francis Drake and of Christopher Columbus was
+swelling in his little body, and was he to be brought under
+by a dry-visaged woman with a press-board? In fact,
+nothing is more ludicrous about the escapades of children
+than the utter insensibility they feel to the dangers they
+have run, and the light esteem in which they hold the
+deep tragedy they create.</p>
+
+<p>That night, when Zephaniah, in his evening exercise,
+poured forth most fervent thanksgivings for the deliverance,
+while Mrs. Pennel was sobbing in her handkerchief,
+Miss Roxy was much scandalized by seeing the young cause
+of all the disturbance sitting upon his heels, regarding the
+emotion of the kneeling party with his wide bright eyes,
+without a wink of compunction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for her part," she said, "she hoped Cap'n Pennel
+would be blessed in takin' that ar boy; but she was
+sure she didn't see much that looked like it now."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Rev. Mr. Sewell fished no more that day, for the
+draught from fairy-land with which he had filled his boat
+brought up many thoughts into his mind, which he pondered
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange ways of God," he thought, "that should send
+to my door this child, and should wash upon the beach the
+only sign by which he could be identified. To what end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+or purpose? Hath the Lord a will in this matter, and
+what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>So he thought as he slowly rowed homeward, and so did
+his thoughts work upon him that half way across the bay
+to Harpswell he slackened his oar without knowing it, and
+the boat lay drifting on the purple and gold-tinted mirror,
+like a speck between two eternities. Under such circumstances,
+even heads that have worn the clerical wig for
+years at times get a little dizzy and dreamy. Perhaps it
+was because of the impression made upon him by the sudden
+apparition of those great dark eyes and sable curls, that
+he now thought of the boy that he had found floating that
+afternoon, looking as if some tropical flower had been
+washed landward by a monsoon; and as the boat rocked
+and tilted, and the minister gazed dreamily downward into
+the wavering rings of purple, orange, and gold which spread
+out and out from it, gradually it seemed to him that a face
+much like the child's formed itself in the waters; but it
+was the face of a girl, young and radiantly beautiful, yet
+with those same eyes and curls,&mdash;he saw her distinctly,
+with her thousand rings of silky hair, bound with strings
+of pearls and clasped with strange gems, and she raised one
+arm imploringly to him, and on the wrist he saw the bracelet
+embroidered with seed pearls, and the letters D.M.
+"Ah, Dolores," he said, "well wert thou called so. Poor
+Dolores! I cannot help thee."</p>
+
+<p>"What am I dreaming of?" said the Rev. Mr. Sewell.
+"It is my Thursday evening lecture on Justification, and
+Emily has got tea ready, and here I am catching cold out
+on the bay."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>SEA TALES</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>Mr. Sewell, as the reader may perhaps have inferred,
+was of a nature profoundly secretive. It was in most
+things quite as pleasant for him to keep matters to himself,
+as it was to Miss Emily to tell them to somebody else.
+She resembled more than anything one of those trotting,
+chattering little brooks that enliven the "back lot" of many
+a New England home, while he was like one of those wells
+you shall sometimes see by a deserted homestead, so long
+unused that ferns and lichens feather every stone down to
+the dark, cool water.</p>
+
+<p>Dear to him was the stillness and coolness of inner
+thoughts with which no stranger intermeddles; dear to him
+every pendent fern-leaf of memory, every dripping moss of
+old recollection; and though the waters of his soul came
+up healthy and refreshing enough when one really must
+have them, yet one had to go armed with bucket and line
+and draw them up,&mdash;they never flowed. One of his favorite
+maxims was, that the only way to keep a secret was
+never to let any one suspect that you have one. And as he
+had one now, he had, as you have seen, done his best to
+baffle and put to sleep the feminine curiosity of his sister.</p>
+
+<p>He rather wanted to tell her, too, for he was a good-natured
+brother, and would have liked to have given her
+the amount of pleasure the confidence would have produced;
+but then he reflected with dismay on the number of women
+in his parish with whom Miss Emily was on tea-drinking
+terms,&mdash;he thought of the wondrous solvent powers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+that beverage in whose amber depths so many resolutions
+yea, and solemn vows, of utter silence have been dissolved
+like Cleopatra's pearls. He knew that an infusion of his
+secret would steam up from every cup of tea Emily should
+drink for six months to come, till gradually every particle
+would be dissolved and float in the air of common fame.
+No; it would not do.</p>
+
+<p>You would have thought, however, that something was
+the matter with Mr. Sewell, had you seen him after he retired
+for the night, after he had so very indifferently dismissed
+the subject of Miss Emily's inquiries. For instead
+of retiring quietly to bed, as had been his habit for years
+at that hour, he locked his door, and then unlocked a desk
+of private papers, and emptied certain pigeon-holes of their
+contents, and for an hour or two sat unfolding and looking
+over old letters and papers; and when all this was done,
+he pushed them from him, and sat for a long time buried
+in thoughts which went down very, very deep into that
+dark and mossy well of which we have spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Then he took a pen and wrote a letter, and addressed it
+to a direction for which he had searched through many
+piles of paper, and having done so, seemed to ponder, uncertainly,
+whether to send it or not. The Harpswell post-office
+was kept in Mr. Silas Perrit's store, and the letters
+were every one of them carefully and curiously investigated
+by all the gossips of the village, and as this was addressed
+to St. Augustine in Florida, he foresaw that before Sunday
+the news would be in every mouth in the parish that the
+minister had written to so and so in Florida, "and what
+do you s'pose it's about?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," he said to himself, "that will never do; but
+at all events there is no hurry," and he put back the papers
+in order, put the letter with them, and locking his desk,
+looked at his watch and found it to be two o'clock, and so
+he went to bed to think the matter over.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, there may be some reader so simple as to feel
+a portion of Miss Emily's curiosity. But, my friend,
+restrain it, for Mr. Sewell will certainly, as we foresee, become
+less rather than more communicative on this subject,
+as he thinks upon it. Nevertheless, whatever it be that
+he knows or suspects, it is something which leads him to
+contemplate with more than usual interest this little mortal
+waif that has so strangely come ashore in his parish. He
+mentally resolves to study the child as minutely as possible,
+without betraying that he has any particular reason
+for being interested in him.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, in the latter part of this mild November afternoon,
+which he has devoted to pastoral visiting, about two
+months after the funeral, he steps into his little sail-boat,
+and stretches away for the shores of Orr's Island. He
+knows the sun will be down before he reaches there; but
+he sees, in the opposite horizon, the spectral, shadowy
+moon, only waiting for daylight to be gone to come out,
+calm and radiant, like a saintly friend neglected in the flush
+of prosperity, who waits patiently to enliven our hours of
+darkness.</p>
+
+<p>As his boat-keel grazed the sands on the other side, a
+shout of laughter came upon his oar from behind a cedar-covered
+rock, and soon emerged Captain Kittridge, as long
+and lean and brown as the Ancient Mariner, carrying little
+Mara on one shoulder, while Sally and little Moses Pennel
+trotted on before.</p>
+
+<p>It was difficult to say who in this whole group was in
+the highest spirits. The fact was that Mrs. Kittridge had
+gone to a tea-drinking over at Maquoit, and left the Captain
+as housekeeper and general overseer; and little Mara
+and Moses and Sally had been gloriously keeping holiday
+with him down by the boat-cove, where, to say the truth,
+few shavings were made, except those necessary to adorn
+the children's heads with flowing suits of curls of a most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+extraordinary effect. The aprons of all of them were full
+of these most unsubstantial specimens of woody treasure,
+which hung out in long festoons, looking of a yellow transparency
+in the evening light. But the delight of the children
+in their acquisitions was only equaled by that of
+grown-up people in possessions equally fanciful in value.</p>
+
+<p>The mirth of the little party, however, came to a sudden
+pause as they met the minister. Mara clung tight to
+the Captain's neck, and looked out slyly under her curls.
+But the little Moses made a step forward, and fixed his
+bold, dark, inquisitive eyes upon him. The fact was, that
+the minister had been impressed upon the boy, in his few
+visits to the "meeting," as such a grand and mysterious
+reason for good behavior, that he seemed resolved to embrace
+the first opportunity to study him close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my little man," said Mr. Sewell, with an affability
+which he could readily assume with children, "you
+seem to like to look at me."</p>
+
+<p>"I do like to look at you," said the boy gravely, continuing
+to fix his great black eyes upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you do, my little fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the Lord?" said the child, solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I what?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, my lad," said Mr. Sewell, smiling.
+"Why, what put that into your little head?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were," said the boy, still continuing to
+study the pastor with attention. "Miss Roxy said so."</p>
+
+<p>"It's curious what notions chil'en will get in their
+heads," said Captain Kittridge. "They put this and that
+together and think it over, and come out with such queer
+things."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said the minister, "I have brought something
+for you all;" saying which he drew from his pocket three
+little bright-cheeked apples, and gave one to each child;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+and then taking the hand of the little Moses in his own,
+he walked with him toward the house-door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel was sitting in her clean kitchen, busily
+spinning at the little wheel, and rose flushed with pleasure
+at the honor that was done her.</p>
+
+<p>"Pray, walk in, Mr. Sewell," she said, rising, and leading
+the way toward the penetralia of the best room.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mrs. Pennel, I am come here for a good sit-down
+by your kitchen-fire, this evening," said Mr. Sewell.
+"Emily has gone out to sit with old Mrs. Broad, who is
+laid up with the rheumatism, and so I am turned loose to
+pick up my living on the parish, and you must give me a
+seat for a while in your kitchen corner. Best rooms are
+always cold."</p>
+
+<p>"The minister's right," said Captain Kittridge. "When
+rooms ain't much set in, folks never feel so kind o' natural
+in 'em. So you jist let me put on a good back-log and
+forestick, and build up a fire to tell stories by this evening.
+My wife's gone out to tea, too," he said, with an elastic
+skip.</p>
+
+<p>And in a few moments the Captain had produced in the
+great cavernous chimney a foundation for a fire that promised
+breadth, solidity, and continuance. A great back-log,
+embroidered here and there with tufts of green or grayish
+moss, was first flung into the capacious arms of the fireplace,
+and a smaller log placed above it. "Now, all you
+young uns go out and bring in chips," said the Captain.
+"There's capital ones out to the wood-pile."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell was pleased to see the flash that came from
+the eyes of little Moses at this order, how energetically he
+ran before the others, and came with glowing cheeks and
+distended arms, throwing down great white chips with their
+green mossy bark, scattering tufts on the floor. "Good,"
+said he softly to himself, as he leaned on the top of his
+gold-headed cane; "there's energy, ambition, muscle;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+and he nodded his head once or twice to some internal
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" said the Captain, rising out of a perfect
+whirlwind of chips and pine kindlings with which in his
+zeal he had bestrown the wide, black stone hearth, and
+pointing to the tongues of flame that were leaping and
+blazing up through the crevices of the dry pine wood
+which he had intermingled plentifully with the more substantial
+fuel,&mdash;"there, Mis' Pennel, ain't I a master-hand
+at a fire? But I'm really sorry I've dirtied your floor,"
+he said, as he brushed down his pantaloons, which were
+covered with bits of grizzly moss, and looked on the surrounding
+desolations; "give me a broom, I can sweep up
+now as well as any woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind," said Mrs. Pennel, laughing, "I'll
+sweep up."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Mis' Pennel, you're one of the women
+that don't get put out easy; ain't ye?" said the Captain,
+still contemplating his fire with a proud and watchful eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Law me!" he exclaimed, glancing through the window,
+"there's the Cap'n a-comin'. I'm jist goin' to give
+a look at what he's brought in. Come, chil'en," and the
+Captain disappeared with all three of the children at his
+heels, to go down to examine the treasures of the fishing-smack.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell seated himself cozily in the chimney corner
+and sank into a state of half-dreamy reverie; his eyes fixed
+on the fairest sight one can see of a frosty autumn twilight&mdash;a
+crackling wood-fire.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel moved soft-footed to and fro, arraying her
+tea-table in her own finest and pure damask, and bringing
+from hidden stores her best china and newest silver, her
+choicest sweetmeats and cake&mdash;whatever was fairest and
+nicest in her house&mdash;to honor her unexpected guest.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell's eyes followed her occasionally about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+room, with an expression of pleased and curious satisfaction.
+He was taking it all in as an artistic picture&mdash;that
+simple, kindly hearth, with its mossy logs, yet steaming
+with the moisture of the wild woods; the table so neat,
+so cheery with its many little delicacies, and refinements
+of appointment, and its ample varieties to tempt the appetite;
+and then the Captain coming in, yet fresh and hungry
+from his afternoon's toil, with the children trotting
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is the inheritance he comes into," he murmured;
+"healthy&mdash;wholesome&mdash;cheerful&mdash;secure: how
+much better than hot, stifling luxury!"</p>
+
+<p>Here the minister's meditations were interrupted by the
+entrance of all the children, joyful and loquacious. Little
+Moses held up a string of mackerel, with their graceful
+bodies and elegantly cut fins.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a specimen of the best, Mary," said Captain Pennel.
+"I thought I'd bring 'em for Miss Emily."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Emily will be a thousand times obliged to you,"
+said Mr. Sewell, rising up.</p>
+
+<p>As to Mara and Sally, they were reveling in apronfuls
+of shells and seaweed, which they bustled into the other
+room to bestow in their spacious baby-house.</p>
+
+<p>And now, after due time for Zephaniah to assume a land
+toilet, all sat down to the evening meal.</p>
+
+<p>After supper was over, the Captain was besieged by the
+children. Little Mara mounted first into his lap, and
+nestled herself quietly under his coat&mdash;Moses and Sally
+stood at each knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now," said Moses, "you said you would tell us
+about the mermen to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and the mermaids," said Sally. "Tell them all
+you told me the other night in the trundle-bed."</p>
+
+<p>Sally valued herself no little on the score of the Captain's
+talent as a romancer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You see, Moses," she said, volubly, "father saw mermen
+and mermaids a plenty of them in the West Indies."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind about 'em now," said Captain Kittridge,
+looking at Mr. Sewell's corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, father? mother isn't here," said Sally, innocently.</p>
+
+<p>A smile passed round the faces of the company, and Mr.
+Sewell said, "Come, Captain, no modesty; we all know
+you have as good a faculty for telling a story as for making
+a fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Do tell me what mermen are," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal'," said the Captain, sinking his voice confidentially,
+and hitching his chair a little around, "mermen and
+maids is a kind o' people that have their world jist like
+our'n, only it's down in the bottom of the sea, 'cause the
+bottom of the sea has its mountains and its valleys, and its
+trees and its bushes, and it stands to reason there should
+be people there too."</p>
+
+<p>Moses opened his broad black eyes wider than usual, and
+looked absorbed attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell 'em about how you saw 'em," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', yes," said Captain Kittridge; "once when I was
+to the Bahamas,&mdash;it was one Sunday morning in June,
+the first Sunday in the month,&mdash;we cast anchor pretty
+nigh a reef of coral, and I was jist a-sittin' down to read
+my Bible, when up comes a merman over the side of the
+ship, all dressed as fine as any old beau that ever ye see,
+with cocked hat and silk stockings, and shoe-buckles, and
+his clothes were sea-green, and his shoe-buckles shone like
+diamonds."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose they were diamonds, really?" said
+Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', child, I didn't ask him, but I shouldn't be
+surprised, from all I know of their ways, if they was," said
+the Captain, who had now got so wholly into the spirit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+his fiction that he no longer felt embarrassed by the minister's
+presence, nor saw the look of amusement with which
+he was listening to him in his chimney-corner. "But, as
+I was sayin', he came up to me, and made the politest
+bow that ever ye see, and says he, 'Cap'n Kittridge, I
+presume,' and says I, 'Yes, sir.' 'I'm sorry to interrupt
+your reading,' says he; and says I, 'Oh, no matter, sir.'
+'But,' says he, 'if you would only be so good as to move
+your anchor. You've cast anchor right before my front-door,
+and my wife and family can't get out to go to meetin'.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do they go to meeting in the bottom of the
+sea?" said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Law, bless you sonny, yes. Why, Sunday morning,
+when the sea was all still, I used to hear the bass-viol
+a-soundin' down under the waters, jist as plain as could
+be,&mdash;and psalms and preachin'. I've reason to think
+there's as many hopefully pious mermaids as there be
+folks," said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Moses, "you said the anchor was before the
+front-door, so the family couldn't get out,&mdash;how did the
+merman get out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! he got out of the scuttle on the roof," said the
+Captain, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"And did you move your anchor?" said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, child, yes, to be sure I did; he was such a gentleman
+I wanted to oblige him,&mdash;it shows you how important
+it is always to be polite," said the Captain, by way
+of giving a moral turn to his narrative.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell, during the progress of this story, examined
+the Captain with eyes of amused curiosity. His countenance
+was as fixed and steady, and his whole manner of
+reciting as matter-of-fact and collected, as if he were relating
+some of the every-day affairs of his boat-building.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', Sally," said the Captain, rising, after his yarn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+had proceeded for an indefinite length in this manner,
+"you and I must be goin'. I promised your ma you
+shouldn't be up late, and we have a long walk home,&mdash;besides
+it's time these little folks was in bed."</p>
+
+<p>The children all clung round the Captain, and could
+hardly be persuaded to let him go.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, Mrs. Pennel took the little ones to
+their nest in an adjoining room.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell approached his chair to that of Captain Pennel,
+and began talking to him in a tone of voice so low,
+that we have never been able to make out exactly what he
+was saying. Whatever it might be, however, it seemed to
+give rise to an anxious consultation. "I did not think it
+advisable to tell <i>any</i> one this but yourself, Captain Pennel.
+It is for you to decide, in view of the probabilities I have
+told you, what you will do."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Zephaniah, "since you leave it to me, I
+say, let us keep him. It certainly seems a marked providence
+that he has been thrown upon us as he has, and the
+Lord seemed to prepare a way for him in our hearts. I
+am well able to afford it, and Mis' Pennel, she agrees to
+it, and on the whole I don't think we'd best go back on
+our steps; besides, our little Mara has thrived since he
+came under our roof. He is, to be sure, kind o' masterful,
+and I shall have to take him off Mis' Pennel's hands
+before long, and put him into the sloop. But, after all,
+there seems to be the makin' of a man in him, and when
+we are called away, why he'll be as a brother to poor little
+Mara. Yes, I think it's best as 'tis."</p>
+
+<p>The minister, as he flitted across the bay by moonlight,
+felt relieved of a burden. His secret was locked up as safe
+in the breast of Zephaniah Pennel as it could be in his
+own.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>BOY AND GIRL</h3>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>Zephaniah Pennel was what might be called a Hebrew
+of the Hebrews.</p>
+
+<p>New England, in her earlier days, founding her institutions
+on the Hebrew Scriptures, bred better Jews than
+Moses could, because she read Moses with the amendments
+of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The state of society in some of the districts of Maine, in
+these days, much resembled in its spirit that which Moses
+labored to produce in ruder ages. It was entirely democratic,
+simple, grave, hearty, and sincere,&mdash;solemn and
+religious in its daily tone, and yet, as to all material good,
+full of wholesome thrift and prosperity. Perhaps, taking
+the average mass of the people, a more healthful and desirable
+state of society never existed. Its better specimens
+had a simple Doric grandeur unsurpassed in any age. The
+bringing up a child in this state of society was a far more
+simple enterprise than in our modern times, when the factious
+wants and aspirations are so much more developed.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah Pennel was as high as anybody in the land.
+He owned not only the neat little schooner, "Brilliant,"
+with divers small fishing-boats, but also a snug farm, adjoining
+the brown house, together with some fresh, juicy
+pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised mutton,
+unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and
+wool, which furnished homespun to clothe his family on all
+every-day occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel, to be sure, had silks and satins, and flow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>ered
+India chintz, and even a Cashmere shawl, the fruits
+of some of her husband's earlier voyages, which were, however,
+carefully stowed away for occasions so high and
+mighty, that they seldom saw the light. <i>Not to wear best
+things every day</i> was a maxim of New England thrift as
+little disputed as any verse of the catechism; and so Mrs.
+Pennel found the stuff gown of her own dyeing and spinning
+so respectable for most purposes, that it figured even
+in the meeting-house itself, except on the very finest of
+Sundays, when heaven and earth seemed alike propitious.
+A person can well afford to wear homespun stuff to meeting,
+who is buoyed up by a secret consciousness of an
+abundance of fine things that could be worn, if one were so
+disposed, and everybody respected Mrs. Pennel's homespun
+the more, because they thought of the things she didn't
+wear.</p>
+
+<p>As to advantages of education, the island, like all other
+New England districts, had its common school, where one
+got the key of knowledge,&mdash;for having learned to read,
+write, and cipher, the young fellow of those regions commonly
+regarded himself as in possession of all that a man
+needs, to help himself to any further acquisitions he might
+desire. The boys then made fishing voyages to the Banks,
+and those who were so disposed took their books with them.
+If a boy did not wish to be bored with study, there was
+nobody to force him; but if a bright one saw visions of
+future success in life lying through the avenues of knowledge,
+he found many a leisure hour to pore over his books,
+and work out the problems of navigation directly over the
+element they were meant to control.</p>
+
+<p>Four years having glided by since the commencement
+of our story, we find in the brown house of Zephaniah
+Pennel a tall, well-knit, handsome boy of ten years, who
+knows no fear of wind or sea; who can set you over from
+Orr's Island to Harpswell, either in sail or row-boat, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+thinks, as well as any man living; who knows every rope
+of the schooner Brilliant, and fancies he could command
+it as well as "father" himself; and is supporting himself
+this spring, during the tamer drudgeries of driving plough,
+and dropping potatoes, with the glorious vision of being
+taken this year on the annual trip to "the Banks," which
+comes on after planting. He reads fluently,&mdash;witness the
+"Robinson Crusoe," which never departs from under his
+pillow, and Goldsmith's "History of Greece and Rome,"
+which good Mr. Sewell has lent him,&mdash;and he often
+brings shrewd criticisms on the character and course of
+Romulus or Alexander into the common current of every-day
+life, in a way that brings a smile over the grave face
+of Zephaniah, and makes Mrs. Pennel think the boy certainly
+ought to be sent to college.</p>
+
+<p>As for Mara, she is now a child of seven, still adorned
+with long golden curls, still looking dreamily out of soft
+hazel eyes into some unknown future not her own. She
+has no dreams for herself&mdash;they are all for Moses. For
+his sake she has learned all the womanly little accomplishments
+which Mrs. Kittridge has dragooned into Sally.
+She knits his mittens and his stockings, and hems his
+pocket-handkerchiefs, and aspires to make his shirts all
+herself. Whatever book Moses reads, forthwith she aspires
+to read too, and though three years younger, reads with a
+far more precocious insight.</p>
+
+<p>Her little form is slight and frail, and her cheek has a
+clear transparent brilliancy quite different from the rounded
+one of the boy; she looks not exactly in ill health, but has
+that sort of transparent appearance which one fancies might
+be an attribute of fairies and sylphs. All her outward
+senses are finer and more acute than his, and finer and
+more delicate all the attributes of her mind. Those who
+contend against giving woman the same education as man
+do it on the ground that it would make the woman unfem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>inine,
+as if Nature had done her work so slightly that it
+could be so easily raveled and knit over. In fact, there is
+a masculine and a feminine element in all knowledge, and
+a man and a woman put to the same study extract only
+what their nature fits them to see, so that knowledge can
+be fully orbed only when the two unite in the search and
+share the spoils.</p>
+
+<p>When Moses was full of Romulus and Numa, Mara pondered
+the story of the nymph Egeria&mdash;sweet parable, in
+which lies all we have been saying. Her trust in him was
+boundless. He was a constant hero in her eyes, and in
+her he found a steadfast believer as to all possible feats and
+exploits to which he felt himself competent, for the boy
+often had privately assured her that he could command the
+Brilliant as well as father himself.</p>
+
+<p>Spring had already come, loosing the chains of ice in all
+the bays and coves round Harpswell, Orr's Island, Maquoit,
+and Middle Bay. The magnificent spruces stood forth in
+their gala-dresses, tipped on every point with vivid emerald;
+the silver firs exuded from their tender shoots the
+fragrance of ripe pineapple; the white pines shot forth
+long weird fingers at the end of their fringy boughs; and
+even every little mimic evergreen in the shadows at their
+feet was made beautiful by the addition of a vivid border
+of green on the sombre coloring of its last year's leaves.
+Arbutus, fragrant with its clean, wholesome odors, gave
+forth its thousand dewy pink blossoms, and the trailing
+Linnea borealis hung its pendent twin bells round every
+mossy stump and old rock damp with green forest mould.
+The green and vermilion matting of the partridge-berry
+was impearled with white velvet blossoms, the checkerberry
+hung forth a translucent bell under its varnished green
+leaf, and a thousand more fairy bells, white or red, hung
+on blueberry and huckleberry bushes. The little Pearl of
+Orr's Island had wandered many an hour gathering bou<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>quets
+of all these, to fill the brown house with sweetness
+when her grandfather and Moses should come in from
+work.</p>
+
+<p>The love of flowers seemed to be one of her earliest
+characteristics, and the young spring flowers of New England,
+in their airy delicacy and fragility, were much like
+herself; and so strong seemed the affinity between them,
+that not only Mrs. Pennel's best India china vases on the
+keeping-room mantel were filled, but here stood a tumbler
+of scarlet rock columbine, and there a bowl of blue and
+white violets, and in another place a saucer of shell-tinted
+crowfoot, blue liverwort, and white anemone, so that
+Zephaniah Pennel was wont to say there wasn't a drink of
+water to be got, for Mara's flowers; but he always said it
+with a smile that made his weather-beaten, hard features
+look like a rock lit up by a sunbeam. Little Mara was
+the pearl of the old seaman's life, every finer particle of
+his nature came out in her concentrated and polished, and
+he often wondered at a creature so ethereal belonging to
+him&mdash;as if down on some shaggy sea-green rock an old
+pearl oyster should muse and marvel on the strange silvery
+mystery of beauty that was growing in the silence of his
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>But May has passed; the arbutus and the Linnea are
+gone from the woods, and the pine tips have grown into
+young shoots, which wilt at noon under a direct reflection
+from sun and sea, and the blue sky has that metallic clearness
+and brilliancy which distinguishes those regions, and
+the planting is at last over, and this very morning Moses
+is to set off in the Brilliant for his first voyage to the
+Banks. Glorious knight he! the world all before him,
+and the blood of ten years racing and throbbing in his veins
+as he talks knowingly of hooks, and sinkers, and bait, and
+lines, and wears proudly the red flannel shirt which Mara
+had just finished for him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How I do wish I were going with you!" she says.
+"I could do something, couldn't I&mdash;take care of your
+hooks, or something?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh!" said Moses, sublimely regarding her while he
+settled the collar of his shirt, "you're a girl; and what
+can girls do at sea? you never like to catch fish&mdash;it always
+makes you cry to see 'em flop."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, poor fish!" said Mara, perplexed between
+her sympathy for the fish and her desire for the glory of
+her hero, which must be founded on their pain; "I can't
+help feeling sorry when they gasp so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and what do you suppose you would do when
+the men are pulling up twenty and forty pounder?" said
+Moses, striding sublimely. "Why, they flop so, they'd
+knock you over in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they? Oh, Moses, do be careful. What if they
+should hurt you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hurt me!" said Moses, laughing; "that's a good one.
+I'd like to see a fish that could hurt me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do hear that boy talk!" said Mrs. Pennel to her husband,
+as they stood within their chamber-door.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said Captain Pennel, smiling; "he's full
+of the matter. I believe he'd take the command of the
+schooner this morning, if I'd let him."</p>
+
+<p>The Brilliant lay all this while courtesying on the waves,
+which kissed and whispered to the little coquettish craft.
+A fairer June morning had not risen on the shores that
+week; the blue mirror of the ocean was all dotted over
+with the tiny white sails of fishing-craft bound on the
+same errand, and the breeze that was just crisping the
+waters had the very spirit of energy and adventure in it.</p>
+
+<p>Everything and everybody was now on board, and she
+began to spread her fair wings, and slowly and gracefully
+to retreat from the shore. Little Moses stood on the deck,
+his black curls blowing in the wind, and his large eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+dancing with excitement,&mdash;his clear olive complexion and
+glowing cheeks well set off by his red shirt.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel stood with Mara on the shore to see them
+go. The fair little golden-haired Ariadne shaded her eyes
+with one arm, and stretched the other after her Theseus,
+till the vessel grew smaller, and finally seemed to melt
+away into the eternal blue. Many be the wives and lovers
+that have watched those little fishing-craft as they went
+gayly out like this, but have waited long&mdash;too long&mdash;and
+seen them again no more. In night and fog they have
+gone down under the keel of some ocean packet or Indiaman,
+and sunk with brave hearts and hands, like a bubble
+in the mighty waters. Yet Mrs. Pennel did not turn back
+to her house in apprehension of this. Her husband had
+made so many voyages, and always returned safely, that
+she confidently expected before long to see them home
+again.</p>
+
+<p>The next Sunday the seat of Zephaniah Pennel was
+vacant in church. According to custom, a note was put
+up asking prayers for his safe return, and then everybody
+knew that he was gone to the Banks; and as the roguish,
+handsome face of Moses was also missing, Miss Roxy whispered
+to Miss Ruey, "There! Captain Pennel's took Moses
+on his first voyage. We must contrive to call round on
+Mis' Pennel afore long. She'll be lonesome."</p>
+
+<p>Sunday evening Mrs. Pennel was sitting pensively with
+little Mara by the kitchen hearth, where they had been
+boiling the tea-kettle for their solitary meal. They heard
+a brisk step without, and soon Captain and Mrs. Kittridge
+made their appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mis' Pennel," said the Captain; "I's
+a-tellin' my good woman we must come down and see how
+you's a-getting along. It's raly a work of necessity and
+mercy proper for the Lord's day. Rather lonesome, now
+the Captain's gone, ain't ye? Took little Moses, too, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+see. Wasn't at meetin' to-day, so I says, Mis' Kittridge,
+we'll just step down and chirk 'em up a little."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't really know how to come," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+as she allowed Mrs. Pennel to take her bonnet;
+"but Aunt Roxy's to our house now, and she said she'd
+see to Sally. So you've let the boy go to the Banks?
+He's young, ain't he, for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it," said Captain Kittridge. "Why, I
+was off to the Banks long afore I was his age, and a capital
+time we had of it, too. Golly! how them fish did bite!
+We stood up to our knees in fish before we'd fished half
+an hour."</p>
+
+<p>Mara, who had always a shy affinity for the Captain,
+now drew towards him and climbed on his knee. "Did
+the wind blow very hard?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"What, my little maid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does the wind blow at the Banks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, my little girl, that it does, sometimes; but
+then there ain't the least danger. Our craft ride out
+storms like live creatures. I've stood it out in gales that
+was tight enough, I'm sure. 'Member once I turned in
+'tween twelve and one, and hadn't more'n got asleep,
+afore I came <i>clump</i> out of my berth, and found everything
+upside down. And 'stead of goin' upstairs to get on deck,
+I had to go right down. Fact was, that 'ere vessel jist
+turned clean over in the water, and come right side up like
+a duck."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Cap'n, I wouldn't be tellin' such a story
+as that," said his helpmeet.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Polly, what do you know about it? you never
+was to sea. We did turn clear over, for I 'member I saw
+a bunch of seaweed big as a peck measure stickin' top of
+the mast next day. Jist shows how safe them ar little
+fishing craft is,&mdash;for all they look like an egg-shell on the
+mighty deep, as Parson Sewell calls it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I was very much pleased with Mr. Sewell's exercise in
+prayer this morning," said Mrs. Kittridge; "it must have
+been a comfort to you, Mis' Pennel."</p>
+
+<p>"It was, to be sure," said Mrs. Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>"Puts me in mind of poor Mary Jane Simpson. Her
+husband went out, you know, last June, and hain't been
+heard of since. Mary Jane don't really know whether to
+put on mourning or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Law! I don't think Mary Jane need give up yet,"
+said the Captain. "'Member one year I was out, we got
+blowed clear up to Baffin's Bay, and got shut up in the
+ice, and had to go ashore and live jist as we could among
+them Esquimaux. Didn't get home for a year. Old
+folks had clean giv' us up. Don't need never despair
+of folks gone to sea, for they's sure to turn up, first or
+last."</p>
+
+<p>"But I hope," said Mara, apprehensively, "that grandpapa
+won't get blown up to Baffin's Bay. I've seen that
+on his chart,&mdash;it's a good ways."</p>
+
+<p>"And then there's them 'ere icebergs," said Mrs. Kittridge;
+"I'm always 'fraid of running into them in the
+fog."</p>
+
+<p>"Law!" said Captain Kittridge, "I've met 'em bigger
+than all the colleges up to Brunswick,&mdash;great white bears
+on 'em,&mdash;hungry as Time in the Primer. Once we came
+kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying Betsey hadn't
+been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been
+stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry,
+that they stood there with the water jist runnin' out
+of their chops in a perfect stream."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear, dear," said Mara, with wide round eyes,
+"what will Moses do if they get on the icebergs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Kittridge, looking solemnly at the
+child through the black bows of her spectacles, "we can
+truly say:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"'Dangers stand thick through all the ground,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To push us to the tomb,'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>as the hymn-book says."</p>
+
+<p>The kind-hearted Captain, feeling the fluttering heart of
+little Mara, and seeing the tears start in her eyes, addressed
+himself forthwith to consolation. "Oh, never you mind,
+Mara," he said, "there won't nothing hurt 'em. Look at
+me. Why, I've been everywhere on the face of the earth.
+I've been on icebergs, and among white bears and Indians,
+and seen storms that would blow the very hair off your
+head, and here I am, dry and tight as ever. You'll see
+'em back before long."</p>
+
+<p>The cheerful laugh with which the Captain was wont to
+chorus his sentences sounded like the crackling of dry pine
+wood on the social hearth. One would hardly hear it
+without being lightened in heart; and little Mara gazed at
+his long, dry, ropy figure, and wrinkled thin face, as a sort
+of monument of hope; and his uproarious laugh, which
+Mrs. Kittridge sometimes ungraciously compared to "the
+crackling of thorns under a pot," seemed to her the most
+delightful thing in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary Jane was a-tellin' me," resumed Mrs. Kittridge,
+"that when her husband had been out a month, she
+dreamed she see him, and three other men, a-floatin' on an
+iceberg."</p>
+
+<p>"Laws," said Captain Kittridge, "that's jist what my
+old mother dreamed about me, and 'twas true enough, too,
+till we got off the ice on to the shore up in the Esquimaux
+territory, as I was a-tellin'. So you tell Mary Jane she
+needn't look out for a second husband <i>yet</i>, for that ar
+dream's a sartin sign he'll be back."</p>
+
+<p>"Cap'n Kittridge!" said his helpmeet, drawing herself
+up, and giving him an austere glance over her spectacles;
+"how often must I tell you that there <i>is</i> subjects which
+shouldn't be treated with levity?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who's been a-treatin' of 'em with levity?" said the
+Captain. "I'm sure I ain't. Mary Jane's good-lookin',
+and there's plenty of young fellows as sees it as well as
+me. I declare, she looked as pretty as any young gal
+when she ris up in the singers' seats to-day. Put me
+in mind of you, Polly, when I first come home from the
+Injies."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, come now, Cap'n Kittridge! we're gettin' too old
+for that sort o' talk."</p>
+
+<p>"We ain't too old, be we, Mara?" said the Captain,
+trotting the little girl gayly on his knee; "and we ain't
+afraid of icebergs and no sich, be we? I tell you they's
+a fine sight of a bright day; they has millions of steeples,
+all white and glistering, like the New Jerusalem, and the
+white bears have capital times trampin' round on 'em.
+Wouldn't little Mara like a great, nice white bear to ride
+on, with his white fur, so soft and warm, and a saddle
+made of pearls, and a gold bridle?"</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't seen any little girls ride so," said Mara,
+doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if I had; but you see, Mis' Kittridge
+there, she won't let me tell all I know," said the
+Captain, sinking his voice to a confidential tone; "you jist
+wait till we get alone."</p>
+
+<p>"But, you are sure," said Mara, confidingly, in return,
+"that white bears will be kind to Moses?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord bless you, yes, child, the kindest critturs in the
+world they be, if you only get the right side of 'em," said
+the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! because," said Mara, "I know how good a
+wolf was to Romulus and Remus once, and nursed them
+when they were cast out to die. I read that in the Roman
+history."</p>
+
+<p>"Jist so," said the Captain, enchanted at this historic
+confirmation of his apocrypha.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And so," said Mara, "if Moses should happen to get
+on an iceberg, a bear might take care of him, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Jist so, jist so," said the Captain; "so don't you
+worry your little curly head one bit. Some time when
+you come down to see Sally, we'll go down to the cove,
+and I'll tell you lots of stories about chil'en that have
+been fetched up by white bears, jist like Romulus and
+what's his name there."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mis' Kittridge," added the cheery Captain;
+"you and I mustn't be keepin' the folks up till nine
+o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"Well now," said Mrs. Kittridge, in a doleful tone, as
+she began to put on her bonnet, "Mis' Pennel, you must
+keep up your spirits&mdash;it's one's duty to take cheerful
+views of things. I'm sure many's the night, when the
+Captain's been gone to sea, I've laid and shook in my bed,
+hearin' the wind blow, and thinking what if I should be
+left a lone widow."</p>
+
+<p>"There'd a-been a dozen fellows a-wanting to get you
+in six months, Polly," interposed the Captain. "Well,
+good-night, Mis' Pennel; there'll be a splendid haul of
+fish at the Banks this year, or there's no truth in signs.
+Come, my little Mara, got a kiss for the dry old daddy?
+That's my good girl. Well, good night, and the Lord
+bless you."</p>
+
+<p>And so the cheery Captain took up his line of march
+homeward, leaving little Mara's head full of dazzling visions
+of the land of romance to which Moses had gone. She
+was yet on that shadowy boundary between the dreamland
+of childhood and the real land of life; so all things looked
+to her quite possible; and gentle white bears, with warm,
+soft fur and pearl and gold saddles, walked through her
+dreams, and the victorious curls of Moses appeared, with
+his bright eyes and cheeks, over glittering pinnacles of
+frost in the ice-land.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ENCHANTED ISLAND</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>June and July passed, and the lonely two lived a quiet
+life in the brown house. Everything was so still and fair&mdash;no
+sound but the coming and going tide, and the swaying
+wind among the pine-trees, and the tick of the clock,
+and the whirr of the little wheel as Mrs. Pennel sat spinning
+in her door in the mild weather. Mara read the
+Roman history through again, and began it a third time,
+and read over and over again the stories and prophecies
+that pleased her in the Bible, and pondered the wood-cuts
+and texts in a very old edition of &AElig;sop's Fables; and as
+she wandered in the woods, picking fragrant bayberries
+and gathering hemlock, checkerberry, and sassafras to put in
+the beer which her grandmother brewed, she mused on the
+things that she read till her little mind became a tabernacle
+of solemn, quaint, dreamy forms, where old Judean kings
+and prophets, and Roman senators and warriors, marched
+in and out in shadowy rounds. She invented long dramas
+and conversations in which they performed imaginary
+parts, and it would not have appeared to the child in the
+least degree surprising either to have met an angel in the
+woods, or to have formed an intimacy with some talking
+wolf or bear, such as she read of in &AElig;sop's Fables.</p>
+
+<p>One day, as she was exploring the garret, she found in
+an old barrel of cast-off rubbish a bit of reading which she
+begged of her grandmother for her own. It was the play
+of the "Tempest," torn from an old edition of Shakespeare,
+and was in that delightfully fragmentary condition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+which most particularly pleases children, because they conceive
+a mutilated treasure thus found to be more especially
+their own property&mdash;something like a rare wild-flower or
+sea-shell. The pleasure which thoughtful and imaginative
+children sometimes take in reading that which they do not
+and cannot fully comprehend is one of the most common
+and curious phenomena of childhood.</p>
+
+<p>And so little Mara would lie for hours stretched out on
+the pebbly beach, with the broad open ocean before her and
+the whispering pines and hemlocks behind her, and pore
+over this poem, from which she collected dim, delightful
+images of a lonely island, an old enchanter, a beautiful
+girl, and a spirit not quite like those in the Bible, but a
+very probable one to her mode of thinking. As for old
+Caliban, she fancied him with a face much like that of a
+huge skate-fish she had once seen drawn ashore in one of
+her grandfather's nets; and then there was the beautiful
+young Prince Ferdinand, much like what Moses would be
+when he was grown up&mdash;and how glad she would be to
+pile up his wood for him, if any old enchanter should set
+him to work!</p>
+
+<p>One attribute of the child was a peculiar shamefacedness
+and shyness about her inner thoughts, and therefore the
+wonder that this new treasure excited, the host of surmises
+and dreams to which it gave rise, were never mentioned
+to anybody. That it was all of it as much authentic fact
+as the Roman history, she did not doubt, but whether it
+had happened on Orr's Island or some of the neighboring
+ones, she had not exactly made up her mind. She resolved
+at her earliest leisure to consult Captain Kittridge on the
+subject, wisely considering that it much resembled some
+of his fishy and aquatic experiences.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the little songs fixed themselves in her memory,
+and she would hum them as she wandered up and down
+the beach.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Come unto these yellow sands,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And then take hands;</span><br />
+Courtsied when you have and kissed<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The wild waves whist,</span><br />
+Foot it featly here and there;<br />
+And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And another which pleased her still more:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Full fathom five thy father lies;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of his bones are coral made,</span><br />
+Those are pearls that were his eyes:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nothing of him that can fade</span><br />
+But doth suffer a sea-change<br />
+Into something rich and strange;<br />
+Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:<br />
+Hark, now I hear them&mdash;ding-dong, bell."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>These words she pondered very long, gravely revolving
+in her little head whether they described the usual course
+of things in the mysterious under-world that lay beneath
+that blue spangled floor of the sea; whether everybody's
+eyes changed to pearl, and their bones to coral, if they
+sunk down there; and whether the sea-nymphs spoken of
+were the same as the mermaids that Captain Kittridge had
+told of. Had he not said that the bell rung for church of
+a Sunday morning down under the waters?</p>
+
+<p>Mara vividly remembered the scene on the sea-beach,
+the finding of little Moses and his mother, the dream of
+the pale lady that seemed to bring him to her; and not
+one of the conversations that had transpired before her
+among different gossips had been lost on her quiet, listening
+little ears. These pale, still children that play without
+making any noise are deep wells into which drop
+many things which lie long and quietly on the bottom, and
+come up in after years whole and new, when everybody
+else has forgotten them.</p>
+
+<p>So she had heard surmises as to the remaining crew of
+that unfortunate ship, where, perhaps, Moses had a father.
+And sometimes she wondered if <i>he</i> were lying fathoms
+deep with sea-nymphs ringing his knell, and whether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+Moses ever thought about him; and yet she could no more
+have asked him a question about it than if she had been
+born dumb. She decided that she should never show him
+this poetry&mdash;it might make him feel unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>One bright afternoon, when the sea lay all dead asleep,
+and the long, steady respiration of its tides scarcely disturbed
+the glassy tranquillity of its bosom, Mrs. Pennel
+sat at her kitchen-door spinning, when Captain Kittridge
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Mis' Pennel; how ye gettin' along?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pretty well, Captain; won't you walk in and have
+a glass of beer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, thank you," said the Captain, raising his hat
+and wiping his forehead, "I be pretty dry, it's a fact."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel hastened to a cask which was kept standing
+in a corner of the kitchen, and drew from thence a mug of
+her own home-brewed, fragrant with the smell of juniper,
+hemlock, and wintergreen, which she presented to the Captain,
+who sat down in the doorway and discussed it in
+leisurely sips.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', s'pose it's most time to be lookin' for 'em home,
+ain't it?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> lookin' every day," said Mrs. Pennel, involuntarily
+glancing upward at the sea.</p>
+
+<p>At the word appeared the vision of little Mara, who
+rose up like a spirit from a dusky corner, where she had
+been stooping over her reading.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, little Mara," said the Captain, "you ris up like
+a ghost all of a sudden. I thought you's out to play. I
+come down a-purpose arter you. Mis' Kittridge has gone
+shoppin' up to Brunswick, and left Sally a 'stent' to do;
+and I promised her if she'd clap to and do it quick, I'd
+go up and fetch you down, and we'd have a play in the
+cove."</p>
+
+<p>Mara's eyes brightened, as they always did at this pros<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>pect,
+and Mrs. Pennel said, "Well, I'm glad to have the
+child go; she seems so kind o' still and lonesome since
+Moses went away; really one feels as if that boy took all
+the noise there was with him. I get tired myself sometimes
+hearing the clock tick. Mara, when she's alone,
+takes to her book more than's good for a child."</p>
+
+<p>"She does, does she? Well, we'll see about that.
+Come, little Mara, get on your sun-bonnet. Sally's sewin'
+fast as ever she can, and we're goin' to dig some clams,
+and make a fire, and have a chowder; that'll be nice,
+won't it? Don't you want to come, too, Mis' Pennel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you, Captain, but I've got so many things
+on hand to do afore they come home, I don't really think
+I can. I'll trust Mara to you any day."</p>
+
+<p>Mara had run into her own little room and secured her
+precious fragment of treasure, which she wrapped up carefully
+in her handkerchief, resolving to enlighten Sally
+with the story, and to consult the Captain on any nice
+points of criticism. Arrived at the cove, they found Sally
+already there in advance of them, clapping her hands and
+dancing in a manner which made her black elf-locks fly
+like those of a distracted creature.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Sally," said the Captain, imitating, in a humble
+way, his wife's manner, "are you sure you've finished
+your work well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father, every stitch on't."</p>
+
+<p>"And stuck in your needle, and folded it up, and put
+it in the drawer, and put away your thimble, and shet the
+drawer, and all the rest on't?" said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father," said Sally, gleefully, "I've done everything
+I could think of."</p>
+
+<p>"'Cause you know your ma'll be arter ye, if you don't
+leave everything straight."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never you fear, father, I've done it all half an
+hour ago, and I've found the most capital bed of clams<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+just round the point here; and you take care of Mara
+there, and make up a fire while I dig 'em. If she comes,
+she'll be sure to wet her shoes, or spoil her frock, or something."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', she likes no better fun now," said the Captain,
+watching Sally, as she disappeared round the rock with a
+bright tin pan.</p>
+
+<p>He then proceeded to construct an extemporary fireplace
+of loose stones, and to put together chips and shavings for
+the fire,&mdash;in which work little Mara eagerly assisted; but
+the fire was crackling and burning cheerily long before
+Sally appeared with her clams, and so the Captain, with a
+pile of hemlock boughs by his side, sat on a stone feeding
+the fire leisurely from time to time with crackling boughs.
+Now was the time for Mara to make her inquiries; her
+heart beat, she knew not why, for she was full of those
+little timidities and shames that so often embarrass children
+in their attempts to get at the meanings of things in this
+great world, where they are such ignorant spectators.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Kittridge," she said at last, "do the mermaids
+toll any bells for people when they are drowned?"</p>
+
+<p>Now the Captain had never been known to indicate the
+least ignorance on any subject in heaven or earth, which
+any one wished his opinion on; he therefore leisurely poked
+another great crackling bough of green hemlock into the
+fire, and, Yankee-like, answered one question by asking
+another.</p>
+
+<p>"What put that into your curly pate?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"A book I've been reading says they do,&mdash;that is, sea-nymphs
+do. Ain't sea-nymphs and mermaids the same
+thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', I guess they be, pretty much," said the Captain,
+rubbing down his pantaloons; "yes, they be," he
+added, after reflection.</p>
+
+<p>"And when people are drowned, how long does it take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+for their bones to turn into coral, and their eyes into
+pearl?" said little Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that depends upon circumstances," said the Captain,
+who wasn't going to be posed; "but let me jist see
+your book you've been reading these things out of."</p>
+
+<p>"I found it in a barrel up garret, and grandma gave it
+to me," said Mara, unrolling her handkerchief; "it's a
+beautiful book,&mdash;it tells about an island, and there was
+an old enchanter lived on it, and he had one daughter, and
+there was a spirit they called Ariel, whom a wicked old
+witch fastened in a split of a pine-tree, till the enchanter
+got him out. He was a beautiful spirit, and rode in the
+curled clouds and hung in flowers,&mdash;because he could
+make himself big or little, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes, I see, to be sure," said the Captain, nodding
+his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that about sea-nymphs ringing his knell is here,"
+Mara added, beginning to read the passage with wide,
+dilated eyes and great emphasis. "You see," she went
+on speaking very fast, "this enchanter had been a prince,
+and a wicked brother had contrived to send him to sea
+with his poor little daughter, in a ship so leaky that the
+very rats had left it."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad business that!" said the Captain, attentively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Mara, "they got cast ashore on this desolate
+island, where they lived together. But once, when a
+ship was going by on the sea that had his wicked brother
+and his son&mdash;a real good, handsome young prince&mdash;in it,
+why then he made a storm by magic arts."</p>
+
+<p>"Jist so," said the Captain; "that's been often done,
+to my sartin knowledge."</p>
+
+<p>"And he made the ship be wrecked, and all the people
+thrown ashore, but there wasn't any of 'em drowned, and
+this handsome prince heard Ariel singing this song about
+his father, and it made him think he was dead."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, what became of 'em?" interposed Sally, who
+had come up with her pan of clams in time to hear this
+story, to which she had listened with breathless interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the beautiful young prince married the beautiful
+young lady," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal'," said the Captain, who by this time had found
+his soundings; "that you've been a-tellin' is what they
+call a play, and I've seen 'em act it at a theatre, when I
+was to Liverpool once. I know all about it. Shakespeare
+wrote it, and he's a great English poet."</p>
+
+<p>"But did it ever happen?" said Mara, trembling between
+hope and fear. "Is it like the Bible and Roman
+history?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," said Captain Kittridge, "not exactly; but
+things jist like it, you know. Mermaids and sich is common
+in foreign parts, and they has funerals for drowned
+sailors. 'Member once when we was sailing near the Bermudas
+by a reef where the Lively Fanny went down,
+and I heard a kind o' ding-dongin',&mdash;and the waters
+there is clear as the sky,&mdash;and I looked down and see the
+coral all a-growin', and the sea-plants a-wavin' as handsome
+as a pictur', and the mermaids they was a-singin'.
+It was beautiful; they sung kind o' mournful; and Jack
+Hubbard, he would have it they was a-singin' for the
+poor fellows that was a-lyin' there round under the seaweed."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Mara, "did you ever see an enchanter that
+could make storms?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', there be witches and conjurers that make storms.
+'Member once when we was crossin' the line, about twelve
+o'clock at night, there was an old man with a long white
+beard that shone like silver, came and stood at the masthead,
+and he had a pitchfork in one hand, and a lantern in
+the other, and there was great balls of fire as big as my fist
+came out all round in the rigging. And I'll tell you if we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+didn't get a blow that ar night! I thought to my soul
+we should all go to the bottom."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Mara, her eyes staring with excitement,
+"that was just like this shipwreck; and 'twas Ariel made
+those balls of fire; he says so; he said he 'flamed amazement'
+all over the ship."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard Miss Roxy tell about witches that made
+storms," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain leisurely proceeded to open the clams, separating
+from the shells the contents, which he threw into a
+pan, meanwhile placing a black pot over the fire in which
+he had previously arranged certain slices of salt pork,
+which soon began frizzling in the heat.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Sally, you peel them potatoes, and mind you
+slice 'em thin," he said, and Sally soon was busy with her
+work.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the Captain, going on with his part of the
+arrangement, "there was old Polly Twitchell, that lived in
+that ar old tumble-down house on Mure P'int; people used
+to say she brewed storms, and went to sea in a sieve."</p>
+
+<p>"Went in a sieve!" said both children; "why a sieve
+wouldn't swim!"</p>
+
+<p>"No more it wouldn't, in any Christian way," said the
+Captain; "but that was to show what a great witch she
+was."</p>
+
+<p>"But this was a good enchanter," said Mara, "and he
+did it all by a book and a rod."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said the Captain; "that ar's the gen'l way
+magicians do, ever since Moses's time in Egypt. 'Member
+once I was to Alexandria, in Egypt, and I saw a magician
+there that could jist see everything you ever did in your life
+in a drop of ink that he held in his hand."</p>
+
+<p>"He could, father!"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure he could! told me all about the old folks
+at home; and described our house as natural as if he'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+a-been there. He used to carry snakes round with him,&mdash;a
+kind so p'ison that it was certain death to have 'em
+bite you; but he played with 'em as if they was kittens."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Mara, "my enchanter was a king; and
+when he got through all he wanted, and got his daughter
+married to the beautiful young prince, he said he would
+break his staff, and deeper than plummet sounded he would
+bury his book."</p>
+
+<p>"It was pretty much the best thing he could do," said
+the Captain, "because the Bible is agin such things."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" said Mara; "why, he was a real good man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, you know, we all on us does what ain't quite
+right sometimes, when we gets pushed up," said the Captain,
+who now began arranging the clams and sliced potatoes
+in alternate layers with sea-biscuit, strewing in salt
+and pepper as he went on; and, in a few moments, a smell,
+fragrant to hungry senses, began to steam upward, and Sally
+began washing and preparing some mammoth clam-shells,
+to serve as ladles and plates for the future chowder.</p>
+
+<p>Mara, who sat with her morsel of a book in her lap,
+seemed deeply pondering the past conversation. At last
+she said, "What did you mean by saying you'd seen 'em
+act that at a theatre?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they make it all seem real; and they have a
+shipwreck, and you see it all jist right afore your eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"And the Enchanter, and Ariel, and Caliban, and all?"
+said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all on't,&mdash;plain as printing."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that is by magic, ain't it?" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"No; they hes ways to jist make it up; but,"&mdash;added
+the Captain, "Sally, you needn't say nothin' to your ma
+'bout the theatre, 'cause she wouldn't think I's fit to go
+to meetin' for six months arter, if she heard on't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, ain't theatres good?" said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', there's a middlin' sight o' bad things in 'em,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+said the Captain, "that I must say; but as long as folks <i>is</i>
+folks, why, they will be <i>folksy</i>;&mdash;but there's never any
+makin' women folk understand about them ar things."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry they are bad," said Mara; "I want to see
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', wal'," said the Captain, "on the hull I've seen
+real things a good deal more wonderful than all their
+shows, and they hain't no make-b'lieve to 'em; but theatres
+is takin' arter all. But, Sally, mind you don't say
+nothin' to Mis' Kittridge."</p>
+
+<p>A few moments more and all discussion was lost in preparations
+for the meal, and each one, receiving a portion of
+the savory stew in a large shell, made a spoon of a small
+cockle, and with some slices of bread and butter, the evening
+meal went off merrily. The sun was sloping toward
+the ocean; the wide blue floor was bedropped here and
+there with rosy shadows of sailing clouds. Suddenly the
+Captain sprang up, calling out,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sure as I'm alive, there they be!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?" exclaimed the children.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Captain Pennel and Moses; don't you see?"</p>
+
+<p>And, in fact, on the outer circle of the horizon came
+drifting a line of small white-breasted vessels, looking like
+so many doves.</p>
+
+<p>"Them's 'em," said the Captain, while Mara danced
+for joy.</p>
+
+<p>"How soon will they be here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Afore long," said the Captain; "so, Mara, I guess
+you'll want to be getting hum."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HOME COMING</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>Mrs. Pennel, too, had seen the white, dove-like cloud
+on the horizon, and had hurried to make biscuits, and conduct
+other culinary preparations which should welcome the
+wanderers home.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was just dipping into the great blue sea&mdash;a
+round ball of fire&mdash;and sending long, slanting tracks of
+light across the top of each wave, when a boat was moored
+at the beach, and the minister sprang out,&mdash;not in his
+suit of ceremony, but attired in fisherman's garb.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Mrs. Pennel," he said. "I was out
+fishing, and I thought I saw your husband's schooner in
+the distance. I thought I'd come and tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Sewell. I thought I saw it, but I
+was not certain. Do come in; the Captain would be delighted
+to see you here."</p>
+
+<p>"We miss your husband in our meetings," said Mr.
+Sewell; "it will be good news for us all when he comes
+home; he is one of those I depend on to help me preach."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure you don't preach to anybody who enjoys it
+more," said Mrs. Pennel. "He often tells me that the
+greatest trouble about his voyages to the Banks is that he
+loses so many sanctuary privileges; though he always keeps
+Sunday on his ship, and reads and sings his psalms; but,
+he says, after all, there's nothing like going to Mount
+Zion."</p>
+
+<p>"And little Moses has gone on his first voyage?" said
+the minister.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed; the child has been teasing to go for more
+than a year. Finally the Cap'n told him if he'd be faithful
+in the ploughing and planting, he should go. You see,
+he's rather unsteady, and apt to be off after other things,&mdash;very
+different from Mara. Whatever you give her to
+do, she always keeps at it till it's done."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray, where is the little lady?" said the minister;
+"is she gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Cap'n Kittridge came in this afternoon to take
+her down to see Sally. The Cap'n's always so fond of
+Mara, and she has always taken to him ever since she was
+a baby."</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain is a curious creature," said the minister,
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel smiled also; and it is to be remarked that
+nobody ever mentioned the poor Captain's name without
+the same curious smile.</p>
+
+<p>"The Cap'n is a good-hearted, obliging creature," said
+Mrs. Pennel, "and a master-hand for telling stories to the
+children."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a perfect 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,'" said
+Mr. Sewell.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I really believe the Cap'n believes his own
+stories," said Mrs. Pennel; "he always seems to, and certainly
+a more obliging man and a kinder neighbor couldn't
+be. He has been in and out almost every day since I've
+been alone, to see if I wanted anything. He would insist
+on chopping wood and splitting kindlings for me, though
+I told him the Cap'n and Moses had left a plenty to last
+till they came home."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the subject of their conversation appeared
+striding along the beach, with a large, red lobster in
+one hand, while with the other he held little Mara upon
+his shoulder, she the while clapping her hands and singing
+merrily, as she saw the Brilliant out on the open blue sea,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+its white sails looking of a rosy purple in the evening light,
+careering gayly homeward.</p>
+
+<p>"There is Captain Kittridge this very minute," said
+Mrs. Pennel, setting down a tea-cup she had been wiping,
+and going to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mis' Pennel," said the Captain. "I
+s'pose you see your folks are comin'. I brought down one
+of these 'ere ready b'iled, 'cause I thought it might make
+out your supper."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Captain; you must stay and take some
+with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', me and the children have pooty much done our
+supper," said the Captain. "We made a real fust-rate
+chowder down there to the cove; but I'll jist stay and see
+what the Cap'n's luck is. Massy!" he added, as he
+looked in at the door, "if you hain't got the minister
+there! Wal', now, I come jist as I be," he added, with
+a glance down at his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Captain," said Mr. Sewell; "I'm in my
+fishing-clothes, so we're even."</p>
+
+<p>As to little Mara, she had run down to the beach, and
+stood so near the sea, that every dash of the tide-wave
+forced her little feet to tread an inch backward, stretching
+out her hands eagerly toward the schooner, which was
+standing straight toward the small wharf, not far from their
+door. Already she could see on deck figures moving about,
+and her sharp little eyes made out a small personage in a
+red shirt that was among the most active. Soon all the
+figures grew distinct, and she could see her grandfather's
+gray head, and alert, active form, and could see, by the
+signs he made, that he had perceived the little blowy figure
+that stood, with hair streaming in the wind, like some
+flower bent seaward.</p>
+
+<p>And now they are come nearer, and Moses shouts and
+dances on the deck, and the Captain and Mrs. Pennel come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+running from the house down to the shore, and a few
+minutes more, and all are landed safe and sound, and little
+Mara is carried up to the house in her grandfather's arms,
+while Captain Kittridge stops to have a few moments' gossip
+with Ben Halliday and Tom Scranton before they go
+to their own resting-places.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Moses loses not a moment in boasting of his
+heroic exploits to Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara! you've no idea what times we've had! I
+can fish equal to any of 'em, and I can take in sail and
+tend the helm like anything, and I know all the names of
+everything; and you ought to have seen us catch fish!
+Why, they bit just as fast as we could throw; and it was
+just throw and bite,&mdash;throw and bite,&mdash;throw and bite;
+and my hands got blistered pulling in, but I didn't mind
+it,&mdash;I was determined no one should beat me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! did you blister your hands?" said Mara, pitifully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to be sure! Now, you girls think that's a dreadful
+thing, but we men don't mind it. My hands are getting
+so hard, you've no idea. And, Mara, we caught a
+great shark."</p>
+
+<p>"A shark!&mdash;oh, how dreadful! Isn't he dangerous?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dangerous! I guess not. We served him out, I tell
+you. He'll never eat any more people, I tell you, the old
+wretch!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, poor shark, it isn't his fault that he eats people.
+He was made so," said Mara, unconsciously touching a
+deep theological mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know but he was," said Moses; "but
+sharks that we catch never eat any more, I'll bet you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Moses, did you see any icebergs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Icebergs! yes; we passed right by one,&mdash;a real grand
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"Were there any bears on it?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bears! No; we didn't see any."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Kittridge says there are white bears live on
+'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Captain Kittridge," said Moses, with a toss of
+superb contempt; "if you're going to believe all <i>he</i> says,
+you've got your hands full."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Moses, you don't think he tells lies?" said
+Mara, the tears actually starting in her eyes. "I think he
+is <i>real</i> good, and tells nothing but the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, you are young yet," said Moses, turning
+away with an air of easy grandeur, "and only a girl besides,"
+he added.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was nettled at this speech. First, it pained her to
+have her child's faith shaken in anything, and particularly
+in her good old friend, the Captain; and next, she felt,
+with more force than ever she did before, the continual
+disparaging tone in which Moses spoke of her girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure," she said to herself, "he oughtn't to feel
+so about girls and women. There was Deborah was a prophetess,
+and judged Israel; and there was Egeria,&mdash;she
+taught Numa Pompilius all his wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the little maiden's way to speak when
+anything thwarted or hurt her, but rather to fold all her
+feelings and thoughts inward, as some insects, with fine
+gauzy wings, draw them under a coat of horny concealment.
+Somehow, there was a shivering sense of disappointment in
+all this meeting with Moses. She had dwelt upon it, and
+fancied so much, and had so many things to say to him;
+and he had come home so self-absorbed and glorious, and
+seemed to have had so little need of or thought for her,
+that she felt a cold, sad sinking at her heart; and walking
+away very still and white, sat down demurely by her grandfather's
+knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so my little girl is glad grandfather's come," he
+said, lifting her fondly in his arms, and putting her golden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+head under his coat, as he had been wont to do from
+infancy; "grandpa thought a great deal about his little
+Mara."</p>
+
+<p>The small heart swelled against his. Kind, faithful old
+grandpa! how much more he thought about her than
+Moses; and yet she had thought so much of Moses. And
+there he sat, this same ungrateful Moses, bright-eyed and
+rosy-cheeked, full of talk and gayety, full of energy and
+vigor, as ignorant as possible of the wound he had given to
+the little loving heart that was silently brooding under her
+grandfather's butternut-colored sea-coat. Not only was he
+ignorant, but he had not even those conditions within himself
+which made knowledge possible. All that there was
+developed of him, at present, was a fund of energy, self-esteem,
+hope, courage, and daring, the love of action, life,
+and adventure; his life was in the outward and present,
+not in the inward and reflective; he was a true ten-year
+old boy, in its healthiest and most animal perfection.
+What she was, the small pearl with the golden hair, with
+her frail and high-strung organization, her sensitive nerves,
+her half-spiritual fibres, her ponderings, and marvels, and
+dreams, her power of love, and yearning for self-devotion,
+our readers may, perhaps, have seen. But if ever two
+children, or two grown people, thus organized, are thrown
+into intimate relations, it follows, from the very laws of
+their being, that one must hurt the other, simply by being
+itself; one must always hunger for what the other has not
+to give.</p>
+
+<p>It was a merry meal, however, when they all sat down
+to the tea-table once more, and Mara by her grandfather's
+side, who often stopped what he was saying to stroke her
+head fondly. Moses bore a more prominent part in the
+conversation than he had been wont to do before this voyage,
+and all seemed to listen to him with a kind of indulgence
+elders often accord to a handsome, manly boy, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+first flush of some successful enterprise. That ignorant
+confidence in one's self and one's future, which comes in
+life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced
+eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, little Mara quieted herself with listening to
+and admiring him. It is not comfortable to have any
+heart-quarrel with one's cherished idol, and everything of
+the feminine nature, therefore, can speedily find fifty good
+reasons for seeing one's self in the wrong and one's graven
+image in the right; and little Mara soon had said to herself,
+without words, that, of course, Moses couldn't be
+expected to think as much of her as she of him. He was
+handsomer, cleverer, and had a thousand other things to
+do and to think of&mdash;he was a boy, in short, and going to
+be a glorious man and sail all over the world, while she
+could only hem handkerchiefs and knit stockings, and sit
+at home and wait for him to come back. This was about
+the <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i> of life as it appeared to the little one, who
+went on from the moment worshiping her image with
+more undivided idolatry than ever, hoping that by and by
+he would think more of her.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell appeared to study Moses carefully and
+thoughtfully, and encouraged the wild, gleeful frankness
+which he had brought home from his first voyage, as a
+knowing jockey tries the paces of a high-mettled colt.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you get any time to read?" he interposed once,
+when the boy stopped in his account of their adventures.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," said Moses; "at least," he added, blushing
+very deeply, "I didn't feel like reading. I had so much
+to do, and there was so much to see."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all new to him now," said Captain Pennel; "but
+when he comes to being, as I've been, day after day, with
+nothing but sea and sky, he'll be glad of a book, just to
+break the sameness."</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, yes," said Captain Kittridge; "sailor's life ain't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+all apple-pie, as it seems when a boy first goes on a summer
+trip with his daddy&mdash;not by no manner o' means."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Mara, blushing and looking very eagerly at
+Mr. Sewell, "Moses has read a great deal. He read the
+Roman and the Grecian history through before he went
+away, and knows all about them."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, turning with an amused
+look towards the tiny little champion; "do you read them,
+too, my little maid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed," said Mara, her eyes kindling; "I have
+read them a great deal since Moses went away&mdash;them and
+the Bible."</p>
+
+<p>Mara did not dare to name her new-found treasure&mdash;there
+was something so mysterious about that, that she
+could not venture to produce it, except on the score of extreme
+intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, sit by me, little Mara," said the minister, putting
+out his hand; "you and I must be friends, I see."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell had a certain something of mesmeric power
+in his eyes which children seldom resisted; and with a
+shrinking movement, as if both attracted and repelled, the
+little girl got upon his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"So you like the Bible and Roman history?" he said
+to her, making a little aside for her, while a brisk conversation
+was going on between Captain Kittridge and Captain
+Pennel on the fishing bounty for the year.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Mara, blushing in a very guilty way.</p>
+
+<p>"And which do you like the best?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, sir; I sometimes think it is the one,
+and sometimes the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what pleases you in the Roman history?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I like that about Quintus Curtius."</p>
+
+<p>"Quintus Curtius?" said Mr. Sewell, pretending not to
+remember.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you remember him? why, there was a great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+gulf opened in the Forum, and the Augurs said that the
+country would not be saved unless some one would offer
+himself up for it, and so he jumped right in, all on horseback.
+I think that was grand. I should like to have
+done that," said little Mara, her eyes blazing out with a
+kind of starry light which they had when she was excited.</p>
+
+<p>"And how would you have liked it, if you had been a
+Roman girl, and Moses were Quintus Curtius? would you
+like to have him give himself up for the good of the
+country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, no!" said Mara, instinctively shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think it would be very grand of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And shouldn't we wish our friends to do what is brave
+and grand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; but then," she added, "it would be so dreadful
+<i>never</i> to see him any more," and a large tear rolled
+from the great soft eyes and fell on the minister's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," thought Mr. Sewell, "this sort of experimenting
+is too bad&mdash;too much nerve here, too much
+solitude, too much pine-whispering and sea-dashing are
+going to the making up of this little piece of workmanship."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," he said, motioning Moses to sit by him,
+"how <i>you</i> like the Roman history."</p>
+
+<p>"I like it first-rate," said Moses. "The Romans were
+such smashers, and beat everybody; nobody could stand
+against them; and I like Alexander, too&mdash;I think he was
+splendid."</p>
+
+<p>"True boy," said Mr. Sewell to himself, "unreflecting
+brother of the wind and the sea, and all that is vigorous
+and active&mdash;no precocious development of the moral
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you have come," said Mr. Sewell, "I will lend
+you another book."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir; I love to read them when I'm at
+home&mdash;it's so still here. I should be dull if I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>Mara's eyes looked eagerly attentive. Mr. Sewell noticed
+their hungry look when a book was spoken of.</p>
+
+<p>"And you must read it, too, my little girl," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Mara; "I always want to read
+everything Moses does."</p>
+
+<p>"What book is it?" said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"It is called Plutarch's 'Lives,'" said the minister; "it
+has more particular accounts of the men you read about in
+history."</p>
+
+<p>"Are there any lives of women?" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear," said Mr. Sewell; "in the old times,
+women did not get their lives written, though I don't
+doubt many of them were much better worth writing than
+the men's."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to be a great general," said Moses, with
+a toss of his head.</p>
+
+<p>"The way to be great lies through books, now, and not
+through battles," said the minister; "there is more done
+with pens than swords; so, if you want to do anything,
+you must read and study."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think of giving this boy a liberal education?"
+said Mr. Sewell some time later in the evening, after Moses
+and Mara were gone to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Depends on the boy," said Zephaniah. "I've been
+up to Brunswick, and seen the fellows there in the college.
+With a good many of 'em, going to college seems to be
+just nothing but a sort of ceremony; they go because they're
+sent, and don't learn anything more'n they can help.
+That's what I call waste of time and money."</p>
+
+<p>"But don't you think Moses shows some taste for reading
+and study?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty well, pretty well!" said Zephaniah; "jist keep
+him a little hungry; not let him get all he wants, you see,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+and he'll bite the sharper. If I want to catch cod, I don't
+begin with flingin' over a barrel o' bait. So with the
+boys, jist bait 'em with a book here and a book there, and
+kind o' let 'em feel their own way, and then, if nothin'
+will do but a fellow must go to college, give in to him&mdash;that'd
+be <i>my</i> way."</p>
+
+<p>"And a very good one, too!" said Mr. Sewell. "I'll
+see if I can't bait my hook, so as to make Moses take after
+Latin this winter. I shall have plenty of time to teach
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, there's Mara!" said the Captain, his face becoming
+phosphorescent with a sort of mild radiance of pleasure
+as it usually was when he spoke of her; "she's real
+sharp set after books; she's ready to fly out of her little
+skin at the sight of one."</p>
+
+<p>"That child thinks too much, and feels too much, and
+knows too much for her years!" said Mr. Sewell. "If
+she were a boy, and you would take her away cod-fishing,
+as you have Moses, the sea-winds would blow away some
+of the thinking, and her little body would grow stout, and
+her mind less delicate and sensitive. But she's a woman,"
+he said, with a sigh, "and they are all alike. We can't
+do much for them, but let them come up as they will and
+make the best of it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>"Emily," said Mr. Sewell, "did you ever take much
+notice of that little Mara Lincoln?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, brother; why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I think her a very uncommon child."</p>
+
+<p>"She is a pretty little creature," said Miss Emily, "but
+that is all I know; modest&mdash;blushing to her eyes when a
+stranger speaks to her."</p>
+
+<p>"She has wonderful eyes," said Mr. Sewell; "when she
+gets excited, they grow so large and so bright, it seems
+almost unnatural."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! has she?" said Miss Emily, in a tone of
+one who had been called upon to do something about it.
+"Well?" she added, inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"That little thing is only seven years old," said Mr.
+Sewell; "and she is thinking and feeling herself all into
+mere spirit&mdash;brain and nerves all active, and her little
+body so frail. She reads incessantly, and thinks over and
+over what she reads."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Miss Emily, winding very swiftly on a
+skein of black silk, and giving a little twitch, every now
+and then, to a knot to make it subservient.</p>
+
+<p>It was commonly the way when Mr. Sewell began to
+talk with Miss Emily, that she constantly answered him
+with the manner of one who expects some immediate, practical
+proposition to flow from every train of thought. Now
+Mr. Sewell was one of the reflecting kind of men, whose
+thoughts have a thousand meandering paths, that lead no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>where
+in particular. His sister's brisk little "Well's?"
+and "Ah's!" and "Indeed's!" were sometimes the least
+bit in the world annoying.</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be done?" said Miss Emily; "shall we
+speak to Mrs. Pennel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Pennel would know nothing about her."</p>
+
+<p>"How strangely you talk!&mdash;who should, if she doesn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean, she wouldn't understand the dangers of her
+case."</p>
+
+<p>"Dangers! Do you think she has any disease? She
+seems to be a healthy child enough, I'm sure. She has
+a lovely color in her cheeks."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell seemed suddenly to become immersed in a
+book he was reading.</p>
+
+<p>"There now," said Miss Emily, with a little tone of
+pique, "that's the way you always do. You begin to talk
+with me, and just as I get interested in the conversation,
+you take up a book. It's too bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Emily," said Mr. Sewell, laying down his book, "I
+think I shall begin to give Moses Pennel Latin lessons this
+winter."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what do you undertake that for?" said Miss
+Emily. "You have enough to do without that, I'm
+sure."</p>
+
+<p>"He is an uncommonly bright boy, and he interests
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, brother, you needn't tell me; there is some
+mystery about the interest you take in that child, <i>you
+know</i> there is."</p>
+
+<p>"I am fond of children," said Mr. Sewell, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but you don't take as much interest in other
+boys. I never heard of your teaching any of them Latin
+before."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Emily, he is an uncommonly interesting child,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+and the providential circumstances under which he came
+into our neighborhood"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Providential fiddlesticks!" said Miss Emily, with
+heightened color, "<i>I</i> believe you knew that boy's mother."</p>
+
+<p>This sudden thrust brought a vivid color into Mr. Sewell's
+cheeks. To be interrupted so unceremoniously, in
+the midst of so very proper and ministerial a remark, was
+rather provoking, and he answered, with some asperity,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose I had, Emily, and supposing there were
+any painful subject connected with this past event, you
+might have sufficient forbearance not to try to make me
+speak on what I do not wish to talk of."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell was one of your gentle, dignified men, from
+whom Heaven deliver an inquisitive female friend! If
+such people would only get angry, and blow some unbecoming
+blast, one might make something of them; but
+speaking, as they always do, from the serene heights of
+immaculate propriety, one gets in the wrong before one
+knows it, and has nothing for it but to beg pardon. Miss
+Emily had, however, a feminine resource: she began to cry&mdash;wisely
+confining herself to the simple eloquence of tears
+and sobs. Mr. Sewell sat as awkwardly as if he had trodden
+on a kitten's toe, or brushed down a china cup, feeling
+as if he were a great, horrid, clumsy boor, and his poor
+little sister a martyr.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Emily," he said, in a softer tone, when the sobs
+subsided a little.</p>
+
+<p>But Emily didn't "come," but went at it with a fresh
+burst. Mr. Sewell had a vision like that which drowning
+men are said to have, in which all Miss Emily's sisterly
+devotions, stocking-darnings, account-keepings, nursings
+and tendings, and infinite self-sacrifices, rose up before
+him: and there she was&mdash;crying!</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I spoke harshly, Emily. Come, come;
+that's a good girl."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm a silly fool," said Miss Emily, lifting her head,
+and wiping the tears from her merry little eyes, as she
+went on winding her silk.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he will tell me now," she thought, as she
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>But he didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"What I was going to say, Emily," said her brother,
+"was, that I thought it would be a good plan for little
+Mara to come sometimes with Moses; and then, by observing
+her more particularly, you might be of use to her;
+her little, active mind needs good practical guidance like
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell spoke in a gentle, flattering tone, and Miss
+Emily was flattered; but she soon saw that she had gained
+nothing by the whole breeze, except a little kind of dread,
+which made her inwardly resolve never to touch the
+knocker of his fortress again. But she entered into her
+brother's scheme with the facile alacrity with which she
+usually seconded any schemes of his proposing.</p>
+
+<p>"I might teach her painting and embroidery," said Miss
+Emily, glancing, with a satisfied air, at a framed piece of
+her own work which hung over the mantelpiece, revealing
+the state of the fine arts in this country, as exhibited in
+the performances of well-instructed young ladies of that
+period. Miss Emily had performed it under the tuition of
+a celebrated teacher of female accomplishments. It represented
+a white marble obelisk, which an inscription, in
+legible India ink letters, stated to be "Sacred to the memory
+of Theophilus Sewell," etc. This obelisk stood in the
+midst of a ground made very green by an embroidery of
+different shades of chenille and silk, and was overshadowed
+by an embroidered weeping-willow. Leaning on it, with
+her face concealed in a plentiful flow of white handkerchief,
+was a female figure in deep mourning, designed to
+represent the desolate widow. A young girl, in a very black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+dress, knelt in front of it, and a very lugubrious-looking
+young man, standing bolt upright on the other side, seemed
+to hold in his hand one end of a wreath of roses, which the
+girl was presenting, as an appropriate decoration for the
+tomb. The girl and gentleman were, of course, the young
+Theophilus and Miss Emily, and the appalling grief conveyed
+by the expression of their faces was a triumph of the
+pictorial art.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily had in her bedroom a similar funeral trophy,
+sacred to the memory of her deceased mother,&mdash;besides
+which there were, framed and glazed, in the little sitting-room,
+two embroidered shepherdesses standing with rueful
+faces, in charge of certain animals of an uncertain breed
+between sheep and pigs. The poor little soul had mentally
+resolved to make Mara the heiress of all the skill and
+knowledge of the arts by which she had been enabled to
+consummate these marvels.</p>
+
+<p>"She is naturally a lady-like little thing," she said to
+herself, "and if I know anything of accomplishments, she
+shall have them."</p>
+
+<p>Just about the time that Miss Emily came to this resolution,
+had she been clairvoyant, she might have seen
+Mara sitting very quietly, busy in the solitude of her own
+room with a little sprig of partridge-berry before her,
+whose round green leaves and brilliant scarlet berries she
+had been for hours trying to imitate, as appeared from the
+scattered sketches and fragments around her. In fact, before
+Zephaniah started on his spring fishing, he had caught
+her one day very busy at work of the same kind, with bits
+of charcoal, and some colors compounded out of wild berries;
+and so out of his capacious pocket, after his return,
+he drew a little box of water-colors and a lead-pencil and
+square of India-rubber, which he had bought for her in
+Portland on his way home.</p>
+
+<p>Hour after hour the child works, so still, so fervent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+so earnest,&mdash;going over and over, time after time, her
+simple, ignorant methods to make it "look like," and
+stopping, at times, to give the true artist's sigh, as the
+little green and scarlet fragment lies there hopelessly, unapproachably
+perfect. Ignorantly to herself, the hands of
+the little pilgrim are knocking at the very door where
+Giotto and Cimabue knocked in the innocent child-life of
+Italian art.</p>
+
+<p>"Why won't it look round?" she said to Moses, who
+had come in behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mara, did you do these?" said Moses, astonished;
+"why, how well they are done! I should know in
+a minute what they were meant for."</p>
+
+<p>Mara flushed up at being praised by Moses, but heaved
+a deep sigh as she looked back.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so pretty, that sprig," she said; "if I only could
+make it just like"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nobody expects <i>that</i>," said Moses, "it's like
+enough, if people only know what you mean it for. But
+come, now, get your bonnet, and come with me in the
+boat. Captain Kittridge has just brought down our new
+one, and I'm going to take you over to Eagle Island, and
+we'll take our dinner and stay all day; mother says so."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how nice!" said the little girl, running cheerfully
+for her sun-bonnet.</p>
+
+<p>At the house-door they met Mrs. Pennel, with a little
+closely covered tin pail.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's your dinner, children; and, Moses, mind and
+take good care of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear <i>me</i> mother, I've been to the Banks; there
+wasn't a man there could manage a boat better than I
+could."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, grandmother," said Mara, "you ought to see how
+strong his arms are; I believe he will be like Samson one
+of these days if he keeps on."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So away they went. It was a glorious August forenoon,
+and the sombre spruces and shaggy hemlocks that dipped
+and rippled in the waters were penetrated to their deepest
+recesses with the clear brilliancy of the sky,&mdash;a true
+northern sky, without a cloud, without even a softening
+haze, defining every outline, revealing every minute point,
+cutting with sharp decision the form of every promontory
+and rock, and distant island.</p>
+
+<p>The blue of the sea and the blue of the sky were so
+much the same, that when the children had rowed far out,
+the little boat seemed to float midway, poised in the centre
+of an azure sphere, with a firmament above and a firmament
+below. Mara leaned dreamily over the side of the
+boat, and drew her little hands through the waters as they
+rippled along to the swift oars' strokes, and she saw as the
+waves broke, and divided and shivered around the boat,
+a hundred little faces, with brown eyes and golden hair,
+gleaming up through the water, and dancing away over
+rippling waves, and thought that so the sea-nymphs might
+look who came up from the coral caves when they ring the
+knell of drowned people. Moses sat opposite to her, with
+his coat off, and his heavy black curls more wavy and
+glossy than ever, as the exercise made them damp with perspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Eagle Island lay on the blue sea, a tangled thicket of
+evergreens,&mdash;white pine, spruce, arbor vit&aelig;, and fragrant
+silver firs. A little strip of white beach bound it, like a
+silver setting to a gem. And there Moses at length moored
+his boat, and the children landed. The island was wholly
+solitary, and there is something to children quite delightful
+in feeling that they have a little lonely world all to themselves.
+Childhood is itself such an enchanted island, separated
+by mysterious depths from the mainland of nature,
+life, and reality.</p>
+
+<p>Moses had subsided a little from the glorious heights on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+which he seemed to be in the first flush of his return, and
+he and Mara, in consequence, were the friends of old time.
+It is true he thought himself quite a man, but the manhood
+of a boy is only a tiny masquerade,&mdash;a fantastic, dreamy
+prevision of real manhood. It was curious that Mara, who
+was by all odds the most precociously developed of the two,
+never thought of asserting herself a woman; in fact, she
+seldom thought of herself at all, but dreamed and pondered
+of almost everything else.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," said Moses, looking up into a thick-branched,
+rugged old hemlock, which stood all shaggy, with
+heavy beards of gray moss drooping from its branches,
+"there's an eagle's nest up there; I mean to go and see."
+And up he went into the gloomy embrace of the old tree,
+crackling the dead branches, wrenching off handfuls of gray
+moss, rising higher and higher, every once in a while turning
+and showing to Mara his glowing face and curly hair
+through a dusky green frame of boughs, and then mounting
+again. "I'm coming to it," he kept exclaiming.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile his proceedings seemed to create a sensation
+among the feathered house-keepers, one of whom rose and
+sailed screaming away into the air. In a moment after
+there was a swoop of wings, and two eagles returned and
+began flapping and screaming about the head of the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Mara, who stood at the foot of the tree, could not see
+clearly what was going on, for the thickness of the boughs;
+she only heard a great commotion and rattling of the
+branches, the scream of the birds, and the swooping of
+their wings, and Moses's valorous exclamations, as he
+seemed to be laying about him with a branch which he had
+broken off.</p>
+
+<p>At last he descended victorious, with the eggs in his
+pocket. Mara stood at the foot of the tree, with her sun-bonnet
+blown back, her hair streaming, and her little arms
+upstretched, as if to catch him if he fell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was so afraid!" she said, as he set foot on the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid? Pooh! Who's afraid? Why, you might
+know the old eagles couldn't beat me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, I know how strong you are; but, you know,
+I couldn't help it. But the poor birds,&mdash;do hear 'em
+scream. Moses, don't you suppose they feel bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they're only mad, to think they couldn't beat
+me. I beat them just as the Romans used to beat folks,&mdash;I
+played their nest was a city, and I spoiled it."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't want to spoil cities!" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"That's 'cause you are a girl,&mdash;I'm a man, and men
+always like war; I've taken one city this afternoon, and
+mean to take a great many more."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Moses, do you think war is right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right? why, yes, to be sure; if it ain't, it's a pity;
+for it's all that has ever been done in this world. In the
+Bible, or out, certainly it's right. I wish I had a gun
+now, I'd stop those old eagles' screeching."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Moses, we shouldn't want any one to come and
+steal all our things, and then shoot us."</p>
+
+<p>"How long you do think about things!" said Moses,
+impatient at her pertinacity. "I am older than you, and
+when I tell you a thing's right, you ought to believe it.
+Besides, don't you take hens' eggs every day, in the barn?
+How do you suppose the hens like that?"</p>
+
+<p>This was a home-thrust, and for the moment threw the
+little casuist off the track. She carefully folded up the
+idea, and laid it away on the inner shelves of her mind till
+she could think more about it. Pliable as she was to all
+outward appearances, the child had her own still, interior
+world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up
+crisp and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places.
+If anybody too rudely assailed a thought or suggestion
+she put forth, she drew it back again into this quiet inner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+chamber, and went on. Reader, there are some women of
+this habit; and there is no independence and pertinacity
+of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures,
+whom it is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince.
+Mara, little and unformed as she yet was, belonged to the
+race of those spirits to whom is deputed the office of the
+angel in the Apocalypse, to whom was given the golden rod
+which measured the New Jerusalem. Infant though she
+was, she had ever in her hands that invisible measuring-rod,
+which she was laying to the foundations of all actions
+and thoughts. There may, perhaps, come a time when the
+saucy boy, who now steps so superbly, and predominates
+so proudly in virtue of his physical strength and daring,
+will learn to tremble at the golden measuring-rod, held in
+the hand of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Howbeit, that is not first which is spiritual, but that
+which is natural." Moses is the type of the first unreflecting
+stage of development, in which are only the out-reachings
+of active faculties, the aspirations that tend toward
+manly accomplishments. Seldom do we meet sensitiveness
+of conscience or discriminating reflection as the indigenous
+growth of a very vigorous physical development. Your
+true healthy boy has the breezy, hearty virtues of a Newfoundland
+dog, the wild fullness of life of the young race-colt.
+Sentiment, sensibility, delicate perceptions, spiritual
+aspirations, are plants of later growth.</p>
+
+<p>But there are, both of men and women, beings born into
+this world in whom from childhood the spiritual and the
+reflective predominate over the physical. In relation to
+other human beings, they seem to be organized much as
+birds are in relation to other animals. They are the artists,
+the poets, the unconscious seers, to whom the purer truths
+of spiritual instruction are open. Surveying man merely
+as an animal, these sensitively organized beings, with their
+feebler physical powers, are imperfect specimens of life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+Looking from the spiritual side, they seem to have a noble
+strength, a divine force. The types of this latter class are
+more commonly among women than among men. Multitudes
+of them pass away in earlier years, and leave behind
+in many hearts the anxious wonder, why they came so fair
+only to mock the love they kindled. They who live to
+maturity are the priests and priestesses of the spiritual life,
+ordained of God to keep the balance between the rude but
+absolute necessities of physical life and the higher sphere
+to which that must at length give place.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>LESSONS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>Moses felt elevated some inches in the world by the gift
+of a new Latin grammar, which had been bought for him
+in Brunswick. It was a step upward in life; no graduate
+from a college ever felt more ennobled.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', now, I tell ye, Moses Pennel," said Miss Roxy,
+who, with her press-board and big flat-iron, was making
+her autumn sojourn in the brown house, "I tell ye Latin
+ain't just what you think 'tis, steppin' round so crank;
+you must remember what the king of Israel said to Benhadad,
+king of Syria."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't remember; what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," said the soft voice of Mara; "he said,
+'Let not him that putteth on the harness boast as him that
+putteth it off.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Good for you, Mara," said Miss Roxy; "if some other
+folks read their Bibles as much as you do, they'd know
+more."</p>
+
+<p>Between Moses and Miss Roxy there had always been a
+state of sub-acute warfare since the days of his first arrival,
+she regarding him as an unhopeful interloper, and he regarding
+her as a grim-visaged, interfering gnome, whom he
+disliked with all the intense, unreasoning antipathy of
+childhood.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate that old woman," he said to Mara, as he flung
+out of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Moses, what for?" said Mara, who never could
+comprehend hating anybody.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do hate her, and Aunt Ruey, too. They are two old
+scratching cats; they hate me, and I hate them; they're
+always trying to bring me down, and I won't be brought
+down."</p>
+
+<p>Mara had sufficient instinctive insight into the feminine
+r&ocirc;le in the domestic concert not to adventure a direct argument
+just now in favor of her friends, and therefore she
+proposed that they should sit down together under a cedar
+hard by, and look over the first lesson.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Emily invited me to go over with you," she said,
+"and I should like so much to hear you recite."</p>
+
+<p>Moses thought this very proper, as would any other male
+person, young or old, who has been habitually admired by
+any other female one. He did not doubt that, as in fishing
+and rowing, and all other things he had undertaken as yet,
+he should win himself distinguished honors.</p>
+
+<p>"See here," he said; "Mr. Sewell told me I might go
+as far as I liked, and I mean to take all the declensions to
+begin with; there's five of 'em, and I shall learn them for
+the first lesson; then I shall take the adjectives next, and
+next the verbs, and so in a fortnight get into reading."</p>
+
+<p>Mara heaved a sort of sigh. She wished she had been
+invited to share this glorious race; but she looked on admiring
+when Moses read, in a loud voice, "Penna, penn&aelig;,
+penn&aelig;, pennam," etc.</p>
+
+<p>"There now, I believe I've got it," he said, handing
+Mara the book; and he was perfectly astonished to find
+that, with the book withdrawn, he boggled, and blundered,
+and stumbled ingloriously. In vain Mara softly prompted,
+and looked at him with pitiful eyes as he grew red in the
+face with his efforts to remember.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it all!" he said, with an angry flush, snatching
+back the book; "it's more trouble than it's worth."</p>
+
+<p>Again he began the repetition, saying it very loud and
+plain; he said it over and over till his mind wandered far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+out to sea, and while his tongue repeated "penna, penn&aelig;,"
+he was counting the white sails of the fishing-smacks, and
+thinking of pulling up codfish at the Banks.</p>
+
+<p>"There now, Mara, try me," he said, and handed her
+the book again; "I'm sure I <i>must</i> know it now."</p>
+
+<p>But, alas! with the book the sounds glided away; and
+"penna" and "pennam" and "pennis" and "penn&aelig;" were
+confusedly and indiscriminately mingled. He thought it
+must be Mara's fault; she didn't read right, or she told
+him just as he was going to say it, or she didn't tell him
+right; or was he a fool? or had he lost his senses?</p>
+
+<p>That first declension has been a valley of humiliation to
+many a sturdy boy&mdash;to many a bright one, too; and often
+it is, that the more full of thought and vigor the mind is,
+the more difficult it is to narrow it down to the single dry
+issue of learning those sounds. Heinrich Heine said the
+Romans would never have found time to conquer the world,
+if they had had to learn their own language; but that,
+luckily for them, they were born into the knowledge of
+what nouns form their accusatives in "um."</p>
+
+<p>Long before Moses had learned the first declension, Mara
+knew it by heart; for her intense anxiety for him, and the
+eagerness and zeal with which she listened for each termination,
+fixed them in her mind. Besides, she was naturally
+of a more quiet and scholar-like turn than he,&mdash;more
+intellectually developed. Moses began to think, before that
+memorable day was through, that there was some sense in
+Aunt Roxy's quotation of the saying of the King of Israel,
+and materially to retrench his expectations as to the time
+it might take to master the grammar; but still, his pride
+and will were both committed, and he worked away in this
+new sort of labor with energy.</p>
+
+<p>It was a fine, frosty November morning, when he rowed
+Mara across the bay in a little boat to recite his first lesson
+to Mr. Sewell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily had provided a plate of seed-cake, otherwise
+called cookies, for the children, as was a kindly custom of
+old times, when the little people were expected. Miss
+Emily had a dim idea that she was to do something for
+Mara in her own department, while Moses was reciting his
+lesson; and therefore producing a large sampler, displaying
+every form and variety of marking-stitch, she began questioning
+the little girl, in a low tone, as to her proficiency
+in that useful accomplishment.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, however, she discovered that the child was
+restless and uneasy, and that she answered without knowing
+what she was saying. The fact was that she was listening,
+with her whole soul in her eyes, and feeling
+through all her nerves, every word Moses was saying.
+She knew all the critical places, where he was likely to go
+wrong; and when at last, in one place, he gave the wrong
+termination, she involuntarily called out the right one,
+starting up and turning towards them. In a moment she
+blushed deeply, seeing Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily both
+looking at her with surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, pussy," said Mr. Sewell, stretching out
+his hand to her. "Can you say this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I could, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, try it."</p>
+
+<p>She went through without missing a word. Mr. Sewell
+then, for curiosity, heard her repeat all the other forms of
+the lesson. She had them perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, my little girl," he said, "have you been
+studying, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard Moses say them so often," said Mara, in an
+apologetic manner, "I couldn't help learning them."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to recite with Moses every day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir, so much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you shall. It is better for him to have company."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mara's face brightened, and Miss Emily looked with a
+puzzled air at her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"So," she said, when the children had gone home, "I
+thought you wanted me to take Mara under my care. I
+was going to begin and teach her some marking stitches,
+and you put her up to studying Latin. I don't understand
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Emily, the fact is, the child has a natural turn
+for study, that no child of her age ought to have; and I
+have done just as people always will with such children;
+there's no sense in it, but I wanted to do it. You can
+teach her marking and embroidery all the same; it would
+break her little heart, now, if I were to turn her back."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not see of what use Latin can be to a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Of what use is embroidery?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that is an accomplishment."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, contemplating the
+weeping willow and tombstone trophy with a singular expression,
+which it was lucky for Miss Emily's peace she
+did not understand. The fact was, that Mr. Sewell had,
+at one period of his life, had an opportunity of studying
+and observing minutely some really fine works of art, and
+the remembrance of them sometimes rose up to his mind,
+in the presence of the <i>chefs-d'&oelig;uvre</i> on which his sister
+rested with so much complacency. It was a part of his
+quiet interior store of amusement to look at these bits of
+Byzantine embroidery round the room, which affected him
+always with a subtle sense of drollery.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, brother," said Miss Emily, "it is far better
+for women to be accomplished than learned."</p>
+
+<p>"You are quite right in the main," said Mr. Sewell,
+"only you must let me have my own way just for once.
+One can't be consistent always."</p>
+
+<p>So another Latin grammar was bought, and Moses began
+to feel a secret respect for his little companion, that he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+never done before, when he saw how easily she walked
+through the labyrinths which at first so confused him.
+Before this, the comparison had been wholly in points
+where superiority arose from physical daring and vigor;
+now he became aware of the existence of another kind of
+strength with which he had not measured himself. Mara's
+opinion in their mutual studies began to assume a value in
+his eyes that her opinions on other subjects had never
+done, and she saw and felt, with a secret gratification, that
+she was becoming more to him through their mutual
+pursuit. To say the truth, it required this fellowship to
+inspire Moses with the patience and perseverance necessary
+for this species of acquisition. His active, daring temperament
+little inclined him to patient, quiet study. For
+anything that could be done by two hands, he was always
+ready; but to hold hands still and work silently in the
+inner forces was to him a species of undertaking that
+seemed against his very nature; but then he would do it&mdash;he
+would not disgrace himself before Mr. Sewell, and let
+a girl younger than himself outdo him.</p>
+
+<p>But the thing, after all, that absorbed more of Moses's
+thoughts than all his lessons was the building and rigging
+of a small schooner, at which he worked assiduously in all
+his leisure moments. He had dozens of blocks of wood,
+into which he had cut anchor moulds; and the melting of
+lead, the running and shaping of anchors, the whittling of
+masts and spars took up many an hour. Mara entered into
+all those things readily, and was too happy to make herself
+useful in hemming the sails.</p>
+
+<p>When the schooner was finished, they built some ways
+down by the sea, and invited Sally Kittridge over to see
+it launched.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" he said, when the little thing skimmed down
+prosperously into the sea and floated gayly on the waters,
+"when I'm a man, I'll have a big ship; I'll build her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+and launch her, and command her, all myself; and I'll
+give you and Sally both a passage in it, and we'll go off to
+the East Indies&mdash;we'll sail round the world!"</p>
+
+<p>None of the three doubted the feasibility of this scheme;
+the little vessel they had just launched seemed the visible
+prophecy of such a future; and how pleasant it would be
+to sail off, with the world all before them, and winds ready
+to blow them to any port they might wish!</p>
+
+<p>The three children arranged some bread and cheese and
+doughnuts on a rock on the shore, to represent the collation
+that was usually spread in those parts at a ship launch, and
+felt quite like grown people&mdash;acting life beforehand in
+that sort of shadowy pantomime which so delights little
+people. Happy, happy days&mdash;when ships can be made
+with a jack-knife and anchors run in pine blocks, and three
+children together can launch a schooner, and the voyage of
+the world can all be made in one sunny Saturday afternoon!</p>
+
+<p>"Mother says you are going to college," said Sally to
+Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Not I, indeed," said Moses; "as soon as I get old
+enough, I'm going up to Umbagog among the lumberers,
+and I'm going to cut real, splendid timber for my ship,
+and I'm going to get it on the stocks, and have it built to
+suit myself."</p>
+
+<p>"What will you call her?" said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't thought of that," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Call her the Ariel," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"What! after the spirit you were telling us about?"
+said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Ariel is a pretty name," said Moses. "But what is
+that about a spirit?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said Sally, "Mara read us a story about a ship
+that was wrecked, and a spirit called Ariel, that sang a
+song about the drowned mariners."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mara gave a shy, apprehensive glance at Moses, to see if
+this allusion called up any painful recollections.</p>
+
+<p>No; instead of this, he was following the motions of his
+little schooner on the waters with the briskest and most
+unconcerned air in the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you ever show me that story, Mara?"
+said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>Mara colored and hesitated; the real reason she dared
+not say.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, she read it to father and me down by the cove,"
+said Sally, "the afternoon that you came home from the
+Banks; I remember how we saw you coming in; don't
+you, Mara?"</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done with it?" said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got it at home," said Mara, in a faint voice; "I'll
+show it to you, if you want to see it; there are such beautiful
+things in it."</p>
+
+<p>That evening, as Moses sat busy, making some alterations
+in his darling schooner, Mara produced her treasure, and
+read and explained to him the story. He listened with
+interest, though without any of the extreme feeling which
+Mara had thought possible, and even interrupted her once
+in the middle of the celebrated&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+"Full fathom five thy father lies,"<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>by asking her to hold up the mast a minute, while he drove
+in a peg to make it rake a little more. He was, evidently,
+thinking of no drowned father, and dreaming of no possible
+sea-caves, but acutely busy in fashioning a present reality;
+and yet he liked to hear Mara read, and, when she had
+done, told her that he thought it was a pretty&mdash;quite a
+pretty story, with such a total absence of recognition that
+the story had any affinities with his own history, that Mara
+was quite astonished.</p>
+
+<p>She lay and thought about him hours, that night, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+she had gone to bed; and he lay and thought about a new
+way of disposing a pulley for raising a sail, which he determined
+to try the effect of early in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>What was the absolute truth in regard to the boy? Had
+he forgotten the scenes of his early life, the strange catastrophe
+that cast him into his present circumstances? To
+this we answer that all the efforts of Nature, during the
+early years of a healthy childhood, are bent on effacing and
+obliterating painful impressions, wiping out from each day
+the sorrows of the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows
+on the seashore. The child that broods, day after day,
+over some fixed idea, is so far forth not a healthy one. It
+is Nature's way to make first a healthy animal, and then
+develop in it gradually higher faculties. We have seen
+our two children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally
+developed. There will come a time, by and by in
+the history of the boy, when the haze of dreamy curiosity
+will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague yearnings,
+and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him,
+but it must be some years hence.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Here for a season we leave both our child friends, and
+when ten years have passed over their heads,&mdash;when
+Moses shall be twenty, and Mara seventeen,&mdash;we will return
+again to tell their story, for then there will be one to
+tell. Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara
+read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess
+with Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood,&mdash;but
+how by herself she learns, after divers trials,
+to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and trailing arbutus,&mdash;how
+Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally
+grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to
+the high school,&mdash;how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and
+Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey nurse and cut and make and
+mend for the still rising generation,&mdash;how there are quilt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>ings
+and tea-drinkings and prayer meetings and Sunday
+sermons,&mdash;how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old
+gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the
+eternal silver tide rises and falls around our little gem,
+Orr's Island.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>SALLY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>"Now, where's Sally Kittridge! There's the clock
+striking five, and nobody to set the table. Sally, I say!
+Sally!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "Sally's gone
+out more'n an hour ago, and I expect she's gone down to
+Pennel's to see Mara; 'cause, you know, she come home
+from Portland to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if she's come home, I s'pose I may as well give
+up havin' any good of Sally, for that girl fairly bows down
+to Mara Lincoln and worships her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good reason," said the Captain. "There ain't
+a puttier creature breathin'. I'm a'most a mind to worship
+her myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Kittridge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,
+at your age, talking as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, laws, mother, I don't feel my age," said the
+frisky Captain, giving a sort of skip. "It don't seem
+more'n yesterday since you and I was a-courtin', Polly.
+What a life you did lead me in them days! I think you
+kep' me on the anxious seat a pretty middlin' spell."</p>
+
+<p>"I do wish you wouldn't talk so. You ought to be
+ashamed to be triflin' round as you do. Come, now, can't
+you jest tramp over to Pennel's and tell Sally I want
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I, mother. There ain't but two gals in two miles
+square here, and I ain't a-goin' to be the feller to shoo 'em
+apart. What's the use of bein' gals, and young, and putty,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+if they can't get together and talk about their new gownds
+and the fellers? That ar's what gals is for."</p>
+
+<p>"I do wish you wouldn't talk in that way before Sally,
+father, for her head is full of all sorts of vanity now; and
+as to Mara, I never did see a more slack-twisted, flimsy
+thing than she's grown up to be. Now Sally's learnt to
+do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can
+make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and
+make. But as to Mara, what does she do? Why, she
+paints pictur's. Mis' Pennel was a-showin' on me a blue-jay
+she painted, and I was a-thinkin' whether she could
+brile a bird fit to be eat if she tried; and she don't know
+the price of nothin'," continued Mrs. Kittridge, with
+wasteful profusion of negatives.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the Captain, "the Lord makes some things
+jist to be looked at. Their work is to be putty, and that
+ar's Mara's sphere. It never seemed to me she was cut
+out for hard work; but she's got sweet ways and kind
+words for everybody, and it's as good as a psalm to look
+at her."</p>
+
+<p>"And what sort of a wife'll she make, Captain Kittridge?"</p>
+
+<p>"A real sweet, putty one," said the Captain, persistently.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as to beauty, I'd rather have our Sally any
+day," said Mrs. Kittridge; "and she looks strong and
+hearty, and seems to be good for use."</p>
+
+<p>"So she is, so she is," said the Captain, with fatherly
+pride. "Sally's the very image of her ma at her age&mdash;black
+eyes, black hair, tall and trim as a spruce-tree, and
+steps off as if she had springs in her heels. I tell you,
+the feller'll have to be spry that catches her. There's
+two or three of 'em at it, I see; but Sally won't have
+nothin' to say to 'em. I hope she won't, yet awhile."</p>
+
+<p>"Sally is a girl that has as good an eddication as money<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+can give," said Mrs. Kittridge. "If I'd a-had her advantages
+at her age, I should a-been a great deal more'n I am.
+But we ha'n't spared nothin' for Sally; and when nothin'
+would do but Mara must be sent to Miss Plucher's school
+over in Portland, why, I sent Sally too&mdash;for all she's our
+seventh child, and Pennel hasn't but the one."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget Moses," said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's settin' up on his own account, I guess.
+They did talk o' giving him college eddication; but he was
+so unstiddy, there weren't no use in trying. A real wild
+ass's colt he was."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', wal', Moses was in the right on't. He took
+the cross-lot track into life," said the Captain. "Colleges
+is well enough for your smooth, straight-grained lumber,
+for gen'ral buildin'; but come to fellers that's got knots,
+and streaks, and cross-grains, like Moses Pennel, and the
+best way is to let 'em eddicate 'emselves, as he's a-doin'.
+He's cut out for the sea, plain enough, and he'd better be
+up to Umbagog, cuttin' timber for his ship, than havin'
+rows with tutors, and blowin' the roof off the colleges, as
+one o' them 'ere kind o' fellers is apt to when he don't
+have work to use up his steam. Why, mother, there's
+more gas got up in them Brunswick buildin's, from young
+men that are spilin' for hard work, than you could shake
+a stick at! But Mis' Pennel told me yesterday she was
+'spectin' Moses home to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oho! that's at the bottom of Sally's bein' up there,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "I take it you ain't
+the woman as would expect a daughter of your bringin' up
+to be a-runnin' after any young chap, be he who he may,"
+said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge for once was fairly silenced by this home-thrust;
+nevertheless, she did not the less think it quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+possible, from all that she knew of Sally; for although that
+young lady professed great hardness of heart and contempt
+for all the young male generation of her acquaintance, yet
+she had evidently a turn for observing their ways&mdash;probably
+purely in the way of philosophical inquiry.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>EIGHTEEN</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>In fact, at this very moment our scene-shifter changes
+the picture. Away rolls the image of Mrs. Kittridge's
+kitchen, with its sanded floor, its scoured rows of bright
+pewter platters, its great, deep fireplace, with wide stone
+hearth, its little looking-glass with a bit of asparagus bush,
+like a green mist, over it. <i>Exeunt</i> the image of Mrs. Kittridge,
+with her hands floury from the bread she has been
+moulding, and the dry, ropy, lean Captain, who has been
+sitting tilting back in a splint-bottomed chair,&mdash;and the
+next scene comes rolling in. It is a chamber in the house
+of Zephaniah Pennel, whose windows present a blue panorama
+of sea and sky. Through two windows you look
+forth into the blue belt of Harpswell Bay, bordered on the
+farther edge by Harpswell Neck, dotted here and there
+with houses, among which rises the little white meeting-house,
+like a mother-bird among a flock of chickens. The
+third window, on the other side of the room, looks far out
+to sea, where only a group of low, rocky islands interrupts
+the clear sweep of the horizon line, with its blue infinitude
+of distance.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture of this room, though of the barest and
+most frigid simplicity, is yet relieved by many of those
+touches of taste and fancy which the indwelling of a person
+of sensibility and imagination will shed off upon the physical
+surroundings. The bed was draped with a white spread,
+embroidered with a kind of knotted tracery, the working
+of which was considered among the female accomplishments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+of those days, and over the head of it was a painting of a
+bunch of crimson and white trillium, executed with a fidelity
+to Nature that showed the most delicate gifts of observation.
+Over the mantelpiece hung a painting of the Bay
+of Genoa, which had accidentally found a voyage home in
+Zephaniah Pennel's sea-chest, and which skillful fingers
+had surrounded with a frame curiously wrought of moss
+and sea-shells. Two vases of India china stood on the
+mantel, filled with spring flowers, crowfoot, anemones, and
+liverwort, with drooping bells of the twin-flower. The
+looking-glass that hung over the table in one corner of the
+room was fancifully webbed with long, drooping festoons
+of that gray moss which hangs in such graceful wreaths
+from the boughs of the pines in the deep forest shadows of
+Orr's Island. On the table below was a collection of
+books: a whole set of Shakespeare which Zephaniah Pennel
+had bought of a Portland bookseller; a selection, in
+prose and verse, from the best classic writers, presented to
+Mara Lincoln, the fly-leaf said, by her sincere friend,
+Theophilus Sewell; a Virgil, much thumbed, with an old,
+worn cover, which, however, some adroit fingers had concealed
+under a coating of delicately marbled paper;&mdash;there
+was a Latin dictionary, a set of Plutarch's Lives, the Mysteries
+of Udolpho, and Sir Charles Grandison, together
+with Edwards on the Affections, and Boston's Fourfold
+State;&mdash;there was an inkstand, curiously contrived from
+a sea-shell, with pens and paper in that phase of arrangement
+which betokened frequency of use; and, lastly, a
+little work-basket, containing a long strip of curious and
+delicate embroidery, in which the needle yet hanging
+showed that the work was in progress.</p>
+
+<p>By a table at the sea-looking window sits our little Mara,
+now grown to the maturity of eighteen summers, but retaining
+still unmistakable signs of identity with the little
+golden-haired, dreamy, excitable, fanciful "Pearl" of Orr's
+<i>Island</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She is not quite of a middle height, with something
+beautiful and child-like about the moulding of her delicate
+form. We still see those sad, wistful, hazel eyes, over
+which the lids droop with a dreamy languor, and whose
+dark lustre contrasts singularly with the golden hue of the
+abundant hair which waves in a thousand rippling undulations
+around her face. The impression she produces is not
+that of paleness, though there is no color in her cheek; but
+her complexion has everywhere that delicate pink tinting
+which one sees in healthy infants, and with the least emotion
+brightens into a fluttering bloom. Such a bloom is on
+her cheek at this moment, as she is working away, copying
+a bunch of scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-glass
+of water before her; every few moments stopping and holding
+her work at a distance, to contemplate its effect. At
+this moment there steps behind her chair a tall, lithe figure,
+a face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black eyes,
+glowing cheeks, marked eyebrows, and lustrous black hair
+arranged in shining braids around her head. It is our old
+friend, Sally Kittridge, whom common fame calls the handsomest
+girl of all the region round Harpswell, Maquoit,
+and Orr's Island. In truth, a wholesome, ruddy, blooming
+creature she was, the sight of whom cheered and
+warmed one like a good fire in December; and she seemed
+to have enough and to spare of the warmest gifts of vitality
+and joyous animal life. She had a well-formed mouth,
+but rather large, and a frank laugh which showed all her
+teeth sound&mdash;and a fortunate sight it was, considering
+that they were white and even as pearls; and the hand
+that she laid upon Mara's at this moment, though twice as
+large as that of the little artist, was yet in harmony with
+her vigorous, finely developed figure.</p>
+
+<p>"Mara Lincoln," she said, "you are a witch, a perfect
+little witch, at painting. How you can make things look
+so like, I don't see. Now, I could paint the things we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+painted at Miss Plucher's; but then, dear me! they didn't
+look at all like flowers. One needed to write under them
+what they were made for."</p>
+
+<p>"Does this look like to you, Sally?" said Mara. "I
+wish it would to me. Just see what a beautiful clear color
+that flower is. All I can do, I can't make one like it.
+My scarlet and yellows sink dead into the paper."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I think your flowers are wonderful! You are a
+real genius, that's what you are! I am only a common
+girl; I can't do things as you can."</p>
+
+<p>"You can do things a thousand times more useful, Sally.
+I don't pretend to compare with you in the useful arts,
+and I am only a bungler in ornamental ones. Sally, I feel
+like a useless little creature. If I could go round as you
+can, and do business, and make bargains, and push ahead
+in the world, I should feel that I was good for something;
+but somehow I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure you can't," said Sally, laughing. "I
+should like to see you try it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now," pursued Mara, in a tone of lamentation, "I
+could no more get into a carriage and drive to Brunswick
+as you can, than I could fly. I can't drive, Sally&mdash;something
+is the matter with me; and the horses always know
+it the minute I take the reins; they always twitch their
+ears and stare round into the chaise at me, as much as to
+say, 'What! you there?' and I feel sure they never will
+mind me. And then how you can make those wonderful
+bargains you do, I can't see!&mdash;you talk up to the clerks
+and the men, and somehow you talk everybody round; but
+as for me, if I only open my mouth in the humblest way
+to dispute the price, everybody puts me down. I always
+tremble when I go into a store, and people talk to me just
+as if I was a little girl, and once or twice they have made
+me buy things that I knew I didn't want, just because
+they will talk me down."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara, Mara," said Sally, laughing till the tears
+rolled down her cheeks, "what do <i>you</i> ever go a-shopping
+for?&mdash;of course you ought always to send me. Why,
+look at this dress&mdash;real India chintz; do you know I made
+old Pennywhistle's clerk up in Brunswick give it to me
+just for the price of common cotton? You see there was
+a yard of it had got faded by lying in the shop-window,
+and there were one or two holes and imperfections in it,
+and you ought to have heard the talk I made! I abused
+it to right and left, and actually at last I brought the poor
+wretch to believe that he ought to be grateful to me for
+taking it off his hands. Well, you see the dress I've
+made of it. The imperfections didn't hurt it the least in
+the world as I managed it,&mdash;and the faded breadth makes
+a good apron, so you see. And just so I got that red
+spotted flannel dress I wore last winter. It was moth-eaten
+in one or two places, and I made them let me have it
+at half-price;&mdash;made exactly as good a dress. But after
+all, Mara, I can't trim a bonnet as you can, and I can't
+come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work, nor I can't
+draw and paint as you can, and I can't sing like you; and
+then as to all those things you talk with Mr. Sewell about,
+why they're beyond my depth,&mdash;that's all I've got to
+say. Now, you are made to have poetry written to you,
+and all that kind of thing one reads of in novels. Nobody
+would ever think of writing poetry to me, now, or sending
+me flowers and rings, and such things. If a fellow
+likes me, he gives me a quince, or a big apple; but, then,
+Mara, there ain't any fellows round here that are fit to
+speak to."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure, Sally, there always is a train following you
+everywhere, at singing-school and Thursday lecture."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;but what do I care for 'em?" said Sally, with
+a toss of her head. "Why they follow me, I don't see.
+I don't do anything to make 'em, and I tell 'em all that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+they tire me to death; and still they will hang round.
+What is the reason, do you suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"What can it be?" said Mara, with a quiet kind of arch
+drollery which suffused her face, as she bent over her
+painting.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know I can't bear fellows&mdash;I think they
+are hateful."</p>
+
+<p>"What! even Tom Hiers?" said Mara, continuing her
+painting.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Hiers! Do you suppose I care for him? He
+would insist on waiting on me round all last winter, taking
+me over in his boat to Portland, and up in his sleigh to
+Brunswick; but I didn't care for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's Jimmy Wilson, up at Brunswick."</p>
+
+<p>"What! that little snip of a clerk! You don't suppose
+I care for him, do you?&mdash;only he almost runs his head off
+following me round when I go up there shopping; he's
+nothing but a little dressed-up yard-stick! I never saw a
+fellow yet that I'd cross the street to have another look at.
+By the by, Mara, Miss Roxy told me Sunday that Moses
+was coming down from Umbagog this week."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is," said Mara; "we are looking for him
+every day."</p>
+
+<p>"You must want to see him. How long is it since you
+saw him?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is three years," said Mara. "I scarcely know what
+he is like now. I was visiting in Boston when he came
+home from his three-years' voyage, and he was gone into
+the lumbering country when I came back. He seems almost
+a stranger to me."</p>
+
+<p>"He's pretty good-looking," said Sally. "I saw him on
+Sunday when he was here, but he was off on Monday, and
+never called on old friends. Does he write to you often?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very," said Mara; "in fact, almost never; and
+when he does, there is so little in his letters."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I tell you, Mara, you must not expect fellows to
+write as girls can. They don't do it. Now, our boys,
+when they write home, they tell the latitude and longitude,
+and soil and productions, and such things. But if you or
+I were only there, don't you think we should find something
+more to say? Of course we should,&mdash;fifty thousand
+little things that they never think of."</p>
+
+<p>Mara made no reply to this, but went on very intently
+with her painting. A close observer might have noticed
+a suppressed sigh that seemed to retreat far down into her
+heart. Sally did not notice it.</p>
+
+<p>What was in that sigh? It was the sigh of a long,
+deep, inner history, unwritten and untold&mdash;such as are
+transpiring daily by thousands, and of which we take no
+heed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>REBELLION</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>We have introduced Mara to our readers as she appears
+in her seventeenth year, at the time when she is expecting
+the return of Moses as a young man of twenty; but we
+cannot do justice to the feelings which are roused in her
+heart by this expectation, without giving a chapter or two
+to tracing the history of Moses since we left him as a boy
+commencing the study of the Latin grammar with Mr.
+Sewell. The reader must see the forces that acted upon
+his early development, and what they have made of him.</p>
+
+<p>It is common for people who write treatises on education
+to give forth their rules and theories with a self-satisfied
+air, as if a human being were a thing to be made up, like
+a batch of bread, out of a given number of materials combined
+by an infallible recipe. Take your child, and do
+thus and so for a given number of years, and he comes
+out a thoroughly educated individual.</p>
+
+<p>But in fact, education is in many cases nothing more
+than a blind struggle of parents and guardians with the
+evolutions of some strong, predetermined character, individual,
+obstinate, unreceptive, and seeking by an inevitable
+law of its being to develop itself and gain free expression
+in its own way. Captain Kittridge's confidence that he
+would as soon undertake a boy as a Newfoundland pup, is
+good for those whose idea of what is to be done for a human
+being are only what would be done for a dog, namely,
+give food, shelter, and world-room, and leave each to act
+out his own nature without let or hindrance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But everybody takes an embryo human being with some
+plan of one's own what it shall do or be. The child's
+future shall shape out some darling purpose or plan, and
+fulfill some long unfulfilled expectation of the parent. And
+thus, though the wind of every generation sweeps its hopes
+and plans like forest-leaves, none are whirled and tossed
+with more piteous moans than those which come out green
+and fresh to shade the happy spring-time of the cradle.
+For the temperaments of children are often as oddly unsuited
+to parents as if capricious fairies had been filling
+cradles with changelings.</p>
+
+<p>A meek member of the Peace Society, a tender, devout,
+poetical clergyman, receives an heir from heaven, and
+straightway devotes him to the Christian ministry. But
+lo! the boy proves a young war-horse, neighing for battle,
+burning for gunpowder and guns, for bowie-knives and
+revolvers, and for every form and expression of physical
+force;&mdash;he might make a splendid trapper, an energetic
+sea-captain, a bold, daring military man, but his whole
+boyhood is full of rebukes and disciplines for sins which
+are only the blind effort of the creature to express a nature
+which his parent does not and cannot understand. So
+again, the son that was to have upheld the old, proud merchant's
+time-honored firm, that should have been mighty
+in ledgers and great upon 'Change, breaks his father's heart
+by an unintelligible fancy for weaving poems and romances.
+A father of literary aspirations, balked of privileges of early
+education, bends over the cradle of his son with but one
+idea. This child shall have the full advantages of regular
+college-training; and so for years he battles with a boy abhorring
+study, and fitted only for a life of out-door energy
+and bold adventure,&mdash;on whom Latin forms and Greek
+quantities fall and melt aimless and useless, as snow-flakes
+on the hide of a buffalo. Then the secret agonies,&mdash;the
+long years of sorrowful watchings of those gentler nurses of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+humanity who receive the infant into their bosom out of
+the void unknown, and strive to read its horoscope through
+the mists of their prayers and tears!&mdash;what perplexities,&mdash;what
+confusion! Especially is this so in a community
+where the moral and religious sense is so cultivated as in
+New England, and frail, trembling, self-distrustful mothers
+are told that the shaping and ordering not only of this
+present life, but of an immortal destiny, is in their hands.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, those who succeed best in the rearing of
+children are the tolerant and easy persons who instinctively
+follow nature and accept without much inquiry whatever
+she sends; or that far smaller class, wise to discern spirits
+and apt to adopt means to their culture and development,
+who can prudently and carefully train every nature according
+to its true and characteristic ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah Pennel was a shrewd old Yankee, whose instincts
+taught him from the first, that the waif that had
+been so mysteriously washed out of the gloom of the sea
+into his family, was of some different class and lineage from
+that which might have filled a cradle of his own, and of a
+nature which he could not perfectly understand. So he
+prudently watched and waited, only using restraint enough
+to keep the boy anchored in society, and letting him otherwise
+grow up in the solitary freedom of his lonely seafaring
+life.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was from childhood, although singularly attractive,
+of a moody, fitful, unrestful nature,&mdash;eager, earnest,
+but unsteady,&mdash;with varying phases of imprudent frankness
+and of the most stubborn and unfathomable secretiveness.
+He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and
+attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as
+full of hitches as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar
+beauty, and a certain electrical power of attraction, seemed
+to form a constant circle of protection and forgiveness
+around him in the home of his foster-parents; and great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+as was the anxiety and pain which he often gave them,
+they somehow never felt the charge of him as a weariness.</p>
+
+<p>We left him a boy beginning Latin with Mr. Sewell in
+company with the little Mara. This arrangement progressed
+prosperously for a time, and the good clergyman,
+all whose ideas of education ran through the halls of a college,
+began to have hopes of turning out a choice scholar.
+But when the boy's ship of life came into the breakers of
+that narrow and intricate channel which divides boyhood
+from manhood, the difficulties that had always attended his
+guidance and management wore an intensified form. How
+much family happiness is wrecked just then and there!
+How many mothers' and sisters' hearts are broken in the
+wild and confused tossings and tearings of that stormy
+transition! A whole new nature is blindly upheaving
+itself, with cravings and clamorings, which neither the boy
+himself nor often surrounding friends understand.</p>
+
+<p>A shrewd observer has significantly characterized the
+period as the time when the boy wishes he were dead, and
+everybody else wishes so too. The wretched, half-fledged,
+half-conscious, anomalous creature has all the desires of the
+man, and none of the rights; has a double and triple share
+of nervous edge and intensity in every part of his nature,
+and no definitely perceived objects on which to bestow it,&mdash;and,
+of course, all sorts of unreasonable moods and
+phases are the result.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most common signs of this period, in some
+natures, is the love of contradiction and opposition,&mdash;a
+blind desire to go contrary to everything that is commonly
+received among the older people. The boy disparages the
+minister, quizzes the deacon, thinks the school-master an
+ass, and doesn't believe in the Bible, and seems to be
+rather pleased than otherwise with the shock and flutter
+that all these announcements create among peaceably disposed
+grown people. No respectable hen that ever hatched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+out a brood of ducks was more puzzled what to do with
+them than was poor Mrs. Pennel when her adopted nursling
+came into this state. Was he a boy? an immortal
+soul? a reasonable human being? or only a handsome goblin
+sent to torment her?</p>
+
+<p>"What shall we do with him, father?" said she, one
+Sunday, to Zephaniah, as he stood shaving before the little
+looking-glass in their bedroom. "He can't be governed
+like a child, and he won't govern himself like a man."</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah stopped and strapped his razor reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>"We must cast out anchor and wait for day," he answered.
+"Prayer is a long rope with a strong hold."</p>
+
+<p>It was just at this critical period of life that Moses Pennel
+was drawn into associations which awoke the alarm of
+all his friends, and from which the characteristic willfulness
+of his nature made it difficult to attempt to extricate
+him.</p>
+
+<p>In order that our readers may fully understand this part
+of our history, we must give some few particulars as to the
+peculiar scenery of Orr's Island and the state of the country
+at this time.</p>
+
+<p>The coast of Maine, as we have elsewhere said, is remarkable
+for a singular interpenetration of the sea with the
+land, forming amid its dense primeval forests secluded
+bays, narrow and deep, into which vessels might float with
+the tide, and where they might nestle unseen and unsuspected
+amid the dense shadows of the overhanging forest.</p>
+
+<p>At this time there was a very brisk business done all
+along the coast of Maine in the way of smuggling. Small
+vessels, lightly built and swift of sail, would run up into
+these sylvan fastnesses, and there make their deposits and
+transact their business so as entirely to elude the vigilance
+of government officers.</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange that practices of this kind should
+ever have obtained a strong foothold in a community pecu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>liar
+for its rigid morality and its orderly submission to law;
+but in this case, as in many others, contempt of law grew
+out of weak and unworthy legislation. The celebrated
+embargo of Jefferson stopped at once the whole trade of
+New England, and condemned her thousand ships to rot at
+the wharves, and caused the ruin of thousands of families.</p>
+
+<p>The merchants of the country regarded this as a flagrant,
+high-handed piece of injustice, expressly designed to cripple
+New England commerce, and evasions of this unjust
+law found everywhere a degree of sympathy, even in the
+breasts of well-disposed and conscientious people. In resistance
+to the law, vessels were constantly fitted out which
+ran upon trading voyages to the West Indies and other
+places; and although the practice was punishable as smuggling,
+yet it found extensive connivance. From this beginning
+smuggling of all kinds gradually grew up in the
+community, and gained such a foothold that even after the
+repeal of the embargo it still continued to be extensively
+practiced. Secret depositories of contraband goods still
+existed in many of the lonely haunts of islands off the
+coast of Maine. Hid in deep forest shadows, visited only
+in the darkness of the night, were these illegal stores of
+merchandise. And from these secluded resorts they found
+their way, no one knew or cared to say how, into houses
+for miles around.</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt that the practice, like all other
+illegal ones, was demoralizing to the community, and particularly
+fatal to the character of that class of bold, enterprising
+young men who would be most likely to be drawn
+into it.</p>
+
+<p>Zephaniah Pennel, who was made of a kind of straight-grained,
+uncompromising oaken timber such as built the
+Mayflower of old, had always borne his testimony at home
+and abroad against any violations of the laws of the land,
+however veiled under the pretext of righting a wrong or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+resisting an injustice, and had done what he could in his
+neighborhood to enable government officers to detect and
+break up these unlawful depositories. This exposed him
+particularly to the hatred and ill-will of the operators concerned
+in such affairs, and a plot was laid by a few of the
+most daring and determined of them to establish one of
+their depositories on Orr's Island, and to implicate the
+family of Pennel himself in the trade. This would
+accomplish two purposes, as they hoped,&mdash;it would be a
+mortification and defeat to him,&mdash;a revenge which they
+coveted; and it would, they thought, insure his silence
+and complicity for the strongest reasons.</p>
+
+<p>The situation and characteristics of Orr's Island peculiarly
+fitted it for the carrying out of a scheme of this kind,
+and for this purpose we must try to give our readers a
+more definite idea of it.</p>
+
+<p>The traveler who wants a ride through scenery of more
+varied and singular beauty than can ordinarily be found on
+the shores of any land whatever, should start some fine
+clear day along the clean sandy road, ribboned with strips
+of green grass, that leads through the flat pitch-pine forests
+of Brunswick toward the sea. As he approaches the salt
+water, a succession of the most beautiful and picturesque
+lakes seems to be lying softly cradled in the arms of wild,
+rocky forest shores, whose outlines are ever changing with
+the windings of the road.</p>
+
+<p>At a distance of about six or eight miles from Brunswick
+he crosses an arm of the sea, and comes upon the first
+of the interlacing group of islands which beautifies the
+shore. A ride across this island is a constant succession of
+pictures, whose wild and solitary beauty entirely distances
+all power of description. The magnificence of the evergreen
+forests,&mdash;their peculiar air of sombre stillness,&mdash;the
+rich intermingling ever and anon of groves of birch,
+beech, and oak, in picturesque knots and tufts, as if set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+for effect by some skillful landscape-gardener,&mdash;produce a
+sort of strange dreamy wonder; while the sea, breaking
+forth both on the right hand and the left of the road into
+the most romantic glimpses, seems to flash and glitter like
+some strange gem which every moment shows itself through
+the framework of a new setting. Here and there little
+secluded coves push in from the sea, around which lie soft
+tracts of green meadow-land, hemmed in and guarded by
+rocky pine-crowned ridges. In such sheltered spots may
+be seen neat white houses, nestling like sheltered doves in
+the beautiful solitude.</p>
+
+<p>When one has ridden nearly to the end of Great Island,
+which is about four miles across, he sees rising before him,
+from the sea, a bold romantic point of land, uplifting a
+crown of rich evergreen and forest trees over shores of perpendicular
+rock. This is Orr's Island.</p>
+
+<p>It was not an easy matter in the days of our past experience
+to guide a horse and carriage down the steep, wild
+shores of Great Island to the long bridge that connects it
+with Orr's. The sense of wild seclusion reaches here the
+highest degree; and one crosses the bridge with a feeling
+as if genii might have built it, and one might be going over
+it to fairy-land. From the bridge the path rises on to a
+high granite ridge, which runs from one end of the island
+to the other, and has been called the Devil's Back, with
+that superstitious generosity which seems to have abandoned
+all romantic places to so undeserving an owner.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of this ridge of granite is a deep, narrow
+chasm, running a mile and a half or two miles parallel with
+the road, and veiled by the darkest and most solemn shadows
+of the primeval forest. Here scream the jays and the
+eagles, and fish-hawks make their nests undisturbed; and
+the tide rises and falls under black branches of evergreen,
+from which depend long, light festoons of delicate gray
+moss. The darkness of the forest is relieved by the deli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>cate
+foliage and the silvery trunks of the great white
+birches, which the solitude of centuries has allowed to grow
+in this spot to a height and size seldom attained elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>It was this narrow, rocky cove that had been chosen by
+the smuggler Atkinson and his accomplices as a safe and
+secluded resort for their operations. He was a seafaring
+man of Bath, one of that class who always prefer uncertain
+and doubtful courses to those which are safe and reputable.
+He was possessed of many of those traits calculated to
+make him a hero in the eyes of young men; was dashing,
+free, and frank in his manners, with a fund of humor and
+an abundance of ready anecdote which made his society
+fascinating; but he concealed beneath all these attractions
+a character of hard, grasping, unscrupulous selfishness, and
+an utter destitution of moral principle.</p>
+
+<p>Moses, now in his sixteenth year, and supposed to be
+in a general way doing well, under the care of the minister,
+was left free to come and go at his own pleasure, unwatched
+by Zephaniah, whose fishing operations often took him for
+weeks from home. Atkinson hung about the boy's path,
+engaging him first in fishing or hunting enterprises; plied
+him with choice preparations of liquor, with which he
+would enhance the hilarity of their expeditions; and finally
+worked on his love of adventure and that impatient restlessness
+incident to his period of life to draw him fully into
+his schemes. Moses lost all interest in his lessons, often
+neglecting them for days at a time&mdash;accounting for his
+negligence by excuses which were far from satisfactory.
+When Mara would expostulate with him about this, he
+would break out upon her with a fierce irritation. Was
+he always going to be tied to a girl's apron-string? He
+was tired of study, and tired of old Sewell, whom he declared
+an old granny in a white wig, who knew nothing of
+the world. He wasn't going to college&mdash;it was altogether<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+too slow for him&mdash;he was going to see life and push ahead
+for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mara's life during this time was intensely wearing. A
+frail, slender, delicate girl of thirteen, she carried a heart
+prematurely old with the most distressing responsibility
+of mature life. Her love for Moses had always had in it
+a large admixture of that maternal and care-taking element
+which, in some shape or other, qualities the affection of
+woman to man. Ever since that dream of babyhood, when
+the vision of a pale mother had led the beautiful boy to
+her arms, Mara had accepted him as something exclusively
+her own, with an intensity of ownership that seemed almost
+to merge her personal identity with his. She felt, and
+saw, and enjoyed, and suffered in him, and yet was conscious
+of a higher nature in herself, by which unwillingly
+he was often judged and condemned. His faults affected
+her with a kind of guilty pain, as if they were her own;
+his sins were borne bleeding in her heart in silence, and
+with a jealous watchfulness to hide them from every eye
+but hers. She busied herself day and night interceding
+and making excuses for him, first to her own sensitive
+moral nature, and then with everybody around, for with
+one or another he was coming into constant collision. She
+felt at this time a fearful load of suspicion, which she dared
+not express to a human being.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this period she had always been the only confidant
+of Moses, who poured into her ear without reserve all
+the good and the evil of his nature, and who loved her
+with all the intensity with which he was capable of loving
+anything. Nothing so much shows what a human being
+is in moral advancement as the quality of his love.
+Moses Pennel's love was egotistic, exacting, tyrannical, and
+capricious&mdash;sometimes venting itself in expressions of
+a passionate fondness, which had a savor of protecting
+generosity in them, and then receding to the icy pole of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+surly petulance. For all that, there was no resisting the
+magnetic attraction with which in his amiable moods he
+drew those whom he liked to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Such people are not very wholesome companions for those
+who are sensitively organized and predisposed to self-sacrificing
+love. They keep the heart in a perpetual freeze and
+thaw, which, like the American northern climate, is so
+particularly fatal to plants of a delicate habit. They could
+live through the hot summer and the cold winter, but they
+cannot endure the three or four months when it freezes
+one day and melts the next,&mdash;when all the buds are
+started out by a week of genial sunshine, and then frozen
+for a fortnight. These fitful persons are of all others most
+engrossing, because you are always sure in their good moods
+that they are just going to be angels,&mdash;an expectation
+which no number of disappointments seems finally to do
+away. Mara believed in Moses's future as she did in her
+own existence. He was going to do something great and
+good,&mdash;that she was certain of. He would be a splendid
+man! Nobody, she thought, knew him as she did; nobody
+could know how good and generous he was <i>sometimes</i>,
+and how frankly he would confess his faults, and what
+noble aspirations he had!</p>
+
+<p>But there was no concealing from her watchful sense that
+Moses was beginning to have secrets from her. He was
+cloudy and murky; and at some of the most harmless inquiries
+in the world, would flash out with a sudden temper,
+as if she had touched some sore spot. Her bedroom
+was opposite to his; and she became quite sure that night
+after night, while she lay thinking of him, she heard him
+steal down out of the house between two and three o'clock,
+and not return till a little before day-dawn. Where he
+went, and with whom, and what he was doing, was to her
+an awful mystery,&mdash;and it was one she dared not share
+with a human being. If she told her kind old grandfather,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+she feared that any inquiry from him would only light as
+a spark on that inflammable spirit of pride and insubordination
+that was rising within him, and bring on an instantaneous
+explosion. Mr. Sewell's influence she could hope
+little more from; and as to poor Mrs. Pennel, such communications
+would only weary and distress her, without
+doing any manner of good. There was, therefore, only
+that one unfailing Confidant&mdash;the Invisible Friend to
+whom the solitary child could pour out her heart, and
+whose inspirations of comfort and guidance never fail to
+come again in return to true souls.</p>
+
+<p>One moonlight night, as she lay thus praying, her senses,
+sharpened by watching, discerned a sound of steps treading
+under her window, and then a low whistle. Her heart
+beat violently, and she soon heard the door of Moses's room
+open, and then the old chamber-stairs gave forth those inconsiderate
+creaks and snaps that garrulous old stairs always
+will when anybody is desirous of making them accomplices
+in a night-secret. Mara rose, and undrawing her curtain,
+saw three men standing before the house, and saw Moses
+come out and join them. Quick as thought she threw on
+her clothes and wrapping her little form in a dark cloak,
+with a hood, followed them out. She kept at a safe distance
+behind them,&mdash;so far back as just to keep them in
+sight. They never looked back, and seemed to say but
+little till they approached the edge of that deep belt of
+forest which shrouds so large a portion of the island. She
+hurried along, now nearer to them lest they should be lost
+to view in the deep shadows, while they went on crackling
+and plunging through the dense underbrush.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TEMPTER</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>It was well for Mara that so much of her life had been
+passed in wild forest rambles. She looked frail as the rays
+of moonbeam which slid down the old white-bearded hemlocks,
+but her limbs were agile and supple as steel; and
+while the party went crashing on before, she followed with
+such lightness that the slight sound of her movements was
+entirely lost in the heavy crackling plunges of the party.
+Her little heart was beating fast and hard; but could any
+one have seen her face, as it now and then came into a
+spot of moonshine, they might have seen it fixed in a deadly
+expression of resolve and determination. She was going
+after <i>him</i>&mdash;no matter where; she was resolved to know
+who and what it was that was leading him away, as her
+heart told her, to no good. Deeper and deeper into the
+shadows of the forest they went, and the child easily kept
+up with them.</p>
+
+<p>Mara had often rambled for whole solitary days in this
+lonely wood, and knew all its rocks and dells the whole
+three miles to the long bridge at the other end of the island.
+But she had never before seen it under the solemn stillness
+of midnight moonlight, which gives to the most familiar
+objects such a strange, ghostly charm. After they had
+gone a mile into the forest, she could see through the black
+spruces silver gleams of the sea, and hear, amid the whirr
+and sway of the pine-tops, the dash of the ever restless
+tide which pushed up the long cove. It was at the full,
+as she could discern with a rapid glance of her practiced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+eye, expertly versed in the knowledge of every change of
+the solitary nature around.</p>
+
+<p>And now the party began to plunge straight down the
+rocky ledge of the Devil's Back, on which they had been
+walking hitherto, into the deep ravine where lay the cove.
+It was a scrambling, precipitous way, over perpendicular
+walls of rock, whose crevices furnished anchoring-places for
+grand old hemlocks or silver-birches, and whose rough
+sides, leathery with black flaps of lichen, were all tangled
+and interlaced with thick netted bushes. The men plunged
+down laughing, shouting, and swearing at their occasional
+missteps, and silently as moonbeam or thistledown the
+light-footed shadow went down after them.</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly paused behind a pile of rock, as, through
+an opening between two great spruces, the sea gleamed out
+like a sheet of looking-glass set in a black frame. And
+here the child saw a small vessel swinging at anchor, with
+the moonlight full on its slack sails, and she could hear the
+gentle gurgle and lick of the green-tongued waves as they
+dashed under it toward the rocky shore.</p>
+
+<p>Mara stopped with a beating heart as she saw the company
+making for the schooner. The tide is high; will
+they go on board and sail away with him where she cannot
+follow? What could she do? In an ecstasy of fear
+she kneeled down and asked God not to let him go,&mdash;to
+give her at least one more chance to save him.</p>
+
+<p>For the pure and pious child had heard enough of the
+words of these men, as she walked behind them, to fill her
+with horror. She had never before heard an oath, but
+there came back from these men coarse, brutal tones and
+words of blasphemy that froze her blood with horror. And
+Moses was going with them! She felt somehow as if they
+must be a company of fiends bearing him to his ruin.</p>
+
+<p>For some time she kneeled there watching behind the
+rock, while Moses and his companions went on board the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+little schooner. She had no feeling of horror at the loneliness
+of her own situation, for her solitary life had made
+every woodland thing dear and familiar to her. She was
+cowering down, on a loose, spongy bed of moss, which was
+all threaded through and through with the green vines and
+pale pink blossoms of the mayflower, and she felt its fragrant
+breath streaming up in the moist moonlight. As
+she leaned forward to look through a rocky crevice, her
+arms rested on a bed of that brittle white moss she had
+often gathered with so much admiration, and a scarlet rock-columbine,
+such as she loved to paint, brushed her cheek,&mdash;and
+all these mute fair things seemed to strive to keep
+her company in her chill suspense of watchfulness. Two
+whippoorwills, from a clump of silvery birches, kept calling
+to each other in melancholy iteration, while she stayed there
+still listening, and knowing by an occasional sound of
+laughing, or the explosion of some oath, that the men were
+not yet gone. At last they all appeared again, and came
+to a cleared place among the dry leaves, quite near to the
+rock where she was concealed, and kindled a fire which
+they kept snapping and crackling by a constant supply of
+green resinous hemlock branches.</p>
+
+<p>The red flame danced and leaped through the green fuel,
+and leaping upward in tongues of flame, cast ruddy bronze
+reflections on the old pine-trees with their long branches
+waving with boards of white moss,&mdash;and by the firelight
+Mara could see two men in sailor's dress with pistols in
+their belts, and the man Atkinson, whom she had recollected
+as having seen once or twice at her grandfather's.
+She remembered how she had always shrunk from him with
+a strange instinctive dislike, half fear, half disgust, when
+he had addressed her with that kind of free admiration
+which men of his class often feel themselves at liberty to
+express to a pretty girl of her early age. He was a man
+that might have been handsome, had it not been for a cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>tain
+strange expression of covert wickedness. It was as if
+some vile evil spirit, walking, as the Scriptures say, through
+dry places, had lighted on a comely man's body, in which
+he had set up housekeeping, making it look like a fair
+house abused by an unclean owner.</p>
+
+<p>As Mara watched his demeanor with Moses, she could
+think only of a loathsome black snake that she had once
+seen in those solitary rocks;&mdash;she felt as if his handsome
+but evil eye were charming him with an evil charm to his
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mo, my boy," she heard him say,&mdash;slapping
+Moses on the shoulder,&mdash;"this is something like. We'll
+have a 'tempus,' as the college fellows say,&mdash;put down
+the clams to roast, and I'll mix the punch," he said, setting
+over the fire a tea-kettle which they brought from the
+ship.</p>
+
+<p>After their preparations were finished, all sat down to
+eat and drink. Mara listened with anxiety and horror to
+a conversation such as she never heard or conceived before.
+It is not often that women hear men talk in the undisguised
+manner which they use among themselves; but the conversation
+of men of unprincipled lives, and low, brutal habits,
+unchecked by the presence of respectable female society,
+might well convey to the horror-struck child a feeling as if
+she were listening at the mouth of hell. Almost every
+word was preceded or emphasized by an oath; and what
+struck with a death chill to her heart was, that Moses
+swore too, and seemed to show that desperate anxiety to
+seem <i>au fait</i> in the language of wickedness, which boys
+often do at that age, when they fancy that to be ignorant
+of vice is a mark of disgraceful greenness. Moses evidently
+was bent on showing that he was not green,&mdash;ignorant of
+the pure ear to which every such word came like the blast
+of death.</p>
+
+<p>He drank a great deal, too, and the mirth among them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+grew furious and terrific. Mara, horrified and shocked as
+she was, did not, however, lose that intense and alert presence
+of mind, natural to persons in whom there is moral
+strength, however delicate be their physical frame. She
+felt at once that these men were playing upon Moses; that
+they had an object in view; that they were flattering and
+cajoling him, and leading him to drink, that they might
+work out some fiendish purpose of their own. The man
+called Atkinson related story after story of wild adventure,
+in which sudden fortunes had been made by men who, he
+said, were not afraid to take "the short cut across lots."
+He told of piratical adventures in the West Indies,&mdash;of
+the fun of chasing and overhauling ships,&mdash;and gave dazzling
+accounts of the treasures found on board. It was
+observable that all these stories were told on the line between
+joke and earnest,&mdash;as frolics, as specimens of good
+fun, and seeing life, etc.</p>
+
+<p>At last came a suggestion,&mdash;What if they should start
+off together some fine day, "just for a spree," and try a
+cruise in the West Indies, to see what they could pick up?
+They had arms, and a gang of fine, whole-souled fellows.
+Moses had been tied to Ma'am Pennel's apron-string long
+enough. And "hark ye," said one of them, "Moses, they
+say old Pennel has lots of dollars in that old sea-chest of
+his'n. It would be a kindness to him to invest them for
+him in an adventure."</p>
+
+<p>Moses answered with a streak of the boy innocence which
+often remains under the tramping of evil men, like ribbons
+of green turf in the middle of roads:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know Father Pennel,&mdash;why, he'd no more
+come into it than"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A perfect roar of laughter cut short this declaration, and
+Atkinson, slapping Moses on the back, said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"By &mdash;&mdash;, Mo! you are the jolliest green dog! I shall
+die a-laughing of your innocence some day. Why, my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+boy, can't you see? Pennel's money can be invested without
+asking him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he keeps it locked," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"And supposing you pick the lock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I, indeed," said Moses, making a sudden movement
+to rise.</p>
+
+<p>Mara almost screamed in her ecstasy, but she had sense
+enough to hold her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! see him now," said Atkinson, lying back, and
+holding his sides while he laughed, and rolled over; "you
+can get off anything on that muff,&mdash;any hoax in the
+world,&mdash;he's so soft! Come, come, my dear boy, sit
+down. I was only seeing how wide I could make you
+open those great black eyes of your'n,&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better take care how you joke with me," said
+Moses, with that look of gloomy determination which Mara
+was quite familiar with of old. It was the rallying effort
+of a boy who had abandoned the first outworks of virtue
+to make a stand for the citadel. And Atkinson, like a
+prudent besieger after a repulse, returned to lie on his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>He began talking volubly on other subjects, telling stories,
+and singing songs, and pressing Moses to drink.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was comforted to see that he declined drinking,&mdash;that
+he looked gloomy and thoughtful, in spite of the jokes
+of his companions; but she trembled to see, by the following
+conversation, how Atkinson was skillfully and prudently
+making apparent to Moses the extent to which
+he had him in his power. He seemed to Mara like an
+ugly spider skillfully weaving his web around a fly. She
+felt cold and faint; but within her there was a heroic
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>She was not going to faint; she would make herself bear
+up. She was going to do something to get Moses out of
+this snare,&mdash;but what? At last they rose.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is past three o'clock," she heard one of them say.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Mo," said Atkinson, "you must make tracks for
+home, or you won't be in bed when Mother Pennel calls
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The men all laughed at this joke, as they turned to go
+on board the schooner.</p>
+
+<p>When they were gone, Moses threw himself down and
+hid his face in his hands. He knew not what pitying little
+face was looking down upon him from the hemlock shadows,
+what brave little heart was determined to save him.
+He was in one of those great crises of agony that boys pass
+through when they first awake from the fun and frolic
+of unlawful enterprises to find themselves sold under sin,
+and feel the terrible logic of evil which constrains them to
+pass from the less to greater crime. He felt that he was in
+the power of bad, unprincipled, heartless men, who, if he
+refused to do their bidding, had the power to expose him.
+All he had been doing would come out. His kind old
+foster-parents would know it. Mara would know it. Mr.
+Sewell and Miss Emily would know the secrets of his life
+that past month. He felt as if they were all looking at
+him now. He had disgraced himself,&mdash;had sunk below
+his education,&mdash;had been false to all his better knowledge
+and the past expectations of his friends, living a mean,
+miserable, dishonorable life,&mdash;and now the ground was
+fast sliding from under him, and the next plunge might be
+down a precipice from which there would be no return.
+What he had done up to this hour had been done in the
+roystering, inconsiderate gamesomeness of boyhood. It had
+been represented to himself only as "sowing wild oats,"
+"having steep times," "seeing a little of life," and so on;
+but this night he had had propositions of piracy and robbery
+made to him, and he had not dared to knock down
+the man that made them,&mdash;had not dared at once to break
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>away from his company. He must meet him again,&mdash;must go on with him, or&mdash;he groaned in agony at the
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strong indication of that repressed, considerate
+habit of mind which love had wrought in the child, that
+when Mara heard the boy's sobs rising in the stillness, she
+did not, as she wished to, rush out and throw her arms
+around his neck and try to comfort him.</p>
+
+<p>But she felt instinctively that she must not do this.
+She must not let him know that she had discovered his
+secret by stealing after him thus in the night shadows.
+She knew how nervously he had resented even the compassionate
+glances she had cast upon him in his restless, turbid
+intervals during the past few weeks, and the fierceness
+with which he had replied to a few timid inquiries. No,&mdash;though
+her heart was breaking for him, it was a shrewd,
+wise little heart, and resolved not to spoil all by yielding
+to its first untaught impulses. She repressed herself as the
+mother does who refrains from crying out when she sees
+her unconscious little one on the verge of a precipice.</p>
+
+<p>When Moses rose and moodily began walking homeward,
+she followed at a distance. She could now keep
+farther off, for she knew the way through every part of the
+forest, and she only wanted to keep within sound of his
+footsteps to make sure that he was going home. When he
+emerged from the forest into the open moonlight, she sat
+down in its shadows and watched him as he walked over
+the open distance between her and the house. He went
+in; and then she waited a little longer for him to be quite
+retired. She thought he would throw himself on the bed,
+and then she could steal in after him. So she sat there
+quite in the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>The grand full moon was riding high and calm in the
+purple sky, and Harpswell Bay on the one hand, and the
+wide, open ocean on the other, lay all in a silver shimmer
+of light. There was not a sound save the plash of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+tide, now beginning to go out, and rolling and rattling the
+pebbles up and down as it came and went, and once in a
+while the distant, mournful intoning of the whippoorwill.
+There were silent lonely ships, sailing slowly to and fro
+far out to sea, turning their fair wings now into bright
+light and now into shadow, as they moved over the glassy
+stillness. Mara could see all the houses on Harpswell
+Neck and the white church as clear as in the daylight. It
+seemed to her some strange, unearthly dream.</p>
+
+<p>As she sat there, she thought over her whole little life,
+all full of one thought, one purpose, one love, one prayer,
+for this being so strangely given to her out of that silent
+sea, which lay so like a still eternity around her,&mdash;and
+she revolved again what meant the vision of her childhood.
+Did it not mean that she was to watch over him and save
+him from some dreadful danger? That poor mother was
+lying now silent and peaceful under the turf in the little
+graveyard not far off, and <i>she</i> must care for her boy.</p>
+
+<p>A strong motherly feeling swelled out the girl's heart,&mdash;she
+felt that she <i>must</i>, she would, somehow save that
+treasure which had so mysteriously been committed to her.
+So, when she thought she had given time enough for Moses
+to be quietly asleep in his room, she arose and ran with
+quick footsteps across the moonlit plain to the house.</p>
+
+<p>The front-door was standing wide open, as was always
+the innocent fashion in these regions, with a half-angle of
+moonlight and shadow lying within its dusky depths.
+Mara listened a moment,&mdash;no sound: he had gone to bed
+then. "Poor boy," she said, "I hope he is asleep; how
+he must feel, poor fellow! It's all the fault of those
+dreadful men!" said the little dark shadow to herself, as
+she stole up the stairs past his room as guiltily as if she
+were the sinner. Once the stairs creaked, and her heart
+was in her mouth, but she gained her room and shut and
+bolted the door. She kneeled down by her little white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+bed, and thanked God that she had come in safe, and then
+prayed him to teach her what to do next. She felt chilly
+and shivering, and crept into bed, and lay with her great
+soft brown eyes wide open, intently thinking what she
+should do.</p>
+
+<p>Should she tell her grandfather? Something instinctively
+said No; that the first word from him which showed
+Moses he was detected would at once send him off with
+those wicked men. "He would never, never bear to have
+this known," she said. Mr. Sewell?&mdash;ah, that was
+worse. She herself shrank from letting him know what
+Moses had been doing; she could not bear to lower him so
+much in his eyes. He could not make allowances, she
+thought. He is good, to be sure, but he is so old and
+grave, and doesn't know how much Moses has been
+tempted by these dreadful men; and then perhaps he
+would tell Miss Emily, and they never would want Moses
+to come there any more.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?" she said to herself. "I must get
+somebody to help me or tell me what to do. I can't tell
+grandmamma; it would only make her ill, and she wouldn't
+know what to do any more than I. Ah, I know what
+I will do,&mdash;I'll tell Captain Kittridge; he was always so
+kind to me; and he has been to sea and seen all sorts of
+men, and Moses won't care so much perhaps to have him
+know, because the Captain is such a funny man, and don't
+take everything so seriously. Yes, that's it. I'll go
+right down to the cove in the morning. God will bring
+me through, I know He will;" and the little weary head
+fell back on the pillow asleep. And as she slept, a smile
+settled over her face, perhaps a reflection from the face of
+her good angel, who always beholdeth the face of our
+Father in Heaven.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>A FRIEND IN NEED</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>Mara was so wearied with her night walk and the agitation
+she had been through, that once asleep she slept long
+after the early breakfast hour of the family. She was surprised
+on awaking to hear the slow old clock downstairs
+striking eight. She hastily jumped up and looked around
+with a confused wonder, and then slowly the events of the
+past night came back upon her like a remembered dream.
+She dressed herself quickly, and went down to find the
+breakfast things all washed and put away, and Mrs. Pennel
+spinning.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, dear heart," said the old lady, "how came you
+to sleep so?&mdash;I spoke to you twice, but I could not make
+you hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Moses been down, grandma?" said Mara, intent
+on the sole thought in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, dear, long ago,&mdash;and cross enough he was;
+that boy does get to be a trial,&mdash;but come, dear, I've
+saved some hot cakes for you,&mdash;sit down now and eat your
+breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>Mara made a feint of eating what her grandmother with
+fond officiousness would put before her, and then rising up
+she put on her sun-bonnet and started down toward the
+cove to find her old friend.</p>
+
+<p>The queer, dry, lean old Captain had been to her all her
+life like a faithful kobold or brownie, an unquestioning
+servant of all her gentle biddings. She dared tell him anything
+without diffidence or shamefacedness; and she felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+that in this trial of her life he might have in his sea-receptacle
+some odd old amulet or spell that should be of power
+to help her. Instinctively she avoided the house, lest Sally
+should see and fly out and seize her. She took a narrow
+path through the cedars down to the little boat cove where
+the old Captain worked so merrily ten years ago, in the
+beginning of our story, and where she found him now, with
+his coat off, busily planing a board.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', now,&mdash;if this 'ere don't beat all!" he said,
+looking up and seeing her; "why, you're looking after
+Sally, I s'pose? She's up to the house."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Captain Kittridge, I'm come to see <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"You <i>be</i>?" said the Captain, "I swow! if I ain't a
+lucky feller. But what's the matter?" he said, suddenly
+observing her pale face and the tears in her eyes. "Hain't
+nothin' bad happened,&mdash;hes there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Captain Kittridge, something dreadful; and nobody
+but you can help me."</p>
+
+<p>"Want to know, now!" said the Captain, with a grave
+face. "Well, come here, now, and sit down, and tell me
+all about it. Don't you cry, there's a good girl! Don't,
+now."</p>
+
+<p>Mara began her story, and went through with it in a
+rapid and agitated manner; and the good Captain listened
+in a fidgety state of interest, occasionally relieving his mind
+by interjecting "Do tell, now!" "I swan,&mdash;if that ar
+ain't too bad."</p>
+
+<p>"That ar's rediculous conduct in Atkinson. He ought
+to be talked to," said the Captain, when she had finished,
+and then he whistled and put a shaving in his mouth,
+which he chewed reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you be a mite worried, Mara," he said. "You
+did a great deal better to come to me than to go to Mr.
+Sewell or your grand'ther either; 'cause you see these 'ere
+wild chaps they'll take things from me they wouldn't from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+a church-member or a minister. Folks mustn't pull 'em
+up with <i>too</i> short a rein,&mdash;they must kind o' flatter 'em
+off. But that ar Atkinson's too rediculous for anything;
+and if he don't mind, I'll serve him out. I know a thing
+or two about him that I shall shake over his head if he
+don't behave. Now I don't think so much of smugglin'
+as some folks," said the Captain, lowering his voice to a
+confidential tone. "I reely don't, now; but come to goin'
+off piratin',&mdash;and tryin' to put a young boy up to robbin'
+his best friends,&mdash;why, there ain't no kind o' sense in
+that. It's p'ison mean of Atkinson. I shall tell him so,
+and I shall talk to Moses."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm afraid to have you," said Mara, apprehensively.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, chickabiddy," said the old Captain, "you don't
+understand me. I ain't goin' at him with no sermons,&mdash;I
+shall jest talk to him this way: Look here now, Moses,
+I shall say, there's Badger's ship goin' to sail in a fortnight
+for China, and they want likely fellers aboard, and
+I've got a hundred dollars that I'd like to send on a venture;
+if you'll take it and go, why, we'll share the profits.
+I shall talk like that, you know. Mebbe I sha'n't let him
+know what I know, and mebbe I shall; jest tip him a
+wink, you know; it depends on circumstances. But bless
+you, child, these 'ere fellers ain't none of 'em 'fraid o' me,
+you see, 'cause they know I know the ropes."</p>
+
+<p>"And can you make that horrid man let him alone?"
+said Mara, fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Calculate I can. 'Spect if I's to tell Atkinson a few
+things I know, he'd be for bein' scase in our parts. Now,
+you see, I hain't minded doin' a small bit o' trade now
+and then with them ar fellers myself; but this 'ere," said
+the Captain, stopping and looking extremely disgusted,
+"why, it's contemptible, it's rediculous!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I'd better tell grandpapa?" said Mara.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry your little head. I'll step up and have
+a talk with Pennel, this evening. He knows as well as I
+that there is times when chaps must be seen to, and no
+remarks made. Pennel knows that ar. Why, now, Mis'
+Kittridge thinks our boys turned out so well all along of
+her bringin' up, and I let her think so; keeps her sort o'
+in spirits, you see. But Lord bless ye, child, there's been
+times with Job, and Sam, and Pass, and Dass, and Dile,
+and all on 'em finally, when, if I hadn't jest pulled a rope
+here and turned a screw there, and said nothin' to nobody,
+they'd a-been all gone to smash. I never told Mis' Kittridge
+none o' their didos; bless you, 'twouldn't been o'
+no use. I never told <i>them</i>, neither; but I jest kind o'
+worked 'em off, you know; and they's all putty 'spectable
+men now, as men go, you know; not like Parson Sewell,
+but good, honest mates and ship-masters,&mdash;kind o' middlin'
+people, you know. It takes a good many o' sich to
+make up a world, d'ye see."</p>
+
+<p>"But oh, Captain Kittridge, did any of them use to
+swear?" said Mara, in a faltering voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', they did, consid'able," said the Captain;&mdash;then
+seeing the trembling of Mara's lip, he added,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ef you could a-found this 'ere out any other way, it's
+most a pity you'd a-heard him; 'cause he wouldn't never
+have let out afore you. It don't do for gals to hear the
+fellers talk when they's alone, 'cause fellers,&mdash;wal', you
+see, fellers will be fellers, partic'larly when they're young.
+Some on 'em, they never gits over it all their lives finally."</p>
+
+<p>"But oh! Captain Kittridge, that talk last night was so
+dreadfully wicked! and Moses!&mdash;oh, it was dreadful to
+hear him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', yes, it was," said the Captain, consolingly;
+"but don't you cry, and don't you break your little heart.
+I expect he'll come all right, and jine the church one
+of these days; 'cause there's old Pennel, he prays,&mdash;fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+now, I think there's consid'able in some people's prayers,
+and he's one of the sort. And you pray, too; and I'm
+quite sure the good Lord <i>must</i> hear you. I declare sometimes
+I wish you'd jest say a good word to Him for me;
+I should like to get the hang o' things a little better than
+I do, somehow, I reely should. I've gi'n up swearing
+years ago. Mis' Kittridge, she broke me o' that, and now
+I don't never go further than 'I vum' or 'I swow,' or
+somethin' o' that sort; but you see I'm old;&mdash;Moses is
+young; but then he's got eddication and friends, and he'll
+come all right. Now you jest see ef he don't!"</p>
+
+<p>This miscellaneous budget of personal experiences and
+friendly consolation which the good Captain conveyed to
+Mara may possibly make you laugh, my reader, but the
+good, ropy brown man was doing his best to console his
+little friend; and as Mara looked at him he was almost
+glorified in her eyes&mdash;he had power to save Moses, and he
+would do it. She went home to dinner that day with her
+heart considerably lightened. She refrained, in a guilty
+way, from even looking at Moses, who was gloomy and
+moody.</p>
+
+<p>Mara had from nature a good endowment of that kind of
+innocent hypocrisy which is needed as a staple in the lives
+of women who bridge a thousand awful chasms with smiling,
+unconscious looks, and walk, singing and scattering
+flowers, over abysses of fear, while their hearts are dying
+within them.</p>
+
+<p>She talked more volubly than was her wont with Mrs.
+Pennel, and with her old grandfather; she laughed and
+seemed in more than usual spirits, and only once did she
+look up and catch the gloomy eye of Moses. It had that
+murky, troubled look that one may see in the eye of a boy
+when those evil waters which cast up mire and dirt have
+once been stirred in his soul. They fell under her clear
+glance, and he made a rapid, impatient movement, as if it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+hurt him to be looked at. The evil spirit in boy or man
+cannot bear the "touch of celestial temper;" and the sensitiveness
+to eyebeams is one of the earliest signs of conscious,
+inward guilt.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was relieved, as he flung out of the house after
+dinner, to see the long, dry figure of Captain Kittridge
+coming up and seizing Moses by the button. From the
+window she saw the Captain assuming a confidential air
+with him; and when they had talked together a few moments,
+she saw Moses going with great readiness after him
+down the road to his house.</p>
+
+<p>In less than a fortnight, it was settled Moses was to sail
+for China, and Mara was deep in the preparations for his
+outfit. Once she would have felt this departure as the
+most dreadful trial of her life. Now it seemed to her a
+deliverance for him, and she worked with a cheerful alacrity,
+which seemed to Moses more than was proper, considering
+<i>he</i> was going away.</p>
+
+<p>For Moses, like many others of his sex, boy or man, had
+quietly settled in his own mind that the whole love of
+Mara's heart was to be his, to have and to hold, to use
+and to draw on, when and as he liked. He reckoned on
+it as a sort of inexhaustible, uncounted treasure that was
+his own peculiar right and property, and therefore he felt
+abused at what he supposed was a disclosure of some deficiency
+on her part.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be very glad to be rid of me," he said to
+her in a bitter tone one day, as she was earnestly busy in
+her preparations.</p>
+
+<p>Now the fact was, that Moses had been assiduously
+making himself disagreeable to Mara for the fortnight past,
+by all sorts of unkind sayings and doings; and he knew it
+too; yet he felt a right to feel very much abused at the
+thought that she could possibly want him to be going. If
+she had been utterly desolate about it, and torn her hair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+and sobbed and wailed, he would have asked what she
+could be crying about, and begged not to be bored with
+scenes; but as it was, this cheerful composure was quite
+unfeeling.</p>
+
+<p>Now pray don't suppose Moses to be a monster of an
+uncommon species. We take him to be an average specimen
+of a boy of a certain kind of temperament in the
+transition period of life. Everything is chaos within; the
+flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the
+flesh, and "light and darkness, and mind and dust, and
+passion and pure thoughts, mingle and contend," without
+end or order. He wondered at himself sometimes that he
+could say such cruel things as he did to his faithful little
+friend&mdash;to one whom, after all, he did love and trust
+before all other human beings.</p>
+
+<p>There is no saying why it is that a man or a boy, not
+radically destitute of generous comprehensions, will often
+cruelly torture and tyrannize over a woman whom he both
+loves and reveres, who stands in his soul in his best
+hours as the very impersonation of all that is good and
+beautiful. It is as if some evil spirit at times possessed
+him, and compelled him to utter words which were felt at
+the moment to be mean and hateful. Moses often wondered
+at himself, as he lay awake nights, how he could
+have said and done the things he had, and felt miserably
+resolved to make it up somehow before he went away;
+but he did not.</p>
+
+<p>He could not say, "Mara, I have done wrong," though
+he every day meant to do it, and sometimes sat an hour in
+her presence, feeling murky and stony, as if possessed by
+a dumb spirit; then he would get up and fling stormily
+out of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Mara wondered if he really would go without one
+kind word. She thought of all the years they had been
+together, and how he had been her only thought and love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+What had become of her brother?&mdash;the Moses that once
+she used to know&mdash;frank, careless, not ill-tempered, and
+who sometimes seemed to love her and think she was the
+best little girl in the world? Where was he gone to&mdash;this
+friend and brother of her childhood, and would he
+never come back?</p>
+
+<p>At last came the evening before his parting; the sea-chest
+was all made up and packed; and Mara's fingers had
+been busy with everything, from more substantial garments
+down to all those little comforts and nameless conveniences
+that only a woman knows how to improvise. Mara thought
+certainly she should get a few kind words, as Moses looked
+it over. But he only said, "All right;" and then added
+that "there was a button off one of the shirts." Mara's
+busy fingers quickly replaced it, and Moses was annoyed at
+the tear that fell on the button. What was she crying for
+now? He knew very well, but he felt stubborn and cruel.
+Afterwards he lay awake many a night in his berth, and
+acted this last scene over differently. He took Mara in his
+arms and kissed her; he told her she was his best friend,
+his good angel, and that he was not worthy to kiss the
+hem of her garment; but the next day, when he thought
+of writing a letter to her, he didn't, and the good mood
+passed away. Boys do not acquire an ease of expression
+in letter-writing as early as girls, and a voyage to China
+furnished opportunities few and far between of sending
+letters.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then, through some sailing ship, came missives
+which seemed to Mara altogether colder and more unsatisfactory
+than they would have done could she have appreciated
+the difference between a boy and a girl in power of
+epistolary expression; for the power of really representing
+one's heart on paper, which is one of the first spring flowers
+of early womanhood, is the latest blossom on the slow-growing
+tree of manhood. To do Moses justice, these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+seeming cold letters were often written with a choking
+lump in his throat, caused by thinking over his many sins
+against his little good angel; but then that past account
+was so long, and had so much that it pained him to think
+of, that he dashed it all off in the shortest fashion, and said
+to himself, "One of these days when I see her I'll make
+it all up."</p>
+
+<p>No man&mdash;especially one that is living a rough, busy,
+out-of-doors life&mdash;can form the slightest conception of
+that veiled and secluded life which exists in the heart of a
+sensitive woman, whose sphere is narrow, whose external
+diversions are few, and whose mind, therefore, acts by a
+continual introversion upon itself. They know nothing
+how their careless words and actions are pondered and
+turned again in weary, quiet hours of fruitless questioning.
+What did he mean by this? and what did he intend by
+that?&mdash;while he, the careless buffalo, meant nothing, or
+has forgotten what it was, if he did. Man's utter ignorance
+of woman's nature is a cause of a great deal of unsuspected
+cruelty which he practices toward her.</p>
+
+<p>Mara found one or two opportunities of writing to Moses;
+but her letters were timid and constrained by a sort of
+frosty, discouraged sense of loneliness; and Moses, though
+he knew he had no earthly right to expect this to be otherwise,
+took upon him to feel as an abused individual, whom
+nobody loved&mdash;whose way in the world was destined to
+be lonely and desolate. So when, at the end of three
+years, he arrived suddenly at Brunswick in the beginning
+of winter, and came, all burning with impatience, to the
+home at Orr's Island, and found that Mara had gone to
+Boston on a visit, he resented it as a personal slight.</p>
+
+<p>He might have inquired why she should expect him,
+and whether her whole life was to be spent in looking out
+of the window to watch for him. He might have remembered
+that he had warned her of his approach by no letter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+But no. "Mara didn't care for him&mdash;she had forgotten
+all about him&mdash;she was having a good time in Boston,
+just as likely as not with some train of admirers, and he
+had been tossing on the stormy ocean, and she had thought
+nothing of it." How many things he had meant to say!
+He had never felt so good and so affectionate. He would
+have confessed all the sins of his life to her, and asked her
+pardon&mdash;and she wasn't there!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel suggested that he might go to Boston after
+her.</p>
+
+<p>No, he was not going to do that. He would not intrude
+on her pleasures with the memory of a rough, hard-working
+sailor. He was alone in the world, and had his own way
+to make, and so best go at once up among lumbermen, and
+cut the timber for the ship that was to carry C&aelig;sar and his
+fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>When Mara was informed by a letter from Mrs. Pennel,
+expressed in the few brief words in which that good woman
+generally embodied her epistolary communications, that
+Moses had been at home, and gone to Umbagog without
+seeing her, she felt at her heart only a little closer stricture
+of cold, quiet pain, which had become a habit of her inner
+life.</p>
+
+<p>"He did not love her&mdash;he was cold and selfish," said
+the inner voice. And faintly she pleaded, in answer,
+"He is a man&mdash;he has seen the world&mdash;and has so much
+to do and think of, no wonder."</p>
+
+<p>In fact, during the last three years that had parted them,
+the great change of life had been consummated in both.
+They had parted boy and girl; they would meet man and
+woman. The time of this meeting had been announced.</p>
+
+<p>And all this is the history of that sigh, so very quiet
+that Sally Kittridge never checked the rattling flow of her
+conversation to observe it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>We have in the last three chapters brought up the history
+of our characters to the time when our story opens,
+when Mara and Sally Kittridge were discussing the expected
+return of Moses. Sally was persuaded by Mara to
+stay and spend the night with her, and did so without
+much fear of what her mother would say when she returned;
+for though Mrs. Kittridge still made bustling demonstrations
+of authority, it was quite evident to every one that
+the handsome grown-up girl had got the sceptre into her
+own hands, and was reigning in the full confidence of
+being, in one way or another, able to bring her mother into
+all her views.</p>
+
+<p>So Sally stayed&mdash;to have one of those long night-talks
+in which girls delight, in the course of which all sorts of
+intimacies and confidences, that shun the daylight, open
+like the night-blooming cereus in strange successions. One
+often wonders by daylight at the things one says very naturally
+in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>So the two girls talked about Moses, and Sally dilated
+upon his handsome, manly air the one Sunday that he had
+appeared in Harpswell meeting-house.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't know me at all, if you'll believe it," said
+Sally. "I was standing with father when he came out,
+and he shook hands with him, and looked at me as if I'd
+been an entire stranger."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not in the least surprised," said Mara; "you're
+grown so and altered."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, you'd hardly know him, Mara," said Sally.
+"He is a man&mdash;a real man; everything about him is different;
+he holds up his head in such a proud way. Well,
+he always did that when he was a boy; but when he
+speaks, he has such a deep voice! How boys do alter in
+a year or two!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I have altered much, Sally?" said
+Mara; "at least, do you think <i>he</i> would think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mara, you and I have been together so much, I
+can't tell. We don't notice what goes on before us every
+day. I really should like to see what Moses Pennel will
+think when he sees you. At any rate, he can't order you
+about with such a grand air as he used to when you were
+younger."</p>
+
+<p>"I think sometimes he has quite forgotten about me,"
+said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if I were you, I should put him in mind of myself
+by one or two little ways," said Sally. "I'd plague
+him and tease him. I'd lead him such a life that he couldn't
+forget me,&mdash;that's what I would."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt you would, Sally; and he might like you
+all the better for it. But you know that sort of thing
+isn't my way. People must act in character."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Mara," said Sally, "I always thought
+Moses was hateful in his treatment of you? Now I'd no
+more marry that fellow than I'd walk into the fire; but it
+would be a just punishment for his sins to have to marry
+me! Wouldn't I serve him out, though!"</p>
+
+<p>With which threat of vengeance on her mind Sally
+Kittridge fell asleep, while Mara lay awake pondering,&mdash;wondering
+if Moses would come to-morrow, and what he
+would be like if he did come.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning as the two girls were wiping breakfast
+dishes in a room adjoining the kitchen, a step was
+heard on the kitchen-floor, and the first that Mara knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+she found herself lifted from the floor in the arms of a tall
+dark-eyed young man, who was kissing her just as if he
+had a right to. She knew it must be Moses, but it seemed
+strange as a dream, for all she had tried to imagine it beforehand.</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her over and over, and then holding her off
+at arm's length, said, "Why, Mara, you have grown to be
+a beauty!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what was she, I'd like to know, when you went
+away, Mr. Moses?" said Sally, who could not long keep
+out of a conversation. "She was handsome when you were
+only a great ugly boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Miss Sally!" said Moses, making a profound
+bow.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank me for what?" said Sally, with a toss.</p>
+
+<p>"For your intimation that I am a handsome young man
+now," said Moses, sitting with his arm around Mara, and
+her hand in his.</p>
+
+<p>And in truth he was as handsome now for a man as he
+was in the promise of his early childhood. All the oafishness
+and surly awkwardness of the half-boy period was
+gone. His great black eyes were clear and confident: his
+dark hair clustering in short curls round his well-shaped
+head; his black lashes, and fine form, and a certain confident
+ease of manner, set him off to the greatest advantage.</p>
+
+<p>Mara felt a peculiar dreamy sense of strangeness at this
+brother who was not a brother,&mdash;this Moses so different
+from the one she had known. The very tone of his voice,
+which when he left had the uncertain cracked notes which
+indicate the unformed man, were now mellowed and settled.
+Mara regarded him shyly as he talked, blushed uneasily,
+and drew away from his arm around her, as if this
+handsome, self-confident young man were being too familiar.
+In fact, she made apology to go out into the other
+room to call Mrs. Pennel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Moses looked after her as she went with admiration.
+"What a little woman she has grown!" he said, na&iuml;vely.</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you expect she would grow?" said
+Sally. "You didn't expect to find her a girl in short
+clothes, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly, Miss Sally," said Moses, turning his attention
+to her; "and some other people are changed too."</p>
+
+<p>"Like enough," said Sally, carelessly. "I should think
+so, since somebody never spoke a word to one the Sunday
+he was at meeting."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you remember that, do you? On my word,
+Sally"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Kittridge, if you please, sir," said Sally, turning
+round with the air of an empress.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, Miss Kittridge," said Moses, making a
+bow; "now let me finish my sentence. I never dreamed
+who you were."</p>
+
+<p>"Complimentary," said Sally, pouting.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, hear me through," said Moses; "you had grown
+so handsome, Miss Kittridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that indeed! I suppose you mean to say I was
+a fright when you left?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all&mdash;not at all," said Moses; "but handsome
+things may grow handsomer, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like flattery," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"I never flatter, Miss Kittridge," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>Our young gentleman and young lady of Orr's Island
+went through with this customary little lie of civilized society
+with as much gravity as if they were practicing in
+the court of Versailles,&mdash;she looking out from the corner
+of her eye to watch the effect of her words, and he laying
+his hand on his heart in the most edifying gravity. They
+perfectly understood one another.</p>
+
+<p>But, says the reader, seems to me Sally Kittridge does
+all the talking! So she does,&mdash;so she always will,&mdash;for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+it is her nature to be bright, noisy, and restless; and one
+of these girls always overcrows a timid and thoughtful one,
+and makes her, for the time, seem dim and faded, as does
+rose color when put beside scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was a born coquette. It was as natural for her to
+want to flirt with every man she saw, as for a kitten to
+scamper after a pin-ball. Does the kitten care a fig for
+the pin-ball, or the dry leaves, which she whisks, and
+frisks, and boxes, and pats, and races round and round
+after? No; it's nothing but kittenhood; every hair of
+her fur is alive with it. Her sleepy green eyes, when she
+pretends to be dozing, are full of it; and though she looks
+wise a moment, and seems resolved to be a discreet young
+cat, let but a leaf sway&mdash;off she goes again, with a frisk
+and a rap. So, though Sally had scolded and flounced
+about Moses's inattention to Mara in advance, she contrived
+even in this first interview to keep him talking with nobody
+but herself;&mdash;not because she wanted to draw him
+from Mara, or meant to; not because she cared a pin for
+him; but because it was her nature, as a frisky young cat.
+And Moses let himself be drawn, between bantering and
+contradicting, and jest and earnest, at some moments almost
+to forget that Mara was in the room.</p>
+
+<p>She took her sewing and sat with a pleased smile, sometimes
+breaking into the lively flow of conversation, or
+eagerly appealed to by both parties to settle some rising
+quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>Once, as they were talking, Moses looked up and saw
+Mara's head, as a stray sunbeam falling upon the golden
+hair seemed to make a halo around her face. Her large
+eyes were fixed upon him with an expression so intense and
+penetrative, that he felt a sort of wincing uneasiness.
+"What makes you look at me so, Mara?" he said, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>A bright flush came in her cheek as she answered, "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+didn't know I was looking. It all seems so strange to me.
+I am trying to make out who and what you are."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not best to look too deep," Moses said, laughing,
+but with a slight shade of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>When Sally, late in the afternoon, declared that she
+must go home, she couldn't stay another minute, Moses
+rose to go with her.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you getting up for?" she said to Moses, as
+he took his hat.</p>
+
+<p>"To go home with you, to be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody asked you to," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm accustomed to asking myself," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose I must have you along," said Sally.
+"Father will be glad to see you, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be back to tea, Moses," said Mara, "will you
+not? Grandfather will be home, and want to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shall be right back," said Moses, "I have a little
+business to settle with Captain Kittridge."</p>
+
+<p>But Moses, however, did stay at tea with Mrs. Kittridge,
+who looked graciously at him through the bows of her
+black horn spectacles, having heard her liege lord observe
+that Moses was a smart chap, and had done pretty well in
+a money way.</p>
+
+<p>How came he to stay? Sally told him every other
+minute to go; and then when he had got fairly out of the
+door, called him back to tell him that there was something
+she had heard about him. And Moses of course came back;
+wanted to know what it was; and couldn't be told, it was
+a secret; and then he would be ordered off, and reminded
+that he promised to go straight home; and then when he
+got a little farther off she called after him a second time,
+to tell him that he would be very much surprised if he
+knew how she found it out, etc., etc.,&mdash;till at last tea
+being ready, there was no reason why he shouldn't have
+a cup. And so it was sober moonrise before Moses found
+himself going home.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hang that girl!" he said to himself; "don't she know
+what she's about, though?"</p>
+
+<p>There our hero was mistaken. Sally never did know
+what she was about,&mdash;had no plan or purpose more than a
+blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how
+many times she had made him come back.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, confound it all," said Moses, "I care more for
+our little Mara than a dozen of her; and what have I been
+fooling all this time for?&mdash;now Mara will think I don't
+love her."</p>
+
+<p>And, in fact, our young gentleman rather set his heart
+on the sensation he was going to make when he got home.
+It is flattering, after all, to feel one's power over a susceptible
+nature; and Moses, remembering how entirely and
+devotedly Mara had loved him all through childhood, never
+doubted but he was the sole possessor of uncounted treasure
+in her heart, which he could develop at his leisure and use
+as he pleased. He did not calculate for one force which
+had grown up in the meanwhile between them,&mdash;and that
+was the power of womanhood. He did not know the intensity
+of that kind of pride, which is the very life of the
+female nature, and which is most vivid and vigorous in the
+most timid and retiring.</p>
+
+<p>Our little Mara was tender, self-devoting, humble, and
+religious, but she was woman after all to the tips of her
+fingers,&mdash;quick to feel slights, and determined with the
+intensest determination, that no man should wrest from
+her one of those few humble rights and privileges, which
+Nature allows to woman. Something swelled and trembled
+in her when she felt the confident pressure of that bold
+arm around her waist,&mdash;like the instinct of a wild bird to
+fly. Something in the deep, manly voice, the determined,
+self-confident air, aroused a vague feeling of defiance and
+resistance in her which she could scarcely explain to herself.
+Was he to assume a right to her in this way with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>out
+even asking? When he did not come to tea nor long
+after, and Mrs. Pennel and her grandfather wondered, she
+laughed, and said gayly,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he knows he'll have time enough to see me.
+Sally seems more like a stranger."</p>
+
+<p>But when Moses came home after moonrise, determined
+to go and console Mara for his absence, he was surprised
+to hear the sound of a rapid and pleasant conversation, in
+which a masculine and feminine voice were intermingled in
+a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara sitting
+knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young
+man seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung
+on the ground, while he was looking up into her face, as
+young men often do into pretty faces seen by moonlight.
+Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of Boston to Mr.
+Moses Pennel.</p>
+
+<p>Moses measured the young man with his eye as if he
+could have shot him with a good will. And his temper
+was not at all bettered as he observed that he had the easy
+air of a man of fashion and culture, and learned by a few
+moments of the succeeding conversation, that the acquaintance
+had commenced during Mara's winter visit to Boston.</p>
+
+<p>"I was staying a day or two at Mr. Sewell's," he said,
+carelessly, "and the night was so fine I couldn't resist the
+temptation to row over."</p>
+
+<p>It was now Moses's turn to listen to a conversation in
+which he could bear little part, it being about persons and
+places and things unfamiliar to him; and though he could
+give no earthly reason why the conversation was not the
+most proper in the world,&mdash;yet he found that it made him
+angry.</p>
+
+<p>In the pauses, Mara inquired, prettily, how he found
+the Kittridges, and reproved him playfully for staying, in
+despite of his promise to come home. Moses answered
+with an effort to appear easy and playful, that there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+no reason, it appeared, to hurry on her account, since she
+had been so pleasantly engaged.</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said Mara, quietly; "but then grandpapa
+and grandmamma expected you, and they have gone to
+bed, as you know they always do after tea."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll keep till morning, I suppose," said Moses,
+rather gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; but then as you had been gone two or three
+months, naturally they wanted to see a little of you at
+first."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger now joined in the conversation, and began
+talking with Moses about his experiences in foreign parts,
+in a manner which showed a man of sense and breeding.
+Moses had a jealous fear of people of breeding,&mdash;an apprehension
+lest they should look down on one whose life had
+been laid out of the course of their conventional ideas; and
+therefore, though he had sufficient ability and vigor of
+mind to acquit himself to advantage in this conversation,
+it gave him all the while a secret uneasiness. After a few
+moments, he rose up moodily, and saying that he was very
+much fatigued, he went into the house to retire.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Adams rose to go also, and Moses might have felt
+in a more Christian frame of mind, had he listened to the
+last words of the conversation between him and Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remain long in Harpswell?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That depends on circumstances," he replied. "If I
+do, may I be permitted to visit you?"</p>
+
+<p>"As a friend&mdash;yes," said Mara; "I shall always be
+happy to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"No more?"</p>
+
+<p>"No more," replied Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"I had hoped," he said, "that you would reconsider."</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible," said she; and soft voices can pronounce
+that word, <i>impossible</i>, in a very fateful and decisive
+manner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, God bless you, then, Miss Lincoln," he said, and
+was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mara stood in the doorway and saw him loosen his boat
+from its moorings and float off in the moonlight, with a
+long train of silver sparkles behind.</p>
+
+<p>A moment after Moses was looking gloomily over her
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that puppy?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not a puppy, but a very fine young man," said
+Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that very fine young man, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I told you. He is a Mr. Adams of Boston,
+and a distant connection of the Sewells. I met him when
+I was visiting at Judge Sewell's in Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"You seemed to be having a very pleasant time together?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were," said Mara, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity I came home as I did. I'm sorry I interrupted
+you," said Moses, with a sarcastic laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't interrupt us; he had been here almost two
+hours."</p>
+
+<p>Now Mara saw plainly enough that Moses was displeased
+and hurt, and had it been in the days of her fourteenth
+summer, she would have thrown her arms around his neck,
+and said, "Moses, I don't care a fig for that man, and I
+love you better than all the world." But this the young
+lady of eighteen would not do; so she wished him good-night
+very prettily, and pretended not to see anything
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was as near being a saint as human dust ever
+is; but&mdash;she was a woman saint; and therefore may be
+excused for a little gentle vindictiveness. She was, in a
+merciful way, rather glad that Moses had gone to bed dissatisfied,
+and rather glad that he did not know what she
+might have told him&mdash;quite resolved that he should not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+know at present. Was he to know that she liked nobody
+so much as him? Not he, unless he loved her more than
+all the world, and said so first. Mara was resolved upon
+that. He might go where he liked&mdash;flirt with whom he
+liked&mdash;come back as late as he pleased; never would
+she, by word or look, give him reason to think she cared.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>DESIRES AND DREAMS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>Moses passed rather a restless and uneasy night on his
+return to the home-roof which had sheltered his childhood.
+All his life past, and all his life expected, seemed to boil
+and seethe and ferment in his thoughts, and to go round
+and round in never-ceasing circles before him.</p>
+
+<p>Moses was <i>par excellence</i> proud, ambitious, and willful.
+These words, generally supposed to describe positive vices
+of the mind, in fact are only the overaction of certain very
+valuable portions of our nature, since one can conceive all
+three to raise a man immensely in the scale of moral being,
+simply by being applied to right objects. He who is too
+proud even to admit a mean thought&mdash;who is ambitious
+only of ideal excellence&mdash;who has an inflexible will only
+in the pursuit of truth and righteousness&mdash;may be a saint
+and a hero.</p>
+
+<p>But Moses was neither a saint nor a hero, but an undeveloped
+chaotic young man, whose pride made him sensitive
+and restless; whose ambition was fixed on wealth and
+worldly success; whose willfulness was for the most part
+a blind determination to compass his own points, with the
+leave of Providence or without. There was no God in his
+estimate of life&mdash;and a sort of secret unsuspected determination
+at the bottom of his heart that there should be
+none. He feared religion, from a suspicion which he entertained
+that it might hamper some of his future schemes.
+He did not wish to put himself under its rules, lest he
+might find them in some future time inconveniently strict.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With such determinations and feelings, the Bible&mdash;necessarily
+an excessively uninteresting book to him&mdash;he
+never read, and satisfied himself with determining in a
+general way that it was not worth reading, and, as was the
+custom with many young men in America at that period,
+announced himself as a skeptic, and seemed to value himself
+not a little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is
+a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and
+maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is
+nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial
+wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which
+belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics
+generally regard their unbelief as a misfortune.</p>
+
+<p>Not that Moses was, after all, without "the angel in
+him." He had a good deal of the susceptibility to poetic
+feeling, the power of vague and dreamy aspiration, the
+longing after the good and beautiful, which is God's witness
+in the soul. A noble sentiment in poetry, a fine scene
+in nature, had power to bring tears in his great dark eyes,
+and he had, under the influence of such things, brief inspired
+moments in which he vaguely longed to do, or be,
+something grand or noble. But this, however, was something
+apart from the real purpose of his life,&mdash;a sort of
+voice crying in the wilderness,&mdash;to which he gave little
+heed. Practically, he was determined with all his might,
+to have a good time in this life, whatever another might
+be,&mdash;if there were one; and that he would do it by the
+strength of his right arm. Wealth he saw to be the lamp
+of Aladdin, which commanded all other things. And the
+pursuit of wealth was therefore the first step in his programme.</p>
+
+<p>As for plans of the heart and domestic life, Moses was
+one of that very common class who had more desire to be
+loved than power of loving. His cravings and dreams
+were not for somebody to be devoted to, but for somebody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+who should be devoted to him. And, like most people
+who possess this characteristic, he mistook it for an affectionate
+disposition.</p>
+
+<p>Now the chief treasure of his heart had always been his
+little sister Mara, chiefly from his conviction that he was
+the one absorbing thought and love of her heart. He had
+never figured life to himself otherwise than with Mara at
+his side, his unquestioning, devoted friend. Of course he
+and his plans, his ways and wants, would always be in
+the future, as they always had been, her sole thought.
+These sleeping partnerships in the interchange of affection,
+which support one's heart with a basis of uncounted
+wealth, and leave one free to come and go, and buy and
+sell, without exaction or interference, are a convenience certainly,
+and the loss of them in any way is like the sudden
+breaking of a bank in which all one's deposits are laid.</p>
+
+<p>It had never occurred to Moses how or in what capacity
+he should always stand banker to the whole wealth of love
+that there was in Mara's heart, and what provision he
+should make on his part for returning this incalculable debt.
+But the interview of this evening had raised a new thought
+in his mind. Mara, as he saw that day, was no longer
+a little girl in a pink sun-bonnet. She was a woman,&mdash;a
+little one, it is true, but every inch a woman,&mdash;and a
+woman invested with a singular poetic charm of appearance,
+which, more than beauty, has the power of awakening feeling
+in the other sex.</p>
+
+<p>He felt in himself, in the experience of that one day,
+that there was something subtle and veiled about her,
+which set the imagination at work; that the wistful, plaintive
+expression of her dark eyes, and a thousand little shy
+and tremulous movements of her face, affected him more
+than the most brilliant of Sally Kittridge's sprightly sallies.
+Yes, there would be people falling in love with her
+fast enough, he thought even here, where she is as secluded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+as a pearl in an oyster-shell,&mdash;it seems means were found
+to come after her,&mdash;and then all the love of her heart, that
+priceless love, would go to another.</p>
+
+<p>Mara would be absorbed in some one else, would love
+some one else, as he knew she could, with heart and soul
+and mind and strength. When he thought of this, it
+affected him much as it would if one were turned out of a
+warm, smiling apartment into a bleak December storm.
+What should he do, if that treasure which he had taken
+most for granted in all his valuations of life should suddenly
+be found to belong to another? Who was this fellow
+that seemed so free to visit her, and what had passed
+between them? Was Mara in love with him, or going to
+be? There is no saying how the consideration of this
+question enhanced in our hero's opinion both her beauty
+and all her other good qualities.</p>
+
+<p>Such a brave little heart! such a good, clear little head!
+and such a pretty hand and foot! She was always so
+cheerful, so unselfish, so devoted! When had he ever seen
+her angry, except when she had taken up some childish
+quarrel of his, and fought for him like a little Spartan?
+Then she was pious, too. She was born religious, thought
+our hero, who, in common with many men professing skepticism
+for their own particular part, set a great value on
+religion in that unknown future person whom they are fond
+of designating in advance as "my wife." Yes, Moses
+meant his wife should be pious, and pray for him, while he
+did as he pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"Now there's that witch of a Sally Kittridge," he said
+to himself; "I wouldn't have such a girl for a wife.
+Nothing to her but foam and frisk,&mdash;no heart more than
+a bobolink! But isn't she amusing? By George! isn't
+she, though?"</p>
+
+<p>"But," thought Moses, "it's time I settled this matter
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>who is to be my wife. I won't marry till I'm rich,&mdash;that's flat. My wife isn't to rub and grub. So at it I
+must go to raise the wind. I wonder if old Sewell really
+does know anything about my parents. Miss Emily would
+have it that there was some mystery that he had the key
+of; but I never could get any thing from him. He always
+put me off in such a smooth way that I couldn't tell
+whether he did or he didn't. But, now, supposing I have
+relatives, family connections, then who knows but what
+there may be property coming to me? That's an idea
+worth looking after, surely."</p>
+
+<p>There's no saying with what vividness ideas and images
+go through one's wakeful brain when the midnight moon
+is making an exact shadow of your window-sash, with
+panes of light, on your chamber-floor. How vividly we
+all have loved and hated and planned and hoped and feared
+and desired and dreamed, as we tossed and turned to and
+fro upon such watchful, still nights. In the stillness, the
+tide upon one side of the Island replied to the dash on the
+other side in unbroken symphony, and Moses began to
+remember all the stories gossips had told him of how he
+had floated ashore there, like a fragment of tropical seaweed
+borne landward by a great gale. He positively wondered
+at himself that he had never thought of it more, and
+the more he meditated, the more mysterious and inexplicable
+he felt. Then he had heard Miss Roxy once speaking
+something about a bracelet, he was sure he had; but afterwards
+it was hushed up, and no one seemed to know anything
+about it when he inquired. But in those days he
+was a boy,&mdash;he was nobody,&mdash;now he was a young man.
+He could go to Mr. Sewell, and demand as his right a fair
+answer to any questions he might ask. If he found, as
+was quite likely, that there was nothing to be known, his
+mind would be thus far settled,&mdash;he should trust only to
+his own resources.</p>
+
+<p>So far as the state of the young man's finances were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+concerned, it would be considered in those simple times
+and regions an auspicious beginning of life. The sum intrusted
+to him by Captain Kittridge had been more than
+doubled by the liberality of Zephaniah Pennel, and Moses
+had traded upon it in foreign parts with a skill and energy
+that brought a very fair return, and gave him, in the eyes
+of the shrewd, thrifty neighbors, the prestige of a young
+man who was marked for success in the world.</p>
+
+<p>He had already formed an advantageous arrangement
+with his grandfather and Captain Kittridge, by which a
+ship was to be built, which he should command, and thus
+the old Saturday afternoon dream of their childhood be fulfilled.
+As he thought of it, there arose in his mind a picture
+of Mara, with her golden hair and plaintive eyes and
+little white hands, reigning as a fairy queen in the captain's
+cabin, with a sort of wish to carry her off and make
+sure that no one else ever should get her from him.</p>
+
+<p>But these midnight dreams were all sobered down by the
+plain matter-of-fact beams of the morning sun, and nothing
+remained of immediate definite purpose except the resolve,
+which came strongly upon Moses as he looked across the
+blue band of Harpswell Bay, that he would go that morning
+and have a talk with Mr. Sewell.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>MISS EMILY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>Miss Roxy Toothache was seated by the window of
+the little keeping-room where Miss Emily Sewell sat on
+every-day occasions. Around her were the insignia of her
+power and sway. Her big tailor's goose was heating between
+Miss Emily's bright brass fire-irons; her great pin-cushion
+was by her side, bristling with pins of all sizes,
+and with broken needles thriftily made into pins by heads
+of red sealing-wax, and with needles threaded with all varieties
+of cotton, silk, and linen; her scissors hung martially
+by her side; her black bombazette work-apron was on; and
+the expression of her iron features was that of deep responsibility,
+for she was making the minister a new Sunday vest!</p>
+
+<p>The good soul looks not a day older than when we left
+her, ten years ago. Like the gray, weather-beaten rocks
+of her native shore, her strong features had an unchangeable
+identity beyond that of anything fair and blooming.
+There was of course no chance for a gray streak in her
+stiff, uncompromising mohair frisette, which still pushed
+up her cap-border bristlingly as of old, and the clear, high
+winds and bracing atmosphere of that rough coast kept
+her in an admirable state of preservation.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily had now and then a white hair among her
+soft, pretty brown ones, and looked a little thinner; but
+the round, bright spot of bloom on each cheek was there
+just as of yore,&mdash;and just as of yore she was thinking of
+her brother, and filling her little head with endless calculations
+to keep him looking fresh and respectable, and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+housekeeping comfortable and easy, on very limited means.
+She was now officiously and anxiously attending on Miss
+Roxy, who was in the midst of the responsible operation
+which should conduce greatly to this end.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that twist work well?" she said, nervously;
+"because I believe I've got some other upstairs in my India
+box."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy surveyed the article; bit a fragment off, as if
+she meant to taste it; threaded a needle and made a few
+cabalistical stitches; and then pronounced, <i>ex cathedr&acirc;</i>,
+that it would do. Miss Emily gave a sigh of relief. After
+buttons and tapes and linings, and various other items
+had been also discussed, the conversation began to flow
+into general channels.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know Moses Pennel had got home from Umbagog?"
+said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Captain Kittridge told brother so this morning.
+I wonder he doesn't call over to see us."</p>
+
+<p>"Your brother took a sight of interest in that boy," said
+Miss Roxy. "I was saying to Ruey, this morning, that
+if Moses Pennel ever did turn out well, he ought to have
+a large share of the credit."</p>
+
+<p>"Brother always did feel a peculiar interest in him; it
+was such a strange providence that seemed to cast in his
+lot among us," said Miss Emily.</p>
+
+<p>"As sure as you live, there he is a-coming to the front
+door," said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "and here I have on this
+old faded chintz. Just so sure as one puts on any old rag,
+and thinks nobody will come, company is sure to call."</p>
+
+<p>"Law, I'm sure I shouldn't think of calling him company,"
+said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>A rap at the door put an end to this conversation, and
+very soon Miss Emily introduced our hero into the little
+sitting-room, in the midst of a perfect stream of apologies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+relating to her old dress and the littered condition of the
+sitting-room, for Miss Emily held to the doctrine of those
+who consider any sign of human occupation and existence
+in a room as being disorder&mdash;however reputable and respectable
+be the cause of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really," she said, after she had seated Moses by
+the fire, "how time does pass, to be sure; it don't seem
+more than yesterday since you used to come with your
+Latin books, and now here you are a grown man! I must
+run and tell Mr. Sewell. He will be so glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell soon appeared from his study in morning-gown
+and slippers, and seemed heartily responsive to the
+proposition which Moses soon made to him to have some
+private conversation with him in his study.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," said Miss Emily, as soon as the study-door
+had closed upon her brother and Moses, "what a handsome
+young man he is! and what a beautiful way he has with
+him!&mdash;so deferential! A great many young men nowadays
+seem to think nothing of their minister; but he comes to
+seek advice. Very proper. It isn't every young man that
+appreciates the privilege of having elderly friends. I declare,
+what a beautiful couple he and Mara Lincoln would
+make! Don't Providence seem in a peculiar way to have
+designed them for each other?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not," said Miss Roxy, with her grimmest expression.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't! Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never liked him," said Miss Roxy, who had possessed
+herself of her great heavy goose, and was now thumping
+and squeaking it emphatically on the press-board. "She's
+a thousand times too good for Moses Pennel,"&mdash;thump.
+"I ne'er had no faith in him,"&mdash;thump. "He's dreffle
+unstiddy,"&mdash;thump. "He's handsome, but he knows
+it,"&mdash;thump. "He won't never love nobody so much as
+he does himself,"&mdash;thump, <i>fortissimo con spirito</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, really now, Miss Roxy, you mustn't always remember
+the sins of his youth. Boys must sow their wild
+oats. He was unsteady for a while, but now everybody
+says he's doing well; and as to his knowing he's handsome,
+and all that, I don't see as he does. See how polite
+and deferential he was to us all, this morning; and he
+spoke so handsomely to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want none of his politeness," said Miss Roxy,
+inexorably; "and as to Mara Lincoln, she might have
+better than him any day. Miss Badger was a-tellin' Captain
+Brown, Sunday noon, that she was very much admired
+in Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"So she was," said Miss Emily, bridling. "I never
+reveal secrets, or I might tell something,&mdash;but there has
+been a young man,&mdash;but I promised not to speak of it,
+and I sha'n't."</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean Mr. Adams," said Miss Roxy, "you need
+n't worry about keepin' that secret, 'cause that ar was all
+talked over atween meetin's a-Sunday noon; for Mis' Kittridge
+she used to know his aunt Jerushy, her that married
+Solomon Peters, and Mis' Captain Badger she says that he
+has a very good property, and is a professor in the Old
+South church in Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "how things do get
+about!"</p>
+
+<p>"People will talk, there ain't no use trying to help it,"
+said Miss Roxy; "but it's strongly borne in on my mind
+that it ain't Adams, nor 't ain't Moses Pennel that's to
+marry her. I've had peculiar exercises of mind about that
+ar child,&mdash;well I have;" and Miss Roxy pulled a large
+spotted bandanna handkerchief out of her pocket, and blew
+her nose like a trumpet, and then wiped the withered corners
+of her eyes, which were humid as some old Orr's
+Island rock wet with sea-spray.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily had a secret love of romancing. It was one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+of the recreations of her quiet, monotonous life to build
+air-castles, which she furnished regardless of expense, and
+in which she set up at housekeeping her various friends
+and acquaintances, and she had always been bent on weaving
+a romance on the history of Mara and Moses Pennel.
+The good little body had done her best to second Mr.
+Sewell's attempts toward the education of the children. It
+was little busy Miss Emily who persuaded honest Zephaniah
+and Mary Pennel that talents such as Mara's ought
+to be cultivated, and that ended in sending her to Miss
+Plucher's school in Portland. There her artistic faculties
+were trained into creating funereal monuments out of chenille
+embroidery, fully equal to Miss Emily's own; also to
+painting landscapes, in which the ground and all the trees
+were one unvarying tint of blue-green; and also to creating
+flowers of a new and particular construction, which, as
+Sally Kittridge remarked, were pretty, but did not look
+like anything in heaven or earth. Mara had obediently
+and patiently done all these things; and solaced herself
+with copying flowers and birds and landscapes as near as
+possible like nature, as a recreation from these more dignified
+toils.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Emily also had been the means of getting Mara
+invited to Boston, where she saw some really polished
+society, and gained as much knowledge of the forms of
+artificial life as a nature so wholly and strongly individual
+could obtain. So little Miss Emily regarded Mara as her
+godchild, and was intent on finishing her up into a romance
+in real life, of which a handsome young man, who had
+been washed ashore in a shipwreck, should be the hero.</p>
+
+<p>What would she have said could she have heard the conversation
+that was passing in her brother's study? Little
+could she dream that the mystery, about which she had
+timidly nibbled for years, was now about to be unrolled;&mdash;but
+it was even so. But, upon what she does not see,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+good reader, you and I, following invisibly on tiptoe, will
+make our observations.</p>
+
+<p>When Moses was first ushered into Mr. Sewell's study,
+and found himself quite alone, with the door shut, his
+heart beat so that he fancied the good man must hear it.
+He knew well what he wanted and meant to say, but he
+found in himself all that shrinking and nervous repugnance
+which always attends the proposing of any decisive question.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it proper," he began, "that I should call and
+express my sense of obligation to you, sir, for all the kindness
+you showed me when a boy. I'm afraid in those
+thoughtless days I did not seem to appreciate it so much as
+I do now."</p>
+
+<p>As Moses said this, the color rose in his cheeks, and
+his fine eyes grew moist with a sort of subdued feeling that
+made his face for the moment more than usually beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell looked at him with an expression of peculiar
+interest, which seemed to have something almost of pain in
+it, and answered with a degree of feeling more than he
+commonly showed,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It has been a pleasure to me to do anything I could
+for you, my young friend. I only wish it could have been
+more. I congratulate you on your present prospects in
+life. You have perfect health; you have energy and enterprise;
+you are courageous and self-reliant, and, I trust,
+your habits are pure and virtuous. It only remains that
+you add to all this that fear of the Lord which is the
+beginning of wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>Moses bowed his head respectfully, and then sat silent
+a moment, as if he were looking through some cloud where
+he vainly tried to discover objects.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell continued, gravely,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You have the greatest reason to bless the kind Providence
+which has cast your lot in such a family, in such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+community. I have had some means in my youth of comparing
+other parts of the country with our New England,
+and it is my opinion that a young man could not ask a
+better introduction into life than the wholesome nurture of
+a Christian family in our favored land."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sewell," said Moses, raising his head, and suddenly
+looking him straight in the eyes, "do you know anything
+of my family?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was so point-blank and sudden, that for
+a moment Mr. Sewell made a sort of motion as if he dodged
+a pistol-shot, and then his face assumed an expression of
+grave thoughtfulness, while Moses drew a long breath. It
+was out,&mdash;the question had been asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My son," replied Mr. Sewell, "it has always been my
+intention, when you had arrived at years of discretion, to
+make you acquainted with all that I know or suspect in
+regard to your life. I trust that when I tell you all I do
+know, you will see that I have acted for the best in the
+matter. It has been my study and my prayer to do so."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell then rose, and unlocking the cabinet, of
+which we have before made mention, in his apartment,
+drew forth a very yellow and time-worn package of papers,
+which he untied. From these he selected one which enveloped
+an old-fashioned miniature case.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to show you," he said, "what only you
+and my God know that I possess. I have not looked at it
+now for ten years, but I have no doubt that it is the likeness
+of your mother."</p>
+
+<p>Moses took it in his hand, and for a few moments there
+came a mist over his eyes,&mdash;he could not see clearly. He
+walked to the window as if needing a clearer light.</p>
+
+<p>What he saw was a painting of a beautiful young girl,
+with large melancholy eyes, and a clustering abundance of
+black, curly hair. The face was of a beautiful, clear oval,
+with that warm brunette tint in which the Italian painters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+delight. The black eyebrows were strongly and clearly
+defined, and there was in the face an indescribable expression
+of childish innocence and shyness, mingled with a
+kind of confiding frankness, that gave the picture the
+charm which sometimes fixes itself in faces for which we
+involuntarily make a history. She was represented as simply
+attired in a white muslin, made low in the neck, and
+the hands and arms were singularly beautiful. The picture,
+as Moses looked at it, seemed to stand smiling at him
+with a childish grace,&mdash;a tender, ignorant innocence which
+affected him deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"My young friend," said Mr. Sewell, "I have written
+all that I know of the original of this picture, and the reasons
+I have for thinking her your mother.</p>
+
+<p>"You will find it all in this paper, which, if I had been
+providentially removed, was to have been given you in
+your twenty-first year. You will see in the delicate nature
+of the narrative that it could not properly have been imparted
+to you till you had arrived at years of understanding.
+I trust when you know all that you will be satisfied
+with the course I have pursued. You will read it at your
+leisure, and after reading I shall be happy to see you
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Moses took the package, and after exchanging salutations
+with Mr. Sewell, hastily left the house and sought
+his boat.</p>
+
+<p>When one has suddenly come into possession of a letter
+or paper in which is known to be hidden the solution of
+some long-pondered secret, of the decision of fate with
+regard to some long-cherished desire, who has not been
+conscious of a sort of pain,&mdash;an unwillingness at once to
+know what is therein? We turn the letter again and
+again, we lay it by and return to it, and defer from moment
+to moment the opening of it. So Moses did not sit
+down in the first retired spot to ponder the paper. He put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+it in the breast pocket of his coat, and then, taking up his
+oars, rowed across the bay. He did not land at the house,
+but passed around the south point of the Island, and rowed
+up the other side to seek a solitary retreat in the rocks,
+which had always been a favorite with him in his early
+days.</p>
+
+<p>The shores of the Island, as we have said, are a precipitous
+wall of rock, whose long, ribbed ledges extend far out
+into the sea. At high tide these ledges are covered with
+the smooth blue sea quite up to the precipitous shore.
+There was a place, however, where the rocky shore shelved
+over, forming between two ledges a sort of grotto, whose
+smooth floor of shells and many-colored pebbles was never
+wet by the rising tide. It had been the delight of Moses
+when a boy, to come here and watch the gradual rise of the
+tide till the grotto was entirely cut off from all approach,
+and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like security over
+the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour
+he had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes
+that might be found for him when he should launch away
+into that blue smiling futurity.</p>
+
+<p>It was now about half-tide, and Moses left his boat and
+made his way over the ledge of rocks toward his retreat.
+They were all shaggy and slippery with yellow seaweeds,
+with here and there among them wide crystal pools, where
+purple and lilac and green mosses unfolded their delicate
+threads, and thousands of curious little shell-fish were
+tranquilly pursuing their quiet life. The rocks where the
+pellucid water lay were in some places crusted with barnacles,
+which were opening and shutting the little white scaly
+doors of their tiny houses, and drawing in and out those
+delicate pink plumes which seem to be their nerves of enjoyment.
+Moses and Mara had rambled and played here
+many hours of their childhood, amusing themselves with
+catching crabs and young lobsters and various little fish for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+these rocky aquariums, and then studying at their leisure
+their various ways. Now he had come hither a man, to
+learn the secret of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Moses stretched himself down on the clean pebbly shore
+of the grotto, and drew forth Mr. Sewell's letter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>DOLORES</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>Mr. Sewell's letter ran as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Young Friend</span>,&mdash;It has always been my
+intention when you arrived at years of maturity to acquaint
+you with some circumstances which have given me reason
+to conjecture your true parentage, and to let you know what
+steps I have taken to satisfy my own mind in relation to
+these conjectures. In order to do this, it will be necessary
+for me to go back to the earlier years of my life, and give
+you the history of some incidents which are known to none
+of my most intimate friends. I trust I may rely on your
+honor that they will ever remain as secrets with you.</p>
+
+<p>I graduated from Harvard University in &mdash;&mdash;. At the
+time I was suffering somewhat from an affection of the
+lungs, which occasioned great alarm to my mother, many
+of whose family had died of consumption. In order to
+allay her uneasiness, and also for the purpose of raising
+funds for the pursuit of my professional studies, I accepted
+a position as tutor in the family of a wealthy gentleman at
+St. Augustine, in Florida.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot do justice to myself,&mdash;to the motives which
+actuated me in the events which took place in this family,
+without speaking with the most undisguised freedom of the
+character of all the parties with whom I was connected.</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute; Mendoza was a Spanish gentleman of large
+property, who had emigrated from the Spanish West Indies
+to Florida, bringing with him an only daughter, who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+been left an orphan by the death of her mother at a very
+early age. He brought to this country a large number of
+slaves;&mdash;and shortly after his arrival, married an American
+lady: a widow with three children. By her he had
+four other children. And thus it will appear that the
+family was made up of such a variety of elements as only
+the most judicious care could harmonize. But the character
+of the father and mother was such that judicious care
+was a thing not to be expected of either.</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute; was extremely ignorant and proud, and had
+lived a life of the grossest dissipation. Habits of absolute
+authority in the midst of a community of a very low moral
+standard had produced in him all the worst vices of despots.
+He was cruel, overbearing, and dreadfully passionate.
+His wife was a woman who had pretensions to beauty,
+and at times could make herself agreeable, and even fascinating,
+but she was possessed of a temper quite as violent
+and ungoverned as his own.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine now two classes of slaves, the one belonging to
+the mistress, and the other brought into the country by
+the master, and each animated by a party spirit and jealousy;&mdash;imagine
+children of different marriages, inheriting
+from their parents violent tempers and stubborn wills,
+flattered and fawned on by slaves, and alternately petted
+or stormed at, now by this parent and now by that, and
+you will have some idea of the task which I undertook in
+being tutor in this family.</p>
+
+<p>I was young and fearless in those days, as you are now,
+and the difficulties of the position, instead of exciting
+apprehension, only awakened the spirit of enterprise and
+adventure.</p>
+
+<p>The whole arrangements of the household, to me fresh
+from the simplicity and order of New England, had a singular
+and wild sort of novelty which was attractive rather
+than otherwise. I was well recommended in the family<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+by an influential and wealthy gentleman of Boston, who
+represented my family, as indeed it was, as among the oldest
+and most respectable of Boston, and spoke in such terms
+of me, personally, as I should not have ventured to use in
+relation to myself. When I arrived, I found that two or
+three tutors, who had endeavored to bear rule in this tempestuous
+family, had thrown up the command after a short
+trial, and that the parents felt some little apprehension of
+not being able to secure the services of another,&mdash;a circumstance
+which I did not fail to improve in making my
+preliminary arrangements. I assumed an air of grave
+hauteur, was very exacting in all my requisitions and stipulations,
+and would give no promise of doing more than to
+give the situation a temporary trial. I put on an air of
+supreme indifference as to my continuance, and acted in
+fact rather on the assumption that I should confer a favor
+by remaining.</p>
+
+<p>In this way I succeeded in obtaining at the outset a position
+of more respect and deference than had been enjoyed
+by any of my predecessors. I had a fine apartment, a servant
+exclusively devoted to me, a horse for riding, and saw
+myself treated among the servants as a person of consideration
+and distinction.</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute; and his wife both had in fact a very strong
+desire to retain my services, when after the trial of a week
+or two, it was found that I really could make their discordant
+and turbulent children to some extent obedient and
+studious during certain portions of the day; and in fact I
+soon acquired in the whole family that ascendancy which
+a well-bred person who respects himself, and can keep his
+temper, must have over passionate and undisciplined
+natures.</p>
+
+<p>I became the receptacle of the complaints of all, and a
+sort of confidential adviser. Don Jos&eacute; imparted to me
+with more frankness than good taste his chagrins with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+regard to his wife's indolence, ill-temper, and bad management,
+and his wife in turn omitted no opportunity to vent
+complaints against her husband for similar reasons. I
+endeavored, to the best of my ability, to act a friendly part
+by both. It never was in my nature to see anything that
+needed to be done without trying to do it, and it was impossible
+to work at all without becoming so interested in
+my work as to do far more than I had agreed to do. I
+assisted Don Jos&eacute; about many of his affairs; brought his
+neglected accounts into order; and suggested from time to
+time arrangements which relieved the difficulties which
+had been brought on by disorder and neglect. In fact, I
+became, as he said, quite a necessary of life to him.</p>
+
+<p>In regard to the children, I had a more difficult task.
+The children of Don Jos&eacute; by his present wife had been
+systematically stimulated by the negroes into a chronic
+habit of dislike and jealousy toward her children by a
+former husband. On the slightest pretext, they were constantly
+running to their father with complaints; and as the
+mother warmly espoused the cause of her first children,
+criminations and recriminations often convulsed the whole
+family.</p>
+
+<p>In ill-regulated families in that region, the care of the
+children is from the first in the hands of half-barbarized
+negroes, whose power of moulding and assimilating childish
+minds is peculiar, so that the teacher has to contend constantly
+with a savage element in the children which seems
+to have been drawn in with the mother's milk. It is, in
+a modified way, something the same result as if the child
+had formed its manners in Dahomey or on the coast of
+Guinea. In the fierce quarrels which were carried on between
+the children of this family, I had frequent occasion
+to observe this strange, savage element, which sometimes
+led to expressions and actions which would seem incredible
+in civilized society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The three children by Madame Mendoza's former husband
+were two girls of sixteen and eighteen and a boy of
+fourteen. The four children of the second marriage consisted
+of three boys and a daughter,&mdash;the eldest being not
+more than thirteen.</p>
+
+<p>The natural capacity of all the children was good, although,
+from self-will and indolence, they had grown up
+in a degree of ignorance which could not have been tolerated
+except in a family living an isolated plantation life in
+the midst of barbarized dependents. Savage and untaught
+and passionate as they were, the work of teaching them
+was not without its interest to me. A power of control
+was with me a natural gift; and then that command of
+temper which is the common attribute of well-trained persons
+in the Northern states, was something so singular in
+this family as to invest its possessor with a certain awe;
+and my calm, energetic voice, and determined manner,
+often acted as a charm on their stormy natures.</p>
+
+<p>But there was one member of the family of whom I have
+not yet spoken,&mdash;and yet all this letter is about her,&mdash;the
+daughter of Don Jos&eacute; by his first marriage. Poor
+Dolores! poor child! God grant she may have entered
+into his rest!</p>
+
+<p>I need not describe her. You have seen her picture.
+And in the wild, rude, discordant family, she always reminded
+me of the words, "a lily among thorns." She
+was in her nature unlike all the rest, and, I may say, unlike
+any one I ever saw. She seemed to live a lonely kind
+of life in this disorderly household, often marked out as
+the object of the spites and petty tyrannies of both parties.
+She was regarded with bitter hatred and jealousy by Madame
+Mendoza, who was sure to visit her with unsparing
+bitterness and cruelty after the occasional demonstrations
+of fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite
+beauty and the gentle softness of her manners made her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+such a contrast to her sisters as constantly excited their
+ill-will. Unlike them all, she was fastidiously neat in her
+personal habits, and orderly in all the little arrangements
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to me in this family to be like some shy,
+beautiful pet creature in the hands of rude, unappreciated
+owners, hunted from quarter to quarter, and finding rest
+only by stealth. Yet she seemed to have no perception of
+the harshness and cruelty with which she was treated.
+She had grown up with it; it was the habit of her life to
+study peaceable methods of averting or avoiding the various
+inconveniences and annoyances of her lot, and secure to
+herself a little quiet.</p>
+
+<p>It not unfrequently happened, amid the cabals and
+storms which shook the family, that one party or the other
+took up and patronized Dolores for a while, more, as it
+would appear, out of hatred for the other than any real
+love to her. At such times it was really affecting to see
+with what warmth the poor child would receive these
+equivocal demonstrations of good-will&mdash;the nearest approaches
+to affection which she had ever known&mdash;and the
+bitterness with which she would mourn when they were
+capriciously withdrawn again. With a heart full of affection,
+she reminded me of some delicate, climbing plant
+trying vainly to ascend the slippery side of an inhospitable
+wall, and throwing its neglected tendrils around every weed
+for support.</p>
+
+<p>Her only fast, unfailing friend was her old negro nurse,
+or Mammy, as the children called her. This old creature,
+with the cunning and subtlety which had grown up from
+years of servitude, watched and waited upon the interests
+of her little mistress, and contrived to carry many points
+for her in the confused household. Her young mistress
+was her one thought and purpose in living. She would
+have gone through fire and water to serve her; and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+faithful, devoted heart, blind and ignorant though it were,
+was the only unfailing refuge and solace of the poor hunted
+child.</p>
+
+<p>Dolores, of course, became my pupil among the rest.
+Like the others, she had suffered by the neglect and interruptions
+in the education of the family, but she was intelligent
+and docile, and learned with a surprising rapidity.
+It was not astonishing that she should soon have formed
+an enthusiastic attachment to me, as I was the only intelligent,
+cultivated person she had ever seen, and treated her
+with unvarying consideration and delicacy. The poor
+thing had been so accustomed to barbarous words and manners
+that simple politeness and the usages of good society
+seemed to her cause for the most boundless gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>It is due to myself, in view of what follows, to say that
+I was from the first aware of the very obvious danger which
+lay in my path in finding myself brought into close and
+daily relations with a young creature so confiding, so attractive,
+and so singularly circumstanced. I knew that it
+would be in the highest degree dishonorable to make the
+slightest advances toward gaining from her that kind of
+affection which might interfere with her happiness in such
+future relations as her father might arrange for her. According
+to the European fashion, I know that Dolores was
+in her father's hands, to be disposed of for life according
+to his pleasure, as absolutely as if she had been one of his
+slaves. I had every reason to think that his plans on this
+subject were matured, and only waited for a little more
+teaching and training on my part, and her fuller development
+in womanhood, to be announced to her.</p>
+
+<p>In looking back over the past, therefore, I have not to
+reproach myself with any dishonest and dishonorable breach
+of trust; for I was from the first upon my guard, and so
+much so that even the jealousy my other scholars never
+accused me of partiality. I was not in the habit of giving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+very warm praise, and was in my general management anxious
+rather to be just than conciliatory, knowing that with
+the kind of spirits I had to deal with, firmness and justice
+went farther than anything else. If I approved Dolores
+oftener than the rest, it was seen to be because she never
+failed in a duty; if I spent more time with her lessons, it
+was because her enthusiasm for study led her to learn
+longer ones and study more things; but I am sure there
+was never a look or a word toward her that went beyond
+the proprieties of my position.</p>
+
+<p>But yet I could not so well guard my heart. I was
+young and full of feeling. She was beautiful; and more
+than that, there was something in her Spanish nature at
+once so warm and simple, so artless and yet so unconsciously
+poetic, that her presence was a continual charm.
+How well I remember her now,&mdash;all her little ways,&mdash;the
+movements of her pretty little hands,&mdash;the expression
+of her changeful face as she recited to me,&mdash;the grave,
+rapt earnestness with which she listened to all my instructions!</p>
+
+<p>I had not been with her many weeks before I felt conscious
+that it was her presence that charmed the whole
+house, and made the otherwise perplexing and distasteful
+details of my situation agreeable. I had a dim perception
+that this growing passion was a dangerous thing for myself;
+but was it a reason, I asked, why I should relinquish a
+position in which I felt that I was useful, and when I
+could do for this lovely child what no one else could do?
+I call her a child,&mdash;she always impressed me as such,&mdash;though
+she was in her sixteenth year and had the early
+womanly development of Southern climates. She seemed
+to me like something frail and precious, needing to be
+guarded and cared for; and when reason told me that I
+risked my own happiness in holding my position, love
+argued on the other hand that I was her only friend, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+that I should be willing to risk something myself for the
+sake of protecting and shielding her. For there was no
+doubt that my presence in the family was a restraint upon
+the passions which formerly vented themselves so recklessly
+on her, and established a sort of order in which she
+found more peace than she had ever known before.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time in our intercourse I was in the habit of
+looking on myself as the only party in danger. It did not
+occur to me that this heart, so beautiful and so lonely,
+might, in the want of all natural and appropriate objects
+of attachment, fasten itself on me unsolicited, from the
+mere necessity of loving. She seemed to me so much too
+beautiful, too perfect, to belong to a lot in life like mine,
+that I could not suppose it possible this could occur without
+the most blameworthy solicitation on my part; and it
+is the saddest and most affecting proof to me how this poor
+child had been starved for sympathy and love, that she
+should have repaid such cold services as mine with such an
+entire devotion. At first her feelings were expressed
+openly toward me, with the dutiful air of a good child.
+She placed flowers on my desk in the morning, and made
+quaint little nosegays in the Spanish fashion, which she
+gave me, and busied her leisure with various ingenious
+little knick-knacks of fancy work, which she brought me.
+I treated them all as the offerings of a child while with
+her, but I kept them sacredly in my own room. To tell
+the truth, I have some of the poor little things now.</p>
+
+<p>But after a while I could not help seeing how she loved
+me; and then I felt as if I ought to go; but how could I?
+The pain to myself I could have borne; but how could I
+leave her to all the misery of her bleak, ungenial position?
+She, poor thing, was so unconscious of what I knew,&mdash;for
+I was made clear-sighted by love. I tried the more
+strictly to keep to the path I had marked out for myself,
+but I fear I did not always do it; in fact, many things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+seemed to conspire to throw us together. The sisters, who
+were sometimes invited out to visit on neighboring estates,
+were glad enough to dispense with the presence and attractions
+of Dolores, and so she was frequently left at home to
+study with me in their absence. As to Don Jos&eacute;, although
+he always treated me with civility, yet he had such an ingrained
+and deep-rooted idea of his own superiority of
+position, that I suppose he would as soon have imagined
+the possibility of his daughter's falling in love with one of
+his horses. I was a great convenience to him. I had a
+knack of governing and carrying points in his family that
+it had always troubled and fatigued him to endeavor to
+arrange,&mdash;and that was all. So that my intercourse with
+Dolores was as free and unwatched, and gave me as many
+opportunities of enjoying her undisturbed society, as heart
+could desire.</p>
+
+<p>At last came the crisis, however. After breakfast one
+morning, Don Jos&eacute; called Dolores into his library and announced
+to her that he had concluded for her a treaty of
+marriage, and expected her husband to arrive in a few
+days. He expected that this news would be received by
+her with the glee with which a young girl hears of a new
+dress or of a ball-ticket, and was quite confounded at the
+grave and mournful silence in which she received it. She
+said no word, made no opposition, but went out from the
+room and shut herself up in her own apartment, and spent
+the day in tears and sobs.</p>
+
+<p>Don Jos&eacute;, who had rather a greater regard for Dolores
+than for any creature living, and who had confidently expected
+to give great delight by the news he had imparted,
+was quite confounded by this turn of things. If there
+had been one word of either expostulation or argument, he
+would have blazed and stormed in a fury of passion; but
+as it was, this broken-hearted submission, though vexatious,
+was perplexing. He sent for me, and opened his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+mind, and begged me to talk with Dolores and show her
+the advantages of the alliance, which the poor foolish
+child, he said, did not seem to comprehend. The man was
+immensely rich, and had a splendid estate in Cuba. It
+was a most desirable thing.</p>
+
+<p>I ventured to inquire whether his person and manners
+were such as would be pleasing to a young girl, and could
+gather only that he was a man of about fifty, who had
+been most of his life in the military service, and was now
+desirous of making an establishment for the repose of his
+latter days, at the head of which he would place a handsome
+and tractable woman, and do well by her.</p>
+
+<p>I represented that it would perhaps be safer to say no
+more on the subject until Dolores had seen him, and to
+this he agreed. Madame Mendoza was very zealous in the
+affair, for the sake of getting clear of the presence of
+Dolores in the family, and her sisters laughed at her for
+her dejected appearance. They only wished, they said,
+that so much luck might happen to them. For myself, I
+endeavored to take as little notice as possible of the affair,
+though what I felt may be conjectured. I knew,&mdash;I was
+perfectly certain,&mdash;that Dolores loved me as I loved her.
+I knew that she had one of those simple and unworldly
+natures which wealth and splendor could not satisfy, and
+whose life would lie entirely in her affections. Sometimes
+I violently debated with myself whether honor required
+me to sacrifice her happiness as well as my own, and I felt
+the strongest temptation to ask her to be my wife and fly
+with me to the Northern states, where I did not doubt my
+ability to make for her a humble and happy home.</p>
+
+<p>But the sense of honor is often stronger than all reasoning,
+and I felt that such a course would be the betrayal of
+a trust; and I determined at least to command myself till
+I should see the character of the man who was destined to
+be her husband.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the whole manner of Dolores was changed.
+She maintained a stony, gloomy silence, performed all her
+duties in a listless way, and occasionally, when I commented
+on anything in her lessons or exercises, would
+break into little flashes of petulance, most strange and unnatural
+in her. Sometimes I could feel that she was looking
+at me earnestly, but if I turned my eyes toward her,
+hers were instantly averted; but there was in her eyes a
+peculiar expression at times, such as I have seen in the eye
+of a hunted animal when it turned at bay,&mdash;a sort of desperate
+resistance,&mdash;which, taken in connection with her
+fragile form and lovely face, produced a mournful impression.</p>
+
+<p>One morning I found Dolores sitting alone in the schoolroom,
+leaning her head on her arms. She had on her wrist
+a bracelet of peculiar workmanship, which she always wore,&mdash;the
+bracelet which was afterwards the means of confirming
+her identity. She sat thus some moments in silence,
+and then she raised her head and began turning this bracelet
+round and round upon her arm, while she looked fixedly
+before her. At last she spoke abruptly, and said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Did I ever tell you that this was <i>my mother's</i> hair?
+It is my mother's hair,&mdash;and she was the only one that
+ever loved me; except poor old Mammy, nobody else loves
+me,&mdash;nobody ever will."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Miss Dolores," I began.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't call me dear," she said; "you don't care for
+me,&mdash;nobody does,&mdash;papa doesn't, and I always loved
+him; everybody in the house wants to get rid of me,
+whether I like to go or not. I have always tried to be
+good and do all you wanted, and I should think <i>you</i> might
+care for me a little, but you don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Dolores," I said, "I do care for you more than I do
+for any one in the world; I love you more than my own
+soul."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These were the very words I never meant to say, but
+somehow they seemed to utter themselves against my will.
+She looked at me for a moment as if she could not believe
+her hearing, and then the blood flushed her face, and she
+laid her head down on her arms.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Madame Mendoza and the other girls
+came into the room in a clamor of admiration about a diamond
+bracelet which had just arrived as a present from her
+future husband. It was a splendid thing, and had for its
+clasp his miniature, surrounded by the largest brilliants.</p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm of the party even at this moment could
+not say anything in favor of the beauty of this miniature,
+which, though painted on ivory, gave the impression of a
+coarse-featured man, with a scar across one eye.</p>
+
+<p>"No matter for the beauty," said one of the girls, "so
+long as it is set with such diamonds."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Dolores," said another, giving her the present,
+"pull off that old hair bracelet, and try this on."</p>
+
+<p>Dolores threw the diamond bracelet from her with a
+vehemence so unlike her gentle self as to startle every one.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not take off my mother's bracelet for a gift from
+a man I never knew," she said. "I hate diamonds. I
+wish those who like such things might have them."</p>
+
+<p>"Was ever anything so odd?" said Madame Mendoza.</p>
+
+<p>"Dolores always was odd," said another of the girls;
+"nobody ever could tell what she would like."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>HIDDEN THINGS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>The next day Se&ntilde;or Don Guzman de Cardona arrived,
+and the whole house was in a commotion of excitement.
+There was to be no school, and everything was bustle and
+confusion. I passed my time in my own room in reflecting
+severely upon myself for the imprudent words by which I
+had thrown one more difficulty in the way of this poor
+harassed child.</p>
+
+<p>Dolores this day seemed perfectly passive in the hands
+of her mother and sisters, who appeared disposed to show
+her great attention. She allowed them to array her in her
+most becoming dress, and made no objection to anything
+except removing the bracelet from her arm. "Nobody's
+gifts should take the place of her mother's," she said, and
+they were obliged to be content with her wearing of the
+diamond bracelet on the other arm.</p>
+
+<p>Don Guzman was a large, plethoric man, with coarse
+features and heavy gait. Besides the scar I have spoken
+of, his face was adorned here and there with pimples,
+which were not set down in the miniature. In the course
+of the first hour's study, I saw him to be a man of much
+the same stamp as Dolores's father&mdash;sensual, tyrannical,
+passionate. He seemed in his own way to be much struck
+with the beauty of his intended wife, and was not wanting
+in efforts to please her. All that I could see in her was
+the settled, passive paleness of despair. She played, sang,
+exhibited her embroidery and painting, at the command of
+Madame Mendoza, with the air of an automaton; and Don<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+Guzman remarked to her father on the passive obedience
+as a proper and hopeful trait. Once only when he, in
+presenting her a flower, took the liberty of kissing her
+cheek, did I observe the flashing of her eye and a movement
+of disgust and impatience, that she seemed scarcely
+able to restrain.</p>
+
+<p>The marriage was announced to take place the next
+week, and a holiday was declared through the house.
+Nothing was talked of or discussed but the <i>corbeille de
+mariage</i> which the bridegroom had brought&mdash;the dresses,
+laces, sets of jewels, and cashmere shawls. Dolores never
+had been treated with such attention by the family in
+her life. She rose immeasurably in the eyes of all as the
+future possessor of such wealth and such an establishment
+as awaited her. Madame Mendoza had visions of future
+visits in Cuba rising before her mind, and overwhelmed
+her daughter-in-law with flatteries and caresses, which she
+received in the same passive silence as she did everything
+else.</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, I tried to keep entirely by myself. I
+remained in my room reading, and took my daily rides,
+accompanied by my servant&mdash;seeing Dolores only at mealtimes,
+when I scarcely ventured to look at her. One
+night, however, as I was walking through a lonely part of
+the garden, Dolores suddenly stepped out from the shrubbery
+and stood before me. It was bright moonlight, by
+which her face and person were distinctly shown. How
+well I remember her as she looked then! She was dressed
+in white muslin, as she was fond of being, but it had been
+torn and disordered by the haste with which she had come
+through the shrubbery. Her face was fearfully pale, and
+her great, dark eyes had an unnatural brightness. She laid
+hold on my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," she said, "I saw you and came down to
+speak with you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She panted and trembled, so that for some moments she
+could not speak another word. "I want to ask you," she
+gasped, after a pause, "whether I heard you right? Did
+you say"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Dolores, you did. I did say what I had no right
+to say, like a dishonorable man."</p>
+
+<p>"But is it true? Are you sure it is true?" she said,
+scarcely seeming to hear my words.</p>
+
+<p>"God knows it is," said I despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why don't you save me? Why do you let them
+sell me to this dreadful man? He don't love me&mdash;he
+never will. Can't you take me away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dolores, I am a poor man. I cannot give you any of
+these splendors your father desires for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I care for them? I love you more than
+all the world together. And if you do really love me, why
+should we not be happy with each other?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dolores," I said, with a last effort to keep calm, "I am
+much older than you, and know the world, and ought not
+to take advantage of your simplicity. You have been so
+accustomed to abundant wealth and all it can give, that
+you cannot form an idea of what the hardships and discomforts
+of marrying a poor man would be. You are unused
+to having the least care, or making the least exertion
+for yourself. All the world would say that I acted a very
+dishonorable part to take you from a position which offers
+you wealth, splendor, and ease, to one of comparative hardship.
+Perhaps some day you would think so yourself."</p>
+
+<p>While I was speaking, Dolores turned me toward the
+moonlight, and fixed her great dark eyes piercingly upon
+me, as if she wanted to read my soul. "Is that all?" she
+said; "is that the only reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand you," said I.</p>
+
+<p>She gave me such a desolate look, and answered in a
+tone of utter dejection, "Oh, I didn't know, but perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+<i>you</i> might not want me. All the rest are so glad to sell
+me to anybody that will take me. But you really do love
+me, don't you?" she added, laying her hand on mine.</p>
+
+<p>What answer I made I cannot say. I only know that
+every vestige of what is called reason and common sense
+left me at that moment, and that there followed an hour of
+delirium in which I&mdash;we both were <i>very</i> happy&mdash;we forgot
+everything but each other, and we arranged all our
+plans for flight. There was fortunately a ship lying in the
+harbor of St. Augustine, the captain of which was known
+to me. In course of a day or two passage was taken, and
+my effects transported on board. Nobody seemed to suspect
+us. Everything went on quietly up to the day before
+that appointed for sailing. I took my usual rides, and did
+everything as much as possible in my ordinary way, to disarm
+suspicion, and none seemed to exist. The needed
+preparations went gayly forward. On the day I mentioned,
+when I had ridden some distance from the house,
+a messenger came post-haste after me. It was a boy who
+belonged specially to Dolores. He gave me a little hurried
+note. I copy it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Papa has found all out, and it is dreadful. No one
+else knows, and he means to kill you when you come back.
+Do, if you love me, hurry and get on board the ship. I
+shall never get over it, if evil comes on you for my sake.
+I shall let them do what they please with me, if God will
+only save <i>you</i>. I will try to be good. Perhaps if I bear
+my trials well, he will let me die soon. That is all I ask.
+I love you, and always shall, to death and after.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dolores.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<p>There was the end of it all. I escaped on the ship. I
+read the marriage in the paper. Incidentally I afterwards
+heard of her as living in Cuba, but I never saw her again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+till I saw her in her coffin. Sorrow and death had changed
+her so much that at first the sight of her awakened only a
+vague, painful remembrance. The sight of the hair bracelet
+which I had seen on her arm brought all back, and I
+felt sure that my poor Dolores had strangely come to sleep
+her last sleep near me.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after I became satisfied who you were, I
+felt a painful degree of responsibility for the knowledge.
+I wrote at once to a friend of mine in the neighborhood of
+St. Augustine, to find out any particulars of the Mendoza
+family. I learned that its history had been like that of
+many others in that region. Don Jos&eacute; had died in a bilious
+fever, brought on by excessive dissipation, and at his
+death the estate was found to be so incumbered that the
+whole was sold at auction. The slaves were scattered
+hither and thither to different owners, and Madame Mendoza,
+with her children and remains of fortune, had gone
+to live in New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>Of Dolores he had heard but once since her marriage.
+A friend had visited Don Guzman's estates in Cuba. He
+was living in great splendor, but bore the character of a
+hard, cruel, tyrannical master, and an overbearing man.
+His wife was spoken of as being in very delicate health,&mdash;avoiding
+society and devoting herself to religion.</p>
+
+<p>I would here take occasion to say that it was understood
+when I went into the family of Don Jos&eacute;, that I should
+not in any way interfere with the religious faith of the
+children, the family being understood to belong to the
+Roman Catholic Church. There was so little like religion
+of any kind in the family, that the idea of their belonging
+to any faith savored something of the ludicrous. In the
+case of poor Dolores, however, it was different. The
+earnestness of her nature would always have made any
+religious form a reality to her. In her case I was glad to
+remember that the Romish Church, amid many corruptions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+preserves all the essential beliefs necessary for our salvation,
+and that many holy souls have gone to heaven through
+its doors. I therefore was only careful to direct her principal
+attention to the more spiritual parts of her own faith,
+and to dwell on the great themes which all Christian people
+hold in common.</p>
+
+<p>Many of my persuasion would not have felt free to do
+this, but my liberty of conscience in this respect was perfect.
+I have seen that if you break the cup out of which
+a soul has been used to take the wine of the gospel, you
+often spill the very wine itself. And after all, these forms
+are but shadows of which the substance is Christ.</p>
+
+<p>I am free to say, therefore, that the thought that
+your poor mother was devoting herself earnestly to religion,
+although after the forms of a church with which I
+differ, was to me a source of great consolation, because I
+knew that in that way alone could a soul like hers find
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>I have never rested from my efforts to obtain more information.
+A short time before the incident which cast you
+upon our shore, I conversed with a sea-captain who had
+returned from Cuba. He stated that there had been an
+attempt at insurrection among the slaves of Don Guzman,
+in which a large part of the buildings and out-houses of
+the estate had been consumed by fire. On subsequent inquiry
+I learned that Don Guzman had sold his estates and
+embarked for Boston with his wife and family, and that
+nothing had subsequently been heard of him.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, my young friend, I have told you all that I know
+of those singular circumstances which have cast your lot on
+our shores. I do not expect at your time of life you will
+take the same view of this event that I do. You may
+possibly&mdash;very probably will&mdash;consider it a loss not to
+have been brought up as you might have been in the splendid
+establishment of Don Guzman, and found yourself heir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+to wealth and pleasure without labor or exertion. Yet I
+am quite sure in that case that your value as a human
+being would have been immeasurably less. I think I have
+seen in you the elements of passions, which luxury and
+idleness and the too early possession of irresponsible power,
+might have developed with fatal results. You have simply
+to reflect whether you would rather be an energetic, intelligent,
+self-controlled man, capable of guiding the affairs of
+life and of acquiring its prizes,&mdash;or to be the reverse of
+all this, with its prizes bought for you by the wealth of
+parents. I hope mature reflection will teach you to regard
+with gratitude that disposition of the All-Wise, which cast
+your lot as it has been cast.</p>
+
+<p>Let me ask one thing in closing. I have written for
+you here many things most painful for me to remember,
+because I wanted you to love and honor the memory of
+your mother. I wanted that her memory should have
+something such a charm for you as it has for me. With
+me, her image has always stood between me and all other
+women; but I have never even intimated to a living being
+that such a passage in my history ever occurred,&mdash;no, not
+even to my sister, who is nearer to me than any other
+earthly creature.</p>
+
+<p>In some respects I am a singular person in my habits,
+and having once written this, you will pardon me if I observe
+that it will never be agreeable to me to have the subject
+named between us. Look upon me always as a friend,
+who would regard nothing as a hardship by which he might
+serve the son of one so dear.</p>
+
+<p>I have hesitated whether I ought to add one circumstance
+more. I think I will do so, trusting to your good
+sense not to give it any undue weight.</p>
+
+<p>I have never ceased making inquiries in Cuba, as I found
+opportunity, in regard to your father's property, and late
+investigations have led me to the conclusion that he left a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+considerable sum of money in the hands of a notary, whose
+address I have, which, if your identity could be proved,
+would come in course of law to you. I have written an
+account of all the circumstances which, in my view, identify
+you as the son of Don Guzman de Cardona, and had
+them properly attested in legal form.</p>
+
+<p>This, together with your mother's picture and the bracelet,
+I recommend you to take on your next voyage, and to
+see what may result from the attempt. How considerable
+the sum may be which will result from this, I cannot say,
+but as Don Guzman's fortune was very large, I am in hopes
+it may prove something worth attention.</p>
+
+<p>At any time you may wish to call, I will have all these
+things ready for you.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:20em">
+I am, with warm regard,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Your sincere friend,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 7em;"><span class="smcap">Theophilus Sewell</span>.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>When Moses had finished reading this letter, he laid it
+down on the pebbles beside him, and, leaning back against
+a rock, looked moodily out to sea. The tide had washed
+quite up to within a short distance of his feet, completely
+isolating the little grotto where he sat from all the surrounding
+scenery, and before him, passing and repassing on
+the blue bright solitude of the sea, were silent ships, going
+on their wondrous pathless ways to unknown lands. The
+letter had stirred all within him that was dreamy and
+poetic: he felt somehow like a leaf torn from a romance,
+and blown strangely into the hollow of those rocks. Something
+too of ambition and pride stirred within him. He
+had been born an heir of wealth and power, little as they
+had done for the happiness of his poor mother; and when
+he thought he might have had these two wild horses which
+have run away with so many young men, he felt, as young
+men all do, an impetuous desire for their possession, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+he thought as so many do, "Give them to me, and I'll risk
+my character,&mdash;I'll risk my happiness."</p>
+
+<p>The letter opened a future before him which was something
+to speculate upon, even though his reason told him
+it was uncertain, and he lay there dreamily piling one air-castle
+on another,&mdash;unsubstantial as the great islands of
+white cloud that sailed through the sky and dropped their
+shadows in the blue sea.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the afternoon when he bethought him he
+must return home, and so climbing from rock to rock he
+swung himself upward on to the island, and sought the
+brown cottage. As he passed by the open window he
+caught a glimpse of Mara sewing. He walked softly up
+to look in without her seeing him. She was sitting with
+the various articles of his wardrobe around her, quietly and
+deftly mending his linen, singing soft snatches of an old
+psalm-tune.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to have resumed quite naturally that quiet
+care of him and his, which she had in all the earlier years
+of their life. He noticed again her little hands,&mdash;they
+seemed a sort of wonder to him. Why had he never seen,
+when a boy, how pretty they were? And she had such
+dainty little ways of taking up and putting down things as
+she measured and clipped; it seemed so pleasant to have
+her handling his things; it was as if a good fairy were
+touching them, whose touch brought back peace. But
+then, he thought, by and by she will do all this for some
+one else. The thought made him angry. He really felt
+abused in anticipation. She was doing all this for him
+just in sisterly kindness, and likely as not thinking of
+somebody else whom she loved better all the time. It is
+astonishing how cool and dignified this consideration made
+our hero as he faced up to the window. He was, after
+all, in hopes she might blush, and look agitated at seeing
+him suddenly; but she did not. The foolish boy did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+know the quick wits of a girl, and that all the while that
+he had supposed himself so sly, and been holding his breath
+to observe, Mara had been perfectly cognizant of his presence,
+and had been schooling herself to look as unconscious
+and natural as possible. So she did,&mdash;only saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Moses, is that you? Where have you been all
+day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I went over to see Parson Sewell, and get my
+pastoral lecture, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And did you stay to dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I came home and went rambling round the rocks,
+and got into our old cave, and never knew how the time
+passed."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then you've had no dinner, poor boy," said
+Mara, rising suddenly. "Come in quick, you must be fed,
+or you'll get dangerous and eat somebody."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, don't get anything," said Moses, "it's almost
+supper-time, and I'm not hungry."</p>
+
+<p>And Moses threw himself into a chair, and began abstractedly
+snipping a piece of tape with Mara's very best
+scissors.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please, sir, don't demolish that; I was going to
+stay one of your collars with it," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hang it, I'm always in mischief among girls'
+things," said Moses, putting down the scissors and picking
+up a bit of white wax, which with equal unconsciousness,
+he began kneading in his hands, while he was dreaming
+over the strange contents of the morning's letter.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope Mr. Sewell didn't say anything to make you
+look so very gloomy," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sewell?" said Moses, starting; "no, he didn't;
+in fact, I had a pleasant call there; and there was that
+confounded old sphinx of a Miss Roxy there. Why don't
+she die? She must be somewhere near a hundred years
+old by this time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never thought to ask her why she didn't die," said
+Mara; "but I presume she has the best of reasons for
+living."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's so," said Moses; "every old toadstool, and
+burdock, and mullein lives and thrives and lasts; no danger
+of their dying."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be in a charitable frame of mind," said
+Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it all! I hate this world. If I could have
+my own way now,&mdash;if I could have just what I wanted,
+and do just as I please exactly, I might make a pretty
+good thing of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And pray what would you have?" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in the first place, riches."</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in the first place, I say; for money buys everything
+else."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, supposing so," said Mara, "for argument's sake,
+what would you buy with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Position in society, respect, consideration,&mdash;and I'd
+have a splendid place, with everything elegant. I have
+ideas enough, only give me the means. And then I'd
+have a wife, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And how much would you pay for her?" said Mara,
+looking quite cool.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd buy her with all the rest,&mdash;a girl that wouldn't
+look at <i>me</i> as I am,&mdash;would take me for all the rest, you
+know,&mdash;that's the way of the world."</p>
+
+<p>"It is, is it?" said Mara. "I don't understand such
+matters much."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it's the way with all you girls," said Moses;
+"it's the way you'll marry when you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be so fierce about it. I haven't done it yet,"
+said Mara; "but now, really, I must go and set the supper-table
+when I have put these things away,"&mdash;and Mara<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+gathered an armful of things together, and tripped singing
+upstairs, and arranged them in the drawer of Moses's room.
+"Will his wife like to do all these little things for him as
+I do?" she thought. "It's natural I should. I grew up
+with him, and love him, just as if he were my own brother,&mdash;he
+is all the brother I ever had. I love him more
+than anything else in the world, and this wife he talks
+about could do no more."</p>
+
+<p>"She don't care a pin about me," thought Moses; "it's
+only a habit she has got, and her strict notions of duty,
+that's all. She is housewifely in her instincts, and seizes
+all neglected linen and garments as her lawful prey,&mdash;she
+would do it just the same for her grandfather;" and Moses
+drummed moodily on the window-pane.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>A COQUETTE</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>The timbers of the ship which was to carry the fortunes
+of our hero were laid by the side of Middle Bay, and all
+these romantic shores could hardly present a lovelier scene.
+This beautiful sheet of water separates Harpswell from a
+portion of Brunswick. Its shores are rocky and pine-crowned,
+and display the most picturesque variety of outline.
+Eagle Island, Shelter Island, and one or two smaller
+ones, lie on the glassy surface like soft clouds of green
+foliage pierced through by the steel-blue tops of arrowy
+pine-trees.</p>
+
+<p>There were a goodly number of shareholders in the projected
+vessel; some among the most substantial men in the
+vicinity. Zephaniah Pennel had invested there quite a
+solid sum, as had also our friend Captain Kittridge. Moses
+had placed therein the proceeds of his recent voyage, which
+enabled him to buy a certain number of shares, and he
+secretly revolved in his mind whether the sum of money
+left by his father might not enable him to buy the whole
+ship. Then a few prosperous voyages, and his fortune was
+made!</p>
+
+<p>He went into the business of building the new vessel
+with all the enthusiasm with which he used, when a boy,
+to plan ships and mould anchors. Every day he was off at
+early dawn in his working-clothes, and labored steadily
+among the men till evening. No matter how early he rose,
+however, he always found that a good fairy had been before
+him and prepared his dinner, daintily sometimes adding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+thereto a fragrant little bunch of flowers. But when his
+boat returned home at evening, he no longer saw her as
+in the days of girlhood waiting far out on the farthest
+point of rock for his return. Not that she did not watch
+for it and run out many times toward sunset; but the moment
+she had made out that it was surely he, she would
+run back into the house, and very likely find an errand
+in her own room, where she would be so deeply engaged
+that it would be necessary for him to call her down before
+she could make her appearance. Then she came smiling,
+chatty, always gracious, and ready to go or to come as he
+requested,&mdash;the very cheerfulest of household fairies,&mdash;but
+yet for all that there was a cobweb invisible barrier
+around her that for some reason or other he could not break
+over. It vexed and perplexed him, and day after day he
+determined to whistle it down,&mdash;ride over it rough-shod,&mdash;and
+be as free as he chose with this apparently soft, unresistant,
+airy being, who seemed so accessible. Why
+shouldn't he kiss her when he chose, and sit with his arm
+around her waist, and draw her familiarly upon his knee,&mdash;this
+little child-woman, who was as a sister to him?
+Why, to be sure? Had she ever frowned or scolded as
+Sally Kittridge did when he attempted to pass the air-line
+that divides man from womanhood? Not at all. She had
+neither blushed nor laughed, nor ran away. If he kissed
+her, she took it with the most matter-of-fact composure; if
+he passed his arm around her, she let it remain with unmoved
+calmness; and so somehow he did these things less
+and less, and wondered why.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is, our hero had begun an experiment with his
+little friend that we would never advise a young man to
+try on one of these intense, quiet, soft-seeming women,
+whose whole life is inward. He had determined to find
+out whether she loved him before he committed himself to
+her; and the strength of a whole book of martyrs is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+women to endure and to bear without flinching before they
+will surrender the gate of this citadel of silence. Moreover,
+our hero had begun his siege with precisely the worst
+weapons.</p>
+
+<p>For on the night that he returned and found Mara conversing
+with a stranger, the suspicion arose in his mind
+that somehow Mara might be particularly interested in him,
+and instead of asking her, which anybody might consider
+the most feasible step in the case, he asked Sally Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>Sally's inborn, inherent love of teasing was up in a
+moment. Did she know anything of that Mr. Adams?
+Of course she did,&mdash;a young lawyer of one of the best
+Boston families,&mdash;a splendid fellow; she wished any such
+luck might happen to her! Was Mara engaged to him?
+What would he give to know? Why didn't he ask
+Mara? Did he expect her to reveal her friend's secrets?
+Well, she shouldn't,&mdash;report said Mr. Adams was well-to-do
+in the world, and had expectations from an uncle,&mdash;and
+didn't Moses think he was interesting in conversation?
+Everybody said what a conquest it was for an Orr's Island
+girl, etc., etc. And Sally said the rest with many a malicious
+toss and wink and sly twinkle of the dimples of her
+cheek, which might mean more or less, as a young man of
+imaginative temperament was disposed to view it. Now
+this was all done in pure simple love of teasing. We incline
+to think phrenologists have as yet been very incomplete
+in their classification of faculties, or they would have
+appointed a separate organ for this propensity of human
+nature. Certain persons, often the most kind-hearted in
+the world, and who would not give pain in any serious
+matter, seem to have an insatiable appetite for those small
+annoyances we commonly denominate teasing,&mdash;and Sally
+was one of this number.</p>
+
+<p>She diverted herself infinitely in playing upon the excitability
+of Moses,&mdash;in awaking his curiosity, and baffling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+it, and tormenting him with a whole phantasmagoria of
+suggestions and assertions, which played along so near the
+line of probability, that one could never tell which might
+be fancy and which might be fact.</p>
+
+<p>Moses therefore pursued the line of tactics for such cases
+made and provided, and strove to awaken jealousy in Mara
+by paying marked and violent attentions to Sally. He
+went there evening after evening, leaving Mara to sit alone
+at home. He made secrets with her, and alluded to them
+before Mara. He proposed calling his new vessel the Sally
+Kittridge; but whether all these things made Mara jealous
+or not, he could never determine. Mara had no peculiar
+gift for acting, except in this one point; but here all the
+vitality of nature rallied to her support, and enabled her to
+preserve an air of the most unperceiving serenity. If she
+shed any tears when she spent a long, lonesome evening,
+she was quite particular to be looking in a very placid
+frame when Moses returned, and to give such an account of
+the books, or the work, or paintings which had interested
+her, that Moses was sure to be vexed. Never were her
+inquiries for Sally more cordial,&mdash;never did she seem
+inspired by a more ardent affection for her.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may have been the result of this state of
+things in regard to Mara, it is certain that Moses succeeded
+in convincing the common fame of that district that he and
+Sally were destined for each other, and the thing was regularly
+discussed at quilting frolics and tea-drinkings around,
+much to Miss Emily's disgust and Aunt Roxy's grave satisfaction,
+who declared that "Mara was altogether too good
+for Moses Pennel, but Sally Kittridge would make him
+stand round,"&mdash;by which expression she was understood
+to intimate that Sally had in her the rudiments of the same
+kind of domestic discipline which had operated so favorably
+in the case of Captain Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>These things, of course, had come to Mara's ears. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+had overheard the discussions on Sunday noons as the people
+between meetings sat over their doughnuts and cheese,
+and analyzed their neighbors' affairs, and she seemed to
+smile at them all. Sally only laughed, and declared that
+it was no such thing; that she would no more marry Moses
+Pennel, or any other fellow, than she would put her head
+into the fire. What did she want of any of them? She
+knew too much to get married,&mdash;that she did. She was
+going to have her liberty for one while yet to come, etc.,
+etc.; but all these assertions were of course supposed to
+mean nothing but the usual declarations in such cases.
+Mara among the rest thought it quite likely that this thing
+was yet to be.</p>
+
+<p>So she struggled and tried to reason down a pain which
+constantly ached in her heart when she thought of this.
+She ought to have foreseen that it must some time end in
+this way. Of course she must have known that Moses
+would some time choose a wife; and how fortunate that,
+instead of a stranger, he had chosen her most intimate
+friend. Sally was careless and thoughtless, to be sure, but
+she had a good generous heart at the bottom, and she hoped
+she would love Moses at least as well as <i>she</i> did, and then
+she would always live with them, and think of any little
+things that Sally might forget.</p>
+
+<p>After all, Sally was so much more capable and efficient
+a person than herself,&mdash;so much more bustling and energetic,
+she would make altogether a better housekeeper, and
+doubtless a better wife for Moses. But then it was so hard
+that he did not tell her about it. Was she not his sister?&mdash;his
+confidant for all his childhood?&mdash;and why should
+he shut up his heart from her now? But then she must
+guard herself from being jealous,&mdash;that would be mean
+and wicked. So Mara, in her zeal of self-discipline, pushed
+on matters; invited Sally to tea to meet Moses; and when
+she came, left them alone together while she busied herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+in hospitable cares. She sent Moses with errands and
+commissions to Sally, which he was sure to improve into
+protracted visits; and in short, no young match-maker
+ever showed more good-will to forward the union of two
+chosen friends than Mara showed to unite Moses and Sally.</p>
+
+<p>So the flirtation went on all summer, like a ship under
+full sail, with prosperous breezes; and Mara, in the many
+hours that her two best friends were together, tried heroically
+to persuade herself that she was not unhappy. She
+said to herself constantly that she never had loved Moses
+other than as a brother, and repeated and dwelt upon the
+fact to her own mind with a pertinacity which might have
+led her to suspect the reality of the fact, had she had experience
+enough to look closer. True, it was rather lonely,
+she said, but that she was used to,&mdash;she always had been
+and always should be. Nobody would ever love her in
+return as she loved; which sentence she did not analyze
+very closely, or she might have remembered Mr. Adams
+and one or two others, who had professed more for her than
+she had found herself able to return. That general proposition
+about nobody is commonly found, if sifted to the
+bottom, to have specific relation to somebody whose name
+never appears in the record.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody could have conjectured from Mara's calm, gentle
+cheerfulness of demeanor, that any sorrow lay at the bottom
+of her heart; she would not have owned it to herself.</p>
+
+<p>There are griefs which grow with years, which have no
+marked beginnings,&mdash;no especial dates; they are not
+events, but slow perceptions of disappointment, which bear
+down on the heart with a constant and equable pressure
+like the weight of the atmosphere, and these things are
+never named or counted in words among life's sorrows;
+yet through them, as through an unsuspected inward
+wound, life, energy, and vigor slowly bleed away, and the
+persons, never owning even to themselves the weight of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+the pressure,&mdash;standing, to all appearance, fair and cheerful,
+are still undermined with a secret wear of this inner
+current, and ready to fall with the first external pressure.</p>
+
+<p>There are persons often brought into near contact by the
+relations of life, and bound to each other by a love so close,
+that they are perfectly indispensable to each other, who yet
+act upon each other as a file upon a diamond, by a slow
+and gradual friction, the pain of which is so equable, so
+constantly diffused through life, as scarcely ever at any
+time to force itself upon the mind as a reality.</p>
+
+<p>Such had been the history of the affection of Mara for
+Moses. It had been a deep, inward, concentrated passion
+that had almost absorbed self-consciousness, and made her
+keenly alive to all the moody, restless, passionate changes
+of his nature; it had brought with it that craving for sympathy
+and return which such love ever will, and yet it was
+fixed upon a nature so different and so uncomprehending
+that the action had for years been one of pain more than
+pleasure. Even now, when she had him at home with her
+and busied herself with constant cares for him, there was
+a sort of disturbing, unquiet element in the history of
+every day. The longing for him to come home at night,&mdash;the
+wish that he would stay with her,&mdash;the uncertainty
+whether he would or would not go and spend the evening
+with Sally,&mdash;the musing during the day over all that he
+had done and said the day before, were a constant interior
+excitement. For Moses, besides being in his moods quite
+variable and changeable, had also a good deal of the dramatic
+element in him, and put on sundry appearances in
+the way of experiment.</p>
+
+<p>He would feign to have quarreled with Sally, that he
+might detect whether Mara would betray some gladness;
+but she only evinced concern and a desire to make up the
+difficulty. He would discuss her character and her fitness
+to make a man happy in matrimony in the style that young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great
+consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and
+firm, and sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal
+style possible, and caution him against trifling with
+her affections. Then again he would be lavish in his praise
+of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara would
+join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes
+he ventured, on the other side, to rally her on some
+future husband, and predict the days when all the attentions
+which she was daily bestowing on him would be for
+another; and here, as everywhere else, he found his little
+Sphinx perfectly inscrutable. Instinct teaches the grass-bird,
+who hides her eggs under long meadow grass, to
+creep timidly yards from the nest, and then fly up boldly
+in the wrong place; and a like instinct teaches shy girls all
+kinds of unconscious stratagems when the one secret of
+their life is approached. They may be as truthful in all
+other things as the strictest Puritan, but here they deceive
+by an infallible necessity. And meanwhile, where was
+Sally Kittridge in all this matter? Was her heart in the
+least touched by the black eyes and long lashes? Who
+can say? Had she a heart? Well, Sally was a good girl.
+When one got sufficiently far down through the foam and
+froth of the surface to find what was in the depths of her
+nature, there was abundance there of good womanly feeling,
+generous and strong, if one could but get at it.</p>
+
+<p>She was the best and brightest of daughters to the old
+Captain, whose accounts she kept, whose clothes she
+mended, whose dinner she often dressed and carried to him,
+from loving choice; and Mrs. Kittridge regarded her housewifely
+accomplishments with pride, though she never spoke
+to her otherwise than in words of criticism and rebuke, as
+in her view an honest mother should who means to keep
+a flourishing sprig of a daughter within limits of a proper
+humility.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But as for any sentiment or love toward any person of
+the other sex, Sally, as yet, had it not. Her numerous
+admirers were only so many subjects for the exercise of her
+dear delight of teasing, and Moses Pennel, the last and
+most considerable, differed from the rest only in the fact
+that he was a match for her in this redoubtable art and
+science, and this made the game she was playing with him
+altogether more stimulating than that she had carried on
+with any other of her admirers. For Moses could sulk
+and storm for effect, and clear off as bright as Harpswell
+Bay after a thunder-storm&mdash;for effect also. Moses could
+play jealous, and make believe all those thousand-and-one
+shadowy nothings that coquettes, male and female, get up
+to carry their points with; and so their quarrels and their
+makings-up were as manifold as the sea-breezes that ruffled
+the ocean before the Captain's door.</p>
+
+<p>There is but one danger in play of this kind, and that
+is, that deep down in the breast of every slippery, frothy,
+elfish Undine sleeps the germ of an unawakened soul,
+which suddenly, in the course of some such trafficking with
+the outward shows and seemings of affection, may wake up
+and make of the teasing, tricksy elf a sad and earnest woman&mdash;a
+creature of loves and self-denials and faithfulness
+unto death&mdash;in short, something altogether too good, too
+sacred to be trifled with; and when a man enters the game
+protected by a previous attachment which absorbs all his
+nature, and the woman awakes in all her depth and
+strength to feel the real meaning of love and life, she finds
+that she has played with one stronger than she, at a terrible
+disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>Is this mine lying dark and evil under the saucy little
+feet of our Sally? Well, we should not of course be surprised
+some day to find it so.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>NIGHT TALKS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>October is come, and among the black glooms of the
+pine forests flare out the scarlet branches of the rock-maple,
+and the beech-groves are all arrayed in gold, through which
+the sunlight streams in subdued richness. October is
+come with long, bright, hazy days, swathing in purple
+mists the rainbow brightness of the forests, and blending
+the otherwise gaudy and flaunting colors into wondrous harmonies
+of splendor. And Moses Pennel's ship is all built
+and ready, waiting only a favorable day for her launching.</p>
+
+<p>And just at this moment Moses is sauntering home from
+Captain Kittridge's in company with Sally, for Mara has
+sent him to bring her to tea with them. Moses is in high
+spirits; everything has succeeded to his wishes; and as
+the two walk along the high, bold, rocky shore, his eye
+glances out to the open ocean, where the sun is setting, and
+the fresh wind blowing, and the white sails flying, and
+already fancies himself a sea-king, commanding his own
+place, and going from land to land.</p>
+
+<p>"There hasn't been a more beautiful ship built here
+these twenty years," he says, in triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"Oho, Mr. Conceit," said Sally, "that's only because
+it's yours now&mdash;your geese are all swans. I wish you
+could have seen the Typhoon, that Ben Drummond sailed
+in&mdash;a real handsome fellow he was. What a pity there
+aren't more like him!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't enter on the merits of Ben Drummond's
+beauty," said Moses; "but I don't believe the Typhoon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+was one whit superior to our ship. Besides, Miss Sally,
+I thought you were going to take it under your especial
+patronage, and let me honor it with your name."</p>
+
+<p>"How absurd you always will be talking about that&mdash;why
+don't you call it after Mara?"</p>
+
+<p>"After Mara?" said Moses. "I don't want to&mdash;it
+wouldn't be appropriate&mdash;one wants a different kind of
+girl to name a ship after&mdash;something bold and bright and
+dashing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir, but I prefer not to have my bold and
+dashing qualities immortalized in this way," said Sally;
+"besides, sir, how do I know that you wouldn't run me
+on a rock the very first thing? When I give my name to
+a ship, it must have an experienced commander," she
+added, maliciously, for she knew that Moses was specially
+vulnerable on this point.</p>
+
+<p>"As you please," said Moses, with heightened color.
+"Allow me to remark that he who shall ever undertake to
+command the 'Sally Kittridge' will have need of all his
+experience&mdash;and then, perhaps, not be able to know the
+ways of the craft."</p>
+
+<p>"See him now," said Sally, with a malicious laugh;
+"we are getting wrathy, are we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," said Moses; "it would cost altogether too
+much exertion to get angry at every teasing thing you
+choose to say, Miss Sally. By and by I shall be gone, and
+then won't your conscience trouble you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My conscience is all easy, so far as you are concerned,
+sir; your self-esteem is too deep-rooted to suffer much from
+my poor little nips&mdash;they produce no more impression
+than a cat-bird pecking at the cones of that spruce-tree
+yonder. Now don't you put your hand where your heart
+is supposed to be&mdash;there's nobody at home there, you
+know. There's Mara coming to meet us;" and Sally
+bounded forward to meet Mara with all those demonstra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>tions
+of extreme delight which young girls are fond of
+showering on each other.</p>
+
+<p>"It's such a beautiful evening," said Mara, "and we
+are all in such good spirits about Moses's ship, and I told
+him you must come down and hold counsel with us as to
+what was to be done about the launching; and the name,
+you know, that is to be decided on&mdash;are you going to let
+it be called after you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I, indeed. I should always be reading in the
+papers of horrible accidents that had happened to the 'Sally
+Kittridge.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Sally has so set her heart on my being unlucky," said
+Moses, "that I believe if I make a prosperous voyage, the
+disappointment would injure her health."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't mean what she says," said Mara; "but I
+think there are some objections in a young lady's name
+being given to a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I suppose, Mara," said Moses, "that you would
+not have yours either?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would be glad to accommodate you in anything <i>but</i>
+that," said Mara, quietly; but she added, "Why need the
+ship be named for anybody? A ship is such a beautiful,
+graceful thing, it should have a fancy name."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, suggest one," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember," said Mara, "one Saturday afternoon,
+when you and Sally and I launched your little ship
+down in the cove after you had come from your first voyage
+at the Banks?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do," said Sally. "We called that the Ariel, Mara,
+after that old torn play you were so fond of. That's a
+pretty name for a ship."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not take that?" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"I bow to the decree," said Moses. "The Ariel it
+shall be."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and you remember," said Sally, "Mr. Moses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+here promised at that time that he would build a ship, and
+take us two round the world with him."</p>
+
+<p>Moses's eyes fell upon Mara as Sally said these words
+with a sort of sudden earnestness of expression which
+struck her. He was really feeling very much about something,
+under all the bantering disguise of his demeanor,
+she said to herself. Could it be that he felt unhappy
+about his prospects with Sally? That careless liveliness
+of hers might wound him perhaps now, when he felt that
+he was soon to leave her.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was conscious herself of a deep undercurrent of
+sadness as the time approached for the ship to sail that
+should carry Moses from her, and she could not but think
+some such feeling must possess her mind. In vain she
+looked into Sally's great Spanish eyes for any signs of a
+lurking softness or tenderness concealed under her sparkling
+vivacity. Sally's eyes were admirable windows of
+exactly the right size and color for an earnest, tender spirit
+to look out of, but just now there was nobody at the casement
+but a slippery elf peering out in tricksy defiance.</p>
+
+<p>When the three arrived at the house, tea was waiting on
+the table for them. Mara fancied that Moses looked sad
+and preoccupied as they sat down to the tea-table, which
+Mrs. Pennel had set forth festively, with the best china
+and the finest tablecloth and the choicest sweetmeats. In
+fact, Moses did feel that sort of tumult and upheaving of
+the soul which a young man experiences when the great
+crisis comes which is to plunge him into the struggles of
+manhood. It is a time when he wants sympathy and is
+grated upon by uncomprehending merriment, and therefore
+his answers to Sally grew brief and even harsh at times,
+and Mara sometimes perceived him looking at herself with
+a singular fixedness of expression, though he withdrew his
+eyes whenever she turned hers to look on him. Like many
+another little woman, she had fixed a theory about her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+friends, into which she was steadily interweaving all the
+facts she saw. Sally <i>must</i> love Moses, because she had
+known her from childhood as a good and affectionate girl,
+and it was impossible that she could have been going on
+with Moses as she had for the last six months without
+loving him. She must evidently have seen that he cared
+for her; and in how many ways had she shown that she
+liked his society and him! But then evidently she did
+not understand him, and Mara felt a little womanly self-pluming
+on the thought that <i>she</i> knew him so much better.
+She was resolved that she would talk with Sally about it,
+and show her that she was disappointing Moses and hurting
+his feelings. Yes, she said to herself, Sally has a
+kind heart, and her coquettish desire to conceal from him
+the extent of her affection ought now to give way to the
+outspoken tenderness of real love.</p>
+
+<p>So Mara pressed Sally with the old-times request to stay
+and sleep with her; for these two, the only young girls
+in so lonely a neighborhood, had no means of excitement
+or dissipation beyond this occasional sleeping together&mdash;by
+which is meant, of course, lying awake all night talking.</p>
+
+<p>When they were alone together in their chamber, Sally
+let down her long black hair, and stood with her back to
+Mara brushing it. Mara sat looking out of the window,
+where the moon was making a wide sheet of silver-sparkling
+water. Everything was so quiet that the restless dash of
+the tide could be plainly heard. Sally was rattling away
+with her usual gayety.</p>
+
+<p>"And so the launching is to come off next Thursday.
+What shall you wear?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I haven't thought," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shall try and finish my blue merino for the
+occasion. What fun it will be! I never was on a ship
+when it was launched, and I think it will be something
+perfectly splendid!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But doesn't it sometimes seem sad to think that after
+all this Moses will leave us to be gone so long?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do I care?" said Sally, tossing back her long
+hair as she brushed it, and then stopping to examine one
+of her eyelashes.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally dear, you often speak in that way," said Mara,
+"but really and seriously, you do yourself great injustice.
+You could not certainly have been going on as you have
+these six months past with a man you did not care for."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do care for him, 'sort o','" said Sally; "but
+is that any reason I should break my heart for his going?&mdash;that's
+too much for any man."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Sally, you <i>must</i> know that Moses loves you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not so sure," said Sally, freakishly tossing her
+head and laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"If he did not," said Mara, "why has he sought you so
+much, and taken every opportunity to be with you? I'm
+sure I've been left here alone hour after hour, when my
+only comfort was that it was because my two best friends
+loved each other, as I know they must some time love
+some one better than they do me."</p>
+
+<p>The most practiced self-control must fail some time, and
+Mara's voice faltered on these last words, and she put her
+hands over her eyes. Sally turned quickly and looked at
+her, then giving her hair a sudden fold round her shoulders,
+and running to her friend, she kneeled down on the
+floor by her, and put her arms round her waist, and looked
+up into her face with an air of more gravity than she commonly
+used.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mara, what a wicked, inconsistent fool I have
+been! Did you feel lonesome?&mdash;did you care? I ought
+to have seen that; but I'm selfish, I love admiration, and
+I love to have some one to flatter me, and run after me;
+and so I've been going on and on in this silly way. But
+I didn't know you cared&mdash;indeed, I didn't&mdash;you are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+such a deep little thing. Nobody can ever tell what you
+feel. I never shall forgive myself, if you have been lonesome,
+for you are worth five hundred times as much as I
+am. You really do love Moses. I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"I do love him as a dear brother," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear fiddlestick," said Sally. "Love is love; and
+when a person loves all she can, it isn't much use to talk
+so. I've been a wicked sinner, that I have. Love? Do
+you suppose I would bear with Moses Pennel all his ins
+and outs and ups and downs, and be always putting him
+before myself in everything, as you do? No, I couldn't;
+I haven't it in me; but you have. He's a sinner, too,
+and deserves to get me for a wife. But, Mara, I have
+tormented him well&mdash;there's some comfort in that."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no comfort to me," said Mara. "I see his heart
+is set on you&mdash;the happiness of his life depends on you&mdash;and
+that he is pained and hurt when you give him only
+cold, trifling words when he needs real true love. It is
+a serious thing, dear, to have a strong man set his whole
+heart on you. It will do him a great good or a great evil,
+and you ought not to make light of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, pshaw, Mara, you don't know these fellows; they
+are only playing games with us. If they once catch us,
+they have no mercy; and for one here's a child that isn't
+going to be caught. I can see plain enough that Moses
+Pennel has been trying to get me in love with him, but he
+doesn't love me. No, he doesn't," said Sally, reflectively.
+"He only wants to make a conquest of me, and
+I'm just the same. I want to make a conquest of him,&mdash;at
+least I have been wanting to,&mdash;but now I see it's
+a false, wicked kind of way to do as we've been doing."</p>
+
+<p>"And is it really possible, Sally, that you don't love
+him?" said Mara, her large, serious eyes looking into
+Sally's. "What! be with him so much,&mdash;seem to like
+him so much,&mdash;look at him as I have seen you do,&mdash;and
+not love him!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can't help my eyes; they will look so," said Sally,
+hiding her face in Mara's lap with a sort of coquettish consciousness.
+"I tell you I've been silly and wicked; but
+he's just the same exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have worn his ring all summer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and he has worn mine; and I have a lock of his
+hair, and he has a lock of mine; yet I don't believe he
+cares for them a bit. Oh, his heart is safe enough. If
+he has any, it isn't with me: that I know."</p>
+
+<p>"But if you found it were, Sally? Suppose you found
+that, after all, you were the one love and hope of his life;
+that all he was doing and thinking was for you; that he
+was laboring, and toiling, and leaving home, so that he
+might some day offer you a heart and home, and be your
+best friend for life? Perhaps he dares not tell you how
+he really does feel."</p>
+
+<p>"It's no such thing! it's no such thing!" said Sally,
+lifting up her head, with her eyes full of tears, which she
+dashed angrily away. "What am I crying for? I hate
+him. I'm glad he's going away. Lately it has been such
+a trouble to me to have things go on so. I'm really getting
+to dislike him. You are the one he ought to love.
+Perhaps all this time you are the one he does love," said
+Sally, with a sudden energy, as if a new thought had
+dawned in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; he does not even love me as he once did,
+when we were children," said Mara. "He is so shut up
+in himself, so reserved, I know nothing about what passes
+in his heart."</p>
+
+<p>"No more does anybody," said Sally. "Moses Pennel
+isn't one that says and does things straightforward because
+he feels so; but he says and does them to see what <i>you</i>
+will do. That's his way. Nobody knows why he has
+been going on with me as he has. He has had his own
+reasons, doubtless, as I have had mine."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He has admired you very much, Sally," said Mara,
+"and praised you to me very warmly. He thinks you are
+so handsome. I could tell you ever so many things he
+has said about you. He knows as I do that you are a
+more enterprising, practical sort of body than I am, too.
+Everybody thinks you are engaged. I have heard it spoken
+of everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody is mistaken, then, as usual," said Sally.
+"Perhaps Aunt Roxy was in the right of it when she said
+that Moses would never be in love with anybody but himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Roxy has always been prejudiced and unjust to
+Moses," said Mara, her cheeks flushing. "She never liked
+him from a child, and she never can be made to see anything
+good in him. I know that he has a deep heart,&mdash;a
+nature that craves affection and sympathy; and it is only
+because he is so sensitive that he is so reserved and conceals
+his feelings so much. He has a noble, kind heart,
+and I believe he truly loves you, Sally; it must be so."</p>
+
+<p>Sally rose from the floor and went on arranging her hair
+without speaking. Something seemed to disturb her mind.
+She bit her lip, and threw down the brush and comb violently.
+In the clear depths of the little square of looking-glass
+a face looked into hers, whose eyes were perturbed as
+if with the shadows of some coming inward storm; the
+black brows were knit, and the lips quivered. She drew
+a long breath and burst out into a loud laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>are</i> you laughing at now?" said Mara, who
+stood in her white night-dress by the window, with her
+hair falling in golden waves about her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, because these fellows are so funny," said Sally;
+"it's such fun to see their actions. Come now," she
+added, turning to Mara, "don't look so grave and sanctified.
+It's better to laugh than cry about things, any time.
+It's a great deal better to be made hard-hearted like me,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+and not care for anybody, than to be like you, for instance.
+The idea of any one's being in love is the drollest thing to
+me. I haven't the least idea how it feels. I wonder if
+I ever shall be in love!"</p>
+
+<p>"It will come to you in its time, Sally."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes,&mdash;I suppose like the chicken-pox or the
+whooping cough," said Sally; "one of the things to be
+gone through with, and rather disagreeable while it lasts,&mdash;so
+I hope to put it off as long as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come," said Mara, "we must not sit up all night."</p>
+
+<p>After the two girls were nestled into bed and the light
+out, instead of the brisk chatter there fell a great silence
+between them. The full round moon cast the reflection of
+the window on the white bed, and the ever restless moan
+of the sea became more audible in the fixed stillness. The
+two faces, both young and fair, yet so different in their
+expression, lay each still on its pillow,&mdash;their wide-open
+eyes gleaming out in the shadow like mystical gems. Each
+was breathing softly, as if afraid of disturbing the other.
+At last Sally gave an impatient movement.</p>
+
+<p>"How lonesome the sea sounds in the night," she said.
+"I wish it would ever be still."</p>
+
+<p>"I like to hear it," said Mara. "When I was in Boston,
+for a while I thought I could not sleep, I used to
+miss it so much."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence, which lasted so long that
+each girl thought the other asleep, and moved softly, but
+at a restless movement from Sally, Mara spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally,&mdash;you asleep?"</p>
+
+<p>"No,&mdash;I thought you were."</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to ask you," said Mara, "did Moses ever say
+anything to you about me?&mdash;you know I told you how
+much he said about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he asked me once if you were engaged to Mr.
+Adams."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And what did you tell him?" said Mara, with increasing
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I only plagued him. I sometimes made him
+think you were, and sometimes that you were not; and
+then again, that there was a deep mystery in hand. But
+I praised and glorified Mr. Adams, and told him what a
+splendid match it would be, and put on any little bits of
+embroidery here and there that I could lay hands on. I
+used to make him sulky and gloomy for a whole evening
+sometimes. In that way it was one of the best weapons I
+had."</p>
+
+<p>"Sally, what does make you love to tease people so?"
+said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you know the hymn says,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+'Let dogs delight to bark and bite,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For God hath made them so;</span><br />
+Let bears and lions growl and fight,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For 'tis their nature too.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>That's all the account I can give of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Mara, "I never can rest easy a moment
+when I see I am making a person uncomfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't tease anybody but the men. I don't
+tease father or mother or you,&mdash;but men are fair game;
+they are such thumby, blundering creatures, and we can
+confuse them so."</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, Sally, it's playing with edge tools; you
+may lose your heart some day in this kind of game."</p>
+
+<p>"Never you fear," said Sally; "but aren't you sleepy?&mdash;let's
+go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Both girls turned their faces resolutely in opposite directions,
+and remained for an hour with their large eyes looking
+out into the moonlit chamber, like the fixed stars over
+Harpswell Bay. At last sleep drew softly down the
+fringy curtains.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>In the plain, simple regions we are describing,&mdash;where
+the sea is the great avenue of active life, and the pine forests
+are the great source of wealth,&mdash;ship-building is an
+engrossing interest, and there is no f&ecirc;te that calls forth the
+community like the launching of a vessel. And no wonder;
+for what is there belonging to this workaday world
+of ours that has such a never-failing fund of poetry and
+grace as a ship? A ship is a beauty and a mystery wherever
+we see it: its white wings touch the regions of the
+unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full of the
+odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life, we
+fondly dream, moves in brighter currents than the muddy,
+tranquil tides of every day.</p>
+
+<p>Who that sees one bound outward, with her white
+breasts swelling and heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy,
+does not feel his own heart swell with a longing impulse
+to go with her to the far-off shores? Even at dingy,
+crowded wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities,
+the coming in of a ship is an event that never can lose its
+interest. But on these romantic shores of Maine, where
+all is so wild and still, and the blue sea lies embraced in
+the arms of dark, solitary forests, the sudden incoming of
+a ship from a distant voyage is a sort of romance. Who
+that has stood by the blue waters of Middle Bay, engirdled
+as it is by soft slopes of green farming land, interchanged
+here and there with heavy billows of forest-trees, or rocky,
+pine-crowned promontories, has not felt that sense of seclu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>sion
+and solitude which is so delightful? And then what
+a wonder! There comes a ship from China, drifting in
+like a white cloud,&mdash;the gallant creature! how the waters
+hiss and foam before her! with what a great free, generous
+plash she throws out her anchors, as if she said a cheerful
+"Well done!" to some glorious work accomplished! The
+very life and spirit of strange romantic lands come with
+her; suggestions of sandal-wood and spice breathe through
+the pine-woods; she is an oriental queen, with hands full
+of mystical gifts; "all her garments smell of myrrh and
+cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made
+her glad." No wonder men have loved ships like birds,
+and that there have been found brave, rough hearts that in
+fatal wrecks chose rather to go down with their ocean love
+than to leave her in the last throes of her death-agony.</p>
+
+<p>A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious
+poetry ever underlying its existence. Exotic ideas
+from foreign lands relieve the trite monotony of life; the
+ship-owner lives in communion with the whole world, and
+is less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that infest
+the routine of inland life.</p>
+
+<p>Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than
+that which was to start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage.
+Moses had risen while the stars were yet twinkling over
+their own images in Middle Bay, to go down and see that
+everything was right; and in all the houses that we know
+in the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of
+being ready to go to the launching.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy
+over the provisions for the ample cold collation that was to
+be spread in a barn adjoining the scene,&mdash;the materials
+for which they were packing into baskets covered with nice
+clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat which lay
+within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn,
+her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges
+should cross together in this boat with their contributions
+of good cheer.</p>
+
+<p>The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent
+on their quota of the festive preparations, in which Dame
+Kittridge's housewifely reputation was involved,&mdash;for it
+had been a disputed point in the neighborhood whether she
+or Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of course,
+with this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had
+been all but superhuman.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain skipped in and out in high feather,&mdash;occasionally
+pinching Sally's cheek, and asking if she were
+going as captain or mate upon the vessel after it was
+launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his sleeve
+or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father
+were on romping terms with each other from early childhood,
+a thing which drew frequent lectures from the always
+exhorting Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Such levity!" she said, as she saw Sally in full chase
+after his retreating figure, in order to be revenged for some
+sly allusions he had whispered in her ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally Kittridge! Sally Kittridge!" she called, "come
+back this minute. What are you about? I should think
+your father was old enough to know better."</p>
+
+<p>"Lawful sakes, Polly, it kind o' renews one's youth to
+get a new ship done," said the Captain, skipping in at another
+door. "Sort o' puts me in mind o' that <i>I</i> went out
+cap'en in when I was jist beginning to court you, as somebody
+else is courtin' our Sally here."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, father," said Sally, threateningly, "what did I
+tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's really <i>lemancholy</i>," said the Captain, "to think
+how it does distress gals to talk to 'em 'bout the fellers,
+when they ain't thinkin' o' nothin' else all the time.
+They can't even laugh without sayin' he-he-he!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, father, you know I've told you five hundred
+times that I don't care a cent for Moses Pennel,&mdash;that
+he's a hateful creature," said Sally, looking very red and
+determined.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "I take that ar's the reason
+you've ben a-wearin' the ring he gin you and them
+ribbins you've got on your neck this blessed minute, and
+why you've giggled off to singin'-school, and Lord knows
+where with him all summer,&mdash;that ar's clear now."</p>
+
+<p>"But, father," said Sally, getting redder and more earnest,
+"I don't care for him really, and I've told him so.
+I keep telling him so, and he will run after me."</p>
+
+<p>"Haw! haw!" laughed the Captain; "he will, will he?
+Jist so, Sally; that ar's jist the way your ma there talked
+to me, and it kind o' 'couraged me along. I knew that
+gals always has to be read back'ard jist like the writin' in
+the Barbary States."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain Kittridge, will you stop such ridiculous talk?"
+said his helpmeet; "and jist carry this 'ere basket of cold
+chicken down to the landin' agin the Pennels come round
+in the boat; and you must step spry, for there's two more
+baskets a-comin'."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain shouldered the basket and walked toward
+the sea with it, and Sally retired to her own little room to
+hold a farewell consultation with her mirror before she
+went.</p>
+
+<p>You will perhaps think from the conversation that you
+heard the other night, that Sally now will cease all thought
+of coquettish allurement in her acquaintance with Moses,
+and cause him to see by an immediate and marked change
+her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands thoughtfully
+before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety
+of laying aside the ribbons he gave her&mdash;perhaps she will
+alter that arrangement of her hair which is one that he
+himself particularly dictated as most becoming to the char<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>acter
+of her face. She opens a little drawer, which looks
+like a flower garden, all full of little knots of pink and blue
+and red, and various fancies of the toilet, and looks into
+it reflectively. She looses the ribbon from her hair and
+chooses another,&mdash;but Moses gave her that too, and said,
+she remembers, that when she wore that "he should know
+she had been thinking of him." Sally is Sally yet&mdash;as
+full of sly dashes of coquetry as a tulip is of streaks.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no reason I should make myself look like a
+fright because I don't care for him," she says; "besides,
+after all that he has said, he ought to say more,&mdash;he
+ought at least to give me a chance to say no,&mdash;he <i>shall</i>,
+too," said the gypsy, winking at the bright, elfish face in
+the glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally Kittridge, Sally Kittridge," called her mother,
+"how long will you stay prinkin'?&mdash;come down this
+minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Law now, mother," said the Captain, "gals must prink
+afore such times; it's as natural as for hens to dress their
+feathers afore a thunder-storm."</p>
+
+<p>Sally at last appeared, all in a flutter of ribbons and
+scarfs, whose bright, high colors assorted well with the
+ultramarine blue of her dress, and the vivid pomegranate
+hue of her cheeks. The boat with its white sails flapping
+was balancing and courtesying up and down on the waters,
+and in the stern sat Mara; her shining white straw hat
+trimmed with blue ribbons set off her golden hair and pink
+shell complexion. The dark, even penciling of her eyebrows,
+and the beauty of the brow above, the brown
+translucent clearness of her thoughtful eyes, made her face
+striking even with its extreme delicacy of tone. She was
+unusually animated and excited, and her cheeks had a rich
+bloom of that pure deep rose-color which flushes up in fair
+complexions under excitement, and her eyes had a kind of
+intense expression, for which they had always been remark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>able.
+All the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature
+was looking out of them, giving that pathos which every
+one has felt at times in the silence of eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now bless that ar gal," said the Captain, when he saw
+her. "Our Sally here's handsome, but she's got the real
+New-Jerusalem look, she has&mdash;like them in the Revelations
+that wears the fine linen, clean and white."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, Captain Kittridge! don't be a-makin' a fool
+of yourself about no girl at your time o' life," said Mrs.
+Kittridge, speaking under her breath in a nipping, energetic
+tone, for they were coming too near the boat to speak
+very loud.</p>
+
+<p>"Good mornin', Mis' Pennel; we've got a good day,
+and a mercy it is so. 'Member when we launched the
+North Star, that it rained guns all the mornin', and the
+water got into the baskets when we was a-fetchin' the
+things over, and made a sight o' pester."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mrs. Pennel, with an air of placid satisfaction,
+"everything seems to be going right about this vessel."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge and Sally were soon accommodated with
+seats, and Zephaniah Pennel and the Captain began trimming
+sail. The day was one of those perfect gems of days
+which are to be found only in the jewel-casket of October,
+a day neither hot nor cold, with an air so clear that every
+distant pine-tree top stood out in vivid separateness, and
+every woody point and rocky island seemed cut out in
+crystalline clearness against the sky. There was so brisk
+a breeze that the boat slanted quite to the water's edge on
+one side, and Mara leaned over and pensively drew her
+little pearly hand through the water, and thought of the
+days when she and Moses took this sail together&mdash;she in
+her pink sun-bonnet, and he in his round straw hat, with
+a tin dinner-pail between them; and now, to-day the ship
+of her childish dreams was to be launched. That launch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>ing
+was something she regarded almost with superstitious
+awe. The ship, built on one element, but designed to
+have its life in another, seemed an image of the soul,
+framed and fashioned with many a weary hammer-stroke in
+this life, but finding its true element only when it sails out
+into the ocean of eternity. Such was her thought as she
+looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it
+have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?&mdash;to
+Sally Kittridge, for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle
+of bright ribbons beside her, and who would have shown
+her white teeth all round at such a suggestion, and said,
+"Now, Mara, who but you would have thought of that?"</p>
+
+<p>But there are souls sent into this world who seem to
+have always mysterious affinities for the invisible and the
+unknown&mdash;who see the face of everything beautiful
+through a thin veil of mystery and sadness. The Germans
+call this yearning of spirit home-sickness&mdash;the dim remembrances
+of a spirit once affiliated to some higher sphere, of
+whose lost brightness all things fair are the vague reminders.
+As Mara looked pensively into the water, it seemed
+to her that every incident of life came up out of its depths
+to meet her. Her own face reflected in a wavering image,
+sometimes shaped itself to her gaze in the likeness of the
+pale lady of her childhood, who seemed to look up at her
+from the waters with dark, mysterious eyes of tender longing.
+Once or twice this dreamy effect grew so vivid that
+she shivered, and drawing herself up from the water, tried
+to take an interest in a very minute account which Mrs.
+Kittridge was giving of the way to make corn-fritters which
+should taste exactly like oysters. The closing direction
+about the quantity of mace Mrs. Kittridge felt was too
+sacred for common ears, and therefore whispered it into
+Mrs. Pennel's bonnet with a knowing nod and a look from
+her black spectacles which would not have been bad for a
+priestess of Dodona in giving out an oracle. In this secret<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+direction about the <i>mace</i> lay the whole mystery of corn-oysters;
+and who can say what consequences might ensue
+from casting it in an unguarded manner before the world?</p>
+
+<p>And now the boat which has rounded Harpswell Point
+is skimming across to the head of Middle Bay, where the
+new ship can distinctly be discerned standing upon her
+ways, while moving clusters of people were walking up
+and down her decks or lining the shore in the vicinity.
+All sorts of gossiping and neighborly chit-chat is being interchanged
+in the little world assembling there.</p>
+
+<p>"I hain't seen the Pennels nor the Kittridges yet," said
+Aunt Ruey, whose little roly-poly figure was made illustrious
+in her best cinnamon-colored dyed silk. "There's
+Moses Pennel a-goin' up that ar ladder. Dear me, what
+a beautiful feller he is! it's a pity he ain't a-goin' to
+marry Mara Lincoln, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Ruey, do hush up," said Miss Roxy, frowning sternly
+down from under the shadow of a preternatural black straw
+bonnet, trimmed with huge bows of black ribbon, which
+head-piece sat above her curls like a helmet. "Don't be
+a-gettin' sentimental, Ruey, whatever else you get&mdash;and
+talkin' like Miss Emily Sewell about match-makin'; I can't
+stand it; it rises on my stomach, such talk does. As to
+that ar Moses Pennel, folks ain't so certain as they thinks
+what he'll do. Sally Kittridge may think he's a-goin' to
+have her, because he's been a-foolin' round with her all
+summer, and Sally Kittridge may jist find she's mistaken,
+that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "I 'member when I was a girl
+my old aunt, Jerushy Hopkins, used to be always a-dwellin'
+on this Scripture, and I've been havin' it brought up to
+me this mornin': 'There are three things which are too
+wonderful for me, yea, four, which I know not: the way
+of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock,
+the way of a ship in the sea, and the way of a man with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+maid.' She used to say it as a kind o' caution to me when
+she used to think Abram Peters was bein' attentive to me.
+I've often reflected what a massy it was that ar never
+come to nothin', for he's a poor drunken critter now."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for my part," said Miss Roxy, fixing her eyes
+critically on the boat that was just at the landing, "I
+should say the ways of a maid with a man was full as particular
+as any of the rest of 'em. Do look at Sally Kittridge
+now. There's Tom Hiers a-helpin' her out of the
+boat; and did you see the look she gin Moses Pennel as
+she went by him? Wal', Moses has got Mara on his arm
+anyhow; there's a gal worth six-and-twenty of the other.
+Do see them ribbins and scarfs, and the furbelows, and the
+way that ar Sally Kittridge handles her eyes. She's one
+that one feller ain't never enough for."</p>
+
+<p>Mara's heart beat fast when the boat touched the shore,
+and Moses and one or two other young men came to assist
+in their landing. Never had he looked more beautiful
+than at this moment, when flushed with excitement and
+satisfaction he stood on the shore, his straw hat off, and his
+black curls blowing in the sea-breeze. He looked at Sally
+with a look of frank admiration as she stood there dropping
+her long black lashes over her bright cheeks, and coquettishly
+looking out from under them, but she stepped forward
+with a little energy of movement, and took the offered
+hand of Tom Hiers, who was gazing at her too with undisguised
+rapture, and Moses, stepping into the boat, helped
+Mrs. Pennel on shore, and then took Mara on his arm,
+looking her over as he did so with a glance far less assured
+and direct than he had given to Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be afraid to climb the ladders, Mara?"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you help me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Sally and Tom Hiers had already walked on toward the
+vessel, she ostentatiously chatting and laughing with him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+Moses's brow clouded a little, and Mara noticed it. Moses
+thought he did not care for Sally; he knew that the little
+hand that was now lying on his arm was the one he wanted,
+and yet he felt vexed when he saw Sally walk off triumphantly
+with another. It was the dog-in-the-manger feeling
+which possesses coquettes of both sexes. Sally, on all
+former occasions, had shown a marked preference for him,
+and professed supreme indifference to Tom Hiers.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all well enough," he said to himself, and he
+helped Mara up the ladders with the greatest deference and
+tenderness. "This little woman is worth ten such girls as
+Sally, if one only could get her heart. Here we are on
+our ship, Mara," he said, as he lifted her over the last
+barrier and set her down on the deck. "Look over there,
+do you see Eagle Island? Did you dream when we used
+to go over there and spend the day that you ever would
+be on <i>my</i> ship, as you are to-day? You won't be afraid,
+will you, when the ship starts?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am too much of a sea-girl to fear on anything that
+sails in water," said Mara with enthusiasm. "What a
+splendid ship! how nicely it all looks!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, let me take you over it," said Moses, "and
+show you my cabin."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the graceful little vessel was the subject of
+various comments by the crowd of spectators below, and
+the clatter of workmen's hammers busy in some of the last
+preparations could yet be heard like a shower of hail-stones
+under her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope the ways are well greased," said old Captain
+Eldritch. "'Member how the John Peters stuck in her
+ways for want of their being greased?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember the Grand Turk, that keeled over
+five minutes after she was launched?" said the quavering
+voice of Miss Ruey; "there was jist such a company of
+thoughtless young creatures aboard as there is now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, there wasn't nobody hurt," said Captain Kittridge.
+"If Mis' Kittridge would let me, I'd be glad to
+go aboard this 'ere, and be launched with 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell the Cap'n he's too old to be climbin' round and
+mixin' with young folks' frolics," said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose, Cap'n Pennel, you've seen that the ways is
+all right," said Captain Broad, returning to the old subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, it's all done as well as hands can do it," said
+Zephaniah. "Moses has been here since starlight this
+morning, and Moses has pretty good faculty about such
+matters."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily?" said Miss
+Ruey. "Oh, there they are over on that pile of rocks;
+they get a pretty fair view there."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily were sitting under a cedar-tree,
+with two or three others, on a projecting point
+whence they could have a clear view of the launching.
+They were so near that they could distinguish clearly the
+figures on deck, and see Moses standing with his hat off,
+the wind blowing his curls back, talking earnestly to the
+golden-haired little woman on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a launch into life for him," said Mr. Sewell, with
+suppressed feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and he has Mara on his arm," said Miss Emily;
+"that's as it should be. Who is that that Sally Kittridge
+is flirting with now? Oh, Tom Hiers. Well! he's good
+enough for her. Why don't she take him?" said Miss
+Emily, in her zeal jogging her brother's elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure, Emily, I don't know," said Mr. Sewell
+dryly; "perhaps he won't be taken."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think Moses looks handsome?" said Miss
+Emily. "I declare there is something quite romantic and
+Spanish about him; don't you think so, Theophilus?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think so," said her brother, quietly looking,
+externally, the meekest and most matter-of-fact of persons,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+but deep within him a voice sighed, "Poor Dolores, be
+comforted, your boy is beautiful and prosperous!"</p>
+
+<p>"There, there!" said Miss Emily, "I believe she is
+starting."</p>
+
+<p>All eyes of the crowd were now fixed on the ship; the
+sound of hammers stopped; the workmen were seen flying
+in every direction to gain good positions to see her go,&mdash;that
+sight so often seen on those shores, yet to which use
+cannot dull the most insensible.</p>
+
+<p>First came a slight, almost imperceptible, movement,
+then a swift exultant rush, a dash into the hissing water,
+and the air was rent with hurrahs as the beautiful ship
+went floating far out on the blue seas, where her fairer life
+was henceforth to be.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was leaning on Moses's arm at the instant the ship
+began to move, but in the moment of the last dizzy rush
+she felt his arm go tightly round her, holding her so close
+that she could hear the beating of his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurrah!" he said, letting go his hold the moment the
+ship floated free, and swinging his hat in answer to the
+hats, scarfs, and handkerchiefs, which fluttered from the
+crowd on the shore. His eyes sparkled with a proud light
+as he stretched himself upward, raising his head and throwing
+back his shoulders with a triumphant movement. He
+looked like a young sea-king just crowned; and the fact is
+the less wonderful, therefore, that Mara felt her heart throb
+as she looked at him, and that a treacherous throb of the
+same nature shook the breezy ribbons fluttering over the
+careless heart of Sally. A handsome young sea-captain,
+treading the deck of his own vessel, is, in his time and
+place, a prince.</p>
+
+<p>Moses looked haughtily across at Sally, and then passed
+a half-laughing defiant flash of eyes between them. He
+looked at Mara, who could certainly not have known what
+was in her eyes at the moment,&mdash;an expression that made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+his heart give a great throb, and wonder if he saw aright:
+but it was gone a moment after, as all gathered around in
+a knot exchanging congratulations on the fortunate way in
+which the affair had gone off. Then came the launching
+in boats to go back to the collation on shore, where were
+high merry-makings for the space of one or two hours: and
+thus was fulfilled the first part of Moses Pennel's Saturday
+afternoon prediction.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<h3>GREEK MEETS GREEK</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>Moses was now within a day or two of the time of his
+sailing, and yet the distance between him and Mara seemed
+greater than ever. It is astonishing, when two people are
+once started on a wrong understanding with each other, how
+near they may live, how intimate they may be, how many
+things they may have in common, how many words they
+may speak, how closely they may seem to simulate intimacy,
+confidence, friendship, while yet there lies a gulf
+between them that neither crosses,&mdash;a reserve that neither
+explores.</p>
+
+<p>Like most shy girls, Mara became more shy the more
+really she understood the nature of her own feelings. The
+conversation with Sally had opened her eyes to the secret
+of her own heart, and she had a guilty feeling as if what
+she had discovered must be discovered by every one else.
+Yes, it was clear she loved Moses in a way that made him,
+she thought, more necessary to her happiness than she could
+ever be to his,&mdash;in a way that made it impossible to think
+of him as wholly and for life devoted to another, without
+a constant inner conflict. In vain had been all her little
+stratagems practiced upon herself the whole summer long,
+to prove to herself that she was glad that the choice had
+fallen upon Sally. She saw clearly enough now that she
+was not glad,&mdash;that there was no woman or girl living,
+however dear, who could come for life between him and
+her, without casting on her heart the shuddering sorrow of
+a dim eclipse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But now the truth was plain to herself, her whole force
+was directed toward the keeping of her secret. "I may
+suffer," she thought, "but I will have strength not to be
+silly and weak. Nobody shall know,&mdash;nobody shall dream
+it,&mdash;and in the long, long time that he is away, I shall
+have strength given me to overcome."</p>
+
+<p>So Mara put on her most cheerful and matter-of-fact kind
+of face, and plunged into the making of shirts and knitting
+of stockings, and talked of the coming voyage with such a
+total absence of any concern, that Moses began to think,
+after all, there could be no depth to her feelings, or that
+the deeper ones were all absorbed by some one else.</p>
+
+<p>"You really seem to enjoy the prospect of my going
+away," said he to her, one morning, as she was energetically
+busying herself with her preparations.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course; you know your career must begin.
+You must make your fortune; and it is pleasant to think
+how favorably everything is shaping for you."</p>
+
+<p>"One likes, however, to be a little regretted," said Moses,
+in a tone of pique.</p>
+
+<p>"A little regretted!" Mara's heart beat at these words,
+but her hypocrisy was well practiced. She put down the
+rebellious throb, and assuming a look of open, sisterly
+friendliness, said, quite naturally, "Why, we shall all miss
+you, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Moses,&mdash;"one would be glad to be
+missed some other way than <i>of course</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as to that, make yourself easy," said Mara. "We
+shall all be dull enough when you are gone to content the
+most exacting." Still she spoke, not stopping her stitching,
+and raising her soft brown eyes with a frank, open
+look into Moses's&mdash;no tremor, not even of an eyelid.</p>
+
+<p>"You men must have everything," she continued, gayly,
+"the enterprise, the adventure, the novelty, the pleasure
+of feeling that you are something, and can do something in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+the world; and besides all this, you want the satisfaction
+of knowing that we women are following in chains behind
+your triumphal car!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a dash of bitterness in this, which was a rare
+ingredient in Mara's conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Moses took the word. "And you women sit easy at
+home, sewing and singing, and forming romantic pictures
+of our life as like its homely reality as romances generally
+are to reality; and while we are off in the hard struggle
+for position and the means of life, you hold your hearts
+ready for the first rich man that offers a fortune ready
+made."</p>
+
+<p>"The first!" said Mara. "Oh, you naughty! sometimes
+we try two or three."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I suppose this is from one of them," said
+Moses, flapping down a letter from Boston, directed in a
+masculine hand, which he had got at the post-office that
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>Now Mara knew that this letter was nothing in particular,
+but she was taken by surprise, and her skin was delicate
+as peach-blossom, and so she could not help a sudden
+blush, which rose even to her golden hair, vexed as she
+was to feel it coming. She put the letter quietly in her
+pocket, and for a moment seemed too discomposed to answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You do well to keep your own counsel," said Moses.
+"No friend so near as one's self, is a good maxim. One
+does not expect young girls to learn it so early, but it seems
+they do."</p>
+
+<p>"And why shouldn't they as well as young men?" said
+Mara. "Confidence begets confidence, they say."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no ambition to play confidant," said Moses;
+"although as one who stands to you in the relation of older
+brother and guardian, and just on the verge of a long voyage,
+I might be supposed anxious to know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And I have no ambition to be confidant," said Mara,
+all her spirit sparkling in her eyes; "although when one
+stands to you in the relation of an only sister, I might be
+supposed perhaps to feel some interest to be in your confidence."</p>
+
+<p>The words "older brother" and "only sister" grated on
+the ears of both the combatants as a decisive sentence.
+Mara never looked so pretty in her life, for the whole force
+of her being was awake, glowing and watchful, to guard
+passage, door, and window of her soul, that no treacherous
+hint might escape. Had he not just reminded her that he
+was only an older brother? and what would he think if he
+knew the truth?&mdash;and Moses thought the words <i>only sister</i>
+unequivocal declaration of how the matter stood in her
+view, and so he rose, and saying, "I won't detain you
+longer from your letter," took his hat and went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going down to Sally's?" said Mara, coming
+to the door and looking out after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ask her to come home with you and spend the
+evening. I have ever so many things to tell her."</p>
+
+<p>"I will," said Moses, as he lounged away.</p>
+
+<p>"The thing is clear enough," said Moses to himself.
+"Why should I make a fool of myself any further? What
+possesses us men always to set our hearts precisely on what
+isn't to be had? There's Sally Kittridge likes me; I can
+see that plainly enough, for all her mincing; and why
+couldn't I have had the sense to fall in love with her?
+She will make a splendid, showy woman. She has talent
+and tact enough to rise to any position I may rise to, let
+me rise as high as I will. She will always have skill and
+energy in the conduct of life; and when all the froth and
+foam of youth has subsided, she will make a noble woman.
+Why, then, do I cling to this fancy? I feel that this little
+flossy cloud, this delicate, quiet little puff of thistledown,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+on which I have set my heart, is the only thing for me,
+and that without her my life will always be incomplete.
+I remember all our early life. It was she who sought me,
+and ran after me, and where has all that love gone to?
+Gone to this fellow; that's plain enough. When a girl
+like her is so comfortably cool and easy, it's because her
+heart is off somewhere else."</p>
+
+<p>This conversation took place about four o'clock in as fine
+an October afternoon as you could wish to see. The sun,
+sloping westward, turned to gold the thousand blue scales
+of the ever-heaving sea, and soft, pine-scented winds were
+breathing everywhere through the forests, waving the long,
+swaying films of heavy moss, and twinkling the leaves of
+the silver birches that fluttered through the leafy gloom.
+The moon, already in the sky, gave promise of a fine moonlight
+night; and the wild and lonely stillness of the island,
+and the thoughts of leaving in a few days, all conspired to
+foster the restless excitement in our hero's mind into a
+kind of romantic unrest.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in some such states, a man disappointed in one
+woman will turn to another, because, in a certain way and
+measure, her presence stills the craving and fills the void.
+It is a sort of supposititious courtship,&mdash;a saying to one
+woman, who is sympathetic and receptive, the words of
+longing and love that another will not receive. To be sure
+it is a game unworthy of any true man,&mdash;a piece of sheer,
+reckless, inconsiderate selfishness. But men do it, as they
+do many other unworthy things, from the mere promptings
+of present impulse, and let consequences take care of themselves.
+Moses met Sally that afternoon in just the frame
+to play the lover in this hypothetical, supposititious way,
+with words and looks and tones that came from feelings
+given to another. And as to Sally? Well, for once,
+Greek met Greek; for although Sally, as we showed her,
+was a girl of generous impulses, she was yet in no danger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+of immediate translation on account of superhuman goodness.
+In short, Sally had made up her mind that Moses
+should give her a chance to say that precious and golden
+<i>No</i>, which should enable her to count him as one of her
+captives,&mdash;and then he might go where he liked for all
+her.</p>
+
+<p>So said the wicked elf, as she looked into her own great
+eyes in the little square of mirror shaded by a misty asparagus
+bush; and to this end there were various braidings
+and adornings of the lustrous black hair, and coquettish earrings
+were mounted that hung glancing and twinkling just
+by the smooth outline of her glowing cheek,&mdash;and then
+Sally looked at herself in a friendly way of approbation,
+and nodded at the bright dimpled shadow with a look of
+secret understanding. The real Sally and the Sally of the
+looking-glass were on admirable terms with each other, and
+both of one mind about the plan of campaign against the
+common enemy. Sally thought of him as he stood kingly
+and triumphant on the deck of his vessel, his great black
+eyes flashing confident glances into hers, and she felt a
+rebellious rustle of all her plumage. "No, sir," she said
+to herself, "you don't do it. You shall never find me
+among your slaves,"&mdash;"that you know of," added a doubtful
+voice within her. "Never to your knowledge," she
+said, as she turned away. "I wonder if he will come here
+this evening," she said, as she began to work upon a pillow-case,&mdash;one
+of a set which Mrs. Kittridge had confided
+to her nimble fingers. The seam was long, straight, and
+monotonous, and Sally was restless and fidgety; her thread
+would catch in knots, and when she tried to loosen it,
+would break, and the needle had to be threaded over.
+Somehow the work was terribly irksome to her, and the
+house looked so still and dim and lonesome, and the tick-tock
+of the kitchen-clock was insufferable, and Sally let her
+work fall in her lap and looked out of the open window,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+far to the open ocean, where a fresh breeze was blowing
+toward her, and her eyes grew deep and dreamy following
+the gliding ship sails. Sally was getting romantic. Had
+she been reading novels? Novels! What can a pretty
+woman find in a novel equal to the romance that is all the
+while weaving and unweaving about her, and of which no
+human foresight can tell her the catastrophe? It is <i>novels</i>
+that give false views of life. Is there not an eternal novel,
+with all these false, cheating views, written in the breast
+of every beautiful and attractive girl whose witcheries make
+every man that comes near her talk like a fool? Like a
+sovereign princess, she never hears the truth, unless it be
+from the one manly man in a thousand, who understands
+both himself and her. From all the rest she hears only
+flatteries more or less ingenious, according to the ability of
+the framer. Compare, for instance, what Tom Brown says
+to little Seraphina at the party to-night, with what Tom
+Brown sober says to sober sister Maria <i>about</i> her to-morrow.
+Tom remembers that he was a fool last night, and
+knows what he thinks and always has thought to-day; but
+pretty Seraphina thinks he adores her, so that no matter
+what she does he will never see a flaw, she is sure of that,&mdash;poor
+little puss! She does not know that philosophic
+Tom looks at her as he does at a glass of champagne, or a
+dose of exhilarating gas, and calculates how much it will
+do for him to take of the stimulus without interfering with
+his serious and settled plans of life, which, of course, he
+doesn't mean to give up for her. The one-thousand-and-first
+man in creation is he that can feel the fascination but
+will not flatter, and that tries to tell to the little tyrant
+the rare word of truth that may save her; he is, as we say,
+the one-thousand-and-first. Well, as Sally sat with her
+great dark eyes dreamily following the ship, she mentally
+thought over all the compliments Moses had paid her, expressed
+or understood, and those of all her other admirers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+who had built up a sort of cloud-world around her, so that
+her little feet never rested on the soil of reality. Sally
+was shrewd and keen, and had a native mother-wit in the
+discernment of spirits, that made her feel that somehow
+this was all false coin; but still she counted it over, and it
+looked so pretty and bright that she sighed to think it was
+not real.</p>
+
+<p>"If it only had been," she thought; "if there were only
+any truth to the creature; he is so handsome,&mdash;it's a pity.
+But I do believe in his secret heart he is in love with Mara;
+he is in love with some one, I know. I have seen looks
+that must come from something real; but they were not for
+me. I have a kind of power over him, though," she said,
+resuming her old wicked look, "and I'll puzzle him a little,
+and torment him. He shall find his match in me,"
+and Sally nodded to a cat-bird that sat perched on a pine-tree,
+as if she had a secret understanding with him, and
+the cat-bird went off into a perfect roulade of imitations of
+all that was going on in the late bird-operas of the season.</p>
+
+<p>Sally was roused from her revery by a spray of goldenrod
+that was thrown into her lap by an invisible hand, and
+Moses soon appeared at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a plume that would be becoming to your hair,"
+he said; "stay, let me arrange it."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; you'll tumble my hair,&mdash;what can you know
+of such things?"</p>
+
+<p>Moses held the spray aloft, and leaned toward her with
+a sort of quiet, determined insistence.</p>
+
+<p>"By your leave, fair lady," he said, wreathing it in her
+hair, and then drawing back a little, he looked at her with
+so much admiration that Sally felt herself blush.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now, I dare say you've made a fright of me,"
+she said, rising and instinctively turning to the looking-glass;
+but she had too much coquetry not to see how
+admirably the golden plume suited her black hair, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+brilliant eyes and cheeks; she turned to Moses again,
+and courtesied, saying "Thank you, sir," dropping her
+eyelashes with a mock humility.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now," said Moses; "I am sent after you to
+come and spend the evening; let's walk along the seashore,
+and get there by degrees."</p>
+
+<p>And so they set out; but the path was circuitous, for
+Moses was always stopping, now at this point and now at
+that, and enacting some of those thousand little by-plays
+which a man can get up with a pretty woman. They
+searched for smooth pebbles where the waves had left
+them,&mdash;many-colored, pink and crimson and yellow and
+brown, all smooth and rounded by the eternal tossings of
+the old sea that had made playthings of them for centuries,
+and with every pebble given and taken were things said
+which should have meant more and more, had the play
+been earnest. Had Moses any idea of offering himself to
+Sally? No; but he was in one of those fluctuating, unresisting
+moods of mind in which he was willing to lie like
+a chip on the tide of present emotion, and let it rise and
+fall and dash him when it liked; and Sally never had
+seemed more beautiful and attractive to him than that afternoon,
+because there was a shade of reality and depth about
+her that he had never seen before.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, and let me show you my hermitage," said
+Moses, guiding her along the slippery projecting rocks,
+all covered with yellow tresses of seaweed. Sally often
+slipped on this treacherous footing, and Moses was obliged
+to hold her up, and instinctively he threw a meaning into
+his manner so much more than ever he had before, that
+by the time they had gained the little cove both were
+really agitated and excited. He felt that temporary delirium
+which is often the mesmeric effect of a strong womanly
+presence, and she felt that agitation which every woman
+must when a determined hand is striking on the great vital<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+chord of her being. When they had stepped round the
+last point of rock they found themselves driven by the
+advancing tide up into the little lonely grotto,&mdash;and there
+they were with no lookout but the wide blue sea, all spread
+out in rose and gold under the twilight skies, with a silver
+moon looking down upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally," said Moses, in a low, earnest whisper, "you
+love me,&mdash;do you not?" and he tried to pass his arm
+around her.</p>
+
+<p>She turned and flashed at him a look of mingled terror
+and defiance, and struck out her hands at him; then impetuously
+turning away and retreating to the other end of
+the grotto, she sat down on a rock and began to cry.</p>
+
+<p>Moses came toward her, and kneeling, tried to take her
+hand. She raised her head angrily, and again repulsed
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Go!" she said. "What right had you to say that?
+What right had you even to think it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sally, you do love me. It cannot but be. You are
+a woman; you could not have been with me as we have
+and not feel more than friendship."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you men!&mdash;your conceit passes understanding,"
+said Sally. "You think we are born to be your bond
+slaves,&mdash;but for once you are mistaken, sir. I <i>don't</i> love
+you; and what's more, you don't love me,&mdash;you know
+you don't; you know that you love somebody else. You
+love Mara,&mdash;you know you do; there's no truth in you,"
+she said, rising indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Moses felt himself color. There was an embarrassed
+pause, and then he answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sally, why should I love Mara? Her heart is all given
+to another,&mdash;you yourself know it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know it either," said Sally; "I know it isn't
+so."</p>
+
+<p>"But you gave me to understand so."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you put prying questions about what you
+ought to have asked her, and so what was I to do? Besides,
+I did want to show you how much better Mara could
+do than to take you; besides, I didn't know till lately. I
+never thought she could care much for any man more than
+I could."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think she loves me?" said Moses, eagerly, a
+flash of joy illuminating his face; "do you, really?"</p>
+
+<p>"There you are," said Sally; "it's a shame I have let
+you know! Yes, Moses Pennel, she loves you like an
+angel, as none of you men deserve to be loved,&mdash;as you in
+particular don't."</p>
+
+<p>Moses sat down on a point of rock, and looked on the
+ground discountenanced. Sally stood up glowing and triumphant,
+as if she had her foot on the neck of her oppressor
+and meant to make the most of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now what do you think of yourself for all this summer's
+work?&mdash;for what you have just said, asking me if
+I didn't love you? Supposing, now, I had done as other
+girls would, played the fool and blushed, and said yes?
+Why, to-morrow you would have been thinking how to be
+rid of me! I shall save you all that trouble, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Sally, I own I have been acting like a fool," said
+Moses, humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"You have done more than that,&mdash;you have acted
+wickedly," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"And am I the only one to blame?" said Moses, lifting
+his head with a show of resistance.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, sir!" said Sally, energetically; "I have played
+the fool and acted wrong too, but there is just this difference
+between you and me: you had nothing to lose, and I
+a great deal; your heart, such as it was, was safely disposed
+of. But supposing you had won mine, what would
+you have done with it? That was the last thing you considered."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Sally, don't spare; I'm a vile dog, unworthy
+of either of you," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>Sally looked down on her handsome penitent with some
+relenting, as he sat quite dejected, his strong arms drooping,
+and his long eyelashes cast down.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be friends with you," she said, "because, after all,
+I'm not so very much better than you. We have both
+done wrong, and made dear Mara very unhappy. But after
+all, I was not so much to blame as you; because, if there
+had been any reality in your love, I could have paid it
+honestly. I had a heart to give,&mdash;I have it now, and
+hope long to keep it," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally, you are a right noble girl. I never knew what
+you were till now," said Moses, looking at her with admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the first time for all these six months that we
+have either of us spoken a word of truth or sense to each
+other. I never did anything but trifle with you, and you
+the same. Now we've come to some plain dry land, we
+may walk on and be friends. So now help me up these
+rocks, and I will go home."</p>
+
+<p>"And you'll not come home with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. I think you may now go home and
+have one talk with Mara without witnesses."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BETROTHAL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>Moses walked slowly home from his interview with
+Sally, in a sort of maze of confused thought. In general,
+men understand women only from the outside, and judge
+them with about as much real comprehension as an eagle
+might judge a canary-bird. The difficulty of real understanding
+intensifies in proportion as the man is distinctively
+manly, and the woman womanly. There are men with a
+large infusion of the feminine element in their composition
+who read the female nature with more understanding than
+commonly falls to the lot of men; but in general, when a
+man passes beyond the mere outside artifices and unrealities
+which lie between the two sexes, and really touches his
+finger to any vital chord in the heart of a fair neighbor, he
+is astonished at the quality of the vibration.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not have dreamed there was so much in her,"
+thought Moses, as he turned away from Sally Kittridge.
+He felt humbled as well as astonished by the moral lecture
+which this frisky elf with whom he had all summer been
+amusing himself, preached to him from the depths of a
+real woman's heart. What she said of Mara's loving him
+filled his eyes with remorseful tears,&mdash;and for the moment
+he asked himself whether this restless, jealous, exacting
+desire which he felt to appropriate her whole life and heart
+to himself were as really worthy of the name of love as
+the generous self-devotion with which she had, all her life,
+made all his interests her own.</p>
+
+<p>Was he to go to her now and tell her that he loved her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+and therefore he had teased and vexed her,&mdash;therefore he
+had seemed to prefer another before her,&mdash;therefore he
+had practiced and experimented upon her nature? A suspicion
+rather stole upon him that love which expresses
+itself principally in making exactions and giving pain is not
+exactly worthy of the name. And yet he had been secretly
+angry with her all summer for being the very reverse of
+this; for her apparent cheerful willingness to see him happy
+with another; for the absence of all signs of jealousy,&mdash;all
+desire of exclusive appropriation. It showed, he said
+to himself, that there was no love; and now when it
+dawned on him that this might be the very heroism of self-devotion,
+he asked himself which was best worthy to be
+called love.</p>
+
+<p>"She did love him, then!" The thought blazed up
+through the smouldering embers of thought in his heart
+like a tongue of flame. She loved him! He felt a sort of
+triumph in it, for he was sure Sally must know, they were
+so intimate. Well, he would go to her, and tell her all,
+confess all his sins, and be forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>When he came back to the house, all was still evening.
+The moon, which was playing brightly on the distant sea,
+left one side of the brown house in shadow. Moses saw a
+light gleaming behind the curtain in the little room on the
+lower floor, which had been his peculiar sanctum during
+the summer past. He had made a sort of library of it,
+keeping there his books and papers. Upon the white curtain
+flitted, from time to time, a delicate, busy shadow;
+now it rose and now it stooped, and then it rose again&mdash;grew
+dim and vanished, and then came out again. His
+heart beat quick.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was in his room, busy, as she always had been
+before his departures, in cares for him. How many things
+had she made for him, and done and arranged for him, all
+his life long! things which he had taken as much as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+matter of course as the shining of that moon. His thought
+went back to the times of his first going to sea,&mdash;he a
+rough, chaotic boy, sensitive and surly, and she the ever
+thoughtful good angel of a little girl, whose loving-kindness
+he had felt free to use and to abuse. He remembered
+that he made her cry there when he should have spoken
+lovingly and gratefully to her, and that the words of acknowledgment
+that ought to have been spoken, never had
+been said,&mdash;remained unsaid to that hour. He stooped
+low, and came quite close to the muslin curtain. All was
+bright in the room, and shadowy without; he could see
+her movements as through a thin white haze. She was
+packing his sea-chest; his things were lying about her,
+folded or rolled nicely. Now he saw her on her knees
+writing something with a pencil in a book, and then she
+enveloped it very carefully in silk paper, and tied it trimly,
+and hid it away at the bottom of the chest. Then she
+remained a moment kneeling at the chest, her head resting
+in her hands. A sort of strange, sacred feeling came over
+him as he heard a low murmur, and knew that she felt a
+Presence that he never felt or acknowledged. He felt
+somehow that he was doing her a wrong thus to be prying
+upon moments when she thought herself alone with God;
+a sort of vague remorse filled him; he felt as if she were
+too good for him. He turned away, and entering the front
+door of the house, stepped noiselessly along and lifted the
+latch of the door. He heard a rustle as of one rising hastily
+as he opened it and stood before Mara. He had made
+up his mind what to say; but when she stood there before
+him, with her surprised, inquiring eyes, he felt confused.</p>
+
+<p>"What, home so soon?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You did not expect me, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not,&mdash;not for these two hours; so," she
+said, looking about, "I found some mischief to do among
+your things. If you had waited as long as I expected,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+they would all have been quite right again, and you would
+never have known."</p>
+
+<p>Moses sat down and drew her toward him, as if he were
+going to say something, and then stopped and began confusedly
+playing with her work-box.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, please don't," said she, archly. "You know
+what a little old maid I am about my things!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mara," said Moses, "people have asked you to marry
+them, have they not?"</p>
+
+<p>"People asked me to marry them!" said Mara. "I
+hope not. What an odd question!"</p>
+
+<p>"You know what I mean," said Moses; "you have had
+offers of marriage&mdash;from Mr. Adams, for example."</p>
+
+<p>"And what if I have?"</p>
+
+<p>"You did not accept him, Mara?" said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I did not."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet he was a fine man, I am told, and well fitted
+to make you happy."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe he was," said Mara, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"And why were you so foolish?"</p>
+
+<p>Mara was fretted at this question. She supposed Moses
+had come to tell her of his engagement to Sally, and that
+this was a kind of preface, and she answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why you call it foolish. I was a true
+friend to Mr. Adams. I saw intellectually that he might
+have the power of making any reasonable woman happy.
+I think now that the woman will be fortunate who becomes
+his wife; but I did not wish to marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anybody you prefer to him, Mara?" said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>She started up with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You have no right to ask me that, though you are my
+brother."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not your brother, Mara," said Moses, rising and
+going toward her, "and that is why I ask you. I feel I
+have a right to ask you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do not understand you," she said, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"I can speak plainer, then. I wish to put in my poor
+venture. I love you, Mara&mdash;not as a brother. I wish
+you to be my wife, if you will."</p>
+
+<p>While Moses was saying these words, Mara felt a sort of
+whirling in her head, and it grew dark before her eyes;
+but she had a strong, firm will, and she mastered herself
+and answered, after a moment, in a quiet, sorrowful tone,
+"How can I believe this, Moses? If it is true, why have
+you done as you have this summer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I was a fool, Mara,&mdash;because I was jealous
+of Mr. Adams,&mdash;because I somehow hoped, after all, that
+you either loved me or that I might make you think more
+of me through jealousy of another. They say that love
+always is shown by jealousy."</p>
+
+<p>"Not true love, I should think," said Mara. "How
+<i>could</i> you do so?&mdash;it was cruel to her,&mdash;cruel to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I admit it,&mdash;anything, everything you can say. I
+have acted like a fool and a knave, if you will; but after
+all, Mara, I do love you. I know I am not worthy of you&mdash;never
+was&mdash;never can be; you are in all things a true,
+noble woman, and I have been unmanly."</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be supposed that all this was spoken without
+accompaniments of looks, movements, and expressions of
+face such as we cannot give, but such as doubled their
+power to the parties concerned; and the "I love you" had
+its usual conclusive force as argument, apology, promise,&mdash;covering,
+like charity, a multitude of sins.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour after, you might have seen a youth and
+a maiden coming together out of the door of the brown
+house, and walking arm in arm toward the sea-beach.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those wonderfully clear moonlight evenings,
+when the ocean, like a great reflecting mirror, seems
+to double the brightness of the sky,&mdash;and its vast expanse
+lay all around them in its stillness, like an eternity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+waveless peace. Mara remembered that time in her girlhood
+when she had followed Moses into the woods on just
+such a night,&mdash;how she had sat there under the shadows
+of the trees, and looked over to Harpswell and noticed the
+white houses and the meeting-house, all so bright and clear
+in the moonlight, and then off again on the other side of
+the island where silent ships were coming and going in the
+mysterious stillness. They were talking together now with
+that outflowing fullness which comes when the seal of some
+great reserve has just been broken,&mdash;going back over their
+lives from day to day, bringing up incidents of childhood,
+and turning them gleefully like two children.</p>
+
+<p>And then Moses had all the story of his life to relate,
+and to tell Mara all he had learned of his mother,&mdash;going
+over with all the narrative contained in Mr. Sewell's letter.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Mara, that it was intended that you should
+be my fate," he ended; "so the winds and waves took me
+up and carried me to the lonely island where the magic
+princess dwelt."</p>
+
+<p>"You are Prince Ferdinand," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"And you are Miranda," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she said with fervor, "how plainly we can see
+that our heavenly Father has been guiding our way! How
+good He is,&mdash;and how we must try to live for Him,&mdash;both
+of us."</p>
+
+<p>A sort of cloud passed over Moses's brow. He looked
+embarrassed, and there was a pause between them, and then
+he turned the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Mara felt pained; it was like a sudden discord; such
+thoughts and feelings were the very breath of her life; she
+could not speak in perfect confidence and unreserve, as she
+then spoke, without uttering them; and her finely organized
+nature felt a sort of electric consciousness of repulsion
+and dissent. She grew abstracted, and they walked on in
+silence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I see now, Mara, I have pained you," said Moses,
+"but there are a class of feelings that you have that I have
+not and cannot have. No, I cannot feign anything. I can
+understand what religion is in you, I can admire its results.
+I can be happy, if it gives you any comfort; but people are
+differently constituted. I never can feel as you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say never," said Mara, with an intensity that
+nearly startled him; "it has been the one prayer, the one
+hope, of my life, that you might have these comforts,&mdash;this
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>"I need no comfort or peace except what I shall find in
+you," said Moses, drawing her to himself, and looking admiringly
+at her; "but pray for me still. I always thought
+that my wife must be one of the sort of women who pray."</p>
+
+<p>"And why?" said Mara, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I need to be loved a great deal, and it is only
+that kind who pray who know how to love really. If you
+had not prayed for me all this time, you never would have
+loved me in spite of all my faults, as you did, and do, and
+will, as I know you will," he said, folding her in his arms,
+and in his secret heart he said, "Some of this intensity,
+this devotion, which went upward to heaven, will be mine
+one day. She will worship me."</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is, Mara," he said, "I am a child of this
+world. I have no sympathy with things not seen. You
+are a half-spiritual creature,&mdash;a child of air; and but for
+the great woman's heart in you, I should feel that you were
+something uncanny and unnatural. I am selfish, I know;
+I frankly admit, I never disguised it; but I love your religion
+because it makes you love me. It is an incident to
+that loving, trusting nature which makes you all and wholly
+mine, as I want you to be. I want you all and wholly;
+every thought, every feeling,&mdash;the whole strength of your
+being. I don't care if I say it: I would not wish to be
+second in your heart even to God himself!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Moses!" said Mara, almost starting away from
+him, "such words are dreadful; they will surely bring evil
+upon us."</p>
+
+<p>"I only breathed out my nature, as you did yours. Why
+should you love an unseen and distant Being more than
+you do one whom you can feel and see, who holds you in
+his arms, whose heart beats like your own?"</p>
+
+<p>"Moses," said Mara, stopping and looking at him in the
+clear moonlight, "God has always been to me not so much
+like a father as like a dear and tender mother. Perhaps it
+was because I was a poor orphan, and my father and mother
+died at my birth, that He has been so loving to me. I
+never remember the time when I did not feel His presence
+in my joys and my sorrows. I never had a thought of joy
+and sorrow that I could not say to Him. I never woke in
+the night that I did not feel that He was loving and watching
+me, and that I loved Him in return. Oh, how many,
+many things I have said to Him about you! My heart
+would have broken years ago, had it not been for Him;
+because, though you did not know it, you often seemed unkind;
+you hurt me very often when you did not mean to.
+His love is so much a part of my life that I cannot conceive
+of life without it. It is the very air I breathe."</p>
+
+<p>Moses stood still a moment, for Mara spoke with a fervor
+that affected him; then he drew her to his heart, and
+said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what could ever make you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"He sent you and gave you to me," she answered, "to
+be mine in time and eternity."</p>
+
+<p>The words were spoken in a kind of enthusiasm so different
+from the usual reserve of Mara, that they seemed
+like a prophecy. That night, for the first time in her life,
+had she broken the reserve which was her very nature, and
+spoken of that which was the intimate and hidden history
+of her soul.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>AT A QUILTING</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>"And so," said Mrs. Captain Badger to Miss Roxy
+Toothacre, "it seems that Moses Pennel ain't going to have
+Sally Kittridge after all,&mdash;he's engaged to Mara Lincoln."</p>
+
+<p>"More shame for him," said Miss Roxy, with a frown
+that made her mohair curls look really tremendous.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy and Mrs. Badger were the advance party at
+a quilting, to be holden at the house of Mr. Sewell, and
+had come at one o'clock to do the marking upon the quilt,
+which was to be filled up by the busy fingers of all the
+women in the parish. Said quilt was to have a bordering
+of a pattern commonly denominated in those parts clam-shell,
+and this Miss Roxy was diligently marking with
+indigo.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you say so, now?" said Mrs. Badger, a
+fat, comfortable, motherly matron, who always patronized
+the last matrimonial venture that put forth among the
+young people.</p>
+
+<p>"What business had he to flirt and gallivant all summer
+with Sally Kittridge, and make everybody think he was
+going to have her, and then turn round to Mara Lincoln at
+the last minute? I wish I'd been in Mara's place."</p>
+
+<p>In Miss Roxy's martial enthusiasm, she gave a sudden
+poke to her frisette, giving to it a diagonal bristle which
+extremely increased its usually severe expression; and any
+one contemplating her at the moment would have thought
+that for Moses Pennel, or any other young man, to come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+with tender propositions in that direction would have been
+indeed a venturesome enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you what 'tis, Mis' Badger," she said, "I've
+known Mara since she was born,&mdash;I may say I fetched
+her up myself, for if I hadn't trotted and tended her them
+first four weeks of her life, Mis' Pennel'd never have got
+her through; and I've watched her every year since; and
+havin' Moses Pennel is the only silly thing I ever knew
+her to do; but you never can tell what a girl will do when
+it comes to marryin',&mdash;never!"</p>
+
+<p>"But he's a real stirrin', likely young man, and captain
+of a fine ship," said Mrs. Badger.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't care if he's captain of twenty ships," said Miss
+Roxy, obdurately; "he ain't a professor of religion, and I
+believe he's an infidel, and she's one of the Lord's people."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Mrs. Badger, "you know the unbelievin'
+husband shall be sanctified by the believin' wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Much sanctifyin' he'll get," said Miss Roxy, contemptuously.
+"I don't believe he loves her any more than
+fancy; she's the last plaything, and when he's got her,
+he'll be tired of her, as he always was with anything he
+got ever since. I tell you, Moses Pennel is all for pride
+and ambition and the world; and his wife, when he gets
+used to her, 'll be only a circumstance,&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now, Miss Roxy," said Miss Emily, who in her
+best silk and smoothly-brushed hair had just come in, "we
+must <i>not</i> let you talk so. Moses Pennel has had long
+talks with brother, and he thinks him in a very hopeful
+way, and we are all delighted; and as to Mara, she is as
+fresh and happy as a little rose."</p>
+
+<p>"So I tell Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who had been absent
+from the room to hold private consultations with Miss
+Emily concerning the biscuits and sponge-cake for tea, and
+who now sat down to the quilt and began to unroll a capa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>cious
+and very limp calico thread-case; and placing her
+spectacles awry on her little pug nose, she began a series
+of ingenious dodges with her thread, designed to hit the
+eye of her needle.</p>
+
+<p>"The old folks," she continued, "are e'en a'most tickled
+to pieces,&mdash;'cause they think it'll jist be the salvation of
+him to get Mara."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't one of the sort that wants to be a-usin' up girls
+for the salvation of fellers," said Miss Roxy, severely.
+"Ever since he nearly like to have got her eat up by
+sharks, by giggiting her off in the boat out to sea when
+she wa'n't more'n three years old, I always have thought
+he was a misfortin' in that family, and I think so now."</p>
+
+<p>Here broke in Mrs. Eaton, a thrifty energetic widow of
+a deceased sea-captain, who had been left with a tidy little
+fortune which commanded the respect of the neighborhood.
+Mrs. Eaton had entered silently during the discussion, but
+of course had come, as every other woman had that afternoon,
+with views to be expressed upon the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"For my part," she said, as she stuck a decisive needle
+into the first clam-shell pattern, "I ain't so sure that all
+the advantage in this match is on Moses Pennel's part.
+Mara Lincoln is a good little thing, but she ain't fitted to
+help a man along,&mdash;she'll always be wantin' somebody to
+help her. Why, I 'member goin' a voyage with Cap'n
+Eaton, when I saved the ship, if anybody did,&mdash;it was
+allowed on all hands. Cap'n Eaton wasn't hearty at that
+time, he was jist gettin' up from a fever,&mdash;it was when
+Marthy Ann was a baby, and I jist took her and went to
+sea and took care of him. I used to work the longitude
+for him and help him lay the ship's course when his head
+was bad,&mdash;and when we came on the coast, we were kept
+out of harbor beatin' about nearly three weeks, and all the
+ship's tacklin' was stiff with ice, and I tell you the men
+never would have stood it through and got the ship in, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+it hadn't been for me. I kept their mittens and stockings
+all the while a-dryin' at my stove in the cabin, and hot
+coffee all the while a-boilin' for 'em, or I believe they'd
+a-frozen their hands and feet, and never been able to work
+the ship in. That's the way <i>I</i> did. Now Sally Kittridge
+is a great deal more like that than Mara."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no doubt that Sally is smart," said Mrs. Badger,
+"but then it ain't every one can do like you, Mrs.
+Eaton."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, oh no," was murmured from mouth to mouth;
+"Mrs. Eaton mustn't think she's any rule for others,&mdash;everybody
+knows she can do more than most people;"
+whereat the pacified Mrs. Eaton said "she didn't know as it
+was anything remarkable,&mdash;it showed what anybody might
+do, if they'd only <i>try</i> and have resolution; but that Mara
+never had been brought up to have resolution, and her
+mother never had resolution before her, it wasn't in any of
+Mary Pennel's family; she knew their grandmother and
+all their aunts, and they were all a weakly set, and not
+fitted to get along in life,&mdash;they were a kind of people
+that somehow didn't seem to know how to take hold of
+things."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the consultation was hushed up by the
+entrance of Sally Kittridge and Mara, evidently on the
+closest terms of intimacy, and more than usually demonstrative
+and affectionate; they would sit together and use
+each other's needles, scissors, thread, and thimbles interchangeably,
+as if anxious to express every minute the most
+overflowing confidence. Sly winks and didactic nods were
+covertly exchanged among the elderly people, and when
+Mrs. Kittridge entered with more than usual airs of impressive
+solemnity, several of these were covertly directed
+toward her, as a matron whose views in life must have
+been considerably darkened by the recent event.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge, however, found an opportunity to whis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>per
+under her breath to Miss Ruey what a relief to her it
+was that the affair had taken such a turn. She had felt
+uneasy all summer for fear of what might come. Sally
+was so thoughtless and worldly, she felt afraid that he
+would lead her astray. She didn't see, for her part, how
+a professor of religion like Mara could make up her mind
+to such an unsettled kind of fellow, even if he did seem to
+be rich and well-to-do. But then she had done looking
+for consistency; and she sighed and vigorously applied herself
+to quilting like one who has done with the world.</p>
+
+<p>In return, Miss Ruey sighed and took snuff, and related
+for the hundredth time to Mrs. Kittridge the great escape
+she once had from the addresses of Abraham Peters, who
+had turned out a "poor drunken creetur." But then it was
+only natural that Mara should be interested in Moses; and
+the good soul went off into her favorite verse:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"The fondness of a creature's love,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How strong it strikes the sense!</span><br />
+Thither the warm affections move,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor can we drive them thence."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Miss Ruey's sentimental vein was in quite a gushing
+state, for she more than once extracted from the dark
+corners of the limp calico thread-case we have spoken of
+certain long-treasured <i>morceaux</i> of newspaper poetry, of
+a tender and sentimental cast, which she had laid up with
+true Yankee economy, in case any one should ever be in
+a situation to need them. They related principally to the
+union of kindred hearts, and the joys of reciprocated feeling
+and the pains of absence. Good Miss Ruey occasionally
+passed these to Mara, with glances full of meaning, which
+caused the poor old thing to resemble a sentimental goblin,
+keeping Sally Kittridge in a perfect hysterical tempest of
+suppressed laughter, and making it difficult for Mara to
+preserve the decencies of life toward her well-intending old
+friend. The trouble with poor Miss Ruey was that, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+her body had grown old and crazy, her soul was just as
+juvenile as ever,&mdash;and a simple, juvenile soul disporting
+itself in a crazy, battered old body, is at great disadvantage.
+It was lucky for her, however, that she lived in the
+most sacred unconsciousness of the ludicrous effect of her
+little indulgences, and the pleasure she took in them was
+certainly of the most harmless kind. The world would be
+a far better and more enjoyable place than it is, if all people
+who are old and uncomely could find amusement as
+innocent and Christian-like as Miss Ruey's inoffensive
+thread-case collection of sentimental truisms.</p>
+
+<p>This quilting of which we speak was a solemn, festive
+occasion of the parish, held a week after Moses had sailed
+away; and so <i>piquant</i> a morsel as a recent engagement
+could not, of course, fail to be served up for the company
+in every variety of garnishing which individual tastes might
+suggest.</p>
+
+<p>It became an ascertained fact, however, in the course
+of the evening festivities, that the minister was serenely
+approbative of the event; that Captain Kittridge was at
+length brought to a sense of the errors of his way in supposing
+that Sally had ever cared a pin for Moses more than
+as a mutual friend and confidant; and the great affair was
+settled without more ripples of discomposure than usually
+attend similar announcements in more refined society.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>FRIENDS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>The quilting broke up at the primitive hour of nine
+o'clock, at which, in early New England days, all social
+gatherings always dispersed. Captain Kittridge rowed his
+helpmeet, with Mara and Sally, across the Bay to the
+island.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and stay with me to-night, Sally," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"I think Sally had best be at home," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+"There's no sense in girls talking all night."</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't sense in nothin' else, mother," said the
+Captain. "Next to sparkin', which is the Christianist
+thing I knows on, comes gals' talks 'bout their sparks;
+they's as natural as crowsfoot and red columbines in the
+spring, and spring don't come but once a year neither,&mdash;and
+so let 'em take the comfort on't. I warrant now,
+Polly, you've laid awake nights and talked about me."</p>
+
+<p>"We've all been foolish once," said Mrs. Kittridge.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mother, we want to be foolish too," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you and your father are too much for me," said
+Mrs. Kittridge, plaintively; "you always get your own
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"How lucky that my way is always a good one!" said
+Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know, Sally, you are going to make the
+beer to-morrow," still objected her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; that's another reason," said Sally. "Mara
+and I shall come home through the woods in the morning,
+and we can get whole apronfuls of young wintergreen, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+besides, I know where there's a lot of sassafras root.
+We'll dig it, won't we, Mara?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and I'll come down and help you brew," said
+Mara. "Don't you remember the beer I made when Moses
+came home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I remember," said the Captain, "you sent us
+a couple of bottles."</p>
+
+<p>"We can make better yet now," said Mara. "The
+wintergreen is young, and the green tips on the spruce
+boughs are so full of strength. Everything is lively and
+sunny now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "and I 'spect I know why
+things do look pretty lively to some folks, don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what sort of work you'll make of the
+beer among you," said Mrs. Kittridge; "but you must
+have it your own way."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kittridge, who never did anything else among her
+tea-drinking acquaintances but laud and magnify Sally's
+good traits and domestic acquirements, felt constantly bound
+to keep up a faint show of controversy and authority in
+her dealings with her,&mdash;the fading remains of the strict
+government of her childhood; but it was, nevertheless,
+very perfectly understood, in a general way, that Sally was
+to do as she pleased; and so, when the boat came to shore,
+she took the arm of Mara and started up toward the brown
+house.</p>
+
+<p>The air was soft and balmy, and though the moon by
+which the troth of Mara and Moses had been plighted had
+waned into the latest hours of the night, still a thousand
+stars were lying in twinkling brightness, reflected from the
+undulating waves all around them, and the tide, as it rose
+and fell, made a sound as gentle and soft as the respiration
+of a peaceful sleeper.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mara," said Sally, after an interval of silence,
+"all has come out right. You see that it was you whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
+he loved. What a lucky thing for me that I am made so
+heartless, or I might not be as glad as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not heartless, Sally," said Mara; "it's the
+enchanted princess asleep; the right one hasn't come to
+waken her."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe so," said Sally, with her old light laugh. "If
+I only were sure he would make you happy now,&mdash;half as
+happy as you deserve,&mdash;I'd forgive him his share of this
+summer's mischief. The fault was just half mine, you
+see, for I witched with him. I confess it. I have my
+own little spider-webs for these great lordly flies, and I like
+to hear them buzz."</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, Sally; never do it again, or the spider-web
+may get round you," said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear me," said Sally. "But, Mara, I wish I
+felt sure that Moses could make you happy. Do you
+really, now, when you think seriously, feel as if he
+would?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought seriously about it," said Mara; "but
+I know he needs me; that I can do for him what no one
+else can. I have always felt all my life that he was to be
+mine; that he was sent to me, ordained for me to care for
+and to love."</p>
+
+<p>"You are well mated," said Sally. "He wants to be
+loved very much, and you want to love. There's the active
+and passive voice, as they used to say at Miss Plucher's.
+But yet in your natures you are opposite as any two could
+well be."</p>
+
+<p>Mara felt that there was in these chance words of Sally
+more than she perceived. No one could feel as intensely
+as she could that the mind and heart so dear to her were
+yet, as to all that was most vital and real in her inner life,
+unsympathizing. To her the spiritual world was a reality;
+God an ever-present consciousness; and the line of this
+present life seemed so to melt and lose itself in the antici<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>pation
+of a future and brighter one, that it was impossible
+for her to speak intimately and not unconsciously to betray
+the fact. To him there was only the life of this world:
+there was no present God; and from all thought of a future
+life he shrank with a shuddering aversion, as from something
+ghastly and unnatural. She had realized this difference
+more in the few days that followed her betrothal than
+all her life before, for now first the barrier of mutual constraint
+and misunderstanding having melted away, each
+spoke with an <i>abandon</i> and unreserve which made the
+acquaintance more vitally intimate than ever it had been
+before. It was then that Mara felt that while her sympathies
+could follow him through all his plans and interests,
+there was a whole world of thought and feeling in her
+heart where his could not follow her; and she asked herself,
+Would it be so always? Must she walk at his side
+forever repressing the utterance of that which was most
+sacred and intimate, living in a nominal and external communion
+only? How could it be that what was so lovely
+and clear in its reality to her, that which was to her as
+life-blood, that which was the vital air in which she lived
+and moved and had her being, could be absolutely nothing
+to him? Was it really possible, as he said, that God had
+no existence for him except in a nominal cold belief; that
+the spiritual world was to him only a land of pale shades
+and doubtful glooms, from which he shrank with dread,
+and the least allusion to which was distasteful? and would
+this always be so? and if so, could she be happy?</p>
+
+<p>But Mara said the truth in saying that the question of
+personal happiness never entered her thoughts. She loved
+Moses in a way that made it necessary to her happiness to
+devote herself to him, to watch over and care for him; and
+though she knew not how, she felt a sort of presentiment
+that it was through her that he must be brought into sympathy
+with a spiritual and immortal life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All this passed through Mara's mind in the reverie into
+which Sally's last words threw her, as she sat on the door-sill
+and looked off into the starry distance and heard the
+weird murmur of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"How lonesome the sea at night always is," said Sally.
+"I declare, Mara, I don't wonder you miss that creature,
+for, to tell the truth, I do a little bit. It was something,
+you know, to have somebody to come in, and to joke with,
+and to say how he liked one's hair and one's ribbons, and
+all that. I quite got up a friendship for Moses, so that I
+can feel how dull you must be;" and Sally gave a half
+sigh, and then whistled a tune as adroitly as a blackbird.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mara, "we two girls down on this lonely
+island need some one to connect us with the great world;
+and he was so full of life, and so certain and confident, he
+seemed to open a way before one out into life."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, while he is gone there will be plenty
+to do getting ready to be married," said Sally. "By the
+by, when I was over to Portland the other day, Maria Potter
+showed me a new pattern for a bed-quilt, the sweetest
+thing you can imagine,&mdash;it is called the morning star.
+There is a great star in the centre, and little stars all
+around,&mdash;white on a blue ground. I mean to begin one
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to begin spinning some very fine flax next
+week," said Mara; "and have I shown you the new pattern
+I drew for a counterpane? it is to be morning-glories,
+leaves and flowers, you know,&mdash;a pretty idea, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>And so, the conversation falling from the region of the
+sentimental to the practical, the two girls went in and spent
+an hour in discussions so purely feminine that we will not
+enlighten the reader further therewith. Sally seemed to
+be investing all her energies in the preparation of the
+wedding outfit of her friend, about which she talked with
+a constant and restless activity, and for which she formed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>
+a thousand plans, and projected shopping tours to Portland,
+Brunswick, and even to Boston,&mdash;this last being about as
+far off a venture at that time as Paris now seems to a Boston
+belle.</p>
+
+<p>"When you are married," said Sally, "you'll have to
+take me to live with you; that creature sha'n't have you
+<i>all</i> to himself. I hate men, they are so exorbitant,&mdash;they
+spoil all our playmates; and what shall I do when <i>you</i> are
+gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will go with Mr.&mdash;what's his name?" said
+Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, I don't know him. I shall be an old maid,"
+said Sally; "and really there isn't much harm in that, if
+one could have company,&mdash;if somebody or other wouldn't
+marry all one's friends,&mdash;that's lonesome," she said,
+winking a tear out of her black eyes and laughing. "If
+I were only a young fellow now, Mara, I'd have you
+myself, and that would be just the thing; and I'd shoot
+Moses, if he said a word; and I'd have money, and I'd
+have honors, and I'd carry you off to Europe, and take
+you to Paris and Rome, and nobody knows where; and
+we'd live in peace, as the story-books say."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Sally, how wild you are talking," said Mara,
+"and the clock has just struck one; let's try to go to
+sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Sally put her face to Mara's and kissed her, and Mara
+felt a moist spot on her cheek,&mdash;could it be a tear?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey Toothacre lived in a little
+one-story gambrel-roofed cottage, on the side of Harpswell
+Bay, just at the head of the long cove which we have already
+described. The windows on two sides commanded
+the beautiful bay and the opposite shores, and on the other
+they looked out into the dense forest, through whose deep
+shadows of white birch and pine the silver rise and fall of
+the sea daily revealed itself.</p>
+
+<p>The house itself was a miracle of neatness within, for
+the two thrifty sisters were worshipers of soap and sand,
+and these two tutelary deities had kept every board of the
+house-floor white and smooth, and also every table and
+bench and tub of household use. There was a sacred care
+over each article, however small and insignificant, which
+composed their slender household stock. The loss or breakage
+of one of them would have made a visible crack in the
+hearts of the worthy sisters,&mdash;for every plate, knife, fork,
+spoon, cup, or glass was as intimate with them, as instinct
+with home feeling, as if it had a soul; each defect or spot
+had its history, and a cracked dish or article of furniture
+received as tender and considerate medical treatment
+as if it were capable of understanding and feeling the attention.</p>
+
+<p>It was now a warm, spicy day in June,&mdash;one of those
+which bring out the pineapple fragrance from the fir-shoots,
+and cause the spruce and hemlocks to exude a warm,
+resinous perfume. The two sisters, for a wonder, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>
+having a day to themselves, free from the numerous calls of
+the vicinity for twelve miles round. The room in which
+they were sitting was bestrewn with fragments of dresses
+and bonnets, which were being torn to pieces in a most
+wholesale way, with a view to a general rejuvenescence.
+A person of unsympathetic temperament, and disposed to
+take sarcastic views of life, might perhaps wonder what
+possible object these two battered and weather-beaten old
+bodies proposed to themselves in this process,&mdash;whether
+Miss Roxy's gaunt black-straw helmet, which she had worn
+defiantly all winter, was likely to receive much lustre from
+being pressed over and trimmed with an old green ribbon
+which that energetic female had colored black by a domestic
+recipe; and whether Miss Roxy's rusty bombazette
+would really seem to the world any fresher for being ripped,
+and washed, and turned, for the second or third time, and
+made over with every breadth in a different situation.
+Probably after a week of efficient labor, busily expended in
+bleaching, dyeing, pressing, sewing, and ripping, an unenlightened
+spectator, seeing them come into the meeting-house,
+would simply think, "There are those two old
+frights with the same old things on they have worn these
+fifty years." Happily the weird sisters were contentedly
+ignorant of any such remarks, for no duchesses could have
+enjoyed a more quiet belief in their own social position,
+and their semi-annual spring and fall rehabilitation was
+therefore entered into with the most simple-hearted satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a-thinkin', Roxy," said Aunt Ruey, considerately
+turning and turning on her hand an old straw bonnet, on
+which were streaked all the marks of the former trimming in
+lighter lines, which revealed too clearly the effects of wind
+and weather,&mdash;"I'm a-thinkin' whether or no this 'ere
+mightn't as well be dyed and done with it as try to bleach
+it out. I've had it ten years last May, and it's kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
+o' losin' its freshness, you know. I don't believe these 'ere
+streaks will bleach out."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Ruey," said Miss Roxy, authoritatively,
+"I'm goin' to do Mis' Badger's leg'orn, and it won't cost
+nothin'; so hang your'n in the barrel along with it,&mdash;the
+same smoke'll do 'em both. Mis' Badger she finds the
+brimstone, and next fall you can put it in the dye when
+we do the yarn."</p>
+
+<p>"That ar straw is a beautiful straw!" said Miss Ruey,
+in a plaintive tone, tenderly examining the battered old
+head-piece,&mdash;"I braided every stroke on it myself, and I
+don't know as I could do it ag'in. My fingers ain't quite
+so limber as they was! I don't think I shall put green
+ribbon on it ag'in; 'cause green is such a color to ruin, if
+a body gets caught out in a shower! There's these green
+streaks come that day I left my amberil at Captain Broad's,
+and went to meetin'. Mis' Broad she says to me, 'Aunt
+Ruey, it won't rain.' And says I to her, 'Well, Mis'
+Broad, I'll try it; though I never did leave my amberil
+at home but what it rained.' And so I went, and sure
+enough it rained cats and dogs, and streaked my bonnet all
+up; and them ar streaks won't bleach out, I'm feared."</p>
+
+<p>"How long is it Mis' Badger has had that ar leg'orn?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you know, the Cap'n he brought it home when
+he came from his voyage from Marseilles. That ar was
+when Phebe Ann was born, and she's fifteen year old. It
+was a most elegant thing when he brought it; but I think
+it kind o' led Mis' Badger on to extravagant ways,&mdash;for
+gettin' new trimmin' spring and fall so uses up money as
+fast as new bonnets; but Mis' Badger's got the money,
+and she's got a right to use it if she pleases; but if I'd
+a-had new trimmin's spring and fall, I shouldn't a-put
+away what I have in the bank."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen the straw Sally Kittridge is braidin'
+for Mara Lincoln's weddin' bonnet?" said Miss Ruey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+"It's jist the finest thing ever you did see,&mdash;and the
+whitest. I was a-tellin' Sally that I could do as well once
+myself, but my mantle was a-fallin' on her. Sally don't
+seem to act a bit like a disap'inted gal. She is as chipper
+as she can be about Mara's weddin', and seems like she
+couldn't do too much. But laws, everybody seems to
+want to be a-doin' for her. Miss Emily was a-showin' me
+a fine double damask tablecloth that she was goin' to give
+her; and Mis' Pennel, she's been a-spinnin' and layin' up
+sheets and towels and tablecloths all her life,&mdash;and then
+she has all Naomi's things. Mis' Pennel was talkin' to
+me the other day about bleachin' 'em out 'cause they'd
+got yellow a-lyin'. I kind o' felt as if 'twas unlucky to
+be a-fittin' out a bride with her dead mother's things, but
+I didn't like to say nothin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Ruey," said Miss Roxy impressively, "I hain't never
+had but jist one mind about Mara Lincoln's weddin',&mdash;it's
+to be,&mdash;but it won't be the way people think. I
+hain't nussed and watched and sot up nights sixty years
+for nothin'. I can see beyond what most folks can,&mdash;her
+weddin' garments is bought and paid for, and she'll wear
+'em, but she won't be Moses Pennel's wife,&mdash;now you
+see."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, whose wife will she be then?" said Miss Ruey;
+"'cause that ar Mr. Adams is married. I saw it in the
+paper last week when I was up to Mis' Badger's."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy shut her lips with oracular sternness and
+went on with her sewing.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's that comin' in the back door?" said Miss
+Ruey, as the sound of a footstep fell upon her ear. "Bless
+me," she added, as she started up to look, "if folks ain't
+always nearest when you're talkin' about 'em. Why,
+Mara; you come down here and catched us in all our dirt!
+Well now, we're glad to see you, if we be," said Miss
+Ruey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SHADOW OF DEATH</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>It was in truth Mara herself who came and stood in the
+doorway. She appeared overwearied with her walk, for
+her cheeks had a vivid brightness unlike their usual tender
+pink. Her eyes had, too, a brilliancy almost painful to
+look upon. They seemed like ardent fires, in which the
+life was slowly burning away.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, sit down, little Mara," said Aunt Ruey.
+"Why, how like a picture you look this mornin',&mdash;one
+needn't ask you how you do,&mdash;it's plain enough that you
+are pretty well."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am, Aunt Ruey," she answered, sinking into
+a chair; "only it is warm to-day, and the sun is so hot,
+that's all, I believe; but I am very tired."</p>
+
+<p>"So you are now, poor thing," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy,
+where's my turkey-feather fan? Oh, here 'tis; there,
+take it, and fan you, child; and maybe you'll have a glass
+of our spruce beer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Aunt Roxy. I brought you some young
+wintergreen," said Mara, unrolling from her handkerchief
+a small knot of those fragrant leaves, which were wilted by
+the heat.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I'm sure," said Miss Ruey, in delight;
+"you always fetch something, Mara,&mdash;always would, ever
+since you could toddle. Roxy and I was jist talkin' about
+your weddin'. I s'pose you're gettin' things well along
+down to your house. Well, here's the beer. I don't
+hardly know whether you'll think it worked enough,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+though. I set it Saturday afternoon, for all Mis' Twitchell
+said it was wicked for beer to work Sundays," said Miss
+Ruey, with a feeble cackle at her own joke.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Aunt Ruey; it is excellent, as your things
+always are. I was very thirsty."</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose you hear from Moses pretty often now," said
+Aunt Ruey. "How kind o' providential it happened
+about his getting that property; he'll be a rich man now;
+and Mara, you'll come to grandeur, won't you? Well, I
+don't know anybody deserves it more,&mdash;I r'ally don't.
+Mis' Badger was a-sayin' so a-Sunday, and Cap'n Kittridge
+and all on 'em. I s'pose though we've got to lose
+you,&mdash;you'll be goin' off to Boston, or New York, or
+somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't tell what may happen, Aunt Ruey," said
+Mara, and there was a slight tremor in her voice as she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy, who beyond the first salutations had taken
+no part in this conversation, had from time to time regarded
+Mara over the tops of her spectacles with looks of
+grave apprehension; and Mara, looking up, now encountered
+one of these glances.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you taken the dock and dandelion tea I told you
+about?" said the wise woman, rather abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aunt Roxy, I have taken them faithfully for two
+weeks past."</p>
+
+<p>"And do they seem to set you up any?" said Miss
+Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think they do. Grandma thinks I'm
+better, and grandpa, and I let them think so; but Miss
+Roxy, <i>can't</i> you think of something else?"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy laid aside the straw bonnet which she was
+ripping, and motioned Mara into the outer room,&mdash;the
+sink-room, as the sisters called it. It was the scullery of
+their little establishment,&mdash;the place where all dish-wash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>ing
+and clothes-washing was generally performed,&mdash;but
+the boards of the floor were white as snow, and the place
+had the odor of neatness. The open door looked out pleasantly
+into the deep forest, where the waters of the cove,
+now at high tide, could be seen glittering through the trees.
+Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the feathery
+ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in
+ruffling wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting
+of fallen pine needles. Birds were singing and calling to
+each other merrily from the green shadows of the forest,&mdash;everything
+had a sylvan fullness and freshness of life.
+There are moods of mind when the sight of the bloom and
+freshness of nature affects us painfully, like the want of
+sympathy in a dear friend. Mara had been all her days a
+child of the woods; her delicate life had grown up in them
+like one of their own cool shaded flowers; and there was
+not a moss, not a fern, not an upspringing thing that
+waved a leaf or threw forth a flower-bell, that was not a
+well-known friend to her; she had watched for years its
+haunts, known the time of its coming and its going, studied
+its shy and veiled habits, and interwoven with its life each
+year a portion of her own; and now she looked out into
+the old mossy woods, with their wavering spots of sun and
+shadow, with a yearning pain, as if she wanted help or
+sympathy to come from their silent recesses.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on the clean, scoured door-sill, and took
+off her straw hat. Her golden-brown hair was moist with
+the damps of fatigue, which made it curl and wave in
+darker little rings about her forehead; her eyes,&mdash;those
+longing, wistful eyes,&mdash;had a deeper pathos of sadness
+than ever they had worn before; and her delicate lips trembled
+with some strong suppressed emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Roxy," she said suddenly, "I <i>must</i> speak to
+somebody. I can't go on and keep up without telling
+some one, and it had better be you, because you have skill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+and experience, and can help me if anybody can. I've
+been going on for six months now, taking this and taking
+that, and trying to get better, but it's of no use. Aunt
+Roxy, I feel my life going,&mdash;going just as steadily and as
+quietly every day as the sand goes out of your hour-glass.
+I want to live,&mdash;oh, I never wanted to live so much, and
+I can't,&mdash;oh, I know I can't. Can I now,&mdash;do you
+think I can?"</p>
+
+<p>Mara looked imploringly at Miss Roxy. The hard-visaged
+woman sat down on the wash-bench, and, covering
+her worn, stony visage with her checked apron, sobbed
+aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Mara was confounded. This implacably withered, sensible,
+dry woman, beneficently impassive in sickness and
+sorrow, weeping!&mdash;it was awful, as if one of the Fates had
+laid down her fatal distaff to weep.</p>
+
+<p>Mara sprung up impulsively and threw her arms round
+her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't, Aunt Roxy, don't. I didn't think you
+would feel bad, or I wouldn't have told you; but oh, you
+don't know how hard it is to keep such a secret all to one's
+self. I have to make believe all the time that I am feeling
+well and getting better. I really say what isn't true
+every day, because, poor grandmamma, how could I bear
+to see her distress? and grandpapa,&mdash;oh, I wish people
+didn't love me so! Why cannot they let me go? And
+oh, Aunt Roxy, I had a letter only yesterday, and he is so
+sure we shall be married this fall,&mdash;and I know it cannot
+be." Mara's voice gave way in sobs, and the two wept
+together,&mdash;the old grim, gray woman holding the soft
+golden head against her breast with a convulsive grasp.
+"Oh, Aunt Roxy, do you love me, too?" said Mara. "I
+didn't know you did."</p>
+
+<p>"Love ye, child?" said Miss Roxy; "yes, I love ye like
+my life. I ain't one that makes talk about things, but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+do; you come into my arms fust of anybody's in this
+world,&mdash;and except poor little Hitty, I never loved nobody
+as I have you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that was your sister, whose grave I have seen,"
+said Mara, speaking in a soothing, caressing tone, and putting
+her little thin hand against the grim, wasted cheek,
+which was now moist with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Jes' so, child, she died when she was a year younger
+than you be; she was not lost, for God took her. Poor
+Hitty! her life jest dried up like a brook in August,&mdash;jest
+so. Well, she was hopefully pious, and it was better
+for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she go like me, Aunt Roxy?" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, dear; she did begin jest so, and I gave her
+everything I could think of; and we had doctors for her
+far and near; but <i>'twasn't to be</i>,&mdash;that's all we could
+say; she was called, and her time was come."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, "at any rate, it's
+a relief to speak out to some one. It's more than two
+months that I have felt every day more and more that
+there was no hope,&mdash;life has hung on me like a weight.
+I have had to <i>make</i> myself keep up, and make myself do
+everything, and no one knows how it has tried me. I am
+so tired all the time, I could cry; and yet when I go to
+bed nights I can't sleep, I lie in such a hot, restless way;
+and then before morning I am drenched with cold sweat,
+and feel so weak and wretched. I force myself to eat, and
+I force myself to talk and laugh, and it's all pretense; and
+it wears me out,&mdash;it would be better if I stopped trying,&mdash;it
+would be better to give up and act as weak as I feel;
+but how can I let them know?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child," said Aunt Roxy, "the truth is the
+kindest thing we can give folks in the end. When folks
+know jest where they are, why they can walk; you'll all
+be supported; you must trust in the Lord. I have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+more'n forty years with sick rooms and dyin' beds, and
+I never knew it fail that those that trusted in the Lord was
+brought through."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Roxy, it is so hard for me to give up,&mdash;to
+give up hoping to live. There were a good many years
+when I thought I should love to depart,&mdash;not that I was
+really unhappy, but I longed to go to heaven, though I
+knew it was selfish, when I knew how lonesome I should
+leave my friends. But now, oh, life has looked so bright;
+I have clung to it so; I do now. I lie awake nights and
+pray, and try to give it up and be resigned, and I can't.
+Is it wicked?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's natur' to want to live," said Miss Roxy.
+"Life is sweet, and in a gen'l way we was made to live.
+Don't worry; the Lord'll bring you right when His time
+comes. Folks isn't always supported jest when they
+want to be, nor <i>as</i> they want to be; but yet they're supported
+fust and last. Ef I was to tell you how as I has
+hope in your case, I shouldn't be a-tellin' you the truth.
+I hasn't much of any; only all things is possible with
+God. If you could kind o' give it all up and rest easy in
+His hands, and keep a-doin' what you can,&mdash;why, while
+there's life there's hope, you know; and if you are to be
+made well, you will be all the sooner."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Roxy, it's all right; I know it's all right. God
+knows best; He will do what is best; I know that; but
+my heart bleeds, and is sore. And when I get his letters,&mdash;I
+got one yesterday,&mdash;it brings it all back again.
+Everything is going on so well; he says he has done more
+than all he ever hoped; his letters are full of jokes, full of
+spirit. Ah, he little knows,&mdash;and how can I tell him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Child, you needn't yet. You can jest kind o' prepare
+his mind a little."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Roxy, have you spoken of my case to any one,&mdash;have
+you told what you know of me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, child, I hain't said nothin' more than that you
+was a little weakly now and then."</p>
+
+<p>"I have such a color every afternoon," said Mara.
+"Grandpapa talks about my roses, and Captain Kittridge
+jokes me about growing so handsome; nobody seems to
+realize how I feel. I have kept up with all the strength
+I had. I have tried to shake it off, and to feel that nothing
+was the matter,&mdash;really there is nothing much, only
+this weakness. This morning I thought it would do me
+good to walk down here. I remember times when I could
+ramble whole days in the woods, but I was so tired before
+I got half way here that I had to stop a long while and
+rest. Aunt Roxy, if you would only tell grandpapa and
+grandmamma just how things are, and what the danger is,
+and let them stop talking to me about wedding things,&mdash;for
+really and truly I am too unwell to keep up any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, child, I will," said Miss Roxy. "Your grandfather
+will be supported, and hold you up, for he's one of
+the sort as has the secret of the Lord,&mdash;I remember him
+of old. Why, the day your father and mother was buried
+he stood up and sung old China, and his face was wonderful
+to see. He seemed to be standin' with the world under
+his feet and heaven opening. He's a master Christian,
+your grandfather is; and now you jest go and lie down in
+the little bedroom, and rest you a bit, and by and by, in
+the cool of the afternoon, I'll walk along home with you."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy opened the door of a little room, whose white
+fringy window-curtains were blown inward by breezes from
+the blue sea, and laid the child down to rest on a clean
+sweet-smelling bed with as deft and tender care as if she
+were not a bony, hard-visaged, angular female, in a black
+mohair frisette.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped a moment wistfully before a little profile
+head, of a kind which resembles a black shadow on a white
+ground. "That was Hitty!" she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mara had often seen in the graveyard a mound inscribed
+to this young person, and heard traditionally of a young
+and pretty sister of Miss Roxy who had died very many
+years before. But the grave was overgrown with blackberry-vines,
+and gray moss had grown into the crevices of
+the slab which served for a tombstone, and never before
+that day had she heard Miss Roxy speak of her. Miss
+Roxy took down the little black object and handed it to
+Mara. "You can't tell much by that, but she was a most
+beautiful creatur'. Well, it's all best as it is." Mara
+saw nothing but a little black shadow cast on white paper,
+yet she was affected by the perception how bright, how
+beautiful, was the image in the memory of that seemingly
+stern, commonplace woman, and how of all that in her
+mind's eye she saw and remembered, she could find no
+outward witness but this black block. "So some day my
+friends will speak of me as a distant shadow," she said,
+as with a sigh she turned her head on the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy shut the door gently as she went out, and
+betrayed the unwonted rush of softer feelings which had
+come over her only by being more dictatorial and commanding
+than usual in her treatment of her sister, who was
+sitting in fidgety curiosity to know what could have been
+the subject of the private conference.</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose Mara wanted to get some advice about makin'
+up her weddin' things," said Miss Ruey, with a sort of
+humble quiver, as Miss Roxy began ripping and tearing
+fiercely at her old straw bonnet, as if she really purposed
+its utter and immediate demolition.</p>
+
+<p>"No she didn't, neither," said Miss Roxy, fiercely. "I
+declare, Ruey, you are silly; your head is always full of
+weddin's, weddin's, weddin's&mdash;nothin' else&mdash;from mornin'
+till night, and night till mornin'. I tell you there's
+other things have got to be thought of in this world besides
+weddin' clothes, and it would be well, if people would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
+think more o' gettin' their weddin' garments ready for the
+kingdom of heaven. That's what Mara's got to think of;
+for, mark my words, Ruey, there is no marryin' and givin'
+in marriage for her in this world."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, bless me, Roxy, now you don't say so!" said
+Miss Ruey; "why I knew she was kind o' weakly and
+ailin', but"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Kind o' weakly and ailin'!" said Miss Roxy, taking
+up Miss Ruey's words in a tone of high disgust, "I should
+rather think she was; and more'n that, too: she's marked
+for death, and that before long, too. It may be that
+Moses Pennel'll never see her again&mdash;he never half knew
+what she was worth&mdash;maybe he'll know when he's lost
+her, that's one comfort!"</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Miss Ruey, "everybody has been a-sayin'
+what a beautiful color she was a-gettin' in her cheeks."</p>
+
+<p>"Color in her cheeks!" snorted Miss Roxy; "so does a
+rock-maple get color in September and turn all scarlet, and
+what for? why, the frost has been at it, and its time is
+out. That's what your bright colors stand for. Hain't
+you noticed that little gravestone cough, jest the faintest
+in the world, and it don't come from a cold, and it hangs
+on. I tell you you can't cheat me, she's goin' jest as
+Mehitabel went, jest as Sally Ann Smith went, jest as
+Louisa Pearson went. I could count now on my fingers
+twenty girls that have gone that way. Nobody saw 'em
+goin' till they was gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, I don't think the old folks have the least
+idea on't," said Miss Ruey. "Only last Saturday Mis'
+Pennel was a-talkin' to me about the sheets and tablecloths
+she's got out a-bleachin'; and she said that the
+weddin' dress was to be made over to Mis' Mosely's in
+Portland, 'cause Moses he's so particular about havin'
+things genteel."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Master Moses'll jest have to give up his partic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>ular
+notions," said Miss Roxy, "and come down in the
+dust, like all the rest on us, when the Lord sends an east
+wind and withers our gourds. Moses Pennel's one of the
+sort that expects to drive all before him with the strong
+arm, and sech has to learn that things ain't to go as they
+please in the Lord's world. Sech always has to come to
+spots that they can't get over nor under nor round, to have
+their own way, but jest has to give right up square."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, "how does the poor
+little thing take it? Has she got reconciled?"</p>
+
+<p>"Reconciled! Ruey, how you do ask questions!" said
+Miss Roxy, fiercely pulling a bandanna silk handkerchief
+out of her pocket, with which she wiped her eyes in a
+defiant manner. "Reconciled! It's easy enough to talk,
+Ruey, but how would you like it, when everything was
+goin' smooth and playin' into your hands, and all the
+world smooth and shiny, to be took short up? I guess you
+wouldn't be reconciled. That's what I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, Roxy, who said I should?" said Miss Ruey.
+"I wa'n't blamin' the poor child, not a grain."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, who said you was, Ruey?" answered Miss
+Roxy, in the same high key.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't take my head off," said Aunt Ruey,
+roused as much as her adipose, comfortable nature could be.
+"You've been a-talkin' at me ever since you came in from
+the sink-room, as if I was to blame; and snappin' at me as
+if I hadn't a right to ask civil questions; and I won't
+stan' it," said Miss Ruey. "And while I'm about it, I'll
+say that you always have snubbed me and contradicted and
+ordered me round. I won't bear it no longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Ruey, don't make a fool of yourself at your
+time of life," said Miss Roxy. "Things is bad enough in
+this world without two lone sisters and church-members
+turnin' agin each other. You must take me as I am,
+Ruey; my bark's worse than my bite, as you know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey sank back pacified into her usual state of
+pillowy dependence; it was so much easier to be good-natured
+than to contend. As for Miss Roxy, if you have
+ever carefully examined a chestnut-burr, you will remember
+that, hard as it is to handle, no plush of downiest texture
+can exceed the satin smoothness of the fibres which line
+its heart. There are a class of people in New England
+who betray the uprising of the softer feelings of our nature
+only by an increase of outward asperity&mdash;a sort of bashfulness
+and shyness leaves them no power of expression for
+these unwonted guests of the heart&mdash;they hurry them into
+inner chambers and slam the doors upon them, as if they
+were vexed at their appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Now if poor Miss Roxy had been like you, my dear
+young lady&mdash;if her soul had been encased in a round,
+rosy, and comely body, and looked out of tender blue eyes
+shaded by golden hair, probably the grief and love she felt
+would have shown themselves only in bursts of feeling
+most graceful to see, and engaging the sympathy of all;
+but this same soul, imprisoned in a dry, angular body, stiff
+and old, and looking out under beetling eyebrows, over
+withered high cheek-bones, could only utter itself by a
+passionate tempest&mdash;unlovely utterance of a lovely impulse&mdash;dear
+only to Him who sees with a Father's heart the
+real beauty of spirits. It is our firm faith that bright
+solemn angels in celestial watchings were frequent guests in
+the homely room of the two sisters, and that passing by all
+accidents of age and poverty, withered skins, bony features,
+and grotesque movements and shabby clothing, they saw
+more real beauty there than in many a scented boudoir
+where seeming angels smile in lace and satin.</p>
+
+<p>"Ruey," said Miss Roxy, in a more composed voice,
+while her hard, bony hands still trembled with excitement,
+"this 'ere's been on my mind a good while. I hain't said
+nothin' to nobody, but I've seen it a-comin'. I always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+thought that child wa'n't for a long life. Lives is run in
+different lengths, and nobody can say what's the matter
+with some folks, only that their thread's run out; there's
+more on one spool and less on another. I thought, when
+we laid Hitty in the grave, that I shouldn't never set my
+heart on nothin' else&mdash;but we can't jest say we will or we
+won't. Ef we are to be sorely afflicted at any time, the
+Lord lets us set our hearts before we know it. This 'ere's
+a great affliction to me, Ruey, but I must jest shoulder my
+cross and go through with it. I'm goin' down to-night to
+tell the old folks, and to make arrangements so that the
+poor little lamb may have the care she needs. She's been
+a-keepin' up so long, 'cause she dreaded to let 'em know,
+but this 'ere has got to be looked right in the face, and I
+hope there'll be grace given to do it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VICTORY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>Meanwhile Mara had been lying in the passive calm
+of fatigue and exhaustion, her eyes fixed on the window,
+where, as the white curtain drew inward, she could catch
+glimpses of the bay. Gradually her eyelids fell, and she
+dropped into that kind of half-waking doze, when the outer
+senses are at rest, and the mind is all the more calm and
+clear for their repose. In such hours a spiritual clairvoyance
+often seems to lift for a while the whole stifling cloud
+that lies like a confusing mist over the problem of life, and
+the soul has sudden glimpses of things unutterable which
+lie beyond. Then the narrow straits, that look so full of
+rocks and quicksands, widen into a broad, clear passage,
+and one after another, rosy with a celestial dawn, and ringing
+silver bells of gladness, the isles of the blessed lift
+themselves up on the horizon, and the soul is flooded with
+an atmosphere of light and joy. As the burden of Christian
+fell off at the cross and was lost in the sepulchre, so
+in these hours of celestial vision the whole weight of life's
+anguish is lifted, and passes away like a dream; and the
+soul, seeing the boundless ocean of Divine love, wherein
+all human hopes and joys and sorrows lie so tenderly upholden,
+comes and casts the one little drop of its personal
+will and personal existence with gladness into that Fatherly
+depth. Henceforth, with it, God and Saviour is no more
+word of mine and thine, for in that hour the child of earth
+feels himself heir of all things: "All things are yours,
+and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."</p>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>"The child is asleep," said Miss Roxy, as she stole on
+tiptoe into the room when their noon meal was prepared.
+A plate and knife had been laid for her, and they had
+placed for her a tumbler of quaint old engraved glass,
+reputed to have been brought over from foreign parts, and
+which had been given to Miss Roxy as her share in the
+effects of the mysterious Mr. Swadkins. Tea also was
+served in some egg-like India china cups, which saw the
+light only on the most high and festive occasions.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't you better wake her?" said Miss Ruey; "a
+cup of hot tea would do her so much good."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ruey could conceive of few sorrows or ailments
+which would not be materially better for a cup of hot tea.
+If not the very elixir of life, it was indeed the next thing
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Roxy, after laying her hand for a
+moment with great gentleness on that of the sleeping girl,
+"she don't wake easy, and she's tired; and she seems to
+be enjoying it so. The Bible says, 'He giveth his beloved
+sleep,' and I won't interfere. I've seen more good come
+of sleep than most things in my nursin' experience," said
+Miss Roxy, and she shut the door gently, and the two sisters
+sat down to their noontide meal.</p>
+
+<p>"How long the child does sleep!" said Miss Ruey as
+the old clock struck four.</p>
+
+<p>"It was too much for her, this walk down here," said
+Aunt Roxy. "She's been doin' too much for a long time.
+I'm a-goin' to put an end to that. Well, nobody needn't
+say Mara hain't got resolution. I never see a little thing
+have more. She always did have, when she was the leastest
+little thing. She was always quiet and white and still,
+but she did whatever she sot out to."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, to their surprise, the door opened, and
+Mara came in, and both sisters were struck with a change
+that had passed over her. It was more than the result of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
+mere physical repose. Not only had every sign of weariness
+and bodily languor vanished, but there was about her
+an air of solemn serenity and high repose that made her
+seem, as Miss Ruey afterwards said, "like an angel jest
+walked out of the big Bible."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, dear child, how you have slept, and how bright
+and rested you look," said Miss Ruey.</p>
+
+<p>"I am rested," said Mara; "oh how much! And
+happy," she added, laying her little hand on Miss Roxy's
+shoulder. "I thank you, dear friend, for all your kindness
+to me. I am sorry I made you feel so sadly; but now you
+mustn't feel so any more, for all is well&mdash;yes, all is well.
+I see now that it is so. I have passed beyond sorrow&mdash;yes,
+forever."</p>
+
+<p>Soft-hearted Miss Ruey here broke into audible sobbing,
+hiding her face in her hands, and looking like a tumbled
+heap of old faded calico in a state of convulsion.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Aunt Ruey, you mustn't," said Mara, with a
+voice of gentle authority. "We mustn't any of us feel so
+any more. There is no harm done, no real evil is coming,
+only a good which we do not understand. I am perfectly
+satisfied&mdash;perfectly at rest now. I was foolish and weak
+to feel as I did this morning, but I shall not feel so any
+more. I shall comfort you all. Is it anything so dreadful
+for me to go to heaven? How little while it will be
+before you all come to me! Oh, how little&mdash;little while!"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you, Mara, that you'd be supported in the
+Lord's time," said Miss Roxy, who watched her with an
+air of grave and solemn attention. "First and last, folks
+allers is supported; but sometimes there is a long wrestlin'.
+The Lord's give you the victory early."</p>
+
+<p>"Victory!" said the girl, speaking as in a deep muse,
+and with a mysterious brightness in her eyes; "yes, that
+is the word&mdash;it <i>is</i> a victory&mdash;no other word expresses it.
+Come, Aunt Roxy, we will go home. I am not afraid now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+to tell grandpapa and grandmamma. God will care for
+them; He will wipe away all tears."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, though, you mus'n't think of goin' till you've
+had a cup of tea," said Aunt Ruey, wiping her eyes.
+"I've kep' the tea-pot hot by the fire, and you must eat a
+little somethin', for it's long past dinner-time."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" said Mara. "I had no idea I had slept so
+long&mdash;how thoughtful and kind you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"I do wish I could only do more for you," said Miss
+Ruey. "I don't seem to get reconciled no ways; it seems
+dreffle hard&mdash;dreffle; but I'm glad you <i>can</i> feel so;" and
+the good old soul proceeded to press upon the child not
+only the tea, which she drank with feverish relish, but
+every hoarded dainty which their limited housekeeping
+commanded.</p>
+
+<p>It was toward sunset before Miss Roxy and Mara
+started on their walk homeward. Their way lay over the
+high stony ridge which forms the central part of the island.
+On one side, through the pines, they looked out into the
+boundless blue of the ocean, and on the other caught
+glimpses of Harpswell Bay as it lay glorified in the evening
+light. The fresh cool breeze blowing landward brought
+with it an invigorating influence, which Mara felt through
+all her feverish frame. She walked with an energy to
+which she had long been a stranger. She said little, but
+there was a sweetness, a repose, in her manner contrasting
+singularly with the passionate melancholy which she had
+that morning expressed.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy did not interrupt her meditations. The nature
+of her profession had rendered her familiar with all
+the changing mental and physical phenomena that attend
+the development of disease and the gradual loosening of
+the silver cords of a present life. Certain well-understood
+phrases everywhere current among the mass of the people
+in New England, strikingly tell of the deep foundations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+religious earnestness on which its daily life is built. "A
+triumphant death" was a matter often casually spoken of
+among the records of the neighborhood; and Miss Roxy
+felt that there was a vague and solemn charm about its
+approach. Yet the soul of the gray, dry woman was hot
+within her, for the conversation of the morning had probed
+depths in her own nature of whose existence she had never
+before been so conscious. The roughest and most matter-of-fact
+minds have a craving for the ideal somewhere; and
+often this craving, forbidden by uncomeliness and ungenial
+surroundings from having any personal history of its own,
+attaches itself to the fortune of some other one in a kind
+of strange disinterestedness. Some one young and beautiful
+is to live the life denied to them&mdash;to be the poem and
+the romance; it is the young mistress of the poor black
+slave&mdash;the pretty sister of the homely old spinster&mdash;or the
+clever son of the consciously ill-educated father. Something
+of this unconscious personal investment had there
+been on the part of Miss Roxy in the nursling whose singular
+loveliness she had watched for so many years, and on
+whose fair virgin orb she had marked the growing shadow
+of a fatal eclipse, and as she saw her glowing and serene,
+with that peculiar brightness that she felt came from no
+earthly presence or influence, she could scarcely keep the
+tears from her honest gray eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at the door of the house, Zephaniah
+Pennel was sitting in it, looking toward the sunset.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, reely," he said, "Miss Roxy, we thought you
+must a-run away with Mara; she's been gone a'most all
+day."</p>
+
+<p>"I expect she's had enough to talk with Aunt Roxy
+about," said Mrs. Pennel. "Girls goin' to get married
+have a deal to talk about, what with patterns and contrivin'
+and makin' up. But come in, Miss Roxy; we're glad to
+see you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mara turned to Miss Roxy, and gave her a look of peculiar
+meaning. "Aunt Roxy," she said, "you must tell
+them what we have been talking about to-day;" and then
+she went up to her room and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy accomplished her task with a matter-of-fact
+distinctness to which her business-like habits of dealing
+with sickness and death had accustomed her, yet with a
+sympathetic tremor in her voice which softened the hard
+directness of her words. "You can take her over to Portland,
+if you say so, and get Dr. Wilson's opinion," she
+said, in conclusion. "It's best to have all done that can
+be, though in my mind the case is decided."</p>
+
+<p>The silence that fell between the three was broken at
+last by the sound of a light footstep descending the stairs,
+and Mara entered among them.</p>
+
+<p>She came forward and threw her arms round Mrs. Pennel's
+neck, and kissed her; and then turning, she nestled
+down in the arms of her old grandfather, as she had often
+done in the old days of childhood, and laid her hand upon
+his shoulder. There was no sound for a few moments but
+one of suppressed weeping; but <i>she</i> did not weep&mdash;she
+lay with bright calm eyes, as if looking upon some celestial
+vision.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not so very sad," she said at last, in a gentle
+voice, "that I should go there; you are going, too, and
+grandmamma; we are all going; and we shall be forever
+with the Lord. Think of it! think of it!"</p>
+
+<p>Many were the words spoken in that strange communing;
+and before Miss Roxy went away, a calmness of solemn
+rest had settled down on all. The old family Bible
+was brought forth, and Zephaniah Pennel read from it
+those strange words of strong consolation, which take the
+sting from death and the victory from the grave:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And I heard a great voice out of heaven. Behold the
+tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+them, and they shall be his people; and God himself shall
+be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away
+all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,
+neither sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed
+away."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>OPEN VISION</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>As Miss Roxy was leaving the dwelling of the Pennels,
+she met Sally Kittridge coming toward the house, laughing
+and singing, as was her wont. She raised her long, lean
+forefinger with a gesture of warning.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now, Aunt Roxy? You look as
+solemn as a hearse."</p>
+
+<p>"None o' your jokin' now, Miss Sally; there <i>is</i> such a
+thing as serious things in this 'ere world of our'n, for all
+you girls never seems to know it."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, Aunt Roxy?&mdash;has anything happened?&mdash;is
+anything the matter with Mara?"</p>
+
+<p>"Matter enough. I've known it a long time," said
+Miss Roxy. "She's been goin' down for three months
+now; and she's got that on her that will carry her off before
+the year's out."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, Aunt Roxy! how lugubriously you old nurses
+always talk! I hope now you haven't been filling Mara's
+head with any such notions&mdash;people can be frightened
+into anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Sally Kittridge, don't be a-talkin' of what you don't
+know nothin' about! It stands to reason that a body that
+was bearin' the heat and burden of the day long before
+you was born or thought on in this world <i>should</i> know a
+thing or two more'n you. Why, I've laid you on your
+stomach and trotted you to trot up the wind many a day,
+and I was pretty experienced then, and it ain't likely that
+I'm a-goin' to take sa'ce from you. Mara Pennel is a gal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>
+as has every bit and grain as much resolution and ambition
+as you have, for all you flap your wings and crow
+so much louder, and she's one of the close-mouthed sort,
+that don't make no talk, and she's been a-bearin' up and
+bearin' up, and comin' to me on the sly for strengthenin'
+things. She's took camomile and orange-peel, and snake-root
+and boneset, and dash-root and dandelion&mdash;and there
+hain't nothin' done her no good. She told me to-day she
+couldn't keep up no longer, and I've been a-tellin' Mis'
+Pennel and her grand'ther. I tell you it has been a solemn
+time; and if you're goin' in, don't go in with none o' your
+light triflin' ways, 'cause 'as vinegar upon nitre is he that
+singeth songs on a heavy heart,' the Scriptur' says."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Roxy, do tell me truly," said Sally, much
+moved. "What do you think is the matter with Mara?
+I've noticed myself that she got tired easy, and that she
+was short-breathed&mdash;but she seemed so cheerful. Can
+anything really be the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's consumption, Sally Kittridge," said Miss Roxy,
+"neither more nor less; that ar is the long and the short.
+They're going to take her over to Portland to see Dr.
+Wilson&mdash;it won't do no harm, and it won't do no good."</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be determined she shall die," said Sally
+in a tone of pique.</p>
+
+<p>"Determined, am I? Is it I that determines that the
+maple leaves shall fall next October? Yet I know they
+will&mdash;folks can't help knowin' what they know, and shuttin'
+one's eyes won't alter one's road. I s'pose you think
+'cause you're young and middlin' good-lookin' that you
+have feelin's and I hasn't; well, you're mistaken, that's
+all. I don't believe there's one person in the world that
+would go farther or do more to save Mara Pennel than I
+would,&mdash;and yet I've been in the world long enough
+to see that livin' ain't no great shakes neither. Ef one
+is hopefully prepared in the days of their youth, why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+they escape a good deal, ef they get took cross-lots into
+heaven."</p>
+
+<p>Sally turned away thoughtfully into the house; there
+was no one in the kitchen, and the tick of the old clock
+sounded lonely and sepulchral. She went upstairs to
+Mara's room; the door was ajar. Mara was sitting at the
+open window that looked forth toward the ocean, busily engaged
+in writing. The glow of evening shone on the golden
+waves of her hair, and tinged the pearly outline of her
+cheek. Sally noticed the translucent clearness of her complexion,
+and the deep burning color and the transparency
+of the little hands, which seemed as if they might transmit
+the light like S&egrave;vres porcelain. She was writing with an
+expression of tender calm, and sometimes stopping to consult
+an open letter that Sally knew came from Moses.</p>
+
+<p>So fair and sweet and serene she looked that a painter
+might have chosen her for an embodiment of twilight, and
+one might not be surprised to see a clear star shining out
+over her forehead. Yet in the tender serenity of the face
+there dwelt a pathos of expression that spoke of struggles
+and sufferings past, like the traces of tears on the face of
+a restful infant that has grieved itself to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Sally came softly in on tiptoe, threw her arms around
+her, and kissed her, with a half laugh, then bursting into
+tears, sobbed upon her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Sally, what is the matter?" said Mara, looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara, I just met Miss Roxy, and she told me"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Sally only sobbed passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very sad to make all one's friends so unhappy,"
+said Mara, in a soothing voice, stroking Sally's hair.
+"You don't know how much I have suffered dreading it.
+Sally, it is a long time since I began to expect and dread
+and fear. My time of anguish was then&mdash;then when I
+first felt that it could be possible that I should not live
+after all. There was a long time I dared not even think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+of it; I could not even tell such a fear to myself; and I
+did far more than I felt able to do to convince myself that
+I was not weak and failing. I have been often to Miss
+Roxy, and once, when nobody knew it, I went to a doctor
+in Brunswick, but then I was afraid to tell him half, lest
+he should say something about me, and it should get out;
+and so I went on getting worse and worse, and feeling
+every day as if I could not keep up, and yet afraid to lie
+down for fear grandmamma would suspect me. But this
+morning it was pleasant and bright, and something came
+over me that said I <i>must</i> tell somebody, and so, as it was
+cool and pleasant, I walked up to Aunt Roxy's and told
+her. I thought, you know, that she knew the most, and
+would feel it the least; but oh, Sally, she has such a feeling
+heart, and loves me so; it is strange she should."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" said Sally, tightening her clasp around Mara's
+neck; and then with a hysterical shadow of gayety she
+said, "I suppose you think that you are such a hobgoblin
+that nobody could be expected to do that. After all,
+though, I should have as soon expected roses to bloom in a
+juniper clump as love from Aunt Roxy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she does love me," said Mara. "No mother
+could be kinder. Poor thing, she really sobbed and cried
+when I told her. I was very tired, and she told me she
+would take care of me, and tell grandpapa and grandmamma,&mdash;<i>that</i>
+had been lying on my heart as such a
+dreadful thing to do,&mdash;and she laid me down to rest on
+her bed, and spoke so lovingly to me! I wish you could
+have seen her. And while I lay there, I fell into a strange,
+sweet sort of rest. I can't describe it; but since then
+everything has been changed. I wish I could tell any one
+how I saw things then."</p>
+
+<p>"Do try to tell me, Mara," said Sally, "for I need
+comfort too, if there is any to be had."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I lay on the bed, and the wind drew in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
+from the sea and just lifted the window-curtain, and I
+could see the sea shining and hear the waves making a
+pleasant little dash, and then my head seemed to swim. I
+thought I was walking out by the pleasant shore, and
+everything seemed so strangely beautiful, and grandpapa
+and grandmamma were there, and Moses had come home,
+and you were there, and we were all so happy. And then
+I felt a sort of strange sense that something was coming&mdash;some
+great trial or affliction&mdash;and I groaned and clung
+to Moses, and asked him to put his arm around me and
+hold me.</p>
+
+<p>"Then it seemed to be not by our seashore that this
+was happening, but by the Sea of Galilee, just as it tells
+about it in the Bible, and there were fishermen mending
+their nets, and men sitting counting their money, and I
+saw Jesus come walking along, and heard him say to this
+one and that one, 'Leave all and follow me,' and it seemed
+that the moment he spoke they did it, and then he came
+to me, and I felt his eyes in my very soul, and he said,
+'Wilt <i>thou</i> leave <i>all</i> and follow me?' I cannot tell now
+what a pain I felt&mdash;what an anguish. I wanted to leave
+all, but my heart felt as if it were tied and woven with a
+thousand threads, and while I waited he seemed to fade
+away, and I found myself then alone and unhappy, wishing
+that I could, and mourning that I had not; and then something
+shone out warm like the sun, and I looked up, and
+he stood there looking pitifully, and he said again just as
+he did before, 'Wilt thou leave all and follow me?'
+Every word was so gentle and full of pity, and I looked
+into his eyes and could not look away; they drew me, they
+warmed me, and I felt a strange, wonderful sense of his
+greatness and sweetness. It seemed as if I felt within me
+cord after cord breaking, I felt so free, so happy; and I
+said, 'I will, I will, with all my heart;' and I woke then,
+so happy, so sure of God's love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I saw so clearly how his love is in everything, and
+these words came into my mind as if an angel had spoken
+them, 'God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.'
+Since then I cannot be unhappy. I was so myself only this
+morning, and now I wonder that any one can have a grief
+when God is so loving and good, and cares so sweetly for
+us all. Why, Sally, if I could see Christ and hear him
+speak, I could not be more certain that he will make this
+sorrow such a blessing to us all that we shall never be able
+to thank him enough for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Mara," said Sally, sighing deeply, while her cheek
+was wet with tears, "it is beautiful to hear you talk; but
+there is one that I am sure will not and cannot feel so."</p>
+
+<p>"God will care for him," said Mara; "oh, I am sure of
+it; He is love itself, and He values his love in us, and He
+never, never would have brought such a trial, if it had not
+been the true and only way to our best good. We shall
+not shed one needless tear. Yes, if God loved us so that
+he spared not his own Son, he will surely give us all the
+good here that we possibly can have without risking our
+eternal happiness."</p>
+
+<p>"You are writing to Moses, now?" said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am answering his letter; it is so full of spirit
+and life and hope&mdash;but all hope in this world&mdash;all, all
+earthly, as much as if there was no God and no world to
+come. Sally, perhaps our Father saw that I could not
+have strength to live with him and keep my faith. I
+should be drawn by him earthward instead of drawing him
+heavenward; and so this is in mercy to us both."</p>
+
+<p>"And are you telling him the whole truth, Mara?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not all, no," said Mara; "he could not bear it at once.
+I only tell him that my health is failing, and that my
+friends are seriously alarmed, and then I speak as if it were
+doubtful, in my mind, what the result might be."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you can make him feel as you do.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+Moses Pennel has a tremendous will, and he never yielded
+to any one. You bend, Mara, like the little blue harebells,
+and so the storm goes over you; but he will stand
+up against it, and it will wrench and shatter him. I am
+afraid, instead of making him better, it will only make him
+bitter and rebellious."</p>
+
+<p>"He has a Father in heaven who knows how to care for
+him," said Mara. "I am persuaded&mdash;I feel certain that
+he will be blessed in the end; not perhaps in the time and
+way I should have chosen, but in the end. I have always
+felt that he was mine, ever since he came a little shipwrecked
+boy to me&mdash;a little girl. And now I have given
+him up to his Saviour and my Saviour&mdash;to his God and
+my God&mdash;and I am perfectly at peace. All will be well."</p>
+
+<p>Mara spoke with a look of such solemn, bright assurance
+as made her, in the dusky, golden twilight, seem like some
+serene angel sent down to comfort, rather than a hapless
+mortal just wrenched from life and hope.</p>
+
+<p>Sally rose up and kissed her silently. "Mara," she
+said, "I shall come to-morrow to see what I can do for
+you. I will not interrupt you now. Good-by, dear."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>There are no doubt many, who have followed this history
+so long as it danced like a gay little boat over sunny
+waters, and who would have followed it gayly to the end,
+had it closed with ringing of marriage-bells, who turn from
+it indignantly, when they see that its course runs through
+the dark valley. This, they say, is an imposition, a
+trick upon our feelings. We want to read only stories
+which end in joy and prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>But have we then settled it in our own mind that there
+is no such thing as a fortunate issue in a history which
+does not terminate in the way of earthly success and good
+fortune? Are we Christians or heathen? It is now eighteen
+centuries since, as we hold, the "highly favored among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
+women" was pronounced to be one whose earthly hopes
+were all cut off in the blossom,&mdash;whose noblest and dearest
+in the morning of his days went down into the shadows
+of death.</p>
+
+<p>Was Mary the highly-favored among women, and was
+Jesus indeed the blessed,&mdash;or was the angel mistaken?
+If they were these, if we are Christians, it ought to be a
+settled and established habit of our souls to regard something
+else as prosperity than worldly success and happy
+marriages. That life is a success which, like the life of
+Jesus, in its beginning, middle, and close, has borne a
+perfect witness to the truth and the highest form of truth.
+It is true that God has given to us, and inwoven in our
+nature a desire for a perfection and completeness made
+manifest to our senses in this mortal life. To see the
+daughter bloom into youth and womanhood, the son into
+manhood, to see them marry and become themselves parents,
+and gradually ripen and develop in the maturities of middle
+life, gradually wear into a sunny autumn, and so be gathered
+in fullness of time to their fathers,&mdash;such, one says,
+is the programme which God has made us to desire; such
+the ideal of happiness which he has interwoven with our
+nerves, and for which our heart and our flesh crieth out;
+to which every stroke of a knell is a violence, and every
+thought of an early death is an abhorrence.</p>
+
+<p>But the life of Christ and his mother sets the foot on
+this lower ideal of happiness, and teaches us that there is
+something higher. His ministry began with declaring,
+"Blessed are they that mourn." It has been well said
+that prosperity was the blessing of the Old Testament, and
+adversity of the New. Christ came to show us a nobler
+style of living and bearing; and so far as he had a personal
+and earthly life, he buried it as a corner-stone on which to
+erect a new immortal style of architecture.</p>
+
+<p>Of his own, he had nothing, neither houses, nor lands,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+nor family ties, nor human hopes, nor earthly sphere of
+success; and as a human life, it was all a sacrifice and a
+defeat. He was rejected by his countrymen, whom the
+passionate anguish of his love and the unwearied devotion
+of his life could not save from an awful doom. He was
+betrayed by weak friends, prevailed against by slanderers,
+overwhelmed with an ignominious death in the morning of
+youth, and his mother stood by his cross, and she was the
+only woman whom God ever called highly favored in this
+world.</p>
+
+<p>This, then, is the great and perfect ideal of what God
+honors. Christ speaks of himself as bread to be eaten,&mdash;bread,
+simple, humble, unpretending, vitally necessary to
+human life, made by the bruising and grinding of the grain,
+unostentatiously having no life or worth of its own except
+as it is absorbed into the life of others and lives in them.
+We wished in this history to speak of a class of lives
+formed on the model of Christ, and like his, obscure and
+unpretending, like his, seeming to end in darkness and
+defeat, but which yet have this preciousness and value that
+the dear saints who live them come nearest in their mission
+to the mission of Jesus. They are made, not for a career
+and history of their own, but to be bread of life to others.
+In every household or house have been some of these, and
+if we look on their lives and deaths with the unbaptized
+eyes of nature, we shall see only most mournful and unaccountable
+failure, when, if we could look with the eye
+of faith, we should see that their living and dying has been
+bread of life to those they left behind. Fairest of these,
+and least developed, are the holy innocents who come into
+our households to smile with the smile of angels, who sleep
+in our bosoms, and win us with the softness of tender little
+hands, and pass away like the lamb that was slain before
+they have ever learned the speech of mortals. Not vain
+are even these silent lives of Christ's lambs, whom many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+an earth-bound heart has been roused to follow when the
+Shepherd bore them to the higher pastures. And so the
+daughter who died so early, whose wedding-bells were
+never rung except in heaven,&mdash;the son who had no career
+of ambition or a manly duty except among the angels,&mdash;the
+patient sufferers, whose only lot on earth seemed to be
+to endure, whose life bled away drop by drop in the shadows
+of the sick-room&mdash;all these are among those whose
+life was like Christ's in that they were made, not for themselves,
+but to become bread to us.</p>
+
+<p>It is expedient for us that they go away. Like their
+Lord, they come to suffer, and to die; they take part in
+his sacrifice; their life is incomplete without their death,
+and not till they are gone away does the Comforter fully
+come to us.</p>
+
+<p>It is a beautiful legend which one sees often represented
+in the churches of Europe, that when the grave of the
+mother of Jesus was opened, it was found full of blossoming
+lilies,&mdash;fit emblem of the thousand flowers of holy
+thought and purpose which spring up in our hearts from
+the memory of our sainted dead.</p>
+
+<p>Cannot many, who read these lines, bethink them of
+such rooms that have been the most cheerful places in the
+family,&mdash;when the heart of the smitten one seemed the
+band that bound all the rest together,&mdash;and have there not
+been dying hours which shed such a joy and radiance on
+all around, that it was long before the mourners remembered
+to mourn? Is it not a misuse of words to call such
+a heavenly translation <i>death</i>? and to call most things that
+are lived out on this earth <i>life</i>?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAND OF BEULAH</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>It is now about a month after the conversation which
+we have recorded, and during that time the process which
+was to loose from this present life had been going on in
+Mara with a soft, insensible, but steady power. When
+she ceased to make efforts beyond her strength, and allowed
+herself that languor and repose which nature claimed, all
+around her soon became aware how her strength was failing;
+and yet a cheerful repose seemed to hallow the atmosphere
+around her. The sight of her every day in family
+worship, sitting by in such tender tranquillity, with such
+a smile on her face, seemed like a present inspiration. And
+though the aged pair knew that she was no more for this
+world, yet she was comforting and inspiring to their view
+as the angel who of old rolled back the stone from the sepulchre
+and sat upon it. They saw in her eyes, not death,
+but the solemn victory which Christ gives over death.</p>
+
+<p>Bunyan has no more lovely poem than the image he
+gives of that land of pleasant waiting which borders the
+river of death, where the chosen of the Lord repose, while
+shining messengers, constantly passing and repassing, bear
+tidings from the celestial shore, opening a way between
+earth and heaven. It was so, that through the very
+thought of Mara an influence of tenderness and tranquillity
+passed through the whole neighborhood, keeping hearts
+fresh with sympathy, and causing thought and conversation
+to rest on those bright mysteries of eternal joy which were
+reflected on her face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sally Kittridge was almost a constant inmate of the
+brown house, ever ready in watching and waiting; and one
+only needed to mark the expression of her face to feel that
+a holy charm was silently working upon her higher and
+spiritual nature. Those great, dark, sparkling eyes that
+once seemed to express only the brightness of animal vivacity,
+and glittered like a brook in unsympathetic gayety,
+had in them now mysterious depths, and tender, fleeting
+shadows, and the very tone of her voice had a subdued
+tremor. The capricious elf, the tricksy sprite, was melting
+away in the immortal soul, and the deep pathetic power
+of a noble heart was being born. Some influence sprung
+of sorrow is necessary always to perfect beauty in womanly
+nature. We feel its absence in many whose sparkling wit
+and high spirits give grace and vivacity to life, but in
+whom we vainly seek for some spot of quiet tenderness
+and sympathetic repose. Sally was, ignorantly to herself,
+changing in the expression of her face and the tone of her
+character, as she ministered in the daily wants which sickness
+brings in a simple household.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the neighborhood, the shelves and larder
+of Mrs. Pennel were constantly crowded with the tributes
+which one or another sent in for the invalid. There was
+jelly of Iceland moss sent across by Miss Emily, and
+brought by Mr. Sewell, whose calls were almost daily.
+There were custards and preserves, and every form of cake
+and other confections in which the housekeeping talent of
+the neighbors delighted, and which were sent in under the
+old superstition that sick people must be kept eating at all
+hazards.</p>
+
+<p>At church, Sunday after Sunday, the simple note requested
+the prayers of the church and congregation for
+Mara Lincoln, who was, as the note phrased it, drawing
+near her end, that she and all concerned might be prepared
+for the great and last change. One familiar with New<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+England customs must have remembered with what a plaintive
+power the reading of such a note, from Sunday to
+Sunday, has drawn the thoughts and sympathies of a congregation
+to some chamber of sickness; and in a village
+church, where every individual is known from childhood
+to every other, the power of this simple custom is still
+greater.</p>
+
+<p>Then the prayers of the minister would dwell on the
+case, and thanks would be rendered to God for the great
+light and peace with which he had deigned to visit his
+young handmaid; and then would follow a prayer that
+when these sad tidings should reach a distant friend who
+had gone down to do business on the great waters, they
+might be sanctified to his spiritual and everlasting good.
+Then on Sunday noons, as the people ate their dinners together
+in a room adjoining the church, all that she said and
+did was talked over and over,&mdash;how quickly she had
+gained the victory of submission, the peace of a will united
+with God's, mixed with harmless gossip of the sick chamber,&mdash;as
+to what she ate and how she slept, and who
+had sent her gruel with raisins in it, and who jelly with
+wine, and how she had praised this and eaten that twice
+with a relish, but how the other had seemed to disagree
+with her. Thereafter would come scraps of nursing information,
+recipes against coughing, specifics against short
+breath, speculations about watchers, how soon she would
+need them, and long legends of other death-beds where
+the fear of death had been slain by the power of an endless
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Yet through all the gossip, and through much that
+might have been called at other times commonplace cant of
+religion, there was spread a tender earnestness, and the
+whole air seemed to be enchanted with the fragrance of
+that fading rose. Each one spoke more gently, more lovingly
+to each, for the thought of her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was now a bright September morning, and the early
+frosts had changed the maples in the pine-woods to scarlet,
+and touched the white birches with gold, when one morning
+Miss Roxy presented herself at an early hour at Captain
+Kittridge's.</p>
+
+<p>They were at breakfast, and Sally was dispensing the
+tea at the head of the table, Mrs. Kittridge having been
+prevailed on to abdicate in her favor.</p>
+
+<p>"It is such a fine morning," she said, looking out at the
+window, which showed a waveless expanse of ocean. "I
+do hope Mara has had a good night."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a-goin' to make her some jelly this very forenoon,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge. "Aunt Roxy was a-tellin'
+me yesterday that she was a-goin' down to stay at the
+house regular, for she needed so much done now."</p>
+
+<p>"It's 'most an amazin' thing we don't hear from Moses
+Pennel," said Captain Kittridge. "If he don't make haste,
+he may never see her."</p>
+
+<p>"There's Aunt Roxy at this minute," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the door opened at this moment, and Aunt
+Roxy entered with a little blue bandbox and a bundle tied
+up in a checked handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Aunt Roxy," said Mrs. Kittridge, "you are on
+your way, are you? Do sit down, right here, and get a
+cup of strong tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Aunt Roxy, "but Ruey gave me a
+humming cup before I came away."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Roxy, have they heard anything from Moses?"
+said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"No, father, I know they haven't," said Sally. "Mara
+has written to him, and so has Mr. Sewell, but it is very
+uncertain whether he ever got the letters."</p>
+
+<p>"It's most time to be a-lookin' for him home," said the
+Captain. "I shouldn't be surprised to see him any day."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Sally, who sat where she could see from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
+the window, gave a sudden start and a half scream, and
+rising from the table, darted first to the window and then
+to the door, whence she rushed out eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what now?" said the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I don't know what's come over her," said
+Mrs. Kittridge, rising to look out.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Aunt Roxy, do look; I believe to my soul that
+ar's Moses Pennel!"</p>
+
+<p>And so it was. He met Sally, as she ran out, with a
+gloomy brow and scarcely a look even of recognition; but
+he seized her hand and wrung it in the stress of his emotion
+so that she almost screamed with the pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Sally," he said, "tell me the truth. I dared
+not go home without I knew. Those gossiping, lying
+reports are always exaggerated. They are dreadful exaggerations,&mdash;they
+frighten a sick person into the grave;
+but you have good sense and a hopeful, cheerful temper,&mdash;you
+must see and know how things are. Mara is not
+so very&mdash;very"&mdash;He held Sally's hand and looked at
+her with a burning eagerness. "Say, what do you think
+of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"We all think that we cannot long keep her with us,"
+said Sally. "And oh, Moses, I am so glad you have
+come."</p>
+
+<p>"It's false,&mdash;it must be false," he said, violently;
+"nothing is more deceptive than these ideas that doctors
+and nurses pile on when a sensitive person is going down
+a little. I know Mara; everything depends on the mind
+with her. I shall wake her up out of this dream. She is
+not to die. She shall not die,&mdash;I come to save her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you could!" said Sally, mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It cannot be; it is not to be," he said again, as if to
+convince himself. "No such thing is to be thought of.
+Tell me, Sally, have you tried to keep up the cheerful side
+of things to her,&mdash;have you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you cannot tell, Moses, how it is, unless you see
+her. She is cheerful, happy; the only really joyous one
+among us."</p>
+
+<p>"Cheerful! joyous! happy! She does not believe, then,
+these frightful things? I thought she would keep up; she
+is a brave little thing."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Moses, she does believe. She has given up all
+hope of life,&mdash;all wish to live; and oh, she is so lovely,&mdash;so
+sweet,&mdash;so dear."</p>
+
+<p>Sally covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
+Moses stood still, looking at her a moment in a confused
+way, and then he answered,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Come, get your bonnet, Sally, and go with me. You
+must go in and tell them; tell her that I am come, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will," said Sally, as she ran quickly back to the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Moses stood listlessly looking after her. A moment
+after she came out of the door again, and Miss Roxy behind.
+Sally hurried up to Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's that black old raven going?" said Moses, in
+a low voice, looking back on Miss Roxy, who stood on the
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>"What, Aunt Roxy?" said Sally; "why, she's going
+up to nurse Mara, and take care of her. Mrs. Pennel is
+so old and infirm she needs somebody to depend on."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't bear her," said Moses. "I always think of
+sick-rooms and coffins and a stifling smell of camphor when
+I see her. I never could endure her. She's an old harpy
+going to carry off my dove."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Moses, you must <i>not</i> talk so. She loves Mara
+dearly, the poor old soul, and Mara loves her, and there is
+no earthly thing she would not do for her. And she knows
+what to do for sickness better than you or I. I have
+found out one thing, that it isn't mere love and good-will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+that is needed in a sick-room; it needs knowledge and
+experience."</p>
+
+<p>Moses assented in gloomy silence, and they walked on
+together the way that they had so often taken laughing and
+chatting. When they came within sight of the house,
+Moses said,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Here she came running to meet us; do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"I was never half worthy of her. I never said half
+what I ought to," he added. "She <i>must</i> live! I must
+have one more chance."</p>
+
+<p>When they came up to the house, Zephaniah Pennel was
+sitting in the door, with his gray head bent over the leaves
+of the great family Bible.</p>
+
+<p>He rose up at their coming, and with that suppression
+of all external signs of feeling for which the New Englander
+is remarkable, simply shook the hand of Moses,
+saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my boy, we are glad you have come."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pennel, who was busied in some domestic work in
+the back part of the kitchen, turned away and hid her face
+in her apron when she saw him. There fell a great silence
+among them, in the midst of which the old clock ticked
+loudly and importunately, like the inevitable approach of
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go up and see her, and get her ready," said
+Sally, in a whisper to Moses. "I'll come and call you."</p>
+
+<p>Moses sat down and looked around on the old familiar
+scene; there was the great fireplace where, in their childish
+days, they had sat together winter nights,&mdash;her fair, spiritual
+face enlivened by the blaze, while she knit and looked
+thoughtfully into the coals; there she had played checkers,
+or fox and geese, with him; or studied with him the Latin
+lessons; or sat by, grave and thoughtful, hemming his toy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>ship
+sails, while he cut the moulds for his anchors, or tried
+experiments on pulleys; and in all these years he could
+not remember one selfish action,&mdash;one unlovely word,&mdash;and
+he thought to himself, "I hoped to possess this angel
+as a mortal wife! God forgive my presumption."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MEETING</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>Sally found Mara sitting in an easy-chair that had been
+sent to her by the provident love of Miss Emily. It was
+wheeled in front of her room window, from whence she
+could look out upon the wide expanse of the ocean. It
+was a gloriously bright, calm morning, and the water lay
+clear and still, with scarce a ripple, to the far distant pearly
+horizon. She seemed to be looking at it in a kind of calm
+ecstasy, and murmuring the words of a hymn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Nor wreck nor ruin there is seen,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There not a wave of trouble rolls,</span><br />
+But the bright rainbow round the throne<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peals endless peace to all their souls."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Sally came softly behind her on tiptoe to kiss her.
+"Good-morning, dear, how do you find yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite well," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mara, is not there anything you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"There might be many things; but His will is mine."</p>
+
+<p>"You want to see Moses?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much; but I shall see him as soon as it is best
+for us both."</p>
+
+<p>"Mara,&mdash;he is come."</p>
+
+<p>The quick blood flushed over the pale, transparent face
+as a virgin glacier flushes at sunrise, and she looked up
+eagerly. "Come!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is below-stairs wanting to see you."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed about to speak eagerly, and then checked
+herself and mused a moment. "Poor, poor boy!" she
+said. "Yes, Sally, let him come at once."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were a few dazzling, dreamy minutes when Moses
+first held that frail form in his arms, which but for its
+tender, mortal warmth, might have seemed to him a spirit.
+It was no spirit, but a woman whose heart he could feel
+thrilling against his own; who seemed to him like some
+frail, fluttering bird; but somehow, as he looked into her
+clear, transparent face, and pressed her thin little hands in
+his, the conviction stole over him overpoweringly that she
+was indeed fading away and going from him,&mdash;drawn from
+him by that mysterious, irresistible power against which
+human strength, even in the strongest, has no chance.</p>
+
+<p>It is dreadful to a strong man who has felt the influence
+of his strength,&mdash;who has always been ready with a resource
+for every emergency, and a weapon for every battle,&mdash;when
+first he meets that mighty invisible power by
+which a beloved life&mdash;a life he would give his own blood
+to save&mdash;melts and dissolves like smoke before his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara, Mara," he groaned, "this is too dreadful,
+too cruel; it is cruel."</p>
+
+<p>"You will think so at first, but not always," she said,
+soothingly. "You will live to see a joy come out of this
+sorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Never, Mara, never. I cannot believe that kind of
+talk. I see no love, no mercy in it. Of course, if there
+is any life after death you will be happy; if there is a
+heaven you will be there; but can this dim, unsubstantial,
+cloudy prospect make you happy in leaving me and
+giving up one's lover? Oh, Mara, you cannot love as I
+do, or you could not"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Moses, I have suffered,&mdash;oh, very, very much. It
+was many months ago when I first thought that I must
+give everything up,&mdash;when I thought that we must part;
+but Christ helped me; he showed me his wonderful love,&mdash;the
+love that surrounds us all our life, that follows us
+in all our wanderings, and sustains us in all our weak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>nesses,&mdash;and
+then I felt that whatever He wills for us is
+in love; oh, believe it,&mdash;believe it for my sake, for your
+own."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I cannot, I cannot," said Moses; but as he looked
+at the bright, pale face, and felt how the tempest of his
+feelings shook the frail form, he checked himself. "I do
+wrong to agitate you so, Mara. I will try to be calm."</p>
+
+<p>"And to pray?" she said, beseechingly.</p>
+
+<p>He shut his lips in gloomy silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I have prayed ever since I got your first letter, and I
+see it does no good," he answered. "Our prayers cannot
+alter fate."</p>
+
+<p>"Fate! there is no fate," she answered; "there is a
+strong and loving Father who guides the way, though we
+know it not. We cannot resist His will; but it is all love,&mdash;pure,
+pure love."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Sally came softly into the room. A
+gentle air of womanly authority seemed to express itself in
+that once gay and giddy face, at which Moses, in the midst
+of his misery, marveled.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not stay any longer now," she said; "it
+would be too much for her strength; this is enough for
+this morning."</p>
+
+<p>Moses turned away, and silently left the room, and Sally
+said to Mara,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You must lie down now, and rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Sally," said Mara, "promise me one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mara; of course I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Promise to love him and care for him when I am gone;
+he will be so lonely."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do all I can, Mara," said Sally, soothingly; "so
+now you must take a little wine and lie down. You know
+what you have so often said, that all will yet be well with
+him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know it, I am sure," said Mara, "but oh, his
+sorrow shook my very heart."</p>
+
+<p>"You must not talk another word about it," said Sally,
+peremptorily, "Do you know Aunt Roxy is coming to
+see you? I see her out of the window this very moment."</p>
+
+<p>And Sally assisted to lay her friend on the bed, and
+then, administering a stimulant, she drew down the curtains,
+and, sitting beside her, began repeating, in a soft
+monotonous tone, the words of a favorite hymn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+"The Lord my shepherd is,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I shall be well supplied;</span><br />
+Since He is mine, and I am His,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">What can I want beside?"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Before she had finished, Mara was asleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI</h2>
+
+<h3>CONSOLATION</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>Moses came down from the chamber of Mara in a tempest
+of contending emotions. He had all that constitutional
+horror of death and the spiritual world which is an
+attribute of some particularly strong and well-endowed physical
+natures, and he had all that instinctive resistance of
+the will which such natures offer to anything which strikes
+athwart their cherished hopes and plans. To be wrenched
+suddenly from the sphere of an earthly life and made to
+confront the unclosed doors of a spiritual world on the
+behalf of the one dearest to him, was to him a dreary horror
+uncheered by one filial belief in God. He felt, furthermore,
+that blind animal irritation which assails one under
+a sudden blow, whether of the body or of the soul,&mdash;an
+anguish of resistance, a vague blind anger.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sewell was sitting in the kitchen,&mdash;he had called
+to see Mara, and waited for the close of the interview
+above. He rose and offered his hand to Moses, who took
+it in gloomy silence, without a smile or word.</p>
+
+<p>"'My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord,'"
+said Mr. Sewell.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot bear that sort of thing," said Moses abruptly,
+and almost fiercely. "I beg your pardon, sir, but it irritates
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not believe that afflictions are sent for our
+improvement?" said Mr. Sewell.</p>
+
+<p>"No! how can I? What improvement will there be to
+me in taking from me the angel who guided me to all good,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+and kept me from all evil; the one pure motive and holy
+influence of my life? If you call this the chastening of a
+loving father, I must say it looks more to me like the
+caprice of an evil spirit."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you ever thanked the God of your life for this
+gift, or felt your dependence on him to keep it? Have
+you not blindly idolized the creature and forgotten Him
+who gave it?" said Mr. Sewell.</p>
+
+<p>Moses was silent a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot believe there is a God," he said. "Since this
+fear came on me I have prayed,&mdash;yes, and humbled myself;
+for I know I have not always been what I ought. I
+promised if he would grant me this one thing, I would seek
+him in future; but it did no good,&mdash;it's of no use to
+pray. I would have been good in this way, if she might
+be spared, and I cannot in any other."</p>
+
+<p>"My son, our Lord and Master will have no such conditions
+from us," said Mr. Sewell. "We must submit
+unconditionally. <i>She</i> has done it, and her peace is as firm
+as the everlasting hills. God's will is a great current that
+flows in spite of us; if we go with it, it carries us to
+endless rest,&mdash;if we resist, we only wear our lives out in
+useless struggles."</p>
+
+<p>Moses stood a moment in silence, and then, turning away
+without a word, hurried from the house. He strode along
+the high rocky bluff, through tangled junipers and pine
+thickets, till he came above the rocky cove which had been
+his favorite retreat on so many occasions. He swung himself
+down over the cliffs into the grotto, where, shut in by
+the high tide, he felt himself alone. There he had read
+Mr. Sewell's letter, and dreamed vain dreams of wealth
+and worldly success, now all to him so void. He felt to-day,
+as he sat there and watched the ships go by, how
+utterly nothing all the wealth in the world was, in the
+loss of that one heart. Unconsciously, even to himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+sorrow was doing her ennobling ministry within him, melting
+off in her fierce fires trivial ambitions and low desires,
+and making him feel the sole worth and value of love.
+That which in other days had seemed only as one good
+thing among many now seemed the <i>only</i> thing in life.
+And he who has learned the paramount value of love has
+taken one step from an earthly to a spiritual existence.</p>
+
+<p>But as he lay there on the pebbly shore, hour after hour
+glided by, his whole past life lived itself over to his eye;
+he saw a thousand actions, he heard a thousand words,
+whose beauty and significance never came to him till now.
+And alas! he saw so many when, on his part, the responsive
+word that should have been spoken, and the deed that
+should have been done, was forever wanting. He had all
+his life carried within him a vague consciousness that he
+had not been to Mara what he should have been, but he
+had hoped to make amends for all in that future which lay
+before him,&mdash;that future now, alas! dissolving and fading
+away like the white cloud-islands which the wind was
+drifting from the sky. A voice seemed saying in his ears,
+"Ye know that when he would have inherited a blessing
+he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance,
+though he sought it carefully with tears." Something that
+he had never felt before struck him as appalling in the
+awful fixedness of all past deeds and words,&mdash;the unkind
+words once said, which no tears could unsay,&mdash;the kind
+ones suppressed, to which no agony of wishfulness could
+give a past reality. There were particular times in their
+past history that he remembered so vividly, when he saw
+her so clearly,&mdash;doing some little thing for him, and shyly
+watching for the word of acknowledgment, which he did
+not give. Some willful wayward demon withheld him at
+the moment, and the light on the little wishful face slowly
+faded. True, all had been a thousand times forgiven and
+forgotten between them, but it is the ministry of these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>
+great vital hours of sorrow to teach us that nothing in the
+soul's history ever dies or is forgotten, and when the beloved
+one lies stricken and ready to pass away, comes the
+judgment-day of love, and all the dead moments of the
+past arise and live again.</p>
+
+<p>He lay there musing and dreaming till the sun grew low
+in the afternoon sky, and the tide that isolated the little
+grotto had gone far out into the ocean, leaving long, low
+reefs of sunken rocks, all matted and tangled with the yellow
+hair of the seaweed, with little crystal pools of salt
+water between. He heard the sound of approaching footsteps,
+and Captain Kittridge came slowly picking his way
+round among the shingle and pebbles.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', now, I thought I'd find ye here!" he said: "I
+kind o' thought I wanted to see ye,&mdash;ye see."</p>
+
+<p>Moses looked up half moody, half astonished, while the
+Captain seated himself upon a fragment of rock and began
+brushing the knees of his trousers industriously, until soon
+the tears rained down from his eyes upon his dry withered
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', now ye see, I can't help it, darned if I can;
+knowed her ever since she's that high. She's done me
+good, she has. Mis' Kittridge has been pretty faithful.
+I've had folks here and there talk to me consid'able, but
+Lord bless you, I never had nothin' go to my heart like
+this 'ere&mdash;Why to look on her there couldn't nobody
+doubt but what there was somethin' in religion. You
+never knew half what she did for you, Moses Pennel, you
+didn't know that the night you was off down to the long
+cove with Skipper Atkinson, that 'ere blessed child was
+a-follerin' you, but she was, and she come to me next day
+to get me to do somethin' for you. That was how your
+grand'ther and I got ye off to sea so quick, and she such
+a little thing then; that ar child was the savin' of ye,
+Moses Pennel."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Moses hid his head in his hands with a sort of groan.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', wal'," said the Captain, "I don't wonder now
+ye feel so,&mdash;I don't see how ye can stan' it no ways&mdash;only
+by thinkin' o' where she's goin' to&mdash;Them ar
+bells in the Celestial City must all be a-ringin' for her,&mdash;there'll
+be joy that side o' the river I reckon, when she
+gets acrost. If she'd jest leave me a hem o' her garment
+to get in by, I'd be glad; but she was one o' the sort that
+was jest <i>made</i> to go to heaven. She only stopped a few
+days in our world, like the robins when they's goin' south;
+but there'll be a good many fust and last that'll get into
+the kingdom for love of her. She never said much to me,
+but she kind o' drew me. Ef ever I should get in there,
+it'll be <i>she</i> led me. But come, now, Moses, ye oughtn't
+fur to be a-settin' here catchin' cold&mdash;jest come round to
+our house and let Sally gin you a warm cup o' tea&mdash;do
+come, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Captain," said Moses, "but I will go
+home; I must see her again to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', don't let her see you grieve too much, ye know;
+we must be a little sort o' manly, ye know, 'cause her
+body's weak, if her heart is strong."</p>
+
+<p>Now Moses was in a mood of dry, proud, fierce, self-consuming
+sorrow, least likely to open his heart or seek
+sympathy from any one; and no friend or acquaintance
+would probably have dared to intrude on his grief. But
+there are moods of the mind which cannot be touched or
+handled by one on an equal level with us that yield at
+once to the sympathy of something below. A dog who
+comes with his great honest, sorrowful face and lays his
+mute paw of inquiry on your knee, will sometimes open
+floodgates of sober feeling, that have remained closed to
+every human touch;&mdash;the dumb simplicity and ignorance
+of his sympathy makes it irresistible. In like manner the
+downright grief of the good-natured old Captain, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+child-like ignorance with which he ventured upon a ministry
+of consolation from which a more cultivated person
+would have shrunk away, were irresistibly touching.
+Moses grasped the dry, withered hand and said, "Thank
+you, thank you, Captain Kittridge; you're a true friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal', I be, that's a fact, Moses. Lord bless me, I
+ain't no great&mdash;I ain't nobody&mdash;I'm jest an old last-year's
+mullein-stalk in the Lord's vineyard; but that 'ere
+blessed little thing allers had a good word for me. She
+gave me a hymn-book and marked some hymns in it, and
+read 'em to me herself, and her voice was jest as sweet as
+the sea of a warm evening. Them hymns come to me kind
+o' powerful when I'm at my work planin' and sawin'.
+Mis' Kittridge, she allers talks to me as ef I was a terrible
+sinner; and I suppose I be, but this 'ere blessed child,
+she's so kind o' good and innocent, she thinks I'm good;
+kind o' takes it for granted I'm one o' the Lord's people,
+ye know. It kind o' makes me want to be, ye know."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain here produced from his coat-pocket a much
+worn hymn-book, and showed Moses where leaves were
+folded down. "Now here's this 'ere," he said; "you get
+her to say it to you," he added, pointing to the well-known
+sacred idyl which has refreshed so many hearts:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"There is a land of pure delight<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where saints immortal reign;</span><br />
+Eternal day excludes the night,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pleasures banish pain.</span><br />
+<br />
+"There everlasting spring abides,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And never-fading flowers;</span><br />
+Death like a narrow sea divides<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This happy land from ours."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Now that ar beats everything," said the Captain, "and
+we must kind o' think of it for her, 'cause she's goin' to
+see all that, and ef it's our loss it's her gain, ye know."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Moses; "our grief is selfish."</p>
+
+<p>"Jest so. Wal', we're selfish critters, we be," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+the Captain; "but arter all, 't ain't as ef we was heathen
+and didn't know where they was a-goin' to. We jest
+ought to be a-lookin' about and tryin' to foller 'em, ye
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I do know," said Moses; "it's easy to say,
+but hard to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But law, man, she prays for you; she did years and
+years ago, when you was a boy and she a girl. You know
+it tells in the Revelations how the angels has golden vials
+full of odors which are the prayers of saints. I tell ye
+Moses, you ought to get into heaven, if no one else does.
+I expect you are pretty well known among the angels by
+this time. I tell ye what 'tis, Moses, fellers think it a
+mighty pretty thing to be a-steppin' high, and a-sayin'
+they don't believe the Bible, and all that ar, so long as the
+world goes well. This 'ere old Bible&mdash;why it's jest like
+yer mother,&mdash;ye rove and ramble, and cut up round the
+world without her a spell, and mebbe think the old woman
+ain't so fashionable as some; but when sickness and sorrow
+comes, why, there ain't nothin' else to go back to. Is
+there, now?"</p>
+
+<p>Moses did not answer, but he shook the hand of the
+Captain and turned away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII</h2>
+
+<h3>LAST WORDS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>The setting sun gleamed in at the window of Mara's
+chamber, tinted with rose and violet hues from a great
+cloud-castle that lay upon the smooth ocean over against
+the window. Mara was lying upon the bed, but she raised
+herself upon her elbow to look out.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Aunt Roxy," she said, "raise me up and put the
+pillows behind me, so that I can see out&mdash;it is splendid."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Roxy came and arranged the pillows, and lifted
+the girl with her long, strong arms, then stooping over her
+a moment she finished her arrangements by softly smoothing
+the hair from her forehead with a caressing movement
+most unlike her usual precise business-like proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, looking up with
+a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Roxy made a strange wry face, which caused her
+to look harder than usual. She was choked with tenderness,
+and had only this uncomely way of showing it.</p>
+
+<p>"Law now, Mara, I don't see how ye can; I ain't nothin'
+but an old burdock-bush; love ain't for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes it is too," said Mara, drawing her down and kissing
+her withered cheek, "and you sha'n't call yourself an
+old burdock. God sees that you are beautiful, and in the
+resurrection everybody will see it."</p>
+
+<p>"I was always homely as an owl," said Miss Roxy, unconsciously
+speaking out what had lain like a stone at the
+bottom of even her sensible heart. "I always had sense to
+know it, and knew my sphere. Homely folks would like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+to say pretty things, and to have pretty things said to them,
+but they never do. I made up my mind pretty early that
+my part in the vineyard was to have hard work and no
+posies."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you will have all the more in heaven; I love you
+dearly, and I like your looks, too. You look kind and
+true and good, and that's beauty in the country where we
+are going."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy sprang up quickly from the bed, and turning
+her back began to arrange the bottles on the table with
+great zeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Moses come in yet?" said Mara.</p>
+
+<p>"No, there ain't nobody seen a thing of him since he
+went out this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy!" said Mara, "it is too hard upon him.
+Aunt Roxy, please pick some roses off the bush from under
+the window and put in the vases; let's have the room as
+sweet and cheerful as we can. I hope God will let me
+live long enough to comfort him. It is not so very terrible,
+if one would only think so, to cross that river. All
+looks so bright to me now that I have forgotten how sorrow
+seemed. Poor Moses! he will have a hard struggle,
+but he will get the victory, too. I am very weak to-night,
+but to-morrow I shall feel better, and I shall sit up, and
+perhaps I can paint a little on that flower I was doing for
+him. We will not have things look sickly or deathly.
+There, Aunt Roxy, he has come in; I hear his step."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't hear it," said Miss Roxy, surprised at the
+acute senses which sickness had etherealized to an almost
+spirit-like intensity. "Shall I call him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do," said Mara. "He can sit with me a little
+while to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The light in the room was a strange dusky mingling of
+gold and gloom, when Moses stole softly in. The great
+cloud-castle that a little while since had glowed like living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span>
+gold from turret and battlement, now dim, changed for the
+most part to a sombre gray, enlivened with a dull glow of
+crimson; but there was still a golden light where the sun
+had sunk into the sea. Moses saw the little thin hand
+stretched out to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," she said; "it has been such a beautiful
+sunset. Did you notice it?"</p>
+
+<p>He sat down by the bed, leaning his forehead on his
+hand, but saying nothing.</p>
+
+<p>She drew her fingers through his dark hair. "I am so
+glad to see you," she said. "It is such a comfort to me
+that you have come; and I hope it will be to you. You
+know I shall be better to-morrow than I am to-night, and
+I hope we shall have some pleasant days together yet. We
+mustn't reject what little we may have, because it cannot
+be more."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara," said Moses, "I would give my life, if I
+could take back the past. I have never been worthy of
+you; never knew your worth; never made you happy.
+You always lived for me, and I lived for myself. I deserve
+to lose you, but it is none the less bitter."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say lose. Why must you? I cannot think of
+losing you. I know I shall not. God has given you to
+me. You will come to me and be mine at last. I feel
+sure of it."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know me," said Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"Christ does, though," she said; "and He has promised
+to care for you. Yes, you will live to see many flowers
+grow out of my grave. You cannot think so now; but it
+will be so&mdash;believe me."</p>
+
+<p>"Mara," said Moses, "I never lived through such a day
+as this. It seems as if every moment of my life had been
+passing before me, and every moment of yours. I have
+seen how true and loving in thought and word and deed
+you have been, and I have been doing nothing but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>take.
+You have given love as the skies give rain, and I
+have drunk it up like the hot dusty earth."</p>
+
+<p>Mara knew in her own heart that this was all true, and
+she was too real to use any of the terms of affected humiliation
+which many think a kind of spiritual court language.
+She looked at him and answered, "Moses, I always knew
+I loved most. It was my nature; God gave it to me, and
+it was a gift for which I give him thanks&mdash;not a merit.
+I knew you had a larger, wider nature than mine,&mdash;a
+wider sphere to live in, and that you could not live in your
+heart as I did. Mine was all thought and feeling, and the
+narrow little duties of this little home. Yours went all
+round the world."</p>
+
+<p>"But, oh Mara&mdash;oh, my angel! to think I should lose
+you when I am just beginning to know your worth. I
+always had a sort of superstitious feeling,&mdash;a sacred presentiment
+about you,&mdash;that my spiritual life, if ever I
+had any, would come through you. It seemed if there
+ever was such a thing as God's providence, which some
+folks believe in, it was in leading me to you, and giving
+you to me. And now, to have all lashed&mdash;all destroyed&mdash;It
+makes me feel as if all was blind chance; no guiding
+God; for if he wanted me to be good, he would spare you."</p>
+
+<p>Mara lay with her large eyes fixed on the now faded
+sky. The dusky shadows had dropped like a black crape
+veil around her pale face. In a few moments she repeated
+to herself, as if she were musing upon them, those mysterious
+words of Him who liveth and was dead, "Except a
+corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone;
+if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."</p>
+
+<p>"Moses," she said, "for all I know you have loved me
+dearly, yet I have felt that in all that was deepest and
+dearest to me, I was alone. You did not come near to me,
+nor touch me where I feel most deeply. If I had lived to
+be your wife, I cannot say but this distance in our spiritual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+nature might have widened. You know, what we live
+with we get used to; it grows an old story. Your love to
+me might have grown old and worn out. If we lived together
+in the commonplace toils of life, you would see only
+a poor threadbare wife. I might have lost what little
+charm I ever had for you; but I feel that if I die, this
+will not be. There is something sacred and beautiful in
+death; and I may have more power over you, when I seem
+to be gone, than I should have had living."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mara, Mara, don't say that."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Moses, it is so. Think how many lovers marry,
+and how few lovers are left in middle life; and how few
+love and reverence living friends as they do the dead.
+There are only a very few to whom it is given to do that."</p>
+
+<p>Something in the heart of Moses told him that this was
+true. In this one day&mdash;the sacred revealing light of approaching
+death&mdash;he had seen more of the real spiritual
+beauty and significance of Mara's life than in years before,
+and felt upspringing in his heart, from the deep pathetic
+influence of the approaching spiritual world a new and
+stronger power of loving. It may be that it is not merely
+a perception of love that we were not aware of before, that
+wakes up when we approach the solemn shadows with a
+friend. It may be that the soul has compressed and unconscious
+powers which are stirred and wrought upon as it
+looks over the borders into its future home,&mdash;its loves and
+its longings so swell and beat, that they astonish itself.
+We are greater than we know, and dimly feel it with every
+approach to the great hereafter. "It doth not yet appear
+what we shall be."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Now, I'll tell you what 'tis," said Aunt Roxy, opening
+the door, "all the strength this 'ere girl spends
+a-talkin' to-night, will be so much taken out o' the whole
+cloth to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>Moses started up. "I ought to have thought of that,
+Mara."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye see," said Miss Roxy, "she's been through a good
+deal to-day, and she must be got to sleep at some rate or
+other to-night. 'Lord, if he sleep he shall do well,' the
+Bible says, and it's one of my best nussin' maxims."</p>
+
+<p>"And a good one, too, Aunt Roxy," said Mara. "Good-night,
+dear boy; you see we must all mind Aunt Roxy."</p>
+
+<p>Moses bent down and kissed her, and felt her arms
+around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Let not your heart be troubled," she whispered. In
+spite of himself Moses felt the storm that had risen in his
+bosom that morning soothed by the gentle influences which
+Mara breathed upon it. There is a sympathetic power in
+all states of mind, and they who have reached the deep
+secret of eternal rest have a strange power of imparting
+calm to others.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the very crisis of the battle that Christ said to
+his disciples, "<i>My peace I give unto you</i>," and they that
+are made one with him acquire like precious power of shedding
+round them repose, as evening flowers shed odors.
+Moses went to his pillow sorrowful and heart-stricken, but
+bitter or despairing he could not be with the consciousness
+of that present angel in the house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PEARL</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>The next morning rose calm and bright with that wonderful
+and mystical stillness and serenity which glorify autumn
+days. It was impossible that such skies could smile
+and such gentle airs blow the sea into one great waving
+floor of sparkling sapphires without bringing cheerfulness
+to human hearts. You must be very despairing indeed,
+when Nature is doing her best, to look her in the face sullen
+and defiant. So long as there is a drop of good in your
+cup, a penny in your exchequer of happiness, a bright day
+reminds you to look at it, and feel that all is not gone yet.</p>
+
+<p>So felt Moses when he stood in the door of the brown
+house, while Mrs. Pennel was clinking plates and spoons
+as she set the breakfast-table, and Zephaniah Pennel in his
+shirt-sleeves was washing in the back-room, while Miss
+Roxy came downstairs in a business-like fashion, bringing
+sundry bowls, plates, dishes, and mysterious pitchers from
+the sick-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Aunt Roxy, you ain't one that lets the grass
+grow under your feet," said Mrs. Pennel. "How is the
+dear child, this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she had a better night than one could have expected,"
+said Miss Roxy, "and by the time she's had her
+breakfast, she expects to sit up a little and see her friends."
+Miss Roxy said this in a cheerful tone, looking encouragingly
+at Moses, whom she began to pity and patronize,
+now she saw how real was his affliction.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Moses went to see her; she was sitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+up in her white dressing-gown, looking so thin and poorly,
+and everything in the room was fragrant with the spicy
+smell of the monthly roses, whose late buds and blossoms
+Miss Roxy had gathered for the vases. She seemed so
+natural, so calm and cheerful, so interested in all that went
+on around her, that one almost forgot that the time of her
+stay must be so short. She called Moses to come and look
+at her drawings, and paintings of flowers and birds,&mdash;full
+of reminders they were of old times,&mdash;and then she would
+have her pencils and colors, and work a little on a bunch
+of red rock-columbine, that she had begun to do for him;
+and she chatted of all the old familiar places where flowers
+grew, and of the old talks they had had there, till Moses
+quite forgot himself; forgot that he was in a sick room, till
+Aunt Roxy, warned by the deepening color on Mara's
+cheeks, interposed her "nussing" authority, that she must
+do no more that day.</p>
+
+<p>Then Moses laid her down, and arranged her pillows so
+that she could look out on the sea, and sat and read to her
+till it was time for her afternoon nap; and when the evening
+shadows drew on, he marveled with himself how the
+day had gone.</p>
+
+<p>Many such there were, all that pleasant month of September,
+and he was with her all the time, watching her
+wants and doing her bidding,&mdash;reading over and over with
+a softened modulation her favorite hymns and chapters,
+arranging her flowers, and bringing her home wild bouquets
+from all her favorite wood-haunts, which made her sick-room
+seem like some sylvan bower. Sally Kittridge was
+there too, almost every day, with always some friendly
+offering or some helpful deed of kindness, and sometimes
+they two together would keep guard over the invalid while
+Miss Roxy went home to attend to some of her own more
+peculiar concerns. Mara seemed to rule all around her
+with calm sweetness and wisdom, speaking unconsciously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
+only the speech of heaven, talking of spiritual things, not
+in an excited rapture or wild ecstasy, but with the sober
+certainty of waking bliss. She seemed like one of the
+sweet friendly angels one reads of in the Old Testament,
+so lovingly companionable, walking and talking, eating
+and drinking, with mortals, yet ready at any unknown
+moment to ascend with the flame of some sacrifice and be
+gone. There are those (a few at least) whose blessing it
+has been to have kept for many days, in bonds of earthly
+fellowship, a perfected spirit in whom the work of purifying
+love was wholly done, who lived in calm victory over
+sin and sorrow and death, ready at any moment to be called
+to the final mystery of joy.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it must come at last, the moment when heaven
+claims its own, and it came at last in the cottage on Orr's
+Island. There came a day when the room so sacredly
+cheerful was hushed to a breathless stillness; the bed was
+then all snowy white, and that soft still sealed face, the
+parted waves of golden hair, the little hands folded over
+the white robe, all had a sacred and wonderful calm, a rapture
+of repose that seemed to say "it is done."</p>
+
+<p>They who looked on her wondered; it was a look that
+sunk deep into every heart; it hushed down the common
+cant of those who, according to country custom, went to
+stare blindly at the great mystery of death,&mdash;for all that
+came out of that chamber smote upon their breasts and
+went away in silence, revolving strangely whence might
+come that unearthly beauty, that celestial joy.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, in that very room where James and Naomi
+Lincoln had lain side by side in their coffins, sleeping restfully,
+there was laid another form, shrouded and coffined,
+but with such a fairness and tender purity, such a mysterious
+fullness of joy in its expression, that it seemed more
+natural to speak of that rest as some higher form of life
+than of death.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once more were gathered the neighborhood; all the
+faces known in this history shone out in one solemn picture,
+of which that sweet restful form was the centre.
+Zephaniah Pennel and Mary his wife, Moses and Sally,
+the dry form of Captain Kittridge and the solemn face of
+his wife, Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, Miss Emily and Mr.
+Sewell; but their faces all wore a tender brightness, such
+as we see falling like a thin celestial veil over all the faces
+in an old Florentine painting. The room was full of sweet
+memories, of words of cheer, words of assurance, words of
+triumph, and the mysterious brightness of that young face
+forbade them to weep. Solemnly Mr. Sewell read,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord
+God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke
+of his people shall he take away from off all the
+earth; for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall be said
+in that day, Lo this is our God; we have waited for him,
+and he will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for
+him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation."</p>
+
+<p>Then the prayer trembled up to heaven with thanksgiving,
+for the early entrance of that fair young saint into
+glory, and then the same old funeral hymn, with its mournful
+triumph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+"Why should we mourn departed friends,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or shake at death's alarms,</span><br />
+'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To call them to his arms."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Then in a few words Mr. Sewell reminded them how
+that hymn had been sung in this room so many years ago,
+when that frail, fluttering orphan soul had been baptized
+into the love and care of Jesus, and how her whole life,
+passing before them in its simplicity and beauty, had come
+to so holy and beautiful a close; and when, pointing to
+the calm sleeping face he asked, "Would we call her
+back?" there was not a heart at that moment that dared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
+answer, Yes. Even he that should have been her bridegroom
+could not at that moment have unsealed the holy
+charm, and so they bore her away, and laid the calm smiling
+face beneath the soil, by the side of poor Dolores.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I had a beautiful dream last night," said Zephaniah
+Pennel, the next morning after the funeral, as he opened
+his Bible to conduct family worship.</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?" said Miss Roxy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ye see, I thought I was out a-walkin' up and
+down, and lookin' and lookin' for something that I'd lost.
+What it was I couldn't quite make out, but my heart felt
+heavy as if it would break, and I was lookin' all up and
+down the sands by the seashore, and somebody said I was
+like the merchantman, seeking goodly pearls. I said I had
+lost my pearl&mdash;my pearl of great price&mdash;and then I
+looked up, and far off on the beach, shining softly on the
+wet sands, lay my pearl. I thought it was Mara, but it
+seemed a great pearl with a soft moonlight on it; and I
+was running for it when some one said 'hush,' and I
+looked and I saw <i>Him</i> a-coming&mdash;Jesus of Nazareth, jist
+as he walked by the sea of Galilee. It was all dark night
+around Him, but I could see Him by the light that came
+from his face, and the long hair was hanging down on his
+shoulders. He came and took up my pearl and put it on
+his forehead, and it shone out like a star, and shone into
+my heart, and I felt happy; and he looked at me steadily,
+and rose and rose in the air, and melted in the clouds, and
+I awoke so happy, and so calm!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV</h2>
+
+<h3>FOUR YEARS AFTER</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>It was a splendid evening in July, and the sky was
+filled high with gorgeous tabernacles of purple and gold,
+the remains of a grand thunder-shower which had freshened
+the air and set a separate jewel on every needle leaf
+of the old pines.</p>
+
+<p>Four years had passed since the fair Pearl of Orr's Island
+had been laid beneath the gentle soil, which every year
+sent monthly tributes of flowers to adorn her rest, great
+blue violets, and starry flocks of ethereal eye-brights in
+spring, and fringy asters, and goldenrod in autumn. In
+those days, the tender sentiment which now makes the
+burial-place a cultivated garden was excluded by the rigid
+spiritualism of the Puritan life, which, ever jealous of that
+which concerned the body, lest it should claim what belonged
+to the immortal alone, had frowned on all watching
+of graves, as an earthward tendency, and enjoined the
+flight of faith with the spirit, rather than the yearning for
+its cast-off garments.</p>
+
+<p>But Sally Kittridge, being lonely, found something in her
+heart which could only be comforted by visits to that
+grave. So she had planted there roses and trailing myrtle,
+and tended and watered them; a proceeding which was
+much commented on Sunday noons, when people were eating
+their dinners and discussing their neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible good Mrs. Kittridge might have been
+much scandalized by it, had she been in a condition to
+think on the matter at all; but a very short time after the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+funeral she was seized with a paralytic shock, which left
+her for a while as helpless as an infant; and then she sank
+away into the grave, leaving Sally the sole care of the old
+Captain.</p>
+
+<p>A cheerful home she made, too, for his old age, adorning
+the house with many little tasteful fancies unknown in
+her mother's days; reading the Bible to him and singing
+Mara's favorite hymns, with a voice as sweet as the spring
+blue-bird. The spirit of the departed friend seemed to
+hallow the dwelling where these two worshiped her memory,
+in simple-hearted love. Her paintings, framed in
+quaint woodland frames of moss and pine-cones by Sally's
+own ingenuity, adorned the walls. Her books were on
+the table, and among them many that she had given to
+Moses.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to be a wanderer for many years," he said
+in parting, "keep these for me until I come back."</p>
+
+<p>And so from time to time passed long letters between
+the two friends,&mdash;each telling to the other the same story,&mdash;that
+they were lonely, and that their hearts yearned for
+the communion of one who could no longer be manifest to
+the senses. And each spoke to the other of a world of
+hopes and memories buried with her, "Which," each so
+constantly said, "no one could understand but you." Each,
+too, was firm in the faith that buried love must have no
+earthly resurrection. Every letter strenuously insisted that
+they should call each other brother and sister, and under
+cover of those names the letters grew longer and more frequent,
+and with every chance opportunity came presents
+from the absent brother, which made the little old cottage
+quaintly suggestive with smell of spice and sandal-wood.</p>
+
+<p>But, as we said, this is a glorious July evening,&mdash;and
+you may discern two figures picking their way over those
+low sunken rocks, yellowed with seaweed, of which we
+have often spoken. They are Moses and Sally going on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
+an evening walk to that favorite grotto retreat, which has
+so often been spoken of in the course of this history.</p>
+
+<p>Moses has come home from long wanderings. It is four
+years since they parted, and now they meet and have
+looked into each other's eyes, not as of old, when they met
+in the first giddy flush of youth, but as fully developed
+man and woman. Moses and Sally had just risen from
+the tea-table, where she had presided with a thoughtful
+housewifery gravity, just pleasantly dashed with quaint
+streaks of her old merry willfulness, while the old Captain,
+warmed up like a rheumatic grasshopper in a fine autumn
+day, chirruped feebly, and told some of his old stories,
+which now he told every day, forgetting that they had
+ever been heard before. Somehow all three had been very
+happy; the more so, from a shadowy sense of some sympathizing
+presence which was rejoicing to see them together
+again, and which, stealing soft-footed and noiseless everywhere,
+touched and lighted up every old familiar object
+with sweet memories.</p>
+
+<p>And so they had gone out together to walk; to walk
+towards the grotto where Sally had caused a seat to be
+made, and where she declared she had passed hours and
+hours, knitting, sewing, or reading.</p>
+
+<p>"Sally," said Moses, "do you know I am tired of wandering?
+I am coming home now. I begin to want a home
+of my own." This he said as they sat together on the
+rustic seat and looked off on the blue sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you must," said Sally. "How lovely that ship
+looks, just coming in there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they are beautiful," said Moses abstractedly; and
+Sally rattled on about the difference between sloops and
+brigs; seeming determined that there should be no silence,
+such as often comes in ominous gaps between two friends
+who have long been separated, and have each many things
+to say with which the other is not familiar.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sally!" said Moses, breaking in with a deep voice on
+one of these monologues. "Do you remember some presumptuous
+things I once said to you, in this place?"</p>
+
+<p>Sally did not answer, and there was a dead silence in
+which they could hear the tide gently dashing on the weedy
+rocks.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I are neither of us what we were then, Sally,"
+said Moses. "We are as different as if we were each
+another person. We have been trained in another life,&mdash;educated
+by a great sorrow,&mdash;is it not so?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said Sally.</p>
+
+<p>"And why should we two, who have a world of thoughts
+and memories which no one can understand but the other,&mdash;why
+should we, each of us, go on alone? If we must,
+why then, Sally, I must leave you, and I must write and
+receive no more letters, for I have found that you are becoming
+so wholly necessary to me, that if any other should
+claim you, I could not feel as I ought. Must I go?"</p>
+
+<p>Sally's answer is not on record; but one infers what it
+was from the fact that they sat there very late, and before
+they knew it, the tide rose up and shut them in, and the
+moon rose up in full glory out of the water, and still they
+sat and talked, leaning on each other, till a cracked, feeble
+voice called down through the pine-trees above, like a
+hoarse old cricket,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Children, be you there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father," said Sally, blushing and conscious.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all right," said the deep bass of Moses. "I'll
+bring her back when I've done with her, Captain."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal',&mdash;wal'; I was gettin' consarned; but I see I
+don't need to. I hope you won't get no colds nor nothin'."</p>
+
+<p>They did not; but in the course of a month there was
+a wedding at the brown house of the old Captain, which
+everybody in the parish was glad of, and was voted without
+dissent to be just the thing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Roxy, grimly approbative, presided over the preparations,
+and all the characters of our story appeared, and
+more, having on their wedding-garments. Nor was the
+wedding less joyful, that all felt the presence of a heavenly
+guest, silent and loving, seeing and blessing all, whose
+voice seemed to say in every heart,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He turneth the shadow of death into morning."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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+Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Pearl of Orr's Island
+       A Story of the Coast of Maine
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: March 6, 2010 [EBook #31522]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND
+
+
+A Story of the Coast of Maine
+
+
+BY
+
+HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+
+1896
+
+
+Copyright, 1862 and 1890,
+
+BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
+
+
+Copyright, 1896,
+
+BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
+
+
+_All rights reserved._
+
+
+_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
+
+Electrotyped and Printed by H.O. Houghton & Co.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  INTRODUCTORY NOTE                                  vii
+
+     CHAP.                                          PAGE
+
+        I. NAOMI                                      1
+
+       II. MARA                                       5
+
+      III. THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL                 9
+
+       IV. AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY                   15
+
+        V. THE KITTRIDGES                            25
+
+       VI. GRANDPARENTS                              36
+
+      VII. FROM THE SEA                              47
+
+     VIII. THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN                   58
+
+       IX. MOSES                                     74
+
+        X. THE MINISTER                              85
+
+       XI. LITTLE ADVENTURERS                        99
+
+      XII. SEA TALES                                110
+
+     XIII. BOY AND GIRL                             120
+
+      XIV. THE ENCHANTED ISLAND                     132
+
+       XV. THE HOME COMING                          143
+
+      XVI. THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL            154
+
+     XVII. LESSONS                                  165
+
+    XVIII. SALLY                                    175
+
+      XIX. EIGHTEEN                                 179
+
+       XX. REBELLION                                186
+
+      XXI. THE TEMPTER                              198
+
+     XXII. A FRIEND IN NEED                         208
+
+    XXIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY               218
+
+     XXIV. DESIRES AND DREAMS                       229
+
+      XXV. MISS EMILY                               235
+
+     XXVI. DOLORES                                  245
+
+    XXVII. HIDDEN THINGS                            258
+
+   XXVIII. A COQUETTE                               270
+
+     XXIX. NIGHT TALKS                              279
+
+      XXX. THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL                  290
+
+     XXXI. GREEK MEETS GREEK                        303
+
+    XXXII. THE BETROTHAL                            315
+
+   XXXIII. AT A QUILTING                            323
+
+    XXXIV. FRIENDS                                  329
+
+     XXXV. THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE                    335
+
+    XXXVI. THE SHADOW OF DEATH                      339
+
+   XXXVII. THE VICTORY                              351
+
+  XXXVIII. OPEN VISION                              358
+
+    XXXIX. THE LAND OF BEULAH                       368
+
+       XL. THE MEETING                              376
+
+      XLI. CONSOLATION                              380
+
+     XLII. LAST WORDS                               387
+
+    XLIII. THE PEARL                                393
+
+     XLIV. FOUR YEARS AFTER                         398
+
+The frontispiece (Mara, page 376) was drawn by W.L. Taylor. The vignette
+was etched by Charles H. Woodbury.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
+
+
+The publication of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, though much more than an
+incident in an author's career, seems to have determined Mrs. Stowe more
+surely in her purpose to devote herself to literature. During the summer
+following its appearance, she was in Andover, making over the house
+which she and her husband were to occupy upon leaving Brunswick; and
+yet, busy as she was, she was writing articles for _The Independent_ and
+_The National Era_. The following extract from a letter written at that
+time, July 29, 1852, intimates that she already was sketching the
+outline of the story which later grew into _The Pearl of Orr's
+Island_:--
+
+"I seem to have so much to fill my time, and yet there is my Maine story
+waiting. However, I am composing it every day, only I greatly need
+living studies for the filling in of my sketches. There is old Jonas, my
+"fish father," a sturdy, independent fisherman farmer, who in his youth
+sailed all over the world and made up his mind about everything. In his
+old age he attends prayer-meetings and reads the _Missionary Herald_. He
+also has plenty of money in an old brown sea-chest. He is a great heart
+with an inflexible will and iron muscles. I must go to Orr's Island and
+see him again." The story seems to have remained in her mind, for we are
+told by her son that she worked upon it by turns with _The Minister's
+Wooing_.
+
+It was not, however, until eight years later, after _The Minister's
+Wooing_ had been published and _Agnes of Sorrento_ was well begun, that
+she took up her old story in earnest and set about making it into a
+short serial. It would seem that her first intention was to confine
+herself to a sketch of the childhood of her chief characters, with a
+view to delineating the influences at work upon them; but, as she
+herself expressed it, "Out of the simple history of the little Pearl of
+Orr's Island as it had shaped itself in her mind, rose up a Captain
+Kittridge with his garrulous yarns, and Misses Roxy and Ruey, given to
+talk, and a whole pigeon roost of yet undreamed of fancies and dreams
+which would insist on being written." So it came about that the story as
+originally planned came to a stopping place at the end of Chapter XVII.,
+as the reader may see when he reaches that place. The childish life of
+her characters ended there, and a lapse of ten years was assumed before
+their story was taken up again in the next chapter. The book when
+published had no chapter headings. These have been supplied in the
+present edition.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+NAOMI
+
+
+On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath, in the State of
+Maine, might have been seen, on a certain autumnal afternoon, a
+one-horse wagon, in which two persons were sitting. One was an old man,
+with the peculiarly hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes
+the seafaring population of the New England shores. A clear blue eye,
+evidently practiced in habits of keen observation, white hair, bronzed,
+weather-beaten cheeks, and a face deeply lined with the furrows of
+shrewd thought and anxious care, were points of the portrait that made
+themselves felt at a glance.
+
+By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of a marked and
+peculiar personal appearance. Her hair was black, and smoothly parted on
+a broad forehead, to which a pair of penciled dark eyebrows gave a
+striking and definite outline. Beneath, lay a pair of large black eyes,
+remarkable for tremulous expression of melancholy and timidity. The
+cheek was white and bloodless as a snowberry, though with the clear and
+perfect oval of good health; the mouth was delicately formed, with a
+certain sad quiet in its lines, which indicated a habitually repressed
+and sensitive nature.
+
+The dress of this young person, as often happens in New England, was, in
+refinement and even elegance, a marked contrast to that of her male
+companion and to the humble vehicle in which she rode. There was not
+only the most fastidious neatness, but a delicacy in the choice of
+colors, an indication of elegant tastes in the whole arrangement, and
+the quietest suggestion in the world of an acquaintance with the usages
+of fashion, which struck one oddly in those wild and dreary
+surroundings. On the whole, she impressed one like those fragile
+wild-flowers which in April cast their fluttering shadows from the mossy
+crevices of the old New England granite,--an existence in which
+colorless delicacy is united to a sort of elastic hardihood of life, fit
+for the rocky soil and harsh winds it is born to encounter.
+
+The scenery of the road along which the two were riding was wild and
+bare. Only savins and mulleins, with their dark pyramids or white spires
+of velvet leaves, diversified the sandy wayside; but out at sea was a
+wide sweep of blue, reaching far to the open ocean, which lay rolling,
+tossing, and breaking into white caps of foam in the bright sunshine.
+For two or three days a northeast storm had been raging, and the sea was
+in all the commotion which such a general upturning creates.
+
+The two travelers reached a point of elevated land, where they paused a
+moment, and the man drew up the jogging, stiff-jointed old farm-horse,
+and raised himself upon his feet to look out at the prospect.
+
+There might be seen in the distance the blue Kennebec sweeping out
+toward the ocean through its picturesque rocky shores, docked with
+cedars and other dusky evergreens, which were illuminated by the orange
+and flame-colored trees of Indian summer. Here and there scarlet
+creepers swung long trailing garlands over the faces of the dark rock,
+and fringes of goldenrod above swayed with the brisk blowing wind that
+was driving the blue waters seaward, in face of the up-coming ocean
+tide,--a conflict which caused them to rise in great foam-crested
+waves. There are two channels into this river from the open sea,
+navigable for ships which are coming in to the city of Bath; one is
+broad and shallow, the other narrow and deep, and these are divided by a
+steep ledge of rocks.
+
+Where the spectators of this scene were sitting, they could see in the
+distance a ship borne with tremendous force by the rising tide into the
+mouth of the river, and encountering a northwest wind which had
+succeeded the gale, as northwest winds often do on this coast. The ship,
+from what might be observed in the distance, seemed struggling to make
+the wider channel, but was constantly driven off by the baffling force
+of the wind.
+
+"There she is, Naomi," said the old fisherman, eagerly, to his
+companion, "coming right in." The young woman was one of the sort that
+never start, and never exclaim, but with all deeper emotions grow still.
+The color slowly mounted into her cheek, her lips parted, and her eyes
+dilated with a wide, bright expression; her breathing came in thick
+gasps, but she said nothing.
+
+The old fisherman stood up in the wagon, his coarse, butternut-colored
+coat-flaps fluttering and snapping in the breeze, while his interest
+seemed to be so intense in the efforts of the ship that he made
+involuntary and eager movements as if to direct her course. A moment
+passed, and his keen, practiced eye discovered a change in her
+movements, for he cried out involuntarily,--
+
+"_Don't_ take the narrow channel to-day!" and a moment after, "O Lord! O
+Lord! have mercy,--there they go! Look! look! look!"
+
+And, in fact, the ship rose on a great wave clear out of the water, and
+the next second seemed to leap with a desperate plunge into the narrow
+passage; for a moment there was a shivering of the masts and the
+rigging, and she went down and was gone.
+
+"They're split to pieces!" cried the fisherman. "Oh, my poor girl--my
+poor girl--they're gone! O Lord, have mercy!"
+
+The woman lifted up no voice, but, as one who has been shot through the
+heart falls with no cry, she fell back,--a mist rose up over her great
+mournful eyes,--she had fainted.
+
+The story of this wreck of a home-bound ship just entering the harbor is
+yet told in many a family on this coast. A few hours after, the
+unfortunate crew were washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in
+which they had attired themselves that morning to go to their sisters,
+wives, and mothers.
+
+This is the first scene in our story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+MARA
+
+
+Down near the end of Orr's Island, facing the open ocean, stands a brown
+house of the kind that the natives call "lean-to," or "linter,"--one of
+those large, comfortable structures, barren in the ideal, but rich in
+the practical, which the workingman of New England can always command.
+The waters of the ocean came up within a rod of this house, and the
+sound of its moaning waves was even now filling the clear autumn
+starlight. Evidently something was going on within, for candles
+fluttered and winked from window to window, like fireflies in a dark
+meadow, and sounds as of quick footsteps, and the flutter of brushing
+garments, might be heard.
+
+Something unusual is certainly going on within the dwelling of Zephaniah
+Pennel to-night.
+
+Let us enter the dark front-door. We feel our way to the right, where a
+solitary ray of light comes from the chink of a half-opened door. Here
+is the front room of the house, set apart as its place of especial
+social hilarity and sanctity,--the "best room," with its low studded
+walls, white dimity window-curtains, rag carpet, and polished wood
+chairs. It is now lit by the dim gleam of a solitary tallow candle,
+which seems in the gloom to make only a feeble circle of light around
+itself, leaving all the rest of the apartment in shadow.
+
+In the centre of the room, stretched upon a table, and covered partially
+by a sea-cloak, lies the body of a man of twenty-five,--lies, too,
+evidently as one of whom it is written, "He shall return to his house
+no more, neither shall his place know him any more." A splendid manhood
+has suddenly been called to forsake that lifeless form, leaving it, like
+a deserted palace, beautiful in its desolation. The hair, dripping with
+the salt wave, curled in glossy abundance on the finely-formed head; the
+flat, broad brow; the closed eye, with its long black lashes; the firm,
+manly mouth; the strongly-moulded chin,--all, all were sealed with that
+seal which is never to be broken till the great resurrection day.
+
+He was lying in a full suit of broadcloth, with a white vest and smart
+blue neck-tie, fastened with a pin, in which was some braided hair under
+a crystal. All his clothing, as well as his hair, was saturated with
+sea-water, which trickled from time to time, and struck with a leaden
+and dropping sound into a sullen pool which lay under the table.
+
+This was the body of James Lincoln, ship-master of the brig Flying Scud,
+who that morning had dressed himself gayly in his state-room to go on
+shore and meet his wife,--singing and jesting as he did so.
+
+This is all that you have to learn in the room below; but as we stand
+there, we hear a trampling of feet in the apartment above,--the quick
+yet careful opening and shutting of doors,--and voices come and go about
+the house, and whisper consultations on the stairs. Now comes the roll
+of wheels, and the Doctor's gig drives up to the door; and, as he goes
+creaking up with his heavy boots, we will follow and gain admission to
+the dimly-lighted chamber.
+
+Two gossips are sitting in earnest, whispering conversation over a small
+bundle done up in an old flannel petticoat. To them the doctor is about
+to address himself cheerily, but is repelled by sundry signs and sounds
+which warn him not to speak. Moderating his heavy boots as well as he
+is able to a pace of quiet, he advances for a moment, and the petticoat
+is unfolded for him to glance at its contents; while a low, eager,
+whispered conversation, attended with much head-shaking, warns him that
+his first duty is with somebody behind the checked curtains of a bed in
+the farther corner of the room. He steps on tiptoe, and draws the
+curtain; and there, with closed eye, and cheek as white as wintry snow,
+lies the same face over which passed the shadow of death when that
+ill-fated ship went down.
+
+This woman was wife to him who lies below, and within the hour has been
+made mother to a frail little human existence, which the storm of a
+great anguish has driven untimely on the shores of life,--a precious
+pearl cast up from the past eternity upon the wet, wave-ribbed sand of
+the present. Now, weary with her moanings, and beaten out with the
+wrench of a double anguish, she lies with closed eyes in that passive
+apathy which precedes deeper shadows and longer rest.
+
+Over against her, on the other side of the bed, sits an aged woman in an
+attitude of deep dejection, and the old man we saw with her in the
+morning is standing with an anxious, awestruck face at the foot of the
+bed.
+
+The doctor feels the pulse of the woman, or rather lays an inquiring
+finger where the slightest thread of vital current is scarcely
+throbbing, and shakes his head mournfully. The touch of his hand rouses
+her,--her large wild, melancholy eyes fix themselves on him with an
+inquiring glance, then she shivers and moans,--
+
+"Oh, Doctor, Doctor!--Jamie, Jamie!"
+
+"Come, come!" said the doctor, "cheer up, my girl, you've got a fine
+little daughter,--the Lord mingles mercies with his afflictions."
+
+Her eyes closed, her head moved with a mournful but decided dissent.
+
+A moment after she spoke in the sad old words of the Hebrew Scripture,--
+
+"Call her not Naomi; call her Mara, for the Almighty hath dealt very
+bitterly with me."
+
+And as she spoke, there passed over her face the sharp frost of the last
+winter; but even as it passed there broke out a smile, as if a flower
+had been thrown down from Paradise, and she said,--
+
+"Not my will, but thy will," and so was gone.
+
+Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey were soon left alone in the chamber of death.
+
+"She'll make a beautiful corpse," said Aunt Roxy, surveying the still,
+white form contemplatively, with her head in an artistic attitude.
+
+"She was a pretty girl," said Aunt Ruey; "dear me, what a Providence! I
+'member the wedd'n down in that lower room, and what a handsome couple
+they were."
+
+"They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they
+were not divided," said Aunt Roxy, sententiously.
+
+"What was it she said, did ye hear?" said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"She called the baby 'Mary.'"
+
+"Ah! sure enough, her mother's name afore her. What a still,
+softly-spoken thing she always was!"
+
+"A pity the poor baby didn't go with her," said Aunt Roxy;
+"seven-months' children are so hard to raise."
+
+"'Tis a pity," said the other.
+
+But babies will live, and all the more when everybody says that it is a
+pity they should. Life goes on as inexorably in this world as death. It
+was ordered by THE WILL above that out of these two graves should spring
+one frail, trembling autumn flower,--the "Mara" whose poor little roots
+first struck deep in the salt, bitter waters of our mortal life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE BAPTISM AND THE BURIAL
+
+
+Now, I cannot think of anything more unlikely and uninteresting to make
+a story of than that old brown "linter" house of Captain Zephaniah
+Pennel, down on the south end of Orr's Island.
+
+Zephaniah and Mary Pennel, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, are a pair of
+worthy, God-fearing people, walking in all the commandments and
+ordinances of the Lord blameless; but that is no great recommendation to
+a world gaping for sensation and calling for something stimulating. This
+worthy couple never read anything but the Bible, the "Missionary
+Herald," and the "Christian Mirror,"--never went anywhere except in the
+round of daily business. He owned a fishing-smack, in which he labored
+after the apostolic fashion; and she washed, and ironed, and scrubbed,
+and brewed, and baked, in her contented round, week in and out. The only
+recreation they ever enjoyed was the going once a week, in good weather,
+to a prayer-meeting in a little old brown school-house, about a mile
+from their dwelling; and making a weekly excursion every Sunday, in
+their fishing craft, to the church opposite, on Harpswell Neck.
+
+To be sure, Zephaniah had read many wide leaves of God's great book of
+Nature, for, like most Maine sea-captains, he had been wherever ship can
+go,--to all usual and unusual ports. His hard, shrewd, weather-beaten
+visage had been seen looking over the railings of his brig in the port
+of Genoa, swept round by its splendid crescent of palaces and its
+snow-crested Apennines. It had looked out in the Lagoons of Venice at
+that wavy floor which in evening seems a sea of glass mingled with fire,
+and out of which rise temples, and palaces, and churches, and distant
+silvery Alps, like so many fabrics of dreamland. He had been through the
+Skagerrack and Cattegat,--into the Baltic, and away round to Archangel,
+and there chewed a bit of chip, and considered and calculated what
+bargains it was best to make. He had walked the streets of Calcutta in
+his shirt-sleeves, with his best Sunday vest, backed with black glazed
+cambric, which six months before came from the hands of Miss Roxy, and
+was pronounced by her to be as good as any tailor could make; and in all
+these places he was just Zephaniah Pennel,--a chip of old
+Maine,--thrifty, careful, shrewd, honest, God-fearing, and carrying an
+instinctive knowledge of men and things under a face of rustic
+simplicity.
+
+It was once, returning from one of his voyages, that he found his wife
+with a black-eyed, curly-headed little creature, who called him papa,
+and climbed on his knee, nestled under his coat, rifled his pockets, and
+woke him every morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and
+jabbering unintelligible dialects in his ears.
+
+"We will call this child Naomi, wife," he said, after consulting his old
+Bible; "for that means pleasant, and I'm sure I never see anything beat
+her for pleasantness. I never knew as children was so engagin'!"
+
+It was to be remarked that Zephaniah after this made shorter and shorter
+voyages, being somehow conscious of a string around his heart which
+pulled him harder and harder, till one Sunday, when the little Naomi was
+five years old, he said to his wife,--
+
+"I hope I ain't a-pervertin' Scriptur' nor nuthin', but I can't help
+thinkin' of one passage, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman
+seeking goodly pearls, and when he hath found one pearl of great price,
+for joy thereof he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that
+pearl.' Well, Mary, I've been and sold my brig last week," he said,
+folding his daughter's little quiet head under his coat, "'cause it
+seems to me the Lord's given us this pearl of great price, and it's
+enough for us. I don't want to be rambling round the world after riches.
+We'll have a little farm down on Orr's Island, and I'll have a little
+fishing-smack, and we'll live and be happy together."
+
+And so Mary, who in those days was a pretty young married woman, felt
+herself rich and happy,--no duchess richer or happier. The two
+contentedly delved and toiled, and the little Naomi was their princess.
+The wise men of the East at the feet of an infant, offering gifts, gold,
+frankincense, and myrrh, is just a parable of what goes on in every
+house where there is a young child. All the hard and the harsh, and the
+common and the disagreeable, is for the parents,--all the bright and
+beautiful for their child.
+
+When the fishing-smack went to Portland to sell mackerel, there came
+home in Zephaniah's fishy coat pocket strings of coral beads, tiny
+gaiter boots, brilliant silks and ribbons for the little fairy
+princess,--his Pearl of the Island; and sometimes, when a stray party
+from the neighboring town of Brunswick came down to explore the romantic
+scenery of the solitary island, they would be startled by the apparition
+of this still, graceful, dark-eyed child exquisitely dressed in the best
+and brightest that the shops of a neighboring city could
+afford,--sitting like some tropical bird on a lonely rock, where the sea
+came dashing up into the edges of arbor vitae, or tripping along the wet
+sands for shells and seaweed.
+
+Many children would have been spoiled by such unlimited indulgence; but
+there are natures sent down into this harsh world so timorous, and
+sensitive, and helpless in themselves, that the utmost stretch of
+indulgence and kindness is needed for their development,--like plants
+which the warmest shelf of the green-house and the most careful watch of
+the gardener alone can bring into flower. The pale child, with her
+large, lustrous, dark eyes, and sensitive organization, was nursed and
+brooded into a beautiful womanhood, and then found a protector in a
+high-spirited, manly young ship-master, and she became his wife.
+
+And now we see in the best room--the walls lined with serious
+faces--men, women, and children, that have come to pay the last tribute
+of sympathy to the living and the dead. The house looked so utterly
+alone and solitary in that wild, sea-girt island, that one would have as
+soon expected the sea-waves to rise and walk in, as so many neighbors;
+but they had come from neighboring points, crossing the glassy sea in
+their little crafts, whose white sails looked like millers' wings, or
+walking miles from distant parts of the island.
+
+Some writer calls a funeral one of the amusements of a New England
+population. Must we call it an amusement to go and see the acted despair
+of Medea? or the dying agonies of poor Adrienne Lecouvreur? It is
+something of the same awful interest in life's tragedy, which makes an
+untaught and primitive people gather to a funeral,--a tragedy where
+there is no acting,--and one which each one feels must come at some time
+to his own dwelling.
+
+Be that as it may, here was a roomful. Not only Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey,
+who by a prescriptive right presided over all the births, deaths, and
+marriages of the neighborhood, but there was Captain Kittridge, a long,
+dry, weather-beaten old sea-captain, who sat as if tied in a double
+bow-knot, with his little fussy old wife, with a great Leghorn bonnet,
+and eyes like black glass beads shining through in the bows of her horn
+spectacles, and her hymn-book in her hand ready to lead the psalm. There
+were aunts, uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased; and in the
+midst stood two coffins, where the two united in death lay sleeping
+tenderly, as those to whom rest is good. All was still as death, except
+a chance whisper from some busy neighbor, or a creak of an old lady's
+great black fan, or the fizz of a fly down the window-pane, and then a
+stifled sound of deep-drawn breath and weeping from under a cloud of
+heavy black crape veils, that were together in the group which
+country-people call the mourners.
+
+A gleam of autumn sunlight streamed through the white curtains, and fell
+on a silver baptismal vase that stood on the mother's coffin, as the
+minister rose and said, "The ordinance of baptism will now be
+administered." A few moments more, and on a baby brow had fallen a few
+drops of water, and the little pilgrim of a new life had been called
+Mara in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,--the minister
+slowly repeating thereafter those beautiful words of Holy Writ, "A
+father of the fatherless is God in his holy habitation,"--as if the
+baptism of that bereaved one had been a solemn adoption into the
+infinite heart of the Lord.
+
+With something of the quaint pathos which distinguishes the primitive
+and Biblical people of that lonely shore, the minister read the passage
+in Ruth from which the name of the little stranger was drawn, and which
+describes the return of the bereaved Naomi to her native land. His voice
+trembled, and there were tears in many eyes as he read, "And it came to
+pass as she came to Bethlehem, all the city was moved about them; and
+they said, Is this Naomi? And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi;
+call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went
+out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty: why then call
+ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty
+hath afflicted me?"
+
+Deep, heavy sobs from the mourners were for a few moments the only
+answer to these sad words, till the minister raised the old funeral
+psalm of New England,--
+
+    "Why do we mourn departing friends,
+      Or shake at Death's alarms?
+    'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends
+      To call them to his arms.
+
+    "Are we not tending upward too,
+      As fast as time can move?
+    And should we wish the hours more slow
+      That bear us to our love?"
+
+The words rose in old "China,"--that strange, wild warble, whose
+quaintly blended harmonies might have been learned of moaning seas or
+wailing winds, so strange and grand they rose, full of that intense
+pathos which rises over every defect of execution; and as they sung,
+Zephaniah Pennel straightened his tall form, before bowed on his hands,
+and looked heavenward, his cheeks wet with tears, but something sublime
+and immortal shining upward through his blue eyes; and at the last verse
+he came forward involuntarily, and stood by his dead, and his voice rose
+over all the others as he sung,--
+
+    "Then let the last loud trumpet sound,
+      And bid the dead arise!
+    Awake, ye nations under ground!
+      Ye saints, ascend the skies!"
+
+The sunbeam through the window-curtain fell on his silver hair, and they
+that looked beheld his face as it were the face of an angel; he had
+gotten a sight of the city whose foundation is jasper, and whose every
+gate is a separate pearl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY
+
+
+The sea lay like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely
+shores of Orr's Island. Tall, kingly spruces wore their regal crowns of
+cones high in air, sparkling with diamonds of clear exuded gum; vast old
+hemlocks of primeval growth stood darkling in their forest shadows,
+their branches hung with long hoary moss; while feathery larches, turned
+to brilliant gold by autumn frosts, lighted up the darker shadows of the
+evergreens. It was one of those hazy, calm, dissolving days of Indian
+summer, when everything is so quiet that the faintest kiss of the wave
+on the beach can be heard, and white clouds seem to faint into the blue
+of the sky, and soft swathing bands of violet vapor make all earth look
+dreamy, and give to the sharp, clear-cut outlines of the northern
+landscape all those mysteries of light and shade which impart such
+tenderness to Italian scenery.
+
+The funeral was over; the tread of many feet, bearing the heavy burden
+of two broken lives, had been to the lonely graveyard, and had come back
+again,--each footstep lighter and more unconstrained as each one went
+his way from the great old tragedy of Death to the common cheerful walks
+of Life.
+
+The solemn black clock stood swaying with its eternal "tick-tock,
+tick-tock," in the kitchen of the brown house on Orr's Island. There was
+there that sense of a stillness that can be felt,--such as settles down
+on a dwelling when any of its inmates have passed through its doors for
+the last time, to go whence they shall not return. The best room was
+shut up and darkened, with only so much light as could fall through a
+little heart-shaped hole in the window-shutter,--for except on solemn
+visits, or prayer meetings, or weddings, or funerals, that room formed
+no part of the daily family scenery.
+
+The kitchen was clean and ample, with a great open fireplace and wide
+stone hearth, and oven on one side, and rows of old-fashioned
+splint-bottomed chairs against the wall. A table scoured to snowy
+whiteness, and a little work-stand whereon lay the Bible, the
+"Missionary Herald" and the "Weekly Christian Mirror," before named,
+formed the principal furniture. One feature, however, must not be
+forgotten,--a great sea-chest, which had been the companion of Zephaniah
+through all the countries of the earth. Old, and battered, and unsightly
+it looked, yet report said that there was good store within of that
+which men for the most part respect more than anything else; and,
+indeed, it proved often when a deed of grace was to be done,--when a
+woman was suddenly made a widow in a coast gale, or a fishing-smack was
+run down in the fogs off the banks, leaving in some neighboring cottage
+a family of orphans,--in all such cases, the opening of this sea-chest
+was an event of good omen to the bereaved; for Zephaniah had a large
+heart and a large hand, and was apt to take it out full of silver
+dollars when once it went in. So the ark of the covenant could not have
+been looked on with more reverence than the neighbors usually showed to
+Captain Pennel's sea-chest.
+
+The afternoon sun is shining in a square of light through the open
+kitchen-door, whence one dreamily disposed might look far out to sea,
+and behold ships coming and going in every variety of shape and size.
+
+But Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, who for the present were sole occupants of
+the premises, were not people of the dreamy kind, and consequently were
+not gazing off to sea, but attending to very terrestrial matters that in
+all cases somebody must attend to. The afternoon was warm and balmy, but
+a few smouldering sticks were kept in the great chimney, and thrust deep
+into the embers was a mongrel species of snub-nosed tea-pot, which fumed
+strongly of catnip-tea, a little of which gracious beverage Miss Roxy
+was preparing in an old-fashioned cracked India china tea-cup, tasting
+it as she did so with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+Apparently this was for the benefit of a small something in long white
+clothes, that lay face downward under a little blanket of very blue new
+flannel, and which something Aunt Roxy, when not otherwise engaged,
+constantly patted with a gentle tattoo, in tune to the steady trot of
+her knee. All babies knew Miss Roxy's tattoo on their backs, and never
+thought of taking it in ill part. On the contrary, it had a vital and
+mesmeric effect of sovereign force against colic, and all other
+disturbers of the nursery; and never was infant known so pressed with
+those internal troubles which infants cry about, as not speedily to give
+over and sink to slumber at this soothing appliance.
+
+At a little distance sat Aunt Ruey, with a quantity of black crape
+strewed on two chairs about her, very busily employed in getting up a
+mourning-bonnet, at which she snipped, and clipped, and worked,
+zealously singing, in a high cracked voice, from time to time, certain
+verses of a funeral psalm.
+
+Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey Toothacre were two brisk old bodies of the
+feminine gender and singular number, well known in all the region of
+Harpswell Neck and Middle Bay, and such was their fame that it had even
+reached the town of Brunswick, eighteen miles away.
+
+They were of that class of females who might be denominated, in the Old
+Testament language, "cunning women,"--that is, gifted with an infinite
+diversity of practical "faculty," which made them an essential
+requisite in every family for miles and miles around. It was impossible
+to say what they could not do: they could make dresses, and make shirts
+and vests and pantaloons, and cut out boys' jackets, and braid straw,
+and bleach and trim bonnets, and cook and wash, and iron and mend, could
+upholster and quilt, could nurse all kinds of sicknesses, and in default
+of a doctor, who was often miles away, were supposed to be infallible
+medical oracles. Many a human being had been ushered into life under
+their auspices,--trotted, chirruped in babyhood on their knees, clothed
+by their handiwork in garments gradually enlarging from year to year,
+watched by them in the last sickness, and finally arrayed for the long
+repose by their hands.
+
+These universally useful persons receive among us the title of "aunt" by
+a sort of general consent, showing the strong ties of relationship which
+bind them to the whole human family. They are nobody's aunts in
+particular, but aunts to human nature generally. The idea of restricting
+their usefulness to any one family, would strike dismay through a whole
+community. Nobody would be so unprincipled as to think of such a thing
+as having their services more than a week or two at most. Your country
+factotum knows better than anybody else how absurd it would be
+
+    "To give to a part what was meant for mankind."
+
+Nobody knew very well the ages of these useful sisters. In that cold,
+clear, severe climate of the North, the roots of human existence are
+hard to strike; but, if once people do take to living, they come in time
+to a place where they seem never to grow any older, but can always be
+found, like last year's mullein stalks, upright, dry, and seedy,
+warranted to last for any length of time.
+
+Miss Roxy Toothacre, who sits trotting the baby, is a tall, thin,
+angular woman, with sharp black eyes, and hair once black, but now well
+streaked with gray. These ravages of time, however, were concealed by an
+ample mohair frisette of glossy blackness woven on each side into a heap
+of stiff little curls, which pushed up her cap border in rather a
+bristling and decisive way. In all her movements and personal habits,
+even to her tone of voice and manner of speaking, Miss Roxy was
+vigorous, spicy, and decided. Her mind on all subjects was made up, and
+she spoke generally as one having authority; and who should, if she
+should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sibyl in all the most
+awful straits and mysteries of life? How many births, and weddings, and
+deaths had come and gone under her jurisdiction! And amid weeping or
+rejoicing, was not Miss Roxy still the master-spirit,--consulted,
+referred to by all?--was not her word law and precedent? Her younger
+sister, Miss Ruey, a pliant, cozy, easy-to-be-entreated personage, plump
+and cushiony, revolved around her as a humble satellite. Miss Roxy
+looked on Miss Ruey as quite a frisky young thing, though under her
+ample frisette of carroty hair her head might be seen white with the
+same snow that had powdered that of her sister. Aunt Ruey had a face
+much resembling the kind of one you may see, reader, by looking at
+yourself in the convex side of a silver milk-pitcher. If you try the
+experiment, this description will need no further amplification.
+
+The two almost always went together, for the variety of talent comprised
+in their stock could always find employment in the varying wants of a
+family. While one nursed the sick, the other made clothes for the well;
+and thus they were always chippering and chatting to each other, like a
+pair of antiquated house-sparrows, retailing over harmless gossips, and
+moralizing in that gentle jogtrot which befits serious old women. In
+fact, they had talked over everything in Nature, and said everything
+they could think of to each other so often, that the opinions of one
+were as like those of the other as two sides of a pea-pod. But as often
+happens in cases of the sort, this was not because the two were in all
+respects exactly alike, but because the stronger one had mesmerized the
+weaker into consent.
+
+Miss Roxy was the master-spirit of the two, and, like the great coining
+machine of a mint, came down with her own sharp, heavy stamp on every
+opinion her sister put out. She was matter-of-fact, positive, and
+declarative to the highest degree, while her sister was naturally
+inclined to the elegiac and the pathetic, indulging herself in
+sentimental poetry, and keeping a store thereof in her thread-case,
+which she had cut from the "Christian Mirror." Miss Roxy sometimes, in
+her brusque way, popped out observations on life and things, with a
+droll, hard quaintness that took one's breath a little, yet never failed
+to have a sharp crystallization of truth,--frosty though it were. She
+was one of those sensible, practical creatures who tear every veil, and
+lay their fingers on every spot in pure business-like good-will; and if
+we shiver at them at times, as at the first plunge of a cold bath, we
+confess to an invigorating power in them after all.
+
+"Well, now," said Miss Roxy, giving a decisive push to the tea-pot,
+which buried it yet deeper in the embers, "ain't it all a strange kind
+o' providence that this 'ere little thing is left behind so; and then
+their callin' on her by such a strange, mournful kind of name,--Mara. I
+thought sure as could be 'twas Mary, till the minister read the passage
+from Scriptur'. Seems to me it's kind o' odd. I'd call it Maria, or I'd
+put an Ann on to it. Mara-ann, now, wouldn't sound so strange."
+
+"It's a Scriptur' name, sister," said Aunt Ruey, "and that ought to be
+enough for us."
+
+"Well, I don't know," said Aunt Roxy. "Now there was Miss Jones down on
+Mure P'int called her twins Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser,--Scriptur'
+names both, but I never liked 'em. The boys used to call 'em, Tiggy and
+Shally, so no mortal could guess they was Scriptur'."
+
+"Well," said Aunt Ruey, drawing a sigh which caused her plump
+proportions to be agitated in gentle waves, "'tain't much matter, after
+all, _what_ they call the little thing, for 'tain't 'tall likely it's
+goin' to live,--cried and worried all night, and kep' a-suckin' my cheek
+and my night-gown, poor little thing! This 'ere's a baby that won't get
+along without its mother. What Mis' Pennel's a-goin' to do with it when
+we is gone, I'm sure I don't know. It comes kind o' hard on old people
+to be broke o' their rest. If it's goin' to be called home, it's a pity,
+as I said, it didn't go with its mother"--
+
+"And save the expense of another funeral," said Aunt Roxy. "Now when
+Mis' Pennel's sister asked her what she was going to do with Naomi's
+clothes, I couldn't help wonderin' when she said she should keep 'em for
+the child."
+
+"She had a sight of things, Naomi did," said Aunt Ruey. "Nothin' was
+never too much for her. I don't believe that Cap'n Pennel ever went to
+Bath or Portland without havin' it in his mind to bring Naomi
+somethin'."
+
+"Yes, and she had a faculty of puttin' of 'em on," said Miss Roxy, with
+a decisive shake of the head. "Naomi was a still girl, but her faculty
+was uncommon; and I tell you, Ruey, 'tain't everybody hes faculty as hes
+things."
+
+"The poor Cap'n," said Miss Ruey, "he seemed greatly supported at the
+funeral, but he's dreadful broke down since. I went into Naomi's room
+this morning, and there the old man was a-sittin' by her bed, and he had
+a pair of her shoes in his hand,--you know what a leetle bit of a foot
+she had. I never saw nothin' look so kind o' solitary as that poor old
+man did!"
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "she was a master-hand for keepin' things,
+Naomi was; her drawers is just a sight; she's got all the little
+presents and things they ever give her since she was a baby, in one
+drawer. There's a little pair of red shoes there that she had when she
+wa'n't more'n five year old. You 'member, Ruey, the Cap'n brought 'em
+over from Portland when we was to the house a-makin' Mis' Pennel's
+figured black silk that he brought from Calcutty. You 'member they cost
+just five and sixpence; but, law! the Cap'n he never grudged the money
+when 'twas for Naomi. And so she's got all her husband's keepsakes and
+things just as nice as when he give 'em to her."
+
+"It's real affectin'," said Miss Ruey, "I can't all the while help
+a-thinkin' of the Psalm,--
+
+    "'So fades the lovely blooming flower,--
+    Frail, smiling solace of an hour;
+    So quick our transient comforts fly,
+    And pleasure only blooms to die.'"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Roxy; "and, Ruey, I was a-thinkin' whether or no it
+wa'n't best to pack away them things, 'cause Naomi hadn't fixed no baby
+drawers, and we seem to want some."
+
+"I was kind o' hintin' that to Mis' Pennel this morning," said Ruey,
+"but she can't seem to want to have 'em touched."
+
+"Well, we may just as well come to such things first as last," said Aunt
+Roxy; "'cause if the Lord takes our friends, he does take 'em; and we
+can't lose 'em and have 'em too, and we may as well give right up at
+first, and done with it, that they are gone, and we've got to do without
+'em, and not to be hangin' on to keep things just as they was."
+
+"So I was a-tellin' Mis' Pennel," said Miss Ruey, "but she'll come to it
+by and by. I wish the baby might live, and kind o' grow up into her
+mother's place."
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I wish it might, but there'd be a sight o'
+trouble fetchin' on it up. Folks can do pretty well with children when
+they're young and spry, if they do get 'em up nights; but come to
+grandchildren, it's pretty tough."
+
+"I'm a-thinkin', sister," said Miss Ruey, taking off her spectacles and
+rubbing her nose thoughtfully, "whether or no cow's milk ain't goin' to
+be too hearty for it, it's such a pindlin' little thing. Now, Mis'
+Badger she brought up a seven-months' child, and she told me she gave it
+nothin' but these 'ere little seed cookies, wet in water, and it throve
+nicely,--and the seed is good for wind."
+
+"Oh, don't tell me none of Mis' Badger's stories," said Miss Roxy, "I
+don't believe in 'em. Cows is the Lord's ordinances for bringing up
+babies that's lost their mothers; it stands to reason they should
+be,--and babies that can't eat milk, why they can't be fetched up; but
+babies can eat milk, and this un will if it lives, and if it can't it
+won't live." So saying, Miss Roxy drummed away on the little back of the
+party in question, authoritatively, as if to pound in a wholesome
+conviction at the outset.
+
+"I hope," said Miss Ruey, holding up a strip of black crape, and looking
+through it from end to end so as to test its capabilities, "I hope the
+Cap'n and Mis' Pennel'll get some support at the prayer-meetin' this
+afternoon."
+
+"It's the right place to go to," said Miss Roxy, with decision.
+
+"Mis' Pennel said this mornin' that she was just beat out tryin' to
+submit; and the more she said, 'Thy will be done,' the more she didn't
+seem to feel it."
+
+"Them's common feelin's among mourners, Ruey. These 'ere forty years
+that I've been round nussin', and layin'-out, and tendin' funerals, I've
+watched people's exercises. People's sometimes supported wonderfully
+just at the time, and maybe at the funeral; but the three or four weeks
+after, most everybody, if they's to say what they feel, is
+unreconciled."
+
+"The Cap'n, he don't say nothin'," said Miss Ruey.
+
+"No, he don't, but he looks it in his eyes," said Miss Roxy; "he's one
+of the kind o' mourners as takes it deep; that kind don't cry; it's a
+kind o' dry, deep pain; them's the worst to get over it,--sometimes they
+just says nothin', and in about six months they send for you to nuss 'em
+in consumption or somethin'. Now, Mis' Pennel, she can cry and she can
+talk,--well, she'll get over it; but _he_ won't get no support unless
+the Lord reaches right down and lifts him up over the world. I've seen
+that happen sometimes, and I tell you, Ruey, that sort makes powerful
+Christians."
+
+At that moment the old pair entered the door. Zephaniah Pennel came and
+stood quietly by the pillow where the little form was laid, and lifted a
+corner of the blanket. The tiny head was turned to one side, showing the
+soft, warm cheek, and the little hand was holding tightly a morsel of
+the flannel blanket. He stood swallowing hard for a few moments. At last
+he said, with deep humility, to the wise and mighty woman who held her,
+"I'll tell you what it is, Miss Roxy, I'll give all there is in my old
+chest yonder if you'll only make her--live."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE KITTRIDGES
+
+
+It did live. The little life, so frail, so unprofitable in every mere
+material view, so precious in the eyes of love, expanded and flowered at
+last into fair childhood. Not without much watching and weariness. Many
+a night the old fisherman walked the floor with the little thing in his
+arms, talking to it that jargon of tender nonsense which fairies bring
+as love-gifts to all who tend a cradle. Many a day the good little old
+grandmother called the aid of gossips about her, trying various
+experiments of catnip, and sweet fern, and bayberry, and other teas of
+rustic reputation for baby frailties.
+
+At the end of three years, the two graves in the lonely graveyard were
+sodded and cemented down by smooth velvet turf, and playing round the
+door of the brown houses was a slender child, with ways and manners so
+still and singular as often to remind the neighbors that she was not
+like other children,--a bud of hope and joy,--but the outcome of a great
+sorrow,--a pearl washed ashore by a mighty, uprooting tempest. They that
+looked at her remembered that her father's eye had never beheld her, and
+her baptismal cup had rested on her mother's coffin.
+
+She was small of stature, beyond the wont of children of her age, and
+moulded with a fine waxen delicacy that won admiration from all eyes.
+Her hair was curly and golden, but her eyes were dark like her mother's,
+and the lids drooped over them in that manner which gives a peculiar
+expression of dreamy wistfulness. Every one of us must remember eyes
+that have a strange, peculiar expression of pathos and desire, as if the
+spirit that looked out of them were pressed with vague remembrances of a
+past, or but dimly comprehended the mystery of its present life. Even
+when the baby lay in its cradle, and its dark, inquiring eyes would
+follow now one object and now another, the gossips would say the child
+was longing for something, and Miss Roxy would still further venture to
+predict that that child always would long and never would know exactly
+what she was after.
+
+That dignitary sits at this minute enthroned in the kitchen corner,
+looking majestically over the press-board on her knee, where she is
+pressing the next year's Sunday vest of Zephaniah Pennel. As she makes
+her heavy tailor's goose squeak on the work, her eyes follow the little
+delicate fairy form which trips about the kitchen, busily and silently
+arranging a little grotto of gold and silver shells and seaweed. The
+child sings to herself as she works in a low chant, like the prattle of
+a brook, but ever and anon she rests her little arms on a chair and
+looks through the open kitchen-door far, far off where the horizon line
+of the blue sea dissolves in the blue sky.
+
+"See that child now, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who sat stitching beside
+her; "do look at her eyes. She's as handsome as a pictur', but 't ain't
+an ordinary look she has neither; she seems a contented little thing;
+but what makes her eyes always look so kind o' wishful?"
+
+"Wa'n't her mother always a-longin' and a-lookin' to sea, and watchin'
+the ships, afore she was born?" said Miss Roxy; "and didn't her heart
+break afore she was born? Babies like that is marked always. They don't
+know what ails 'em, nor nobody."
+
+"It's her mother she's after," said Miss Ruey.
+
+"The Lord only knows," said Miss Roxy; "but them kind o' children always
+seem homesick to go back where they come from. They're mostly grave and
+old-fashioned like this 'un. If they gets past seven years, why they
+live; but it's always in 'em to long; they don't seem to be really
+unhappy neither, but if anything's ever the matter with 'em, it seems a
+great deal easier for 'em to die than to live. Some say it's the mothers
+longin' after 'em makes 'em feel so, and some say it's them longin'
+after their mothers; but dear knows, Ruey, what anything is or what
+makes anything. Children's mysterious, that's my mind."
+
+"Mara, dear," said Miss Ruey, interrupting the child's steady lookout,
+"what you thinking of?"
+
+"Me want somefin'," said the little one.
+
+"That's what she's always sayin'," said Miss Roxy.
+
+"Me want somebody to pay wis'," continued the little one.
+
+"Want somebody to play with," said old Dame Pennel, as she came in from
+the back-room with her hands yet floury with kneading bread; "sure
+enough, she does. Our house stands in such a lonesome place, and there
+ain't any children. But I never saw such a quiet little thing--always
+still and always busy."
+
+"I'll take her down with me to Cap'n Kittridge's," said Miss Roxy, "and
+let her play with their little girl; she'll chirk her up, I'll warrant.
+She's a regular little witch, Sally is, but she'll chirk her up. It
+ain't good for children to be so still and old-fashioned; children ought
+to be children. Sally takes to Mara just 'cause she's so different."
+
+"Well, now, you may," said Dame Pennel; "to be sure _he_ can't bear her
+out of his sight a minute after he comes in; but after all, old folks
+can't be company for children."
+
+Accordingly, that afternoon, the little Mara was arrayed in a little
+blue flounced dress, which stood out like a balloon, made by Miss Roxy
+in first-rate style, from a French fashion-plate; her golden hair was
+twined in manifold curls by Dame Pennel, who, restricted in her ideas
+of ornamentation, spared, nevertheless, neither time nor money to
+enhance the charms of this single ornament to her dwelling. Mara was her
+picture-gallery, who gave her in the twenty-four hours as many Murillos
+or Greuzes as a lover of art could desire; and as she tied over the
+child's golden curls a little flat hat, and saw her go dancing off along
+the sea-sands, holding to Miss Roxy's bony finger, she felt she had in
+her what galleries of pictures could not buy.
+
+It was a good mile to the one story, gambrel-roofed cottage where lived
+Captain Kittridge,--the long, lean, brown man, with his good wife of the
+great Leghorn bonnet, round, black bead eyes, and psalm-book, whom we
+told you of at the funeral. The Captain, too, had followed the sea in
+his early life, but being not, as he expressed it, "very rugged," in
+time changed his ship for a tight little cottage on the seashore, and
+devoted himself to boat-building, which he found sufficiently lucrative
+to furnish his brown cottage with all that his wife's heart desired,
+besides extra money for knick-knacks when she chose to go up to
+Brunswick or over to Portland to shop.
+
+The Captain himself was a welcome guest at all the firesides round,
+being a chatty body, and disposed to make the most of his foreign
+experiences, in which he took the usual advantages of a traveler. In
+fact, it was said, whether slanderously or not, that the Captain's yarns
+were spun to order; and as, when pressed to relate his foreign
+adventures, he always responded with, "What would you like to hear?" it
+was thought that he fabricated his article to suit his market. In short,
+there was no species of experience, finny, fishy, or aquatic,--no legend
+of strange and unaccountable incident of fire or flood,--no romance of
+foreign scenery and productions, to which his tongue was not competent,
+when he had once seated himself in a double bow-knot at a neighbor's
+evening fireside.
+
+His good wife, a sharp-eyed, literal body, and a vigorous church-member,
+felt some concern of conscience on the score of these narrations; for,
+being their constant auditor, she, better than any one else, could
+perceive the variations and discrepancies of text which showed their
+mythical character, and oftentimes her black eyes would snap and her
+knitting-needles rattle with an admonitory vigor as he went on, and
+sometimes she would unmercifully come in at the end of a narrative
+with,--
+
+"Well, now, the Cap'n's told them ar stories till he begins to b'lieve
+'em himself, I think."
+
+But works of fiction, as we all know, if only well gotten up, have
+always their advantages in the hearts of listeners over plain, homely
+truth; and so Captain Kittridge's yarns were marketable fireside
+commodities still, despite the skepticisms which attended them.
+
+The afternoon sunbeams at this moment are painting the gambrel-roof with
+a golden brown. It is September again, as it was three years ago when
+our story commenced, and the sea and sky are purple and amethystine with
+its Italian haziness of atmosphere.
+
+The brown house stands on a little knoll, about a hundred yards from the
+open ocean. Behind it rises a ledge of rocks, where cedars and hemlocks
+make deep shadows into which the sun shoots golden shafts of light,
+illuminating the scarlet feathers of the sumach, which throw themselves
+jauntily forth from the crevices; while down below, in deep, damp, mossy
+recesses, rise ferns which autumn has just begun to tinge with yellow
+and brown. The little knoll where the cottage stood had on its right
+hand a tiny bay, where the ocean water made up amid picturesque
+rocks--shaggy and solemn. Here trees of the primeval forest, grand and
+lordly, looked down silently into the waters which ebbed and flowed
+daily into this little pool. Every variety of those beautiful evergreens
+which feather the coast of Maine, and dip their wings in the very spray
+of its ocean foam, found here a representative. There were aspiring
+black spruces, crowned on the very top with heavy coronets of cones;
+there were balsamic firs, whose young buds breathe the scent of
+strawberries; there were cedars, black as midnight clouds, and white
+pines with their swaying plumage of needle-like leaves, strewing the
+ground beneath with a golden, fragrant matting; and there were the
+gigantic, wide-winged hemlocks, hundreds of years old, and with long,
+swaying, gray beards of moss, looking white and ghostly under the deep
+shadows of their boughs. And beneath, creeping round trunk and matting
+over stones, were many and many of those wild, beautiful things which
+embellish the shadows of these northern forests. Long, feathery wreaths
+of what are called ground-pines ran here and there in little ruffles of
+green, and the prince's pine raised its oriental feather, with a mimic
+cone on the top, as if it conceived itself to be a grown-up tree. Whole
+patches of partridge-berry wove their evergreen matting, dotted
+plentifully with brilliant scarlet berries. Here and there, the rocks
+were covered with a curiously inwoven tapestry of moss, overshot with
+the exquisite vine of the Linnea borealis, which in early spring rings
+its two fairy bells on the end of every spray; while elsewhere the
+wrinkled leaves of the mayflower wove themselves through and through
+deep beds of moss, meditating silently thoughts of the thousand little
+cups of pink shell which they had it in hand to make when the time of
+miracles should come round next spring.
+
+Nothing, in short, could be more quaintly fresh, wild, and beautiful
+than the surroundings of this little cove which Captain Kittridge had
+thought fit to dedicate to his boat-building operations,--where he had
+set up his tar-kettle between two great rocks above the highest
+tide-mark, and where, at the present moment, he had a boat upon the
+stocks.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge, at this hour, was sitting in her clean kitchen, very
+busily engaged in ripping up a silk dress, which Miss Roxy had engaged
+to come and make into a new one; and, as she ripped, she cast now and
+then an eye at the face of a tall, black clock, whose solemn tick-tock
+was the only sound that could be heard in the kitchen.
+
+By her side, on a low stool, sat a vigorous, healthy girl of six years,
+whose employment evidently did not please her, for her well-marked black
+eyebrows were bent in a frown, and her large black eyes looked surly and
+wrathful, and one versed in children's grievances could easily see what
+the matter was,--she was turning a sheet! Perhaps, happy young female
+reader, you don't know what that is,--most likely not; for in these
+degenerate days the strait and narrow ways of self-denial, formerly
+thought so wholesome for little feet, are quite grass-grown with
+neglect. Childhood nowadays is unceasingly feted and caressed, the
+principal difficulty of the grown people seeming to be to discover what
+the little dears want,--a thing not always clear to the little dears
+themselves. But in old times, turning sheets was thought a most especial
+and wholesome discipline for young girls; in the first place, because it
+took off the hands of their betters a very uninteresting and monotonous
+labor; and in the second place, because it was such a long, straight,
+unending turnpike, that the youthful travelers, once started thereupon,
+could go on indefinitely, without requiring guidance and direction of
+their elders. For these reasons, also, the task was held in special
+detestation by children in direct proportion to their amount of life,
+and their ingenuity and love of variety. A dull child took it tolerably
+well; but to a lively, energetic one, it was a perfect torture.
+
+"I don't see the use of sewing up sheets one side, and ripping up the
+other," at last said Sally, breaking the monotonous tick-tock of the
+clock by an observation which has probably occurred to every child in
+similar circumstances.
+
+"Sally Kittridge, if you say another word about that ar sheet, I'll whip
+you," was the very explicit rejoinder; and there was a snap of Mrs.
+Kittridge's black eyes, that seemed to make it likely that she would
+keep her word. It was answered by another snap from the six-year-old
+eyes, as Sally comforted herself with thinking that when she was a woman
+she'd speak her mind out in pay for all this.
+
+At this moment a burst of silvery child-laughter rang out, and there
+appeared in the doorway, illuminated by the afternoon sunbeams, the
+vision of Miss Roxy's tall, lank figure, with the little golden-haired,
+blue-robed fairy, hanging like a gay butterfly upon the tip of a
+thorn-bush. Sally dropped the sheet and clapped her hands, unnoticed by
+her mother, who rose to pay her respects to the "cunning woman" of the
+neighborhood.
+
+"Well, now, Miss Roxy, I was 'mazin' afraid you wer'n't a-comin'. I'd
+just been an' got my silk ripped up, and didn't know how to get a step
+farther without you."
+
+"Well, I was finishin' up Cap'n Pennel's best pantaloons," said Miss
+Roxy; "and I've got 'em along so, Ruey can go on with 'em; and I told
+Mis' Pennel I must come to you, if 'twas only for a day; and I fetched
+the little girl down, 'cause the little thing's so kind o' lonesome
+like. I thought Sally could play with her, and chirk her up a little."
+
+"Well, Sally," said Mrs. Kittridge, "stick in your needle, fold up your
+sheet, put your thimble in your work-pocket, and then you may take the
+little Mara down to the cove to play; but be sure you don't let her go
+near the tar, nor wet her shoes. D'ye hear?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Sally, who had sprung up in light and radiance, like
+a translated creature, at this unexpected turn of fortune, and
+performed the welcome orders with a celerity which showed how agreeable
+they were; and then, stooping and catching the little one in her arms,
+disappeared through the door, with the golden curls fluttering over her
+own crow-black hair.
+
+The fact was, that Sally, at that moment, was as happy as human creature
+could be, with a keenness of happiness that children who have never been
+made to turn sheets of a bright afternoon can never realize. The sun was
+yet an hour high, as she saw, by the flash of her shrewd, time-keeping
+eye, and she could bear her little prize down to the cove, and collect
+unknown quantities of gold and silver shells, and starfish, and
+salad-dish shells, and white pebbles for her, besides quantities of well
+turned shavings, brown and white, from the pile which constantly was
+falling under her father's joiner's bench, and with which she would make
+long extemporaneous tresses, so that they might play at being mermaids,
+like those that she had heard her father tell about in some of his
+sea-stories.
+
+"Now, railly, Sally, what you got there?" said Captain Kittridge, as he
+stood in his shirt-sleeves peering over his joiner's bench, to watch the
+little one whom Sally had dumped down into a nest of clean white
+shavings. "Wal', wal', I should think you'd a-stolen the big doll I see
+in a shop-window the last time I was to Portland. So this is Pennel's
+little girl?--poor child!"
+
+"Yes, father, and we want some nice shavings."
+
+"Stay a bit, I'll make ye a few a-purpose," said the old man, reaching
+his long, bony arm, with the greatest ease, to the farther part of his
+bench, and bringing up a board, from which he proceeded to roll off
+shavings in fine satin rings, which perfectly delighted the hearts of
+the children, and made them dance with glee; and, truth to say, reader,
+there are coarser and homelier things in the world than a well turned
+shaving.
+
+"There, go now," he said, when both of them stood with both hands full;
+"go now and play; and mind you don't let the baby wet her feet, Sally;
+them shoes o' hern must have cost five-and-sixpence at the very least."
+
+That sunny hour before sundown seemed as long to Sally as the whole seam
+of the sheet; for childhood's joys are all pure gold; and as she ran up
+and down the white sands, shouting at every shell she found, or darted
+up into the overhanging forest for checkerberries and ground-pine, all
+the sorrows of the morning came no more into her remembrance.
+
+The little Mara had one of those sensitive, excitable natures, on which
+every external influence acts with immediate power. Stimulated by the
+society of her energetic, buoyant little neighbor, she no longer seemed
+wishful or pensive, but kindled into a perfect flame of wild delight,
+and gamboled about the shore like a blue and gold-winged fly; while her
+bursts of laughter made the squirrels and blue jays look out
+inquisitively from their fastnesses in the old evergreens. Gradually the
+sunbeams faded from the pines, and the waves of the tide in the little
+cove came in, solemnly tinted with purple, flaked with orange and
+crimson, borne in from a great rippling sea of fire, into which the sun
+had just sunk.
+
+"Mercy on us--them children!" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"_He's_ bringin' 'em along," said Mrs. Kittridge, as she looked out of
+the window and saw the tall, lank form of the Captain, with one child
+seated on either shoulder, and holding on by his head.
+
+The two children were both in the highest state of excitement, but never
+was there a more marked contrast of nature. The one seemed a perfect
+type of well-developed childish health and vigor, good solid flesh and
+bones, with glowing skin, brilliant eyes, shining teeth, well-knit,
+supple limbs,--vigorously and healthily beautiful; while the other
+appeared one of those aerial mixtures of cloud and fire, whose radiance
+seems scarcely earthly. A physiologist, looking at the child, would
+shake his head, seeing one of those perilous organizations, all nerve
+and brain, which come to life under the clear, stimulating skies of
+America, and, burning with the intensity of lighted phosphorus, waste
+themselves too early.
+
+The little Mara seemed like a fairy sprite, possessed with a wild spirit
+of glee. She laughed and clapped her hands incessantly, and when set
+down on the kitchen-floor spun round like a little elf; and that night
+it was late and long before her wide, wakeful eyes could be veiled in
+sleep.
+
+"Company jist sets this 'ere child crazy," said Miss Roxy; "it's jist
+her lonely way of livin'; a pity Mis' Pennel hadn't another child to
+keep company along with her."
+
+"Mis' Pennel oughter be trainin' of her up to work," said Mrs.
+Kittridge. "Sally could oversew and hem when she wa'n't more'n three
+years old; nothin' straightens out children like work. Mis' Pennel she
+just keeps that ar child to look at."
+
+"All children ain't alike, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Roxy,
+sententiously. "This 'un ain't like your Sally. 'A hen and a bumble-bee
+can't be fetched up alike, fix it how you will!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GRANDPARENTS
+
+
+Zephaniah Pennel came back to his house in the evening, after Miss Roxy
+had taken the little Mara away. He looked for the flowery face and
+golden hair as he came towards the door, and put his hand in his
+vest-pocket, where he had deposited a small store of very choice shells
+and sea curiosities, thinking of the widening of those dark, soft eyes
+when he should present them.
+
+"Where's Mara?" was the first inquiry after he had crossed the
+threshold.
+
+"Why, Roxy's been an' taken her down to Cap'n Kittridge's to spend the
+night," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy's gone to help Mis' Kittridge to turn her
+spotted gray and black silk. We was talking this mornin' whether 'no 't
+would turn, 'cause _I_ thought the spot was overshot, and wouldn't make
+up on the wrong side; but Roxy she says it's one of them ar Calcutty
+silks that has two sides to 'em, like the one you bought Miss Pennel,
+that we made up for her, you know;" and Miss Ruey arose and gave a
+finishing snap to the Sunday pantaloons, which she had been left to
+"finish off,"--which snap said, as plainly as words could say that there
+was a good job disposed of.
+
+Zephaniah stood looking as helpless as animals of the male kind
+generally do when appealed to with such prolixity on feminine details;
+in reply to it all, only he asked meekly,--
+
+"Where's Mary?"
+
+"Mis' Pennel? Why, she's up chamber. She'll be down in a minute, she
+said; she thought she'd have time afore supper to get to the bottom of
+the big chist, and see if that 'ere vest pattern ain't there, and them
+sticks o' twist for the button-holes, 'cause Roxy she says she never see
+nothin' so rotten as that 'ere twist we've been a-workin' with, that
+Mis' Pennel got over to Portland; it's a clear cheat, and Mis' Pennel
+she give more'n half a cent a stick more for 't than what Roxy got for
+her up to Brunswick; so you see these 'ere Portland stores charge up,
+and their things want lookin' after."
+
+Here Mrs. Pennel entered the room, "the Captain" addressing her
+eagerly,--
+
+"How came you to let Aunt Roxy take Mara off so far, and be gone so
+long?"
+
+"Why, law me, Captain Pennel! the little thing seems kind o' lonesome.
+Chil'en want chil'en; Miss Roxy says she's altogether too sort o' still
+and old-fashioned, and must have child's company to chirk her up, and so
+she took her down to play with Sally Kittridge; there's no manner of
+danger or harm in it, and she'll be back to-morrow afternoon, and Mara
+will have a real good time."
+
+"Wal', now, really," said the good man, "but it's 'mazin' lonesome."
+
+"Cap'n Pennel, you're gettin' to make an idol of that 'ere child," said
+Miss Ruey. "We have to watch our hearts. It minds me of the hymn,--
+
+    "'The fondness of a creature's love,
+      How strong it strikes the sense,--
+    Thither the warm affections move,
+      Nor can we call them hence.'"
+
+Miss Ruey's mode of getting off poetry, in a sort of high-pitched
+canter, with a strong thump on every accented syllable, might have
+provoked a smile in more sophisticated society, but Zephaniah listened
+to her with deep gravity, and answered,--
+
+"I'm 'fraid there's truth in what you say, Aunt Ruey. When her mother
+was called away, I thought that was a warning I never should forget; but
+now I seem to be like Jonah,--I'm restin' in the shadow of my gourd, and
+my heart is glad because of it. I kind o' trembled at the prayer meetin'
+when we was a-singin',--
+
+    "'The dearest idol I have known,
+      Whate'er that idol be,
+    Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
+      And worship only Thee.'"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "Roxy says if the Lord should take us up short on
+our prayers, it would make sad work with us sometimes."
+
+"Somehow," said Mrs. Pennel, "it seems to me just her mother over again.
+She don't look like her. I think her hair and complexion comes from the
+Badger blood; my mother had that sort o' hair and skin,--but then she
+has ways like Naomi,--and it seems as if the Lord had kind o' given
+Naomi back to us; so I hope she's goin' to be spared to us."
+
+Mrs. Pennel had one of those natures--gentle, trustful, and hopeful,
+because not very deep; she was one of the little children of the world
+whose faith rests on child-like ignorance, and who know not the deeper
+needs of deeper natures; such see only the sunshine and forget the
+storm.
+
+This conversation had been going on to the accompaniment of a clatter of
+plates and spoons and dishes, and the fizzling of sausages, prefacing
+the evening meal, to which all now sat down after a lengthened grace
+from Zephaniah.
+
+"There's a tremendous gale a-brewin'," he said, as they sat at table. "I
+noticed the clouds to-night as I was comin' home, and somehow I felt
+kind o' as if I wanted all our folks snug in-doors."
+
+"Why, law, husband, Cap'n Kittridge's house is as good as ours, if it
+does blow. You never can seem to remember that houses don't run aground
+or strike on rocks in storms."
+
+"The Cap'n puts me in mind of old Cap'n Jeduth Scranton," said Miss
+Ruey, "that built that queer house down by Middle Bay. The Cap'n he
+would insist on havin' on't jist like a ship, and the closet-shelves had
+holes for the tumblers and dishes, and he had all his tables and chairs
+battened down, and so when it came a gale, they say the old Cap'n used
+to sit in his chair and hold on to hear the wind blow."
+
+"Well, I tell you," said Captain, "those that has followed the seas
+hears the wind with different ears from lands-people. When you lie with
+only a plank between you and eternity, and hear the voice of the Lord on
+the waters, it don't sound as it does on shore."
+
+And in truth, as they were speaking, a fitful gust swept by the house,
+wailing and screaming and rattling the windows, and after it came the
+heavy, hollow moan of the surf on the beach, like the wild, angry howl
+of some savage animal just beginning to be lashed into fury.
+
+"Sure enough, the wind is rising," said Miss Ruey, getting up from the
+table, and flattening her snub nose against the window-pane. "Dear me,
+how dark it is! Mercy on us, how the waves come in!--all of a sheet of
+foam. I pity the ships that's comin' on coast such a night."
+
+The storm seemed to have burst out with a sudden fury, as if myriads of
+howling demons had all at once been loosened in the air. Now they piped
+and whistled with eldritch screech round the corners of the house--now
+they thundered down the chimney--and now they shook the door and rattled
+the casement--and anon mustering their forces with wild ado, seemed to
+career over the house, and sail high up into the murky air. The dash of
+the rising tide came with successive crash upon crash like the discharge
+of heavy artillery, seeming to shake the very house, and the spray
+borne by the wind dashed whizzing against the window-panes.
+
+Zephaniah, rising from supper, drew up the little stand that had the
+family Bible on it, and the three old time-worn people sat themselves as
+seriously down to evening worship as if they had been an extensive
+congregation. They raised the old psalm-tune which our fathers called
+"Complaint," and the cracked, wavering voices of the women, with the
+deep, rough bass of the old sea-captain, rose in the uproar of the storm
+with a ghostly, strange wildness, like the scream of the curlew or the
+wailing of the wind:--
+
+    "Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray,
+      Nor let our sun go down at noon:
+    Thy years are an eternal day,
+      And must thy children die so soon!"
+
+Miss Ruey valued herself on singing a certain weird and exalted part
+which in ancient days used to be called counter, and which wailed and
+gyrated in unimaginable heights of the scale, much as you may hear a
+shrill, fine-voiced wind over a chimney-top; but altogether, the deep
+and earnest gravity with which the three filled up the pauses in the
+storm with their quaint minor key, had something singularly impressive.
+When the singing was over, Zephaniah read to the accompaniment of wind
+and sea, the words of poetry made on old Hebrew shores, in the dim, gray
+dawn of the world:--
+
+"The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thundereth;
+the Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord shaketh the
+wilderness; the Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. The Lord sitteth
+upon the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King forever. The Lord will give
+strength to his people; yea, the Lord will bless his people with peace."
+
+How natural and home-born sounded this old piece of Oriental poetry in
+the ears of the three! The wilderness of Kadesh, with its great cedars,
+was doubtless Orr's Island, where even now the goodly fellowship of
+black-winged trees were groaning and swaying, and creaking as the breath
+of the Lord passed over them.
+
+And the three old people kneeling by their smouldering fireside, amid
+the general uproar, Zephaniah began in the words of a prayer which Moses
+the man of God made long ago under the shadows of Egyptian pyramids:
+"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the
+mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
+the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."
+
+We hear sometimes in these days that the Bible is no more inspired of
+God than many other books of historic and poetic merit. It is a fact,
+however, that the Bible answers a strange and wholly exceptional purpose
+by thousands of firesides on all shores of the earth; and, till some
+other book can be found to do the same thing, it will not be surprising
+if a belief of its Divine origin be one of the ineffaceable ideas of the
+popular mind. It will be a long while before a translation from Homer or
+a chapter in the Koran, or any of the beauties of Shakespeare, will be
+read in a stormy night on Orr's Island with the same sense of a Divine
+presence as the Psalms of David, or the prayer of Moses, the man of God.
+
+Boom! boom! "What's that?" said Zephaniah, starting, as they rose up
+from prayer. "Hark! again, that's a gun,--there's a ship in distress."
+
+"Poor souls," said Miss Ruey; "it's an awful night!"
+
+The captain began to put on his sea-coat.
+
+"You ain't a-goin' out?" said his wife.
+
+"I must go out along the beach a spell, and see if I can hear any more
+of that ship."
+
+"Mercy on us; the wind'll blow you over!" said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"I rayther think I've stood wind before in my day," said Zephaniah, a
+grim smile stealing over his weather-beaten cheeks. In fact, the man
+felt a sort of secret relationship to the storm, as if it were in some
+manner a family connection--a wild, roystering cousin, who drew him out
+by a rough attraction of comradeship.
+
+"Well, at any rate," said Mrs. Pennel, producing a large tin lantern
+perforated with many holes, in which she placed a tallow candle, "take
+this with you, and don't stay out long."
+
+The kitchen door opened, and the first gust of wind took off the old
+man's hat and nearly blew him prostrate. He came back and shut the
+door. "I ought to have known better," he said, knotting his
+pocket-handkerchief over his head, after which he waited for a momentary
+lull, and went out into the storm.
+
+Miss Ruey looked through the window-pane, and saw the light go twinkling
+far down into the gloom, and ever and anon came the mournful boom of
+distant guns.
+
+"Certainly there is a ship in trouble somewhere," she said.
+
+"He never can be easy when he hears these guns," said Mrs. Pennel; "but
+what can he do, or anybody, in such a storm, the wind blowing right on
+to shore?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if Cap'n Kittridge should be out on the beach, too,"
+said Miss Ruey; "but laws, he ain't much more than one of these 'ere old
+grasshoppers you see after frost comes. Well, any way, there _ain't_
+much help in man if a ship comes ashore in such a gale as this, such a
+dark night too."
+
+"It's kind o' lonesome to have poor little Mara away such a night as
+this is," said Mrs. Pennel; "but who would a-thought it this afternoon,
+when Aunt Roxy took her?"
+
+"I 'member my grandmother had a silver cream-pitcher that come ashore
+in a storm on Mare P'int," said Miss Ruey, as she sat trotting her
+knitting-needles. "Grand'ther found it, half full of sand, under a knot
+of seaweed way up on the beach. It had a coat of arms on it,--might have
+belonged to some grand family, that pitcher; in the Toothacre family
+yet."
+
+"I remember when I was a girl," said Mrs. Pennel, "seeing the hull of a
+ship that went on Eagle Island; it run way up in a sort of gully between
+two rocks, and lay there years. They split pieces off it sometimes to
+make fires, when they wanted to make a chowder down on the beach."
+
+"My aunt, Lois Toothacre, that lives down by Middle Bay," said Miss
+Ruey, "used to tell about a dreadful blow they had once in time of the
+equinoctial storm; and what was remarkable, she insisted that she heard
+a baby cryin' out in the storm,--she heard it just as plain as could
+be."
+
+"Laws a-mercy," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously, "it was nothing but the
+wind,--it always screeches like a child crying; or maybe it was the
+seals; seals will cry just like babes."
+
+"So they told her; but no,--she insisted she knew the difference,--it
+_was_ a baby. Well, what do you think, when the storm cleared off, they
+found a baby's cradle washed ashore sure enough!"
+
+"But they didn't find any baby," said Mrs. Pennel, nervously.
+
+"No; they searched the beach far and near, and that cradle was all they
+found. Aunt Lois took it in--it was a very good cradle, and she took it
+to use, but every time there came up a gale, that ar cradle would rock,
+rock, jist as if somebody was a-sittin' by it; and you could stand
+across the room and see there wa'n't nobody there."
+
+"You make me all of a shiver," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+This, of course, was just what Miss Ruey intended, and she went on:--
+
+"Wal', you see they kind o' got used to it; they found there wa'n't no
+harm come of its rockin', and so they didn't mind; but Aunt Lois had a
+sister Cerinthy that was a weakly girl, and had the janders. Cerinthy
+was one of the sort that's born with veils over their faces, and can see
+sperits; and one time Cerinthy was a-visitin' Lois after her second baby
+was born, and there came up a blow, and Cerinthy comes out of the
+keepin'-room, where the cradle was a-standin', and says, 'Sister,' says
+she, 'who's that woman sittin' rockin' the cradle?' and Aunt Lois says
+she, 'Why, there ain't nobody. That ar cradle always will rock in a
+gale, but I've got used to it, and don't mind it.' 'Well,' says
+Cerinthy, 'jist as true as you live, I just saw a woman with a silk gown
+on, and long black hair a-hangin' down, and her face was pale as a
+sheet, sittin' rockin' that ar cradle, and she looked round at me with
+her great black eyes kind o' mournful and wishful, and then she stooped
+down over the cradle.' 'Well,' says Lois, 'I ain't goin' to have no such
+doin's in my house,' and she went right in and took up the baby, and the
+very next day she jist had the cradle split up for kindlin'; and that
+night, if you'll believe, when they was a-burnin' of it, they heard,
+jist as plain as could be, a baby scream, scream, screamin' round the
+house; but after that they never heard it no more."
+
+"I don't like such stories," said Dame Pennel, "'specially to-night,
+when Mara's away. I shall get to hearing all sorts of noises in the
+wind. I wonder when Cap'n Pennel will be back."
+
+And the good woman put more wood on the fire, and as the tongues of
+flame streamed up high and clear, she approached her face to the
+window-pane and started back with half a scream, as a pale, anxious
+visage with sad dark eyes seemed to approach her. It took a moment or
+two for her to discover that she had seen only the reflection of her own
+anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without having converted the
+window into a sort of dark mirror.
+
+Miss Ruey meanwhile began solacing herself by singing, in her
+chimney-corner, a very favorite sacred melody, which contrasted oddly
+enough with the driving storm and howling sea:--
+
+    "Haste, my beloved, haste away,
+    Cut short the hours of thy delay;
+    Fly like the bounding hart or roe,
+    Over the hills where spices grow."
+
+The tune was called "Invitation,"--one of those profusely florid in
+runs, and trills, and quavers, which delighted the ears of a former
+generation; and Miss Ruey, innocently unconscious of the effect of old
+age on her voice, ran them up and down, and out and in, in a way that
+would have made a laugh, had there been anybody there to notice or to
+laugh.
+
+"I remember singin' that ar to Mary Jane Wilson the very night she
+died," said Aunt Ruey, stopping. "She wanted me to sing to her, and it
+was jist between two and three in the mornin'; there was jist the least
+red streak of daylight, and I opened the window and sat there and sung,
+and when I come to 'over the hills where spices grow,' I looked round
+and there was a change in Mary Jane, and I went to the bed, and says she
+very bright, 'Aunt Ruey, the Beloved has come,' and she was gone afore I
+could raise her up on her pillow. I always think of Mary Jane at them
+words; if ever there was a broken-hearted crittur took home, it was
+her."
+
+At this moment Mrs. Pennel caught sight through the window of the gleam
+of the returning lantern, and in a moment Captain Pennel entered,
+dripping with rain and spray.
+
+"Why, Cap'n! you're e'en a'most drowned," said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"How long have you been gone? You must have been a great ways," said
+Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"Yes, I have been down to Cap'n Kittridge's. I met Kittridge out on the
+beach. We heard the guns plain enough, but couldn't see anything. I went
+on down to Kittridge's to get a look at little Mara."
+
+"Well, she's all well enough?" said Mrs. Pennel, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, yes, well enough. Miss Roxy showed her to me in the trundle-bed,
+'long with Sally. The little thing was lying smiling in her sleep, with
+her cheek right up against Sally's. I took comfort looking at her. I
+couldn't help thinking: 'So he giveth his beloved sleep!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FROM THE SEA
+
+
+During the night and storm, the little Mara had lain sleeping as quietly
+as if the cruel sea, that had made her an orphan from her birth, were
+her kind-tempered old grandfather singing her to sleep, as he often
+did,--with a somewhat hoarse voice truly, but with ever an undertone of
+protecting love. But toward daybreak, there came very clear and bright
+into her childish mind a dream, having that vivid distinctness which
+often characterizes the dreams of early childhood.
+
+She thought she saw before her the little cove where she and Sally had
+been playing the day before, with its broad sparkling white beach of
+sand curving round its blue sea-mirror, and studded thickly with gold
+and silver shells. She saw the boat of Captain Kittridge upon the
+stocks, and his tar-kettle with the smouldering fires flickering under
+it; but, as often happens in dreams, a certain rainbow vividness and
+clearness invested everything, and she and Sally were jumping for joy at
+the beautiful things they found on the beach.
+
+Suddenly, there stood before them a woman, dressed in a long white
+garment. She was very pale, with sweet, serious dark eyes, and she led
+by the hand a black-eyed boy, who seemed to be crying and looking about
+as for something lost. She dreamed that she stood still, and the woman
+came toward her, looking at her with sweet, sad eyes, till the child
+seemed to feel them in every fibre of her frame. The woman laid her hand
+on her head as if in blessing, and then put the boy's hand in hers, and
+said, "Take him, Mara, he is a playmate for you;" and with that the
+little boy's face flashed out into a merry laugh. The woman faded away,
+and the three children remained playing together, gathering shells and
+pebbles of a wonderful brightness. So vivid was this vision, that the
+little one awoke laughing with pleasure, and searched under her pillows
+for the strange and beautiful things that she had been gathering in
+dreamland.
+
+"What's Mara looking after?" said Sally, sitting up in her trundle-bed,
+and speaking in the patronizing motherly tone she commonly used to her
+little playmate.
+
+"All gone, pitty boy--all gone!" said the child, looking round
+regretfully, and shaking her golden head; "pitty lady all gone!"
+
+"How queer she talks!" said Sally, who had awakened with the project of
+building a sheet-house with her fairy neighbor, and was beginning to
+loosen the upper sheet and dispose the pillows with a view to this
+species of architecture. "Come, Mara, let's make a pretty house!" she
+said.
+
+"Pitty boy out dere--out dere!" said the little one, pointing to the
+window, with a deeper expression than ever of wishfulness in her eyes.
+
+"Come, Sally Kittridge, get up this minute!" said the voice of her
+mother, entering the door at this moment; "and here, put these clothes
+on to Mara, the child mustn't run round in her best; it's strange, now,
+Mary Pennel never thinks of such things."
+
+Sally, who was of an efficient temperament, was preparing energetically
+to second these commands of her mother, and endue her little neighbor
+with a coarse brown stuff dress, somewhat faded and patched, which she
+herself had outgrown when of Mara's age; with shoes, which had been
+coarsely made to begin with, and very much battered by time; but, quite
+to her surprise, the child, generally so passive and tractable, opposed
+a most unexpected and desperate resistance to this operation. She began
+to cry and to sob and shake her curly head, throwing her tiny hands out
+in a wild species of freakish opposition, which had, notwithstanding, a
+quaint and singular grace about it, while she stated her objections in
+all the little English at her command.
+
+"Mara don't want--Mara want pitty boo des--and _pitty_ shoes."
+
+"Why, was ever anything like it?" said Mrs. Kittridge to Miss Roxy, as
+they both were drawn to the door by the outcry; "here's this child won't
+have decent every-day clothes put on her,--she must be kept dressed up
+like a princess. Now, that ar's French calico!" said Mrs. Kittridge,
+holding up the controverted blue dress, "and that ar never cost a cent
+under five-and-sixpence a yard; it takes a yard and a half to make it,
+and it must have been a good day's work to make it up; call that
+three-and-sixpence more, and with them pearl buttons and thread and all,
+that ar dress never cost less than a dollar and seventy-five, and here
+she's goin' to run out every day in it!"
+
+"Well, well!" said Miss Roxy, who had taken the sobbing fair one in her
+lap, "you know, Mis' Kittridge, this 'ere's a kind o' pet lamb, an
+old-folks' darling, and things be with her as they be, and we can't make
+her over, and she's such a nervous little thing we mustn't cross her."
+Saying which, she proceeded to dress the child in her own clothes.
+
+"If you had a good large checked apron, I wouldn't mind putting that on
+her!" added Miss Roxy, after she had arrayed the child.
+
+"Here's one," said Mrs. Kittridge; "that may save her clothes some."
+
+Miss Roxy began to put on the wholesome garment; but, rather to her
+mortification, the little fairy began to weep again in a most
+heart-broken manner.
+
+"Don't want che't apon."
+
+"Why don't Mara want nice checked apron?" said Miss Roxy, in that extra
+cheerful tone by which children are to be made to believe they have
+mistaken their own mind.
+
+"Don't want it!" with a decided wave of the little hand; "I's too pitty
+to wear che't apon."
+
+"Well! well!" said Mrs. Kittridge, rolling up her eyes, "did I ever! no,
+I never did. If there ain't depraved natur' a-comin' out early. Well, if
+she says she's pretty now, what'll it be when she's fifteen?"
+
+"She'll learn to tell a lie about it by that time," said Miss Roxy, "and
+say she thinks she's horrid. The child _is_ pretty, and the truth comes
+uppermost with her now."
+
+"Haw! haw! haw!" burst with a great crash from Captain Kittridge, who
+had come in behind, and stood silently listening during this
+conversation; "that's musical now; come here, my little maid, you _are_
+too pretty for checked aprons, and no mistake;" and seizing the child in
+his long arms, he tossed her up like a butterfly, while her sunny curls
+shone in the morning light.
+
+"There's one comfort about the child, Miss Kittridge," said Aunt Roxy:
+"she's one of them that dirt won't stick to. I never knew her to stain
+or tear her clothes,--she always come in jist so nice."
+
+"She ain't much like Sally, then!" said Mrs. Kittridge. "That girl'll
+run through more clothes! Only last week she walked the crown out of my
+old black straw bonnet, and left it hanging on the top of a
+blackberry-bush."
+
+"Wal', wal'," said Captain Kittridge, "as to dressin' this 'ere
+child,--why, ef Pennel's a mind to dress her in cloth of gold, it's none
+of our business! He's rich enough for all he wants to do, and so let's
+eat our breakfast and mind our own business."
+
+After breakfast Captain Kittridge took the two children down to the
+cove, to investigate the state of his boat and tar-kettle, set high
+above the highest tide-mark. The sun had risen gloriously, the sky was
+of an intense, vivid blue, and only great snowy islands of clouds, lying
+in silver banks on the horizon, showed vestiges of last night's storm.
+The whole wide sea was one glorious scene of forming and dissolving
+mountains of blue and purple, breaking at the crest into brilliant
+silver. All round the island the waves were constantly leaping and
+springing into jets and columns of brilliant foam, throwing themselves
+high up, in silvery cataracts, into the very arms of the solemn
+evergreen forests which overhung the shore.
+
+The sands of the little cove seemed harder and whiter than ever, and
+were thickly bestrewn with the shells and seaweed which the upturnings
+of the night had brought in. There lay what might have been fringes and
+fragments of sea-gods' vestures,--blue, crimson, purple, and orange
+seaweeds, wreathed in tangled ropes of kelp and sea-grass, or lying
+separately scattered on the sands. The children ran wildly, shouting as
+they began gathering sea-treasures; and Sally, with the air of an
+experienced hand in the business, untwisted the coils of rosy seaweed,
+from which every moment she disengaged some new treasure, in some rarer
+shell or smoother pebble.
+
+Suddenly, the child shook out something from a knotted mass of
+sea-grass, which she held up with a perfect shriek of delight. It was a
+bracelet of hair, fastened by a brilliant clasp of green, sparkling
+stones, such as she had never seen before. She redoubled her cries of
+delight, as she saw it sparkle between her and the sun, calling upon her
+father.
+
+"Father! father! do come here, and see what I've found!"
+
+He came quickly, and took the bracelet from the child's hand; but, at
+the same moment, looking over her head, he caught sight of an object
+partially concealed behind a projecting rock. He took a step forward,
+and uttered an exclamation,--
+
+"Well, well! sure enough! poor things!"
+
+There lay, bedded in sand and seaweed, a woman with a little boy clasped
+in her arms! Both had been carefully lashed to a spar, but the child was
+held to the bosom of the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot
+that mortal hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which
+had streamed the woman's long, dark hair, which sparkled with glittering
+morsels of sand and pebbles, and with those tiny, brilliant, yellow
+shells which are so numerous on that shore.
+
+The woman was both young and beautiful. The forehead, damp with
+ocean-spray, was like sculptured marble,--the eyebrows dark and decided
+in their outline; but the long, heavy, black fringes had shut down, as a
+solemn curtain, over all the history of mortal joy or sorrow that those
+eyes had looked upon. A wedding-ring gleamed on the marble hand; but the
+sea had divorced all human ties, and taken her as a bride to itself.
+And, in truth, it seemed to have made to her a worthy bed, for she was
+all folded and inwreathed in sand and shells and seaweeds, and a great,
+weird-looking leaf of kelp, some yards in length, lay twined around her
+like a shroud. The child that lay in her bosom had hair, and face, and
+eyelashes like her own, and his little hands were holding tightly a
+portion of the black dress which she wore.
+
+"Cold,--cold,--stone dead!" was the muttered exclamation of the old
+seaman, as he bent over the woman.
+
+"She must have struck her head there," he mused, as he laid his finger
+on a dark, bruised spot on her temple. He laid his hand on the child's
+heart, and put one finger under the arm to see if there was any
+lingering vital heat, and then hastily cut the lashings that bound the
+pair to the spar, and with difficulty disengaged the child from the cold
+clasp in which dying love had bound him to a heart which should beat no
+more with mortal joy or sorrow.
+
+Sally, after the first moment, had run screaming toward the house, with
+all a child's forward eagerness, to be the bearer of news; but the
+little Mara stood, looking anxiously, with a wishful earnestness of
+face.
+
+"Pitty boy,--pitty boy,--come!" she said often; but the old man was so
+busy, he scarcely regarded her.
+
+"Now, Cap'n Kittridge, do tell!" said Miss Roxy, meeting him in all
+haste, with a cap-border stiff in air, while Dame Kittridge exclaimed,--
+
+"Now, you don't! Well, well! didn't I say that was a ship last night?
+And what a solemnizing thought it was that souls might be goin' into
+eternity!"
+
+"We must have blankets and hot bottles, right away," said Miss Roxy, who
+always took the earthly view of matters, and who was, in her own person,
+a personified humane society. "Miss Kittridge, you jist dip out your
+dishwater into the smallest tub, and we'll put him in. Stand away, Mara!
+Sally, you take her out of the way! We'll fetch this child to, perhaps.
+I've fetched 'em to, when they's seemed to be dead as door-nails!"
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, you're sure the woman's dead?"
+
+"Laws, yes; she had a blow right on her temple here. There's no bringing
+her to till the resurrection."
+
+"Well, then, you jist go and get Cap'n Pennel to come down and help you,
+and get the body into the house, and we'll attend to layin' it out by
+and by. Tell Ruey to come down."
+
+Aunt Roxy issued her orders with all the military vigor and precision of
+a general in case of a sudden attack. It was her habit. Sickness and
+death were her opportunities; where they were, she felt herself at home,
+and she addressed herself to the task before her with undoubting faith.
+
+Before many hours a pair of large, dark eyes slowly emerged from under
+the black-fringed lids of the little drowned boy,--they rolled dreamily
+round for a moment, and dropped again in heavy languor.
+
+The little Mara had, with the quiet persistence which formed a trait in
+her baby character, dragged stools and chairs to the back of the bed,
+which she at last succeeded in scaling, and sat opposite to where the
+child lay, grave and still, watching with intense earnestness the
+process that was going on. At the moment when the eyes had opened, she
+stretched forth her little arms, and said, eagerly, "Pitty boy,
+come,"--and then, as they closed again, she dropped her hands with a
+sigh of disappointment. Yet, before night, the little stranger sat up in
+bed, and laughed with pleasure at the treasures of shells and pebbles
+which the children spread out on the bed before him.
+
+He was a vigorous, well-made, handsome child, with brilliant eyes and
+teeth, but the few words that he spoke were in a language unknown to
+most present. Captain Kittridge declared it to be Spanish, and that a
+call which he most passionately and often repeated was for his mother.
+But he was of that happy age when sorrow can be easily effaced, and the
+efforts of the children called forth joyous smiles. When his playthings
+did not go to his liking, he showed sparkles of a fiery, irascible
+spirit.
+
+The little Mara seemed to appropriate him in feminine fashion, as a
+chosen idol and graven image. She gave him at once all her slender stock
+of infantine treasures, and seemed to watch with an ecstatic devotion
+his every movement,--often repeating, as she looked delightedly around,
+"Pitty boy, come."
+
+She had no words to explain the strange dream of the morning; it lay in
+her, struggling for expression, and giving her an interest in the
+new-comer as in something belonging to herself. Whence it came,--whence
+come multitudes like it, which spring up as strange, enchanted flowers,
+every now and then in the dull, material pathway of life,--who knows? It
+may be that our present faculties have among them a rudimentary one,
+like the germs of wings in the chrysalis, by which the spiritual world
+becomes sometimes an object of perception; there may be natures in which
+the walls of the material are so fine and translucent that the spiritual
+is seen through them as through a glass darkly. It may be, too, that the
+love which is stronger than death has a power sometimes to make itself
+heard and felt through the walls of our mortality, when it would plead
+for the defenseless ones it has left behind. All these things _may_
+be,--who knows?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There," said Miss Roxy, coming out of the keeping-room at sunset; "I
+wouldn't ask to see a better-lookin' corpse. That ar woman was a sight
+to behold this morning. I guess I shook a double handful of stones and
+them little shells out of her hair,--now she reely looks beautiful.
+Captain Kittridge has made a coffin out o' some cedar-boards he happened
+to have, and I lined it with bleached cotton, and stuffed the pillow
+nice and full, and when we come to get her in, she reely will look
+lovely."
+
+"I s'pose, Mis' Kittridge, you'll have the funeral to-morrow,--it's
+Sunday."
+
+"Why, yes, Aunt Roxy,--I think everybody must want to improve such a
+dispensation. Have you took little Mara in to look at the corpse?"
+
+"Well, no," said Miss Roxy; "Mis' Pennel's gettin' ready to take her
+home."
+
+"I think it's an opportunity we ought to improve," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+"to learn children what death is. I think we can't begin to solemnize
+their minds too young."
+
+At this moment Sally and the little Mara entered the room.
+
+"Come here, children," said Mrs. Kittridge, taking a hand of either one,
+and leading them to the closed door of the keeping-room; "I've got
+somethin' to show you."
+
+The room looked ghostly and dim,--the rays of light fell through the
+closed shutter on an object mysteriously muffled in a white sheet.
+
+Sally's bright face expressed only the vague curiosity of a child to see
+something new; but the little Mara resisted and hung back with all her
+force, so that Mrs. Kittridge was obliged to take her up and hold her.
+
+She folded back the sheet from the chill and wintry form which lay so
+icily, lonely, and cold. Sally walked around it, and gratified her
+curiosity by seeing it from every point of view, and laying her warm,
+busy hand on the lifeless and cold one; but Mara clung to Mrs.
+Kittridge, with eyes that expressed a distressed astonishment. The good
+woman stooped over and placed the child's little hand for a moment on
+the icy forehead. The little one gave a piercing scream, and struggled
+to get away; and as soon as she was put down, she ran and hid her face
+in Aunt Roxy's dress, sobbing bitterly.
+
+"That child'll grow up to follow vanity," said Mrs. Kittridge; "her
+little head is full of dress now, and she hates anything serious,--it's
+easy to see that."
+
+The little Mara had no words to tell what a strange, distressful chill
+had passed up her arm and through her brain, as she felt that icy cold
+of death,--that cold so different from all others. It was an impression
+of fear and pain that lasted weeks and months, so that she would start
+out of sleep and cry with a terror which she had not yet a sufficiency
+of language to describe.
+
+"You seem to forget, Mis' Kittridge, that this 'ere child ain't rugged
+like our Sally," said Aunt Roxy, as she raised the little Mara in her
+arms. "She was a seven-months' baby, and hard to raise at all, and a
+shivery, scary little creature."
+
+"Well, then, she ought to be hardened," said Dame Kittridge. "But Mary
+Pennel never had no sort of idea of bringin' up children; 'twas jist so
+with Naomi,--the girl never had no sort o' resolution, and she just died
+for want o' resolution,--that's what came of it. I tell ye, children's
+got to learn to take the world as it is; and 'tain't no use bringin' on
+'em up too tender. Teach 'em to begin as they've got to go out,--that's
+my maxim."
+
+"Mis' Kittridge," said Aunt Roxy, "there's reason in all things, and
+there's difference in children. 'What's one's meat's another's pison.'
+You couldn't fetch up Mis' Pennel's children, and she couldn't fetch up
+your'n,--so let's say no more 'bout it."
+
+"I'm always a-tellin' my wife that ar," said Captain Kittridge; "she's
+always wantin' to make everybody over after her pattern."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, I don't think _you_ need to speak," resumed his wife.
+"When such a loud providence is a-knockin' at _your_ door, I think you'd
+better be a-searchin' your own heart,--here it is the eleventh hour, and
+you hain't come into the Lord's vineyard yet."
+
+"Oh! come, come, Mis' Kittridge, don't twit a feller afore folks," said
+the Captain. "I'm goin' over to Harpswell Neck this blessed minute after
+the minister to 'tend the funeral,--so we'll let _him_ preach."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN
+
+
+Life on any shore is a dull affair,--ever degenerating into commonplace;
+and this may account for the eagerness with which even a great calamity
+is sometimes accepted in a neighborhood, as affording wherewithal to
+stir the deeper feelings of our nature. Thus, though Mrs. Kittridge was
+by no means a hard-hearted woman, and would not for the world have had a
+ship wrecked on her particular account, yet since a ship had been
+wrecked and a body floated ashore at her very door, as it were, it
+afforded her no inconsiderable satisfaction to dwell on the details and
+to arrange for the funeral.
+
+It was something to talk about and to think of, and likely to furnish
+subject-matter for talk for years to come when she should go out to tea
+with any of her acquaintances who lived at Middle Bay, or Maquoit, or
+Harpswell Neck. For although in those days,--the number of light-houses
+being much smaller than it is now,--it was no uncommon thing for ships
+to be driven on shore in storms, yet this incident had undeniably more
+that was stirring and romantic in it than any within the memory of any
+tea-table gossip in the vicinity. Mrs. Kittridge, therefore, looked
+forward to the funeral services on Sunday afternoon as to a species of
+solemn fete, which imparted a sort of consequence to her dwelling and
+herself. Notice of it was to be given out in "meeting" after service,
+and she might expect both keeping-room and kitchen to be full. Mrs.
+Pennel had offered to do her share of Christian and neighborly
+kindness, in taking home to her own dwelling the little boy. In fact, it
+became necessary to do so in order to appease the feelings of the little
+Mara, who clung to the new acquisition with most devoted fondness, and
+wept bitterly when he was separated from her even for a few moments.
+Therefore, in the afternoon of the day when the body was found, Mrs.
+Pennel, who had come down to assist, went back in company with Aunt Ruey
+and the two children.
+
+The September evening set in brisk and chill, and the cheerful fire that
+snapped and roared up the ample chimney of Captain Kittridge's kitchen
+was a pleasing feature. The days of our story were before the advent of
+those sullen gnomes, the "air-tights," or even those more sociable and
+cheery domestic genii, the cooking-stoves. They were the days of the
+genial open kitchen-fire, with the crane, the pot-hooks, and
+trammels,--where hissed and boiled the social tea-kettle, where steamed
+the huge dinner-pot, in whose ample depths beets, carrots, potatoes, and
+turnips boiled in jolly sociability with the pork or corned beef which
+they were destined to flank at the coming meal.
+
+On the present evening, Miss Roxy sat bolt upright, as was her wont, in
+one corner of the fireplace, with her spectacles on her nose, and an
+unwonted show of candles on the little stand beside her, having resumed
+the task of the silk dress which had been for a season interrupted. Mrs.
+Kittridge, with her spectacles also mounted, was carefully and warily
+"running-up breadths," stopping every few minutes to examine her work,
+and to inquire submissively of Miss Roxy if "it will do?"
+
+Captain Kittridge sat in the other corner busily whittling on a little
+boat which he was shaping to please Sally, who sat on a low stool by his
+side with her knitting, evidently more intent on what her father was
+producing than on the evening task of "ten bouts," which her mother
+exacted before she could freely give her mind to anything on her own
+account. As Sally was rigorously sent to bed exactly at eight o'clock,
+it became her to be diligent if she wished to do anything for her own
+amusement before that hour.
+
+And in the next room, cold and still, was lying that faded image of
+youth and beauty which the sea had so strangely given up. Without a
+name, without a history, without a single accompaniment from which her
+past could even be surmised,--there she lay, sealed in eternal silence.
+
+"It's strange," said Captain Kittridge, as he whittled away,--"it's very
+strange we don't find anything more of that ar ship. I've been all up
+and down the beach a-lookin'. There was a spar and some broken bits of
+boards and timbers come ashore down on the beach, but nothin' to speak
+of."
+
+"It won't be known till the sea gives up its dead," said Miss Roxy,
+shaking her head solemnly, "and there'll be a great givin' up then, I'm
+a-thinkin'."
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Kittridge, with an emphatic nod.
+
+"Father," said Sally, "how many, many things there must be at the bottom
+of the sea,--so many ships are sunk with all their fine things on board.
+Why don't people contrive some way to go down and get them?"
+
+"They do, child," said Captain Kittridge; "they have diving-bells, and
+men go down in 'em with caps over their faces, and long tubes to get the
+air through, and they walk about on the bottom of the ocean."
+
+"Did you ever go down in one, father?"
+
+"Why, yes, child, to be sure; and strange enough it was, to be sure.
+There you could see great big sea critters, with ever so many eyes and
+long arms, swimming right up to catch you, and all you could do would be
+to muddy the water on the bottom, so they couldn't see you."
+
+"I never heard of that, Cap'n Kittridge," said his wife, drawing herself
+up with a reproving coolness.
+
+"Wal', Mis' Kittridge, you hain't heard of everything that ever
+happened," said the Captain, imperturbably, "though you _do_ know a
+sight."
+
+"And how does the bottom of the ocean look, father?" said Sally.
+
+"Laws, child, why trees and bushes grow there, just as they do on land;
+and great plants,--blue and purple and green and yellow, and lots of
+great pearls lie round. I've seen 'em big as chippin'-birds' eggs."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge!" said his wife.
+
+"I have, and big as robins' eggs, too, but them was off the coast of
+Ceylon and Malabar, and way round the Equator," said the Captain,
+prudently resolved to throw his romance to a sufficient distance.
+
+"It's a pity you didn't get a few of them pearls," said his wife, with
+an indignant appearance of scorn.
+
+"I did get lots on 'em, and traded 'em off to the Nabobs in the interior
+for Cashmere shawls and India silks and sich," said the Captain,
+composedly; "and brought 'em home and sold 'em at a good figure, too."
+
+"Oh, father!" said Sally, earnestly, "I wish you had saved just one or
+two for us."
+
+"Laws, child, I wish now I had," said the Captain, good-naturedly. "Why,
+when I was in India, I went up to Lucknow, and Benares, and round, and
+saw all the Nabobs and Biggums,--why, they don't make no more of gold
+and silver and precious stones than we do of the shells we find on the
+beach. Why, I've seen one of them fellers with a diamond in his turban
+as big as my fist."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, what are you telling?" said his wife once more.
+
+"Fact,--as big as my fist," said the Captain, obdurately; "and all the
+clothes he wore was jist a stiff crust of pearls and precious stones. I
+tell you, he looked like something in the Revelations,--a real New
+Jerusalem look he had."
+
+"I call that ar talk wicked, Cap'n Kittridge, usin' Scriptur' that ar
+way," said his wife.
+
+"Why, don't it tell about all sorts of gold and precious stones in the
+Revelations?" said the Captain; "that's all I meant. Them ar countries
+off in Asia ain't like our'n,--stands to reason they shouldn't be;
+them's Scripture countries, and everything is different there."
+
+"Father, didn't you ever get any of those splendid things?" said Sally.
+
+"Laws, yes, child. Why, I had a great green ring, an emerald, that one
+of the princes giv' me, and ever so many pearls and diamonds. I used to
+go with 'em rattlin' loose in my vest pocket. I was young and gay in
+them days, and thought of bringin' of 'em home for the gals, but somehow
+I always got opportunities for swappin' of 'em off for goods and sich.
+That ar shawl your mother keeps in her camfire chist was what I got for
+one on 'em."
+
+"Well, well," said Mrs. Kittridge, "there's never any catchin' you,
+'cause you've been where we haven't."
+
+"You've caught me once, and that ought'r do," said the Captain, with
+unruffled good-nature. "I tell you, Sally, your mother was the
+handsomest gal in Harpswell in them days."
+
+"I should think you was too old for such nonsense, Cap'n," said Mrs.
+Kittridge, with a toss of her head, and a voice that sounded far less
+inexorable than her former admonition. In fact, though the old Captain
+was as unmanageable under his wife's fireside _regime_ as any brisk old
+cricket that skipped and sang around the hearth, and though he hopped
+over all moral boundaries with a cheerful alertness of conscience that
+was quite discouraging, still there was no resisting the spell of his
+inexhaustible good-nature.
+
+By this time he had finished the little boat, and to Sally's great
+delight, began sailing it for her in a pail of water.
+
+"I wonder," said Mrs. Kittridge, "what's to be done with that ar child.
+I suppose the selectmen will take care on't; it'll be brought up by the
+town."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said Miss Roxy, "if Cap'n Pennel should adopt it."
+
+"You don't think so," said Mrs. Kittridge. "'Twould be taking a great
+care and expense on their hands at their time of life."
+
+"I wouldn't want no better fun than to bring up that little shaver,"
+said Captain Kittridge; "he's a bright un, I promise you."
+
+"You, Cap'n Kittridge! I wonder you can talk so," said his wife. "It's
+an awful responsibility, and I wonder you don't think whether or no
+you're fit for it."
+
+"Why, down here on the shore, I'd as lives undertake a boy as a
+Newfoundland pup," said the Captain. "Plenty in the sea to eat, drink,
+and wear. That ar young un may be the staff of their old age yet."
+
+"You see," said Miss Roxy, "I think they'll adopt it to be company for
+little Mara; they're bound up in her, and the little thing pines bein'
+alone."
+
+"Well, they make a real graven image of that ar child," said Mrs.
+Kittridge, "and fairly bow down to her and worship her."
+
+"Well, it's natural," said Miss Roxy. "Besides, the little thing is
+cunnin'; she's about the cunnin'est little crittur that I ever saw, and
+has such enticin' ways."
+
+The fact was, as the reader may perceive, that Miss Roxy had been thawed
+into an unusual attachment for the little Mara, and this affection was
+beginning to spread a warming element though her whole being. It was as
+if a rough granite rock had suddenly awakened to a passionate
+consciousness of the beauty of some fluttering white anemone that
+nestled in its cleft, and felt warm thrills running through all its
+veins at every tender motion and shadow. A word spoken against the
+little one seemed to rouse her combativeness. Nor did Dame Kittridge
+bear the child the slightest ill-will, but she was one of those
+naturally care-taking people whom Providence seems to design to perform
+the picket duties for the rest of society, and who, therefore, challenge
+everybody and everything to stand and give an account of themselves.
+Miss Roxy herself belonged to this class, but sometimes found herself so
+stoutly overhauled by the guns of Mrs. Kittridge's battery, that she
+could only stand modestly on the defensive.
+
+One of Mrs. Kittridge's favorite hobbies was education, or, as she
+phrased it, the "fetchin' up" of children, which she held should be
+performed to the letter of the old stiff rule. In this manner she had
+already trained up six sons, who were all following their fortunes upon
+the seas, and, on this account, she had no small conceit of her
+abilities; and when she thought she discerned a lamb being left to frisk
+heedlessly out of bounds, her zeal was stirred to bring it under proper
+sheepfold regulations.
+
+"Come, Sally, it's eight o'clock," said the good woman.
+
+Sally's dark brows lowered over her large, black eyes, and she gave an
+appealing look to her father.
+
+"Law, mother, let the child sit up a quarter of an hour later, jist for
+once."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, if I was to hear to you, there'd never be no rule in
+this house. Sally, you go 'long this minute, and be sure you put your
+knittin' away in its place."
+
+The Captain gave a humorous nod of submissive good-nature to his
+daughter as she went out. In fact, putting Sally to bed was taking away
+his plaything, and leaving him nothing to do but study faces in the
+coals, or watch the fleeting sparks which chased each other in flocks
+up the sooty back of the chimney.
+
+It was Saturday night, and the morrow was Sunday,--never a very pleasant
+prospect to the poor Captain, who, having, unfortunately, no spiritual
+tastes, found it very difficult to get through the day in compliance
+with his wife's views of propriety, for he, alas! soared no higher in
+his aims.
+
+"I b'lieve, on the hull, Polly, I'll go to bed, too," said he, suddenly
+starting up.
+
+"Well, father, your clean shirt is in the right-hand corner of the upper
+drawer, and your Sunday clothes on the back of the chair by the bed."
+
+The fact was that the Captain promised himself the pleasure of a long
+conversation with Sally, who nestled in the trundle-bed under the
+paternal couch, to whom he could relate long, many-colored yarns,
+without the danger of interruption from her mother's sharp,
+truth-seeking voice.
+
+A moralist might, perhaps, be puzzled exactly what account to make of
+the Captain's disposition to romancing and embroidery. In all real,
+matter-of-fact transactions, as between man and man, his word was as
+good as another's, and he was held to be honest and just in his
+dealings. It was only when he mounted the stilts of foreign travel that
+his paces became so enormous. Perhaps, after all, a rude poetic and
+artistic faculty possessed the man. He might have been a humbler phase
+of the "mute, inglorious Milton." Perhaps his narrations required the
+privileges and allowances due to the inventive arts generally. Certain
+it was that, in common with other artists, he required an atmosphere of
+sympathy and confidence in which to develop himself fully; and, when
+left alone with children, his mind ran such riot, that the bounds
+between the real and unreal became foggier than the banks of
+Newfoundland.
+
+The two women sat up, and the night wore on apace, while they kept
+together that customary vigil which it was thought necessary to hold
+over the lifeless casket from which an immortal jewel had recently been
+withdrawn.
+
+"I re'lly did hope," said Mrs. Kittridge, mournfully, "that this 'ere
+solemn Providence would have been sent home to the Cap'n's mind; but he
+seems jist as light and triflin' as ever."
+
+"There don't nobody see these 'ere things unless they's effectually
+called," said Miss Roxy, "and the Cap'n's time ain't come."
+
+"It's gettin' to be t'ward the eleventh hour," said Mrs. Kittridge, "as
+I was a-tellin' him this afternoon."
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "you know
+
+    "'While the lamp holds out to burn,
+    The vilest sinner may return.'"
+
+"Yes, I know that," said Mrs. Kittridge, rising and taking up the
+candle. "Don't you think, Aunt Roxy, we may as well give a look in there
+at the corpse?"
+
+It was past midnight as they went together into the keeping-room. All
+was so still that the clash of the rising tide and the ticking of the
+clock assumed that solemn and mournful distinctness which even tones
+less impressive take on in the night-watches. Miss Roxy went
+mechanically through with certain arrangements of the white drapery
+around the cold sleeper, and uncovering the face and bust for a moment,
+looked critically at the still, unconscious countenance.
+
+"Not one thing to let us know who or what she is," she said; "that boy,
+if he lives, would give a good deal to know, some day."
+
+"What is it one's duty to do about this bracelet?" said Mrs. Kittridge,
+taking from a drawer the article in question, which had been found on
+the beach in the morning.
+
+"Well, I s'pose it belongs to the child, whatever it's worth," said Miss
+Roxy.
+
+"Then if the Pennels conclude to take him, I may as well give it to
+them," said Mrs. Kittridge, laying it back in the drawer.
+
+Miss Roxy folded the cloth back over the face, and the two went out into
+the kitchen. The fire had sunk low--the crickets were chirruping
+gleefully. Mrs. Kittridge added more wood, and put on the tea-kettle
+that their watching might be refreshed by the aid of its talkative and
+inspiring beverage. The two solemn, hard-visaged women drew up to each
+other by the fire, and insensibly their very voices assumed a tone of
+drowsy and confidential mystery.
+
+"If this 'ere poor woman was hopefully pious, and could see what was
+goin' on here," said Mrs. Kittridge, "it would seem to be a comfort to
+her that her child has fallen into such good hands. It seems a'most a
+pity she couldn't know it."
+
+"How do you know she don't?" said Miss Roxy, brusquely.
+
+"Why, you know the hymn," said Mrs. Kittridge, quoting those somewhat
+saddusaical lines from the popular psalm-book:--
+
+    "'The living know that they must die,
+    But all the dead forgotten lie--
+    _Their memory and their senses gone,
+    Alike unknowing and unknown_.'"
+
+"Well, I don't know 'bout that," said Miss Roxy, flavoring her cup of
+tea; "hymn-book ain't Scriptur', and I'm pretty sure that ar ain't true
+always;" and she nodded her head as if she could say more if she chose.
+
+Now Miss Roxy's reputation of vast experience in all the facts relating
+to those last fateful hours, which are the only certain event in every
+human existence, caused her to be regarded as a sort of Delphic oracle
+in such matters, and therefore Mrs. Kittridge, not without a share of
+the latent superstition to which each human heart must confess at some
+hours, drew confidentially near to Miss Roxy, and asked if she had
+anything particular on her mind.
+
+"Well, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Roxy, "I ain't one of the sort as
+likes to make a talk of what I've seen, but mebbe if I was, I've seen
+some things _as_ remarkable as anybody. I tell you, Mis' Kittridge,
+folks don't tend the sick and dyin' bed year in and out, at all hours,
+day and night, and not see some remarkable things; that's my opinion."
+
+"Well, Miss Roxy, did you ever see a sperit?"
+
+"I won't say as I have, and I won't say as I haven't," said Miss Roxy;
+"only as I have seen some remarkable things."
+
+There was a pause, in which Mrs. Kittridge stirred her tea, looking
+intensely curious, while the old kitchen-clock seemed to tick with one
+of those fits of loud insistence which seem to take clocks at times when
+all is still, as if they had something that they were getting ready to
+say pretty soon, if nobody else spoke.
+
+But Miss Roxy evidently had something to say, and so she began:--
+
+"Mis' Kittridge, this 'ere's a very particular subject to be talkin'
+of. I've had opportunities to observe that most haven't, and I don't
+care if I jist say to you, that I'm pretty sure spirits that has left
+the body do come to their friends sometimes."
+
+The clock ticked with still more _empressement_, and Mrs. Kittridge
+glared through the horn bows of her glasses with eyes of eager
+curiosity.
+
+"Now, you remember Cap'n Titcomb's wife, that died fifteen years ago
+when her husband had gone to Archangel; and you remember that he took
+her son John out with him--and of all her boys, John was the one she
+was particular sot on."
+
+"Yes, and John died at Archangel; I remember that."
+
+"Jes' so," said Miss Roxy, laying her hand on Mrs. Kittridge's; "he died
+at Archangel the very day his mother died, and jist the hour, for the
+Cap'n had it down in his log-book."
+
+"You don't say so!"
+
+"Yes, I do. Well, now," said Miss Roxy, sinking her voice, "this 'ere
+was remarkable. Mis' Titcomb was one of the fearful sort, tho' one of
+the best women that ever lived. Our minister used to call her 'Mis'
+Muchafraid'--you know, in the 'Pilgrim's Progress'--but he was satisfied
+with her evidences, and told her so; she used to say she was 'afraid of
+the dark valley,' and she told our minister so when he went out, that ar
+last day he called; and his last words, as he stood with his hand on the
+knob of the door, was 'Mis' Titcomb, the Lord will find ways to bring
+you thro' the dark valley.' Well, she sunk away about three o'clock in
+the morning. I remember the time, 'cause the Cap'n's chronometer watch
+that he left with her lay on the stand for her to take her drops by. I
+heard her kind o' restless, and I went up, and I saw she was struck with
+death, and she looked sort o' anxious and distressed.
+
+"'Oh, Aunt Roxy,' says she, 'it's so dark, who will go with me?' and in
+a minute her whole face brightened up, and says she, 'John is going with
+me,' and she jist gave the least little sigh and never breathed no
+more--she jist died as easy as a bird. I told our minister of it next
+morning, and he asked if I'd made a note of the hour, and I told him I
+had, and says he, 'You did right, Aunt Roxy.'"
+
+"What did he seem to think of it?"
+
+"Well, he didn't seem inclined to speak freely. 'Miss Roxy,' says he,
+'all natur's in the Lord's hands, and there's no saying why he uses this
+or that; them that's strong enough to go by faith, he lets 'em, but
+there's no saying what he won't do for the weak ones.'"
+
+"Wa'n't the Cap'n overcome when you told him?" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Indeed he was; he was jist as white as a sheet."
+
+Miss Roxy now proceeded to pour out another cup of tea, and having mixed
+and flavored it, she looked in a weird and sibylline manner across it,
+and inquired,--
+
+"Mis' Kittridge, do you remember that ar Mr. Wadkins that come to
+Brunswick twenty years ago, in President Averill's days?"
+
+"Yes, I remember the pale, thin, long-nosed gentleman that used to sit
+in President Averill's pew at church. Nobody knew who he was, or where
+he came from. The college students used to call him Thaddeus of Warsaw.
+Nobody knew who he was but the President, 'cause he could speak all the
+foreign tongues--one about as well as another; but the President he knew
+his story, and said he was a good man, and he used to stay to the
+sacrament regular, I remember."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Roxy, "he used to live in a room all alone, and keep
+himself. Folks said he was quite a gentleman, too, and fond of reading."
+
+"I heard Cap'n Atkins tell," said Mrs. Kittridge, "how they came to take
+him up on the shores of Holland. You see, when he was somewhere in a
+port in Denmark, some men come to him and offered him a pretty good sum
+of money if he'd be at such a place on the coast of Holland on such a
+day, and take whoever should come. So the Cap'n he went, and sure enough
+on that day there come a troop of men on horseback down to the beach
+with this man, and they all bid him good-by, and seemed to make much of
+him, but he never told 'em nothin' on board ship, only he seemed kind o'
+sad and pinin'."
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy; "Ruey and I we took care o' that man in his
+last sickness, and we watched with him the night he died, and there was
+something quite remarkable."
+
+"Do tell now," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Well, you see," said Miss Roxy, "he'd been low and poorly all day, kind
+o' tossin' and restless, and a little light-headed, and the Doctor said
+he thought he wouldn't last till morning, and so Ruey and I we set up
+with him, and between twelve and one Ruey said she thought she'd jist
+lop down a few minutes on the old sofa at the foot of the bed, and I
+made me a cup of tea like as I'm a-doin' now, and set with my back to
+him."
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Kittridge, eagerly.
+
+"Well, you see he kept a-tossin' and throwin' off the clothes, and I
+kept a-gettin' up to straighten 'em; and once he threw out his arms, and
+something bright fell out on to the pillow, and I went and looked, and
+it was a likeness that he wore by a ribbon round his neck. It was a
+woman--a real handsome one--and she had on a low-necked black dress, of
+the cut they used to call Marie Louise, and she had a string of pearls
+round her neck, and her hair curled with pearls in it, and very wide
+blue eyes. Well, you see, I didn't look but a minute before he seemed to
+wake up, and he caught at it and hid it in his clothes. Well, I went and
+sat down, and I grew kind o' sleepy over the fire; but pretty soon I
+heard him speak out very clear, and kind o' surprised, in a tongue I
+didn't understand, and I looked round."
+
+Miss Roxy here made a pause, and put another lump of sugar into her tea.
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Kittridge, ready to burst with curiosity.
+
+"Well, now, I don't like to tell about these 'ere things, and you
+mustn't never speak about it; but as sure as you live, Polly Kittridge,
+I see that ar very woman standin' at the back of the bed, right in the
+partin' of the curtains, jist as she looked in the pictur'--blue eyes
+and curly hair and pearls on her neck, and black dress."
+
+"What did you do?" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Do? Why, I jist held my breath and looked, and in a minute it kind o'
+faded away, and I got up and went to the bed, but the man was gone. He
+lay there with the pleasantest smile on his face that ever you see; and
+I woke up Ruey, and told her about it."
+
+Mrs. Kittridge drew a long breath. "What do you think it was?"
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, "I know what I think, but I don't think best to
+tell. I told Doctor Meritts, and he said there were more things in
+heaven and earth than folks knew about--and so I think."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meanwhile, on this same evening, the little Mara frisked like a
+household fairy round the hearth of Zephaniah Pennel.
+
+The boy was a strong-limbed, merry-hearted little urchin, and did full
+justice to the abundant hospitalities of Mrs. Pennel's tea-table; and
+after supper little Mara employed herself in bringing apronful after
+apronful of her choicest treasures, and laying them down at his feet.
+His great black eyes flashed with pleasure, and he gamboled about the
+hearth with his new playmate in perfect forgetfulness, apparently, of
+all the past night of fear and anguish.
+
+When the great family Bible was brought out for prayers, and little Mara
+composed herself on a low stool by her grandmother's side, he, however,
+did not conduct himself as a babe of grace. He resisted all Miss Ruey's
+efforts to make him sit down beside her, and stood staring with his
+great, black, irreverent eyes during the Bible-reading, and laughed out
+in the most inappropriate manner when the psalm-singing began, and
+seemed disposed to mingle incoherent remarks of his own even in the
+prayers.
+
+"This is a pretty self-willed youngster," said Miss Ruey, as they rose
+from the exercises, "and I shouldn't think he'd been used to religious
+privileges."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Zephaniah Pennel; "but who can say but what this
+providence is a message of the Lord to us--such as Pharaoh's daughter
+sent about Moses, 'Take this child, and bring him up for me'?"
+
+"I'd like to take him, if I thought I was capable," said Mrs. Pennel,
+timidly. "It seems a real providence to give Mara some company; the poor
+child pines so for want of it."
+
+"Well, then, Mary, if you say so, we will bring him up with our little
+Mara," said Zephaniah, drawing the child toward him. "May the Lord bless
+him!" he added, laying his great brown hands on the shining black curls
+of the child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MOSES
+
+
+Sunday morning rose clear and bright on Harpswell Bay. The whole sea was
+a waveless, blue looking-glass, streaked with bands of white, and
+flecked with sailing cloud-shadows from the skies above. Orr's Island,
+with its blue-black spruces, its silver firs, its golden larches, its
+scarlet sumachs, lay on the bosom of the deep like a great many-colored
+gem on an enchanted mirror. A vague, dreamlike sense of rest and Sabbath
+stillness seemed to brood in the air. The very spruce-trees seemed to
+know that it was Sunday, and to point solemnly upward with their dusky
+fingers; and the small tide-waves that chased each other up on the
+shelly beach, or broke against projecting rocks, seemed to do it with a
+chastened decorum, as if each blue-haired wave whispered to his brother,
+"Be still--be still."
+
+Yes, Sunday it was along all the beautiful shores of Maine--netted in
+green and azure by its thousand islands, all glorious with their
+majestic pines, all musical and silvery with the caresses of the
+sea-waves, that loved to wander and lose themselves in their numberless
+shelly coves and tiny beaches among their cedar shadows.
+
+Not merely as a burdensome restraint, or a weary endurance, came the
+shadow of that Puritan Sabbath. It brought with it all the sweetness
+that belongs to rest, all the sacredness that hallows home, all the
+memories of patient thrift, of sober order, of chastened yet intense
+family feeling, of calmness, purity, and self-respecting dignity which
+distinguish the Puritan household. It seemed a solemn pause in all the
+sights and sounds of earth. And he whose moral nature was not yet enough
+developed to fill the blank with visions of heaven was yet wholesomely
+instructed by his weariness into the secret of his own spiritual
+poverty.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel, in his best Sunday clothes, with his hard visage
+glowing with a sort of interior tenderness, ministered this morning at
+his family-altar--one of those thousand priests of God's ordaining that
+tend the sacred fire in as many families of New England. He had risen
+with the morning star and been forth to meditate, and came in with his
+mind softened and glowing. The trance-like calm of earth and sea found a
+solemn answer with him, as he read what a poet wrote by the sea-shores
+of the Mediterranean, ages ago: "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my
+God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who
+coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the
+heavens like a curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
+waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of
+the wind. The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon,
+which he hath planted; where the birds make their nests; as for the
+stork, the fir-trees are her house. O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
+in wisdom hast thou made them all."
+
+Ages ago the cedars that the poet saw have rotted into dust, and from
+their cones have risen generations of others, wide-winged and grand. But
+the words of that poet have been wafted like seed to our days, and
+sprung up in flowers of trust and faith in a thousand households.
+
+"Well, now," said Miss Ruey, when the morning rite was over, "Mis'
+Pennel, I s'pose you and the Cap'n will be wantin' to go to the meetin',
+so don't you gin yourse'ves a mite of trouble about the children, for
+I'll stay at home with 'em. The little feller was starty and fretful in
+his sleep last night, and didn't seem to be quite well."
+
+"No wonder, poor dear," said Mrs. Pennel; "it's a wonder children can
+forget as they do."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Ruey; "you know them lines in the 'English Reader,'--
+
+    'Gay hope is theirs by fancy led,
+      Least pleasing when possessed;
+    The tear forgot as soon as shed,
+      The sunshine of the breast.'
+
+Them lines all'ys seemed to me affectin'."
+
+Miss Ruey's sentiment was here interrupted by a loud cry from the
+bedroom, and something between a sneeze and a howl.
+
+"Massy! what is that ar young un up to!" she exclaimed, rushing into the
+adjoining bedroom.
+
+There stood the young Master Hopeful of our story, with streaming eyes
+and much-bedaubed face, having just, after much labor, succeeded in
+making Miss Ruey's snuff-box fly open, which he did with such force as
+to send the contents in a perfect cloud into eyes, nose, and mouth. The
+scene of struggling and confusion that ensued cannot be described. The
+washings, and wipings, and sobbings, and exhortings, and the sympathetic
+sobs of the little Mara, formed a small tempest for the time being that
+was rather appalling.
+
+"Well, this 'ere's a youngster that's a-goin' to make work," said Miss
+Ruey, when all things were tolerably restored. "Seems to make himself at
+home first thing."
+
+"Poor little dear," said Mrs. Pennel, in the excess of loving-kindness,
+"I hope he will; he's welcome, I'm sure."
+
+"Not to my snuff-box," said Miss Ruey, who had felt herself attacked in
+a very tender point.
+
+"He's got the notion of lookin' into things pretty early," said Captain
+Pennel, with an indulgent smile.
+
+"Well, Aunt Ruey," said Mrs. Pennel, when this disturbance was somewhat
+abated, "I feel kind o' sorry to deprive you of your privileges to-day."
+
+"Oh! never mind me," said Miss Ruey, briskly. "I've got the big Bible,
+and I can sing a hymn or two by myself. My voice ain't quite what it
+used to be, but then I get a good deal of pleasure out of it." Aunt
+Ruey, it must be known, had in her youth been one of the foremost
+leaders in the "singers' seats," and now was in the habit of speaking of
+herself much as a retired _prima donna_ might, whose past successes were
+yet in the minds of her generation.
+
+After giving a look out of the window, to see that the children were
+within sight, she opened the big Bible at the story of the ten plagues
+of Egypt, and adjusting her horn spectacles with a sort of sideway twist
+on her little pug nose, she seemed intent on her Sunday duties. A moment
+after she looked up and said, "I don't know but I must send a message by
+you over to Mis' Deacon Badger, about a worldly matter, if 'tis Sunday;
+but I've been thinkin', Mis' Pennel, that there'll have to be clothes
+made up for this 'ere child next week, and so perhaps Roxy and I had
+better stop here a day or two longer, and you tell Mis' Badger that
+we'll come to her a Wednesday, and so she'll have time to have that new
+press-board done,--the old one used to pester me so."
+
+"Well, I'll remember," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"It seems a'most impossible to prevent one's thoughts wanderin'
+Sundays," said Aunt Ruey; "but I couldn't help a-thinkin' I could get
+such a nice pair o' trousers out of them old Sunday ones of the Cap'n's
+in the garret. I was a-lookin' at 'em last Thursday, and thinkin' what a
+pity 'twas you hadn't nobody to cut down for; but this 'ere young un's
+going to be such a tearer, he'll want somethin' real stout; but I'll try
+and put it out of my mind till Monday. Mis' Pennel, you'll be sure to
+ask Mis' Titcomb how Harriet's toothache is, and whether them drops
+cured her that I gin her last Sunday; and ef you'll jist look in a
+minute at Major Broad's, and tell 'em to use bayberry wax for his
+blister, it's so healin'; and do jist ask if Sally's baby's eye-tooth
+has come through yet."
+
+"Well, Aunt Ruey, I'll try to remember all," said Mrs. Pennel, as she
+stood at the glass in her bedroom, carefully adjusting the respectable
+black silk shawl over her shoulders, and tying her neat bonnet-strings.
+
+"I s'pose," said Aunt Ruey, "that the notice of the funeral'll be gin
+out after sermon."
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"It's another loud call," said Miss Ruey, "and I hope it will turn the
+young people from their thoughts of dress and vanity,--there's Mary Jane
+Sanborn was all took up with gettin' feathers and velvet for her fall
+bonnet. I don't think I shall get no bonnet this year till snow comes.
+My bonnet's respectable enough,--don't you think so?"
+
+"Certainly, Aunt Ruey, it looks very well."
+
+"Well, I'll have the pork and beans and brown-bread all hot on table
+agin you come back," said Miss Ruey, "and then after dinner we'll all go
+down to the funeral together. Mis' Pennel, there's one thing on my
+mind,--what you goin' to call this 'ere boy?"
+
+"Father and I've been thinkin' that over," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"Wouldn't think of giv'n him the Cap'n's name?" said Aunt Ruey.
+
+"He must have a name of his own," said Captain Pennel. "Come here,
+sonny," he called to the child, who was playing just beside the door.
+
+The child lowered his head, shook down his long black curls, and looked
+through them as elfishly as a Skye terrier, but showed no inclination to
+come.
+
+"One thing he hasn't learned, evidently," said Captain Pennel, "and that
+is to mind."
+
+"Here!" he said, turning to the boy with a little of the tone he had
+used of old on the quarter-deck, and taking his small hand firmly.
+
+The child surrendered, and let the good man lift him on his knee and
+stroke aside the clustering curls; the boy then looked fixedly at him
+with his great gloomy black eyes, his little firm-set mouth and bridled
+chin,--a perfect little miniature of proud manliness.
+
+"What's your name, little boy?"
+
+The great eyes continued looking in the same solemn quiet.
+
+"Law, he don't understand a word," said Zephaniah, putting his hand
+kindly on the child's head; "our tongue is all strange to him. Kittridge
+says he's a Spanish child; may be from the West Indies; but nobody
+knows,--we never shall know his name."
+
+"Well, I dare say it was some Popish nonsense or other," said Aunt Ruey;
+"and now he's come to a land of Christian privileges, we ought to give
+him a good Scripture name, and start him well in the world."
+
+"Let's call him Moses," said Zephaniah, "because we drew him out of the
+water."
+
+"Now, did I ever!" said Miss Ruey; "there's something in the Bible to
+fit everything, ain't there?"
+
+"I like Moses, because I had a brother of that name," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+The child had slid down from his protector's knee, and stood looking
+from one to the other gravely while this discussion was going on. What
+change of destiny was then going on for him in this simple formula of
+adoption, none could tell; but, surely, never orphan stranded on a
+foreign shore found home with hearts more true and loving.
+
+"Well, wife, I suppose we must be goin'," said Zephaniah.
+
+About a stone's throw from the open door, the little fishing-craft lay
+courtesying daintily on the small tide-waves that came licking up the
+white pebbly shore. Mrs. Pennel seated herself in the end of the boat,
+and a pretty placid picture she was, with her smooth, parted hair, her
+modest, cool, drab bonnet, and her bright hazel eyes, in which was the
+Sabbath calm of a loving and tender heart. Zephaniah loosed the sail,
+and the two children stood on the beach and saw them go off. A pleasant
+little wind carried them away, and back on the breeze came the sound of
+Zephaniah's Sunday-morning psalm:--
+
+    "Lord, in the morning thou shalt hear
+      My voice ascending high;
+    To thee will I direct my prayer,
+      To thee lift up mine eye.
+
+    "Unto thy house will I resort.
+      To taste thy mercies there;
+    I will frequent thy holy court,
+      And worship in thy fear."
+
+The surface of the glassy bay was dotted here and there with the white
+sails of other little craft bound for the same point and for the same
+purpose. It was as pleasant a sight as one might wish to see.
+
+Left in charge of the house, Miss Ruey drew a long breath, took a
+consoling pinch of snuff, sang "Bridgewater" in an uncommonly high key,
+and then began reading in the prophecies. With her good head full of the
+"daughter of Zion" and the house of Israel and Judah, she was recalled
+to terrestrial things by loud screams from the barn, accompanied by a
+general flutter and cackling among the hens.
+
+Away plodded the good soul, and opening the barn-door saw the little boy
+perched on the top of the hay-mow, screaming and shrieking,--his face
+the picture of dismay,--while poor little Mara's cries came in a more
+muffled manner from some unexplored lower region. In fact, she was found
+to have slipped through a hole in the hay-mow into the nest of a very
+domestic sitting-hen, whose clamors at the invasion of her family
+privacy added no little to the general confusion.
+
+The little princess, whose nicety as to her dress and sensitiveness as
+to anything unpleasant about her pretty person we have seen, was lifted
+up streaming with tears and broken eggs, but otherwise not seriously
+injured, having fallen on the very substantial substratum of hay which
+Dame Poulet had selected as the foundation of her domestic hopes.
+
+"Well, now, did I ever!" said Miss Ruey, when she had ascertained that
+no bones were broken; "if that ar young un isn't a limb! I declare for't
+I pity Mis' Pennel,--she don't know what she's undertook. How upon 'arth
+the critter managed to get Mara on to the hay, I'm sure I can't
+tell,--that ar little thing never got into no such scrapes before."
+
+Far from seeming impressed with any wholesome remorse of conscience, the
+little culprit frowned fierce defiance at Miss Ruey, when, after having
+repaired the damages of little Mara's toilet, she essayed the good old
+plan of shutting him into the closet. He fought and struggled so
+fiercely that Aunt Ruey's carroty frisette came off in the skirmish, and
+her head-gear, always rather original, assumed an aspect verging on the
+supernatural. Miss Ruey thought of Philistines and Moabites, and all the
+other terrible people she had been reading about that morning, and came
+as near getting into a passion with the little elf as so good-humored
+and Christian an old body could possibly do. Human virtue is frail, and
+every one has some vulnerable point. The old Roman senator could not
+control himself when his beard was invaded, and the like sensitiveness
+resides in an old woman's cap; and when young master irreverently clawed
+off her Sunday best, Aunt Ruey, in her confusion of mind, administered a
+sound cuff on either ear.
+
+Little Mara, who had screamed loudly through the whole scene, now
+conceiving that her precious new-found treasure was endangered, flew at
+poor Miss Ruey with both little hands; and throwing her arms round her
+"boy," as she constantly called him, she drew him backward, and looked
+defiance at the common enemy. Miss Ruey was dumb-struck.
+
+"I declare for't, I b'lieve he's bewitched her," she said, stupefied,
+having never seen anything like the martial expression which now gleamed
+from those soft brown eyes. "Why, Mara dear,--putty little Mara."
+
+But Mara was busy wiping away the angry tears that stood on the hot,
+glowing cheeks of the boy, and offering her little rosebud of a mouth to
+kiss him, as she stood on tiptoe.
+
+"Poor boy,--no kie,--Mara's boy," she said; "Mara love boy;" and then
+giving an angry glance at Aunt Ruey, who sat much disheartened and
+confused, she struck out her little pearly hand, and cried, "Go way,--go
+way, naughty!"
+
+The child jabbered unintelligibly and earnestly to Mara, and she seemed
+to have the air of being perfectly satisfied with his view of the case,
+and both regarded Miss Ruey with frowning looks. Under these peculiar
+circumstances, the good soul began to bethink her of some mode of
+compromise, and going to the closet took out a couple of slices of cake,
+which she offered to the little rebels with pacificatory words.
+
+Mara was appeased at once, and ran to Aunt Ruey; but the boy struck the
+cake out of her hand, and looked at her with steady defiance. The little
+one picked it up, and with much chippering and many little feminine
+manoeuvres, at last succeeded in making him taste it, after which
+appetite got the better of his valorous resolutions,--he ate and was
+comforted; and after a little time, the three were on the best possible
+footing. And Miss Ruey having smoothed her hair, and arranged her
+frisette and cap, began to reflect upon herself as the cause of the
+whole disturbance. If she had not let them run while she indulged in
+reading and singing, this would not have happened. So the toilful good
+soul kept them at her knee for the next hour or two, while they looked
+through all the pictures in the old family Bible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The evening of that day witnessed a crowded funeral in the small rooms
+of Captain Kittridge. Mrs. Kittridge was in her glory. Solemn and
+lugubrious to the last degree, she supplied in her own proper person the
+want of the whole corps of mourners, who generally attract sympathy on
+such occasions. But what drew artless pity from all was the unconscious
+orphan, who came in, led by Mrs. Pennel by the one hand, and with the
+little Mara by the other.
+
+The simple rite of baptism administered to the wondering little creature
+so strongly recalled that other scene three years before, that Mrs.
+Pennel hid her face in her handkerchief, and Zephaniah's firm hand shook
+a little as he took the boy to offer him to the rite. The child received
+the ceremony with a look of grave surprise, put up his hand quickly and
+wiped the holy drops from his brow, as if they annoyed him; and
+shrinking back, seized hold of the gown of Mrs. Pennel. His great
+beauty, and, still more, the air of haughty, defiant firmness with which
+he regarded the company, drew all eyes, and many were the whispered
+comments.
+
+"Pennel'll have his hands full with that ar chap," said Captain
+Kittridge to Miss Roxy.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge darted an admonitory glance at her husband, to remind him
+that she was looking at him, and immediately he collapsed into
+solemnity.
+
+The evening sunbeams slanted over the blackberry bushes and mullein
+stalks of the graveyard, when the lonely voyager was lowered to the rest
+from which she should not rise till the heavens be no more. As the
+purple sea at that hour retained no trace of the ships that had furrowed
+its waves, so of this mortal traveler no trace remained, not even in
+that infant soul that was to her so passionately dear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MINISTER
+
+
+Mrs. Kittridge's advantages and immunities resulting from the shipwreck
+were not yet at an end. Not only had one of the most "solemn
+providences" known within the memory of the neighborhood fallen out at
+her door,--not only had the most interesting funeral that had occurred
+for three or four years taken place in her parlor, but she was still
+further to be distinguished in having the minister to tea after the
+performances were all over. To this end she had risen early, and taken
+down her best china tea-cups, which had been marked with her and her
+husband's joint initials in Canton, and which only came forth on high
+and solemn occasions. In view of this probable distinction, on Saturday,
+immediately after the discovery of the calamity, Mrs. Kittridge had
+found time to rush to her kitchen, and make up a loaf of pound-cake and
+some doughnuts, that the great occasion which she foresaw might not find
+her below her reputation as a forehanded housewife.
+
+It was a fine golden hour when the minister and funeral train turned
+away from the grave. Unlike other funerals, there was no draught on the
+sympathies in favor of mourners--no wife, or husband, or parent, left a
+heart in that grave; and so when the rites were all over, they turned
+with the more cheerfulness back into life, from the contrast of its
+freshness with those shadows into which, for the hour, they had been
+gazing.
+
+The Rev. Theophilus Sewell was one of the few ministers who preserved
+the costume of a former generation, with something of that imposing
+dignity with which, in earlier times, the habits of the clergy were
+invested. He was tall and majestic in stature, and carried to advantage
+the powdered wig and three-cornered hat, the broad-skirted coat,
+knee-breeches, high shoes, and plated buckles of the ancient costume.
+There was just a sufficient degree of the formality of olden times to
+give a certain quaintness to all he said and did. He was a man of a
+considerable degree of talent, force, and originality, and in fact had
+been held in his day to be one of the most promising graduates of
+Harvard University. But, being a good man, he had proposed to himself no
+higher ambition than to succeed to the pulpit of his father in
+Harpswell.
+
+His parish included not only a somewhat scattered seafaring population
+on the mainland, but also the care of several islands. Like many other
+of the New England clergy of those times, he united in himself numerous
+different offices for the benefit of the people whom he served. As there
+was neither lawyer nor physician in the town, he had acquired by his
+reading, and still more by his experience, enough knowledge in both
+these departments to enable him to administer to the ordinary wants of a
+very healthy and peaceable people.
+
+It was said that most of the deeds and legal conveyances in his parish
+were in his handwriting, and in the medical line his authority was only
+rivaled by that of Miss Roxy, who claimed a very obvious advantage over
+him in a certain class of cases, from the fact of her being a woman,
+which was still further increased by the circumstance that the good man
+had retained steadfastly his bachelor estate. "So, of course," Miss Roxy
+used to say, "poor man! what could he know about a woman, you know?"
+
+This state of bachelorhood gave occasion to much surmising; but when
+spoken to about it, he was accustomed to remark with gallantry, that he
+should have too much regard for any lady whom he could think of as a
+wife, to ask her to share his straitened circumstances. His income,
+indeed, consisted of only about two hundred dollars a year; but upon
+this he and a very brisk, cheerful maiden sister contrived to keep up a
+thrifty and comfortable establishment, in which everything appeared to
+be pervaded by a spirit of quaint cheerfulness.
+
+In fact, the man might be seen to be an original in his way, and all the
+springs of his life were kept oiled by a quiet humor, which sometimes
+broke out in playful sparkles, despite the gravity of the pulpit and the
+awfulness of the cocked hat. He had a placid way of amusing himself with
+the quaint and picturesque side of life, as it appeared in all his
+visitings among a very primitive, yet very shrewd-minded people.
+
+There are those people who possess a peculiar faculty of mingling in the
+affairs of this life as spectators as well as actors. It does not, of
+course, suppose any coldness of nature or want of human interest or
+sympathy--nay, it often exists most completely with people of the
+tenderest human feeling. It rather seems to be a kind of distinct
+faculty working harmoniously with all the others; but he who possesses
+it needs never to be at a loss for interest or amusement; he is always a
+spectator at a tragedy or comedy, and sees in real life a humor and a
+pathos beyond anything he can find shadowed in books.
+
+Mr. Sewell sometimes, in his pastoral visitations, took a quiet pleasure
+in playing upon these simple minds, and amusing himself with the odd
+harmonies and singular resolutions of chords which started out under his
+fingers. Surely he had a right to something in addition to his limited
+salary, and this innocent, unsuspected entertainment helped to make up
+the balance for his many labors.
+
+His sister was one of the best-hearted and most unsuspicious of the
+class of female idolaters, and worshiped her brother with the most
+undoubting faith and devotion--wholly ignorant of the constant amusement
+she gave him by a thousand little feminine peculiarities, which struck
+him with a continual sense of oddity. It was infinitely diverting to him
+to see the solemnity of her interest in his shirts and stockings, and
+Sunday clothes, and to listen to the subtle distinctions which she would
+draw between best and second-best, and every-day; to receive her
+somewhat prolix admonition how he was to demean himself in respect of
+the wearing of each one; for Miss Emily Sewell was a gentlewoman, and
+held rigidly to various traditions of gentility which had been handed
+down in the Sewell family, and which afforded her brother too much quiet
+amusement to be disturbed. He would not have overthrown one of her
+quiddities for the world; it would be taking away a part of his capital
+in existence.
+
+Miss Emily was a trim, genteel little person, with dancing black eyes,
+and cheeks which had the roses of youth well dried into them. It was
+easy to see that she had been quite pretty in her days; and her neat
+figure, her brisk little vivacious ways, her unceasing good-nature and
+kindness of heart, still made her an object both of admiration and
+interest in the parish. She was great in drying herbs and preparing
+recipes; in knitting and sewing, and cutting and contriving; in saving
+every possible snip and chip either of food or clothing; and no less
+liberal was she in bestowing advice and aid in the parish, where she
+moved about with all the sense of consequence which her brother's
+position warranted.
+
+The fact of his bachelorhood caused his relations to the female part of
+his flock to be even more shrouded in sacredness and mystery than is
+commonly the case with the great man of the parish; but Miss Emily
+delighted to act as interpreter. She was charmed to serve out to the
+willing ears of his parish from time to time such scraps of information
+as regarded his life, habits, and opinions as might gratify their ever
+new curiosity. Instructed by her, all the good wives knew the difference
+between his very best long silk stocking and his second best, and how
+carefully the first had to be kept under lock and key, where he could
+not get at them; for he was understood, good as he was, to have
+concealed in him all the thriftless and pernicious inconsiderateness of
+the male nature, ready at any moment to break out into unheard-of
+improprieties. But the good man submitted himself to Miss Emily's rule,
+and suffered himself to be led about by her with an air of half
+whimsical consciousness.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge that day had felt the full delicacy of the compliment
+when she ascertained by a hasty glance, before the first prayer, that
+the good man had been brought out to her funeral in all his very best
+things, not excepting the long silk stockings, for she knew the
+second-best pair by means of a certain skillful darn which Miss Emily
+had once shown her, which commemorated the spot where a hole had been.
+The absence of this darn struck to Mrs. Kittridge's heart at once as a
+delicate attention.
+
+"Mis' Simpkins," said Mrs. Kittridge to her pastor, as they were seated
+at the tea-table, "told me that she wished when you were going home that
+you would call in to see Mary Jane; she couldn't come out to the funeral
+on account of a dreffle sore throat. I was tellin' on her to gargle it
+with blackberry-root tea--don't you think that is a good gargle, Mr.
+Sewell?"
+
+"Yes, I think it a very good gargle," replied the minister, gravely.
+
+"Ma'sh rosemary is the gargle that I always use," said Miss Roxy; "it
+cleans out your throat so."
+
+"Marsh rosemary is a very excellent gargle," said Mr. Sewell.
+
+"Why, brother, don't you think that rose leaves and vitriol is a good
+gargle?" said little Miss Emily; "I always thought that you liked rose
+leaves and vitriol for a gargle."
+
+"So I do," said the imperturbable Mr. Sewell, drinking his tea with the
+air of a sphinx.
+
+"Well, now, you'll have to tell which on 'em will be most likely to cure
+Mary Jane," said Captain Kittridge, "or there'll be a pullin' of caps,
+I'm thinkin'; or else the poor girl will have to drink them all, which
+is generally the way."
+
+"There won't any of them cure Mary Jane's throat," said the minister,
+quietly.
+
+"Why, brother!" "Why, Mr. Sewell!" "Why, you don't!" burst in different
+tones from each of the women.
+
+"I thought you said that blackberry-root tea was good," said Mrs.
+Kittridge.
+
+"I understood that you 'proved of ma'sh rosemary," said Miss Roxy,
+touched in her professional pride.
+
+"And I am sure, brother, that I have heard you say, often and often,
+that there wasn't a better gargle than rose leaves and vitriol," said
+Miss Emily.
+
+"You are quite right, ladies, all of you. I think these are all good
+gargles--excellent ones."
+
+"But I thought you said that they didn't do any good?" said all the
+ladies in a breath.
+
+"No, they don't--not the least in the world," said Mr. Sewell; "but they
+are all excellent gargles, and as long as people must have gargles, I
+think one is about as good as another."
+
+"Now you have got it," said Captain Kittridge.
+
+"Brother, you do say the strangest things," said Miss Emily.
+
+"Well, I must say," said Miss Roxy, "it is a new idea to me, long as
+I've been nussin', and I nussed through one season of scarlet fever
+when sometimes there was five died in one house; and if ma'sh rosemary
+didn't do good then, I should like to know what did."
+
+"So would a good many others," said the minister.
+
+"Law, now, Miss Roxy, you mus'n't mind him. Do you know that I believe
+he says these sort of things just to hear us talk? Of course he wouldn't
+think of puttin' his experience against yours."
+
+"But, Mis' Kittridge," said Miss Emily, with a view of summoning a less
+controverted subject, "what a beautiful little boy that was, and what a
+striking providence that brought him into such a good family!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Kittridge; "but I'm sure I don't see what Mary Pennel
+is goin' to do with that boy, for she ain't got no more government than
+a twisted tow-string."
+
+"Oh, the Cap'n, he'll lend a hand," said Miss Roxy, "it won't be easy
+gettin' roun' him; Cap'n bears a pretty steady hand when he sets out to
+drive."
+
+"Well," said Miss Emily, "I do think that bringin' up children is the
+most awful responsibility, and I always wonder when I hear that any one
+dares to undertake it."
+
+"It requires a great deal of resolution, certainly," said Mrs.
+Kittridge; "I'm sure I used to get a'most discouraged when my boys was
+young: they was a reg'lar set of wild ass's colts," she added, not
+perceiving the reflection on their paternity.
+
+But the countenance of Mr. Sewell was all aglow with merriment, which
+did not break into a smile.
+
+"Wal', Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "strikes me that you're
+gettin' pussonal."
+
+"No, I ain't neither," said the literal Mrs. Kittridge, ignorant of the
+cause of the amusement which she saw around her; "but you wa'n't no help
+to me, you know; you was always off to sea, and the whole wear and tear
+on't came on me."
+
+"Well, well, Polly, all's well that ends well; don't you think so, Mr.
+Sewell?"
+
+"I haven't much experience in these matters," said Mr. Sewell, politely.
+
+"No, indeed, that's what he hasn't, for he never will have a child round
+the house that he don't turn everything topsy-turvy for them," said Miss
+Emily.
+
+"But I was going to remark," said Mr. Sewell, "that a friend of mine
+said once, that the woman that had brought up six boys deserved a seat
+among the martyrs; and that is rather my opinion."
+
+"Wal', Polly, if you git up there, I hope you'll keep a seat for me."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge, what levity!" said his wife.
+
+"I didn't begin it, anyhow," said the Captain.
+
+Miss Emily interposed, and led the conversation back to the subject.
+"What a pity it is," she said, "that this poor child's family can never
+know anything about him. There may be those who would give all the world
+to know what has become of him; and when he comes to grow up, how sad he
+will feel to have no father and mother!"
+
+"Sister," said Mr. Sewell, "you cannot think that a child brought up by
+Captain Pennel and his wife would ever feel as without father and
+mother."
+
+"Why, no, brother, to be sure not. There's no doubt he will have
+everything done for him that a child could. But then it's a loss to lose
+one's real home."
+
+"It may be a gracious deliverance," said Mr. Sewell--"who knows? We may
+as well take a cheerful view, and think that some kind wave has drifted
+the child away from an unfortunate destiny to a family where we are
+quite sure he will be brought up industriously and soberly, and in the
+fear of God."
+
+"Well, I never thought of that," said Miss Roxy.
+
+Miss Emily, looking at her brother, saw that he was speaking with a
+suppressed vehemence, as if some inner fountain of recollection at the
+moment were disturbed. But Miss Emily knew no more of the deeper parts
+of her brother's nature than a little bird that dips its beak into the
+sunny waters of some spring knows of its depths of coldness and shadow.
+
+"Mis' Pennel was a-sayin' to me," said Mrs. Kittridge, "that I should
+ask you what was to be done about the bracelet they found. We don't know
+whether 'tis real gold and precious stones, or only glass and pinchbeck.
+Cap'n Kittridge he thinks it's real; and if 'tis, why then the question
+is, whether or no to try to sell it, or keep it for the boy agin he
+grows up. It may help find out who and what he is."
+
+"And why should he want to find out?" said Mr. Sewell. "Why should he
+not grow up and think himself the son of Captain and Mrs. Pennel? What
+better lot could a boy be born to?"
+
+"That may be, brother, but it can't be kept from him. Everybody knows
+how he was found, and you may be sure every bird of the air will tell
+him, and he'll grow up restless and wanting to know. Mis' Kittridge,
+have you got the bracelet handy?"
+
+The fact was, little Miss Emily was just dying with curiosity to set her
+dancing black eyes upon it.
+
+"Here it is," said Mrs. Kittridge, taking it from a drawer.
+
+It was a bracelet of hair, of some curious foreign workmanship. A green
+enameled serpent, studded thickly with emeralds and with eyes of ruby,
+was curled around the clasp. A crystal plate covered a wide flat braid
+of hair, on which the letters "D.M." were curiously embroidered in a
+cipher of seed pearls. The whole was in style and workmanship quite
+different from any jewelry which ordinarily meets one's eye.
+
+But what was remarkable was the expression in Mr. Sewell's face when
+this bracelet was put into his hand. Miss Emily had risen from table and
+brought it to him, leaning over him as she did so, and he turned his
+head a little to hold it in the light from the window, so that only she
+remarked the sudden expression of blank surprise and startled
+recognition which fell upon it. He seemed like a man who chokes down an
+exclamation; and rising hastily, he took the bracelet to the window, and
+standing with his back to the company, seemed to examine it with the
+minutest interest. After a few moments he turned and said, in a very
+composed tone, as if the subject were of no particular interest,--
+
+"It is a singular article, so far as workmanship is concerned. The value
+of the gems in themselves is not great enough to make it worth while to
+sell it. It will be worth more as a curiosity than anything else. It
+will doubtless be an interesting relic to keep for the boy when he grows
+up."
+
+"Well, Mr. Sewell, you keep it," said Mrs. Kittridge; "the Pennels told
+me to give it into your care."
+
+"I shall commit it to Emily here; women have a native sympathy with
+anything in the jewelry line. She'll be sure to lay it up so securely
+that she won't even know where it is herself."
+
+"Brother!"
+
+"Come, Emily," said Mr. Sewell, "your hens will all go to roost on the
+wrong perch if you are not at home to see to them; so, if the Captain
+will set us across to Harpswell, I think we may as well be going."
+
+"Why, what's your hurry?" said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Sewell, "firstly, there's the hens; secondly, the pigs;
+and lastly, the cow. Besides I shouldn't wonder if some of Emily's
+admirers should call on her this evening,--never any saying when Captain
+Broad may come in."
+
+"Now, brother, you are too bad," said Miss Emily, as she bustled about
+her bonnet and shawl. "Now, that's all made up out of whole cloth.
+Captain Broad called last week a Monday, to talk to you about the pews,
+and hardly spoke a word to me. You oughtn't to say such things, 'cause
+it raises reports."
+
+"Ah, well, then, I won't again," said her brother. "I believe, after
+all, it was Captain Badger that called twice."
+
+"Brother!"
+
+"And left you a basket of apples the second time."
+
+"Brother, you know he only called to get some of my hoarhound for
+Mehitable's cough."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember."
+
+"If you don't take care," said Miss Emily, "I'll tell where you call."
+
+"Come, Miss Emily, you must not mind him," said Miss Roxy; "we all know
+his ways."
+
+And now took place the grand leave-taking, which consisted first of the
+three women's standing in a knot and all talking at once, as if their
+very lives depended upon saying everything they could possibly think of
+before they separated, while Mr. Sewell and Captain Kittridge stood
+patiently waiting with the resigned air which the male sex commonly
+assume on such occasions; and when, after two or three "Come, Emily's,"
+the group broke up only to form again on the door-step, where they were
+at it harder than ever, and a third occasion of the same sort took place
+at the bottom of the steps, Mr. Sewell was at last obliged by main force
+to drag his sister away in the middle of a sentence.
+
+Miss Emily watched her brother shrewdly all the way home, but all traces
+of any uncommon feeling had passed away; and yet, with the restlessness
+of female curiosity, she felt quite sure that she had laid hold of the
+end of some skein of mystery, could she only find skill enough to unwind
+it.
+
+She took up the bracelet, and held it in the fading evening light, and
+broke into various observations with regard to the singularity of the
+workmanship. Her brother seemed entirely absorbed in talking with
+Captain Kittridge about the brig Anna Maria, which was going to be
+launched from Pennel's wharf next Wednesday. But she, therefore,
+internally resolved to lie in wait for the secret in that confidential
+hour which usually preceded going to bed. Therefore, as soon as she had
+arrived at their quiet dwelling, she put in operation the most seducing
+little fire that ever crackled and snapped in a chimney, well knowing
+that nothing was more calculated to throw light into any hidden or
+concealed chamber of the soul than that enlivening blaze, which danced
+so merrily on her well-polished andirons, and made the old chintz sofa
+and the time-worn furniture so rich in remembrances of family comfort.
+
+She then proceeded to divest her brother of his wig and his dress-coat,
+and to induct him into the flowing ease of a study-gown, crowning his
+well-shaven head with a black cap, and placing his slippers before the
+corner of a sofa nearest the fire. She observed him with satisfaction
+sliding into his seat, and then she trotted to a closet with a glass
+door in the corner of the room, and took down an old, quaintly-shaped
+silver cup, which had been an heirloom in their family, and was the only
+piece of plate which their modern domestic establishment could boast;
+and with this, down cellar she tripped, her little heels tapping lightly
+on each stair, and the hum of a song coming back after her as she sought
+the cider-barrel. Up again she came, and set the silver cup, with its
+clear amber contents, down by the fire, and then busied herself in
+making just the crispest, nicest square of toast to be eaten with it;
+for Miss Emily had conceived the idea that some little ceremony of this
+sort was absolutely necessary to do away all possible ill effects from a
+day's labor, and secure an uninterrupted night's repose. Having done
+all this, she took her knitting-work, and stationed herself just
+opposite to her brother.
+
+It was fortunate for Miss Emily that the era of daily journals had not
+yet arisen upon the earth, because if it had, after all her care and
+pains, her brother would probably have taken up the evening paper, and
+holding it between his face and her, have read an hour or so in silence;
+but Mr. Sewell had not this resort. He knew perfectly well that he had
+excited his sister's curiosity on a subject where he could not gratify
+it, and therefore he took refuge in a kind of mild, abstracted air of
+quietude which bid defiance to all her little suggestions.
+
+After in vain trying every indirect form, Miss Emily approached the
+subject more pointedly. "I thought that you looked very much interested
+in that poor woman to-day."
+
+"She had an interesting face," said her brother, dryly.
+
+"Was it like anybody that you ever saw?" said Miss Emily.
+
+Her brother did not seem to hear her, but, taking the tongs, picked up
+the two ends of a stick that had just fallen apart, and arranged them so
+as to make a new blaze.
+
+Miss Emily was obliged to repeat her question, whereat he started as one
+awakened out of a dream, and said,--
+
+"Why, yes, he didn't know but she did; there were a good many women with
+black eyes and black hair,--Mrs. Kittridge, for instance."
+
+"Why, I don't think that she looked like Mrs. Kittridge in the least,"
+said Miss Emily, warmly.
+
+"Oh, well! I didn't say she did," said her brother, looking drowsily at
+his watch; "why, Emily, it's getting rather late."
+
+"What made you look so when I showed you that bracelet?" said Miss
+Emily, determined now to push the war to the heart of the enemy's
+country.
+
+"Look how?" said her brother, leisurely moistening a bit of toast in his
+cider.
+
+"Why, I never saw anybody look more wild and astonished than you did for
+a minute or two."
+
+"I did, did I?" said her brother, in the same indifferent tone. "My dear
+child, what an active imagination you have. Did you ever look through a
+prism, Emily?"
+
+"Why, no, Theophilus; what do you mean?"
+
+"Well, if you should, you would see everybody and everything with a nice
+little bordering of rainbow around them; now the rainbow isn't on the
+things, but in the prism."
+
+"Well, what's that to the purpose?" said Miss Emily, rather bewildered.
+
+"Why, just this: you women are so nervous and excitable, that you are
+very apt to see your friends and the world in general with some coloring
+just as unreal. I am sorry for you, childie, but really I can't help you
+to get up a romance out of this bracelet. Well, good-night, Emily; take
+good care of yourself and go to bed;" and Mr. Sewell went to his room,
+leaving poor Miss Emily almost persuaded out of the sight of her own
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+LITTLE ADVENTURERS
+
+
+The little boy who had been added to the family of Zephaniah Pennel and
+his wife soon became a source of grave solicitude to that mild and
+long-suffering woman. For, as the reader may have seen, he was a
+resolute, self-willed little elf, and whatever his former life may have
+been, it was quite evident that these traits had been developed without
+any restraint.
+
+Mrs. Pennel, whose whole domestic experience had consisted in rearing
+one very sensitive and timid daughter, who needed for her development
+only an extreme of tenderness, and whose conscientiousness was a law
+unto herself, stood utterly confounded before the turbulent little
+spirit to which her loving-kindness had opened so ready an asylum, and
+she soon discovered that it is one thing to take a human being to bring
+up, and another to know what to do with it after it is taken.
+
+The child had the instinctive awe of Zephaniah which his manly nature
+and habits of command were fitted to inspire, so that morning and
+evening, when he was at home, he was demure enough; but while the good
+man was away all day, and sometimes on fishing excursions which often
+lasted a week, there was a chronic state of domestic warfare--a
+succession of skirmishes, pitched battles, long treaties, with divers
+articles of capitulation, ending, as treaties are apt to do, in open
+rupture on the first convenient opportunity.
+
+Mrs. Pennel sometimes reflected with herself mournfully, and with many
+self-disparaging sighs, what was the reason that young master somehow
+contrived to keep her far more in awe of him than he was of her. Was she
+not evidently, as yet at least, bigger and stronger than he, able to
+hold his rebellious little hands, to lift and carry him, and to shut him
+up, if so she willed, in a dark closet, and even to administer to him
+that discipline of the birch which Mrs. Kittridge often and forcibly
+recommended as the great secret of her family prosperity? Was it not her
+duty, as everybody told her, to break his will while he was young?--a
+duty which hung like a millstone round the peaceable creature's neck,
+and weighed her down with a distressing sense of responsibility.
+
+Now, Mrs. Pennel was one of the people to whom self-sacrifice is
+constitutionally so much a nature, that self-denial for her must have
+consisted in standing up for her own rights, or having her own way when
+it crossed the will and pleasure of any one around her. All she wanted
+of a child, or in fact of any human creature, was something to love and
+serve. We leave it entirely to theologians to reconcile such facts with
+the theory of total depravity; but it is a fact that there are a
+considerable number of women of this class. Their life would flow on
+very naturally if it might consist only in giving, never in
+withholding--only in praise, never in blame--only in acquiescence, never
+in conflict; and the chief comfort of such women in religion is that it
+gives them at last an object for love without criticism, and for whom
+the utmost degree of self-abandonment is not idolatry, but worship.
+
+Mrs. Pennel would gladly have placed herself and all she possessed at
+the disposition of the children; they might have broken her china, dug
+in the garden with her silver spoons, made turf alleys in her best room,
+drummed on her mahogany tea-table, filled her muslin drawer with their
+choicest shells and seaweed; only Mrs. Pennel knew that such kindness
+was no kindness, and that in the dreadful word responsibility, familiar
+to every New England mother's ear, there lay an awful summons to deny
+and to conflict where she could so much easier have conceded.
+
+She saw that the tyrant little will would reign without mercy, if it
+reigned at all; and ever present with her was the uneasy sense that it
+was her duty to bring this erratic little comet within the laws of a
+well-ordered solar system,--a task to which she felt about as competent
+as to make a new ring for Saturn. Then, too, there was a secret feeling,
+if the truth must be told, of what Mrs. Kittridge would think about it;
+for duty is never more formidable than when she gets on the cap and gown
+of a neighbor; and Mrs. Kittridge, with her resolute voice and
+declamatory family government, had always been a secret source of
+uneasiness to poor Mrs. Pennel, who was one of those sensitive souls who
+can feel for a mile or more the sphere of a stronger neighbor. During
+all the years that they had lived side by side, there had been this
+shadowy, unconfessed feeling on the part of poor Mrs. Pennel, that Mrs.
+Kittridge thought her deficient in her favorite virtue of "resolution,"
+as, in fact, in her inmost soul she knew she was;--but who wants to have
+one's weak places looked into by the sharp eyes of a neighbor who is
+strong precisely where we are weak? The trouble that one neighbor may
+give to another, simply by living within a mile of one, is incredible;
+but until this new accession to her family, Mrs. Pennel had always been
+able to comfort herself with the idea that the child under her
+particular training was as well-behaved as any of those of her more
+demonstrative friend. But now, all this consolation had been put to
+flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge without most humiliating
+recollections.
+
+On Sundays, when those sharp black eyes gleamed upon her through the
+rails of the neighboring pew, her very soul shrank within her, as she
+recollected all the compromises and defeats of the week before. It
+seemed to her that Mrs. Kittridge saw it all,--how she had ingloriously
+bought peace with gingerbread, instead of maintaining it by rightful
+authority,--how young master had sat up till nine o'clock on divers
+occasions, and even kept little Mara up for his lordly pleasure.
+
+How she trembled at every movement of the child in the pew, dreading
+some patent and open impropriety which should bring scandal on her
+government! This was the more to be feared, as the first effort to
+initiate the youthful neophyte in the decorums of the sanctuary had
+proved anything but a success,--insomuch that Zephaniah Pennel had been
+obliged to carry him out from the church; therefore, poor Mrs. Pennel
+was thankful every Sunday when she got her little charge home without
+any distinct scandal and breach of the peace.
+
+But, after all, he was such a handsome and engaging little wretch,
+attracting all eyes wherever he went, and so full of saucy drolleries,
+that it seemed to Mrs. Pennel that everything and everybody conspired to
+help her spoil him. There are two classes of human beings in this world:
+one class seem made to give love, and the other to take it. Now Mrs.
+Pennel and Mara belonged to the first class, and little Master Moses to
+the latter.
+
+It was, perhaps, of service to the little girl to give to her delicate,
+shrinking, highly nervous organization the constant support of a
+companion so courageous, so richly blooded, and highly vitalized as the
+boy seemed to be. There was a fervid, tropical richness in his air that
+gave one a sense of warmth in looking at him, and made his Oriental name
+seem in good-keeping. He seemed an exotic that might have waked up under
+fervid Egyptian suns, and been found cradled among the lotus blossoms of
+old Nile; and the fair golden-haired girl seemed to be gladdened by his
+companionship, as if he supplied an element of vital warmth to her
+being. She seemed to incline toward him as naturally as a needle to a
+magnet.
+
+The child's quickness of ear and the facility with which he picked up
+English were marvelous to observe. Evidently, he had been somewhat
+accustomed to the sound of it before, for there dropped out of his
+vocabulary, after he began to speak, phrases which would seem to betoken
+a longer familiarity with its idioms than could be equally accounted for
+by his present experience. Though the English evidently was not his
+native language, there had yet apparently been some effort to teach it
+to him, although the terror and confusion of the shipwreck seemed at
+first to have washed every former impression from his mind.
+
+But whenever any attempt was made to draw him to speak of the past, of
+his mother, or of where he came from, his brow lowered gloomily, and he
+assumed that kind of moody, impenetrable gravity, which children at
+times will so strangely put on, and which baffle all attempts to look
+within them. Zephaniah Pennel used to call it putting up his
+dead-lights. Perhaps it was the dreadful association of agony and terror
+connected with the shipwreck, that thus confused and darkened the mirror
+of his mind the moment it was turned backward; but it was thought wisest
+by his new friends to avoid that class of subjects altogether--indeed,
+it was their wish that he might forget the past entirely, and remember
+them as his only parents.
+
+Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey came duly, as appointed, to initiate the young
+pilgrim into the habiliments of a Yankee boy, endeavoring, at the same
+time, to drop into his mind such seeds of moral wisdom as might make the
+internal economy in time correspond to the exterior. But Miss Roxy
+declared that "of all the children that ever she see, he beat all for
+finding out new mischief,--the moment you'd make him understand he
+mustn't do one thing, he was right at another."
+
+One of his exploits, however, had very nearly been the means of cutting
+short the materials of our story in the outset.
+
+It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and the three women, being busy together
+with their stitching, had tied a sun-bonnet on little Mara, and turned
+the two loose upon the beach to pick up shells. All was serene, and
+quiet, and retired, and no possible danger could be apprehended. So up
+and down they trotted, till the spirit of adventure which ever burned in
+the breast of little Moses caught sight of a small canoe which had been
+moored just under the shadow of a cedar-covered rock. Forthwith he
+persuaded his little neighbor to go into it, and for a while they made
+themselves very gay, rocking it from side to side.
+
+The tide was going out, and each retreating wave washed the boat up and
+down, till it came into the boy's curly head how beautiful it would be
+to sail out as he had seen men do,--and so, with much puffing and
+earnest tugging of his little brown hands, the boat at last was loosed
+from her moorings and pushed out on the tide, when both children laughed
+gayly to find themselves swinging and balancing on the amber surface,
+and watching the rings and sparkles of sunshine and the white pebbles
+below. Little Moses was glorious,--his adventures had begun,--and with a
+fairy-princess in his boat, he was going to stretch away to some of the
+islands of dreamland. He persuaded Mara to give him her pink sun-bonnet,
+which he placed for a pennon on a stick at the end of the boat, while he
+made a vehement dashing with another, first on one side of the boat and
+then on the other,--spattering the water in diamond showers, to the
+infinite amusement of the little maiden.
+
+Meanwhile the tide waves danced them out and still outward, and as they
+went farther and farther from shore, the more glorious felt the boy. He
+had got Mara all to himself, and was going away with her from all grown
+people, who wouldn't let children do as they pleased,--who made them sit
+still in prayer-time, and took them to meeting, and kept so many things
+which they must not touch, or open, or play with. Two white sea-gulls
+came flying toward the children, and they stretched their little arms in
+welcome, nothing doubting but these fair creatures were coming at once
+to take passage with them for fairy-land. But the birds only dived and
+shifted and veered, turning their silvery sides toward the sun, and
+careering in circles round the children. A brisk little breeze, that
+came hurrying down from the land, seemed disposed to favor their
+unsubstantial enterprise,--for your winds, being a fanciful, uncertain
+tribe of people, are always for falling in with anything that is
+contrary to common sense. So the wind trolled them merrily along,
+nothing doubting that there might be time, if they hurried, to land
+their boat on the shore of some of the low-banked red clouds that lay in
+the sunset, where they could pick up shells,--blue and pink and
+purple,--enough to make them rich for life. The children were all
+excitement at the rapidity with which their little bark danced and
+rocked, as it floated outward to the broad, open ocean; at the blue,
+freshening waves, at the silver-glancing gulls, at the floating,
+white-winged ships, and at vague expectations of going rapidly
+somewhere, to something more beautiful still. And what is the happiness
+of the brightest hours of grown people more than this?
+
+"Roxy," said Aunt Ruey innocently, "seems to me I haven't heard nothin'
+o' them children lately. They're so still, I'm 'fraid there's some
+mischief."
+
+"Well, Ruey, you jist go and give a look at 'em," said Miss Roxy. "I
+declare, that boy! I never know what he will do next; but there didn't
+seem to be nothin' to get into out there but the sea, and the beach is
+so shelving, a body can't well fall into that."
+
+Alas! good Miss Roxy, the children are at this moment tilting up and
+down on the waves, half a mile out to sea, as airily happy as the
+sea-gulls; and little Moses now thinks, with glorious scorn, of you and
+your press-board, as of grim shadows of restraint and bondage that shall
+never darken his free life more.
+
+Both Miss Roxy and Mrs. Pennel were, however, startled into a paroxysm
+of alarm when poor Miss Ruey came screaming, as she entered the door,--
+
+"As sure as you're alive, them chil'en are off in the boat,--they're out
+to sea, sure as I'm alive! What shall we do? The boat'll upset, and the
+sharks'll get 'em."
+
+Miss Roxy ran to the window, and saw dancing and courtesying on the blue
+waves the little pinnace, with its fanciful pink pennon fluttered gayly
+by the indiscreet and flattering wind.
+
+Poor Mrs. Pennel ran to the shore, and stretched her arms wildly, as if
+she would have followed them across the treacherous blue floor that
+heaved and sparkled between them.
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara! Oh, my poor little girl! Oh, poor children!"
+
+"Well, if ever I see such a young un as that," soliloquized Miss Roxy
+from the chamber-window; "there they be, dancin' and giggitin' about;
+they'll have the boat upset in a minit, and the sharks are waitin' for
+'em, no doubt. _I_ b'lieve that ar young un's helped by the Evil
+One,--not a boat round, else I'd push off after 'em. Well, I don't see
+but we must trust in the Lord,--there don't seem to be much else to
+trust to," said the spinster, as she drew her head in grimly.
+
+To say the truth, there was some reason for the terror of these most
+fearful suggestions; for not far from the place where the children
+embarked was Zephaniah's fish-drying ground, and multitudes of sharks
+came up with every rising tide, allured by the offal that was here
+constantly thrown into the sea. Two of these prowlers, outward-bound
+from their quest, were even now assiduously attending the little boat,
+and the children derived no small amusement from watching their motions
+in the pellucid water,--the boy occasionally almost upsetting the boat
+by valorous plunges at them with his stick. It was the most exhilarating
+and piquant entertainment he had found for many a day; and little Mara
+laughed in chorus at every lunge that he made.
+
+What would have been the end of it all, it is difficult to say, had not
+some mortal power interfered before they had sailed finally away into
+the sunset. But it so happened, on this very afternoon, Rev. Mr. Sewell
+was out in a boat, busy in the very apostolic employment of catching
+fish, and looking up from one of the contemplative pauses which his
+occupation induced, he rubbed his eyes at the apparition which presented
+itself. A tiny little shell of a boat came drifting toward him, in which
+was a black-eyed boy, with cheeks like a pomegranate and lustrous
+tendrils of silky dark hair, and a little golden-haired girl, white as a
+water-lily, and looking ethereal enough to have risen out of the
+sea-foam. Both were in the very sparkle and effervescence of that
+fanciful glee which bubbles up from the golden, untried fountains of
+early childhood. Mr. Sewell, at a glance, comprehended the whole, and at
+once overhauling the tiny craft, he broke the spell of fairy-land, and
+constrained the little people to return to the confines, dull and
+dreary, of real and actual life.
+
+Neither of them had known a doubt or a fear in that joyous trance of
+forbidden pleasure which shadowed with so many fears the wiser and more
+far-seeing heads and hearts of the grown people; nor was there enough
+language yet in common between the two classes to make the little ones
+comprehend the risk they had run. Perhaps so do our elder brothers, in
+our Father's house, look anxiously out when we are sailing gayly over
+life's sea,--over unknown depths,--amid threatening monsters,--but want
+words to tell us why what seems so bright is so dangerous.
+
+Duty herself could not have worn a more rigid aspect than Miss Roxy, as
+she stood on the beach, press-board in hand; for she had forgotten to
+lay it down in the eagerness of her anxiety. She essayed to lay hold of
+the little hand of Moses to pull him from the boat, but he drew back,
+and, looking at her with a world of defiance in his great eyes, jumped
+magnanimously upon the beach. The spirit of Sir Francis Drake and of
+Christopher Columbus was swelling in his little body, and was he to be
+brought under by a dry-visaged woman with a press-board? In fact,
+nothing is more ludicrous about the escapades of children than the utter
+insensibility they feel to the dangers they have run, and the light
+esteem in which they hold the deep tragedy they create.
+
+That night, when Zephaniah, in his evening exercise, poured forth most
+fervent thanksgivings for the deliverance, while Mrs. Pennel was sobbing
+in her handkerchief, Miss Roxy was much scandalized by seeing the young
+cause of all the disturbance sitting upon his heels, regarding the
+emotion of the kneeling party with his wide bright eyes, without a wink
+of compunction.
+
+"Well, for her part," she said, "she hoped Cap'n Pennel would be blessed
+in takin' that ar boy; but she was sure she didn't see much that looked
+like it now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Rev. Mr. Sewell fished no more that day, for the draught from
+fairy-land with which he had filled his boat brought up many thoughts
+into his mind, which he pondered anxiously.
+
+"Strange ways of God," he thought, "that should send to my door this
+child, and should wash upon the beach the only sign by which he could be
+identified. To what end or purpose? Hath the Lord a will in this
+matter, and what is it?"
+
+So he thought as he slowly rowed homeward, and so did his thoughts work
+upon him that half way across the bay to Harpswell he slackened his oar
+without knowing it, and the boat lay drifting on the purple and
+gold-tinted mirror, like a speck between two eternities. Under such
+circumstances, even heads that have worn the clerical wig for years at
+times get a little dizzy and dreamy. Perhaps it was because of the
+impression made upon him by the sudden apparition of those great dark
+eyes and sable curls, that he now thought of the boy that he had found
+floating that afternoon, looking as if some tropical flower had been
+washed landward by a monsoon; and as the boat rocked and tilted, and the
+minister gazed dreamily downward into the wavering rings of purple,
+orange, and gold which spread out and out from it, gradually it seemed
+to him that a face much like the child's formed itself in the waters;
+but it was the face of a girl, young and radiantly beautiful, yet with
+those same eyes and curls,--he saw her distinctly, with her thousand
+rings of silky hair, bound with strings of pearls and clasped with
+strange gems, and she raised one arm imploringly to him, and on the
+wrist he saw the bracelet embroidered with seed pearls, and the letters
+D.M. "Ah, Dolores," he said, "well wert thou called so. Poor Dolores! I
+cannot help thee."
+
+"What am I dreaming of?" said the Rev. Mr. Sewell. "It is my Thursday
+evening lecture on Justification, and Emily has got tea ready, and here
+I am catching cold out on the bay."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SEA TALES
+
+
+Mr. Sewell, as the reader may perhaps have inferred, was of a nature
+profoundly secretive. It was in most things quite as pleasant for him to
+keep matters to himself, as it was to Miss Emily to tell them to
+somebody else. She resembled more than anything one of those trotting,
+chattering little brooks that enliven the "back lot" of many a New
+England home, while he was like one of those wells you shall sometimes
+see by a deserted homestead, so long unused that ferns and lichens
+feather every stone down to the dark, cool water.
+
+Dear to him was the stillness and coolness of inner thoughts with which
+no stranger intermeddles; dear to him every pendent fern-leaf of memory,
+every dripping moss of old recollection; and though the waters of his
+soul came up healthy and refreshing enough when one really must have
+them, yet one had to go armed with bucket and line and draw them
+up,--they never flowed. One of his favorite maxims was, that the only
+way to keep a secret was never to let any one suspect that you have one.
+And as he had one now, he had, as you have seen, done his best to baffle
+and put to sleep the feminine curiosity of his sister.
+
+He rather wanted to tell her, too, for he was a good-natured brother,
+and would have liked to have given her the amount of pleasure the
+confidence would have produced; but then he reflected with dismay on the
+number of women in his parish with whom Miss Emily was on tea-drinking
+terms,--he thought of the wondrous solvent powers of that beverage in
+whose amber depths so many resolutions yea, and solemn vows, of utter
+silence have been dissolved like Cleopatra's pearls. He knew that an
+infusion of his secret would steam up from every cup of tea Emily should
+drink for six months to come, till gradually every particle would be
+dissolved and float in the air of common fame. No; it would not do.
+
+You would have thought, however, that something was the matter with Mr.
+Sewell, had you seen him after he retired for the night, after he had so
+very indifferently dismissed the subject of Miss Emily's inquiries. For
+instead of retiring quietly to bed, as had been his habit for years at
+that hour, he locked his door, and then unlocked a desk of private
+papers, and emptied certain pigeon-holes of their contents, and for an
+hour or two sat unfolding and looking over old letters and papers; and
+when all this was done, he pushed them from him, and sat for a long time
+buried in thoughts which went down very, very deep into that dark and
+mossy well of which we have spoken.
+
+Then he took a pen and wrote a letter, and addressed it to a direction
+for which he had searched through many piles of paper, and having done
+so, seemed to ponder, uncertainly, whether to send it or not. The
+Harpswell post-office was kept in Mr. Silas Perrit's store, and the
+letters were every one of them carefully and curiously investigated by
+all the gossips of the village, and as this was addressed to St.
+Augustine in Florida, he foresaw that before Sunday the news would be in
+every mouth in the parish that the minister had written to so and so in
+Florida, "and what do you s'pose it's about?"
+
+"No, no," he said to himself, "that will never do; but at all events
+there is no hurry," and he put back the papers in order, put the letter
+with them, and locking his desk, looked at his watch and found it to be
+two o'clock, and so he went to bed to think the matter over.
+
+Now, there may be some reader so simple as to feel a portion of Miss
+Emily's curiosity. But, my friend, restrain it, for Mr. Sewell will
+certainly, as we foresee, become less rather than more communicative on
+this subject, as he thinks upon it. Nevertheless, whatever it be that he
+knows or suspects, it is something which leads him to contemplate with
+more than usual interest this little mortal waif that has so strangely
+come ashore in his parish. He mentally resolves to study the child as
+minutely as possible, without betraying that he has any particular
+reason for being interested in him.
+
+Therefore, in the latter part of this mild November afternoon, which he
+has devoted to pastoral visiting, about two months after the funeral, he
+steps into his little sail-boat, and stretches away for the shores of
+Orr's Island. He knows the sun will be down before he reaches there; but
+he sees, in the opposite horizon, the spectral, shadowy moon, only
+waiting for daylight to be gone to come out, calm and radiant, like a
+saintly friend neglected in the flush of prosperity, who waits patiently
+to enliven our hours of darkness.
+
+As his boat-keel grazed the sands on the other side, a shout of laughter
+came upon his oar from behind a cedar-covered rock, and soon emerged
+Captain Kittridge, as long and lean and brown as the Ancient Mariner,
+carrying little Mara on one shoulder, while Sally and little Moses
+Pennel trotted on before.
+
+It was difficult to say who in this whole group was in the highest
+spirits. The fact was that Mrs. Kittridge had gone to a tea-drinking
+over at Maquoit, and left the Captain as housekeeper and general
+overseer; and little Mara and Moses and Sally had been gloriously
+keeping holiday with him down by the boat-cove, where, to say the truth,
+few shavings were made, except those necessary to adorn the children's
+heads with flowing suits of curls of a most extraordinary effect. The
+aprons of all of them were full of these most unsubstantial specimens of
+woody treasure, which hung out in long festoons, looking of a yellow
+transparency in the evening light. But the delight of the children in
+their acquisitions was only equaled by that of grown-up people in
+possessions equally fanciful in value.
+
+The mirth of the little party, however, came to a sudden pause as they
+met the minister. Mara clung tight to the Captain's neck, and looked out
+slyly under her curls. But the little Moses made a step forward, and
+fixed his bold, dark, inquisitive eyes upon him. The fact was, that the
+minister had been impressed upon the boy, in his few visits to the
+"meeting," as such a grand and mysterious reason for good behavior, that
+he seemed resolved to embrace the first opportunity to study him close
+at hand.
+
+"Well, my little man," said Mr. Sewell, with an affability which he
+could readily assume with children, "you seem to like to look at me."
+
+"I do like to look at you," said the boy gravely, continuing to fix his
+great black eyes upon him.
+
+"I see you do, my little fellow."
+
+"Are you the Lord?" said the child, solemnly.
+
+"Am I what?"
+
+"The Lord," said the boy.
+
+"No, indeed, my lad," said Mr. Sewell, smiling. "Why, what put that into
+your little head?"
+
+"I thought you were," said the boy, still continuing to study the pastor
+with attention. "Miss Roxy said so."
+
+"It's curious what notions chil'en will get in their heads," said
+Captain Kittridge. "They put this and that together and think it over,
+and come out with such queer things."
+
+"But," said the minister, "I have brought something for you all;" saying
+which he drew from his pocket three little bright-cheeked apples, and
+gave one to each child; and then taking the hand of the little Moses in
+his own, he walked with him toward the house-door.
+
+Mrs. Pennel was sitting in her clean kitchen, busily spinning at the
+little wheel, and rose flushed with pleasure at the honor that was done
+her.
+
+"Pray, walk in, Mr. Sewell," she said, rising, and leading the way
+toward the penetralia of the best room.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Pennel, I am come here for a good sit-down by your
+kitchen-fire, this evening," said Mr. Sewell. "Emily has gone out to sit
+with old Mrs. Broad, who is laid up with the rheumatism, and so I am
+turned loose to pick up my living on the parish, and you must give me a
+seat for a while in your kitchen corner. Best rooms are always cold."
+
+"The minister's right," said Captain Kittridge. "When rooms ain't much
+set in, folks never feel so kind o' natural in 'em. So you jist let me
+put on a good back-log and forestick, and build up a fire to tell
+stories by this evening. My wife's gone out to tea, too," he said, with
+an elastic skip.
+
+And in a few moments the Captain had produced in the great cavernous
+chimney a foundation for a fire that promised breadth, solidity, and
+continuance. A great back-log, embroidered here and there with tufts of
+green or grayish moss, was first flung into the capacious arms of the
+fireplace, and a smaller log placed above it. "Now, all you young uns go
+out and bring in chips," said the Captain. "There's capital ones out to
+the wood-pile."
+
+Mr. Sewell was pleased to see the flash that came from the eyes of
+little Moses at this order, how energetically he ran before the others,
+and came with glowing cheeks and distended arms, throwing down great
+white chips with their green mossy bark, scattering tufts on the floor.
+"Good," said he softly to himself, as he leaned on the top of his
+gold-headed cane; "there's energy, ambition, muscle;" and he nodded his
+head once or twice to some internal decision.
+
+"There!" said the Captain, rising out of a perfect whirlwind of chips
+and pine kindlings with which in his zeal he had bestrown the wide,
+black stone hearth, and pointing to the tongues of flame that were
+leaping and blazing up through the crevices of the dry pine wood which
+he had intermingled plentifully with the more substantial fuel,--"there,
+Mis' Pennel, ain't I a master-hand at a fire? But I'm really sorry I've
+dirtied your floor," he said, as he brushed down his pantaloons, which
+were covered with bits of grizzly moss, and looked on the surrounding
+desolations; "give me a broom, I can sweep up now as well as any woman."
+
+"Oh, never mind," said Mrs. Pennel, laughing, "I'll sweep up."
+
+"Well, now, Mis' Pennel, you're one of the women that don't get put out
+easy; ain't ye?" said the Captain, still contemplating his fire with a
+proud and watchful eye.
+
+"Law me!" he exclaimed, glancing through the window, "there's the Cap'n
+a-comin'. I'm jist goin' to give a look at what he's brought in. Come,
+chil'en," and the Captain disappeared with all three of the children at
+his heels, to go down to examine the treasures of the fishing-smack.
+
+Mr. Sewell seated himself cozily in the chimney corner and sank into a
+state of half-dreamy reverie; his eyes fixed on the fairest sight one
+can see of a frosty autumn twilight--a crackling wood-fire.
+
+Mrs. Pennel moved soft-footed to and fro, arraying her tea-table in her
+own finest and pure damask, and bringing from hidden stores her best
+china and newest silver, her choicest sweetmeats and cake--whatever was
+fairest and nicest in her house--to honor her unexpected guest.
+
+Mr. Sewell's eyes followed her occasionally about the room, with an
+expression of pleased and curious satisfaction. He was taking it all in
+as an artistic picture--that simple, kindly hearth, with its mossy logs,
+yet steaming with the moisture of the wild woods; the table so neat, so
+cheery with its many little delicacies, and refinements of appointment,
+and its ample varieties to tempt the appetite; and then the Captain
+coming in, yet fresh and hungry from his afternoon's toil, with the
+children trotting before him.
+
+"And this is the inheritance he comes into," he murmured;
+"healthy--wholesome--cheerful--secure: how much better than hot,
+stifling luxury!"
+
+Here the minister's meditations were interrupted by the entrance of all
+the children, joyful and loquacious. Little Moses held up a string of
+mackerel, with their graceful bodies and elegantly cut fins.
+
+"Just a specimen of the best, Mary," said Captain Pennel. "I thought I'd
+bring 'em for Miss Emily."
+
+"Miss Emily will be a thousand times obliged to you," said Mr. Sewell,
+rising up.
+
+As to Mara and Sally, they were reveling in apronfuls of shells and
+seaweed, which they bustled into the other room to bestow in their
+spacious baby-house.
+
+And now, after due time for Zephaniah to assume a land toilet, all sat
+down to the evening meal.
+
+After supper was over, the Captain was besieged by the children. Little
+Mara mounted first into his lap, and nestled herself quietly under his
+coat--Moses and Sally stood at each knee.
+
+"Come, now," said Moses, "you said you would tell us about the mermen
+to-night."
+
+"Yes, and the mermaids," said Sally. "Tell them all you told me the
+other night in the trundle-bed."
+
+Sally valued herself no little on the score of the Captain's talent as a
+romancer.
+
+"You see, Moses," she said, volubly, "father saw mermen and mermaids a
+plenty of them in the West Indies."
+
+"Oh, never mind about 'em now," said Captain Kittridge, looking at Mr.
+Sewell's corner.
+
+"Why not, father? mother isn't here," said Sally, innocently.
+
+A smile passed round the faces of the company, and Mr. Sewell said,
+"Come, Captain, no modesty; we all know you have as good a faculty for
+telling a story as for making a fire."
+
+"Do tell me what mermen are," said Moses.
+
+"Wal'," said the Captain, sinking his voice confidentially, and hitching
+his chair a little around, "mermen and maids is a kind o' people that
+have their world jist like our'n, only it's down in the bottom of the
+sea, 'cause the bottom of the sea has its mountains and its valleys, and
+its trees and its bushes, and it stands to reason there should be people
+there too."
+
+Moses opened his broad black eyes wider than usual, and looked absorbed
+attention.
+
+"Tell 'em about how you saw 'em," said Sally.
+
+"Wal', yes," said Captain Kittridge; "once when I was to the
+Bahamas,--it was one Sunday morning in June, the first Sunday in the
+month,--we cast anchor pretty nigh a reef of coral, and I was jist
+a-sittin' down to read my Bible, when up comes a merman over the side of
+the ship, all dressed as fine as any old beau that ever ye see, with
+cocked hat and silk stockings, and shoe-buckles, and his clothes were
+sea-green, and his shoe-buckles shone like diamonds."
+
+"Do you suppose they were diamonds, really?" said Sally.
+
+"Wal', child, I didn't ask him, but I shouldn't be surprised, from all I
+know of their ways, if they was," said the Captain, who had now got so
+wholly into the spirit of his fiction that he no longer felt
+embarrassed by the minister's presence, nor saw the look of amusement
+with which he was listening to him in his chimney-corner. "But, as I was
+sayin', he came up to me, and made the politest bow that ever ye see,
+and says he, 'Cap'n Kittridge, I presume,' and says I, 'Yes, sir.' 'I'm
+sorry to interrupt your reading,' says he; and says I, 'Oh, no matter,
+sir.' 'But,' says he, 'if you would only be so good as to move your
+anchor. You've cast anchor right before my front-door, and my wife and
+family can't get out to go to meetin'.'"
+
+"Why, do they go to meeting in the bottom of the sea?" said Moses.
+
+"Law, bless you sonny, yes. Why, Sunday morning, when the sea was all
+still, I used to hear the bass-viol a-soundin' down under the waters,
+jist as plain as could be,--and psalms and preachin'. I've reason to
+think there's as many hopefully pious mermaids as there be folks," said
+the Captain.
+
+"But," said Moses, "you said the anchor was before the front-door, so
+the family couldn't get out,--how did the merman get out?"
+
+"Oh! he got out of the scuttle on the roof," said the Captain, promptly.
+
+"And did you move your anchor?" said Moses.
+
+"Why, child, yes, to be sure I did; he was such a gentleman I wanted to
+oblige him,--it shows you how important it is always to be polite," said
+the Captain, by way of giving a moral turn to his narrative.
+
+Mr. Sewell, during the progress of this story, examined the Captain with
+eyes of amused curiosity. His countenance was as fixed and steady, and
+his whole manner of reciting as matter-of-fact and collected, as if he
+were relating some of the every-day affairs of his boat-building.
+
+"Wal', Sally," said the Captain, rising, after his yarn had proceeded
+for an indefinite length in this manner, "you and I must be goin'. I
+promised your ma you shouldn't be up late, and we have a long walk
+home,--besides it's time these little folks was in bed."
+
+The children all clung round the Captain, and could hardly be persuaded
+to let him go.
+
+When he was gone, Mrs. Pennel took the little ones to their nest in an
+adjoining room.
+
+Mr. Sewell approached his chair to that of Captain Pennel, and began
+talking to him in a tone of voice so low, that we have never been able
+to make out exactly what he was saying. Whatever it might be, however,
+it seemed to give rise to an anxious consultation. "I did not think it
+advisable to tell _any_ one this but yourself, Captain Pennel. It is for
+you to decide, in view of the probabilities I have told you, what you
+will do."
+
+"Well," said Zephaniah, "since you leave it to me, I say, let us keep
+him. It certainly seems a marked providence that he has been thrown upon
+us as he has, and the Lord seemed to prepare a way for him in our
+hearts. I am well able to afford it, and Mis' Pennel, she agrees to it,
+and on the whole I don't think we'd best go back on our steps; besides,
+our little Mara has thrived since he came under our roof. He is, to be
+sure, kind o' masterful, and I shall have to take him off Mis' Pennel's
+hands before long, and put him into the sloop. But, after all, there
+seems to be the makin' of a man in him, and when we are called away, why
+he'll be as a brother to poor little Mara. Yes, I think it's best as 't
+is."
+
+The minister, as he flitted across the bay by moonlight, felt relieved
+of a burden. His secret was locked up as safe in the breast of Zephaniah
+Pennel as it could be in his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+BOY AND GIRL
+
+
+Zephaniah Pennel was what might be called a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
+
+New England, in her earlier days, founding her institutions on the
+Hebrew Scriptures, bred better Jews than Moses could, because she read
+Moses with the amendments of Christ.
+
+The state of society in some of the districts of Maine, in these days,
+much resembled in its spirit that which Moses labored to produce in
+ruder ages. It was entirely democratic, simple, grave, hearty, and
+sincere,--solemn and religious in its daily tone, and yet, as to all
+material good, full of wholesome thrift and prosperity. Perhaps, taking
+the average mass of the people, a more healthful and desirable state of
+society never existed. Its better specimens had a simple Doric grandeur
+unsurpassed in any age. The bringing up a child in this state of society
+was a far more simple enterprise than in our modern times, when the
+factious wants and aspirations are so much more developed.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel was as high as anybody in the land. He owned not only
+the neat little schooner, "Brilliant," with divers small fishing-boats,
+but also a snug farm, adjoining the brown house, together with some
+fresh, juicy pasture-lots on neighboring islands, where he raised
+mutton, unsurpassed even by the English South-down, and wool, which
+furnished homespun to clothe his family on all every-day occasions.
+
+Mrs. Pennel, to be sure, had silks and satins, and flowered India
+chintz, and even a Cashmere shawl, the fruits of some of her husband's
+earlier voyages, which were, however, carefully stowed away for
+occasions so high and mighty, that they seldom saw the light. _Not to
+wear best things every day_ was a maxim of New England thrift as little
+disputed as any verse of the catechism; and so Mrs. Pennel found the
+stuff gown of her own dyeing and spinning so respectable for most
+purposes, that it figured even in the meeting-house itself, except on
+the very finest of Sundays, when heaven and earth seemed alike
+propitious. A person can well afford to wear homespun stuff to meeting,
+who is buoyed up by a secret consciousness of an abundance of fine
+things that could be worn, if one were so disposed, and everybody
+respected Mrs. Pennel's homespun the more, because they thought of the
+things she didn't wear.
+
+As to advantages of education, the island, like all other New England
+districts, had its common school, where one got the key of
+knowledge,--for having learned to read, write, and cipher, the young
+fellow of those regions commonly regarded himself as in possession of
+all that a man needs, to help himself to any further acquisitions he
+might desire. The boys then made fishing voyages to the Banks, and those
+who were so disposed took their books with them. If a boy did not wish
+to be bored with study, there was nobody to force him; but if a bright
+one saw visions of future success in life lying through the avenues of
+knowledge, he found many a leisure hour to pore over his books, and work
+out the problems of navigation directly over the element they were meant
+to control.
+
+Four years having glided by since the commencement of our story, we find
+in the brown house of Zephaniah Pennel a tall, well-knit, handsome boy
+of ten years, who knows no fear of wind or sea; who can set you over
+from Orr's Island to Harpswell, either in sail or row-boat, he thinks,
+as well as any man living; who knows every rope of the schooner
+Brilliant, and fancies he could command it as well as "father" himself;
+and is supporting himself this spring, during the tamer drudgeries of
+driving plough, and dropping potatoes, with the glorious vision of being
+taken this year on the annual trip to "the Banks," which comes on after
+planting. He reads fluently,--witness the "Robinson Crusoe," which never
+departs from under his pillow, and Goldsmith's "History of Greece and
+Rome," which good Mr. Sewell has lent him,--and he often brings shrewd
+criticisms on the character and course of Romulus or Alexander into the
+common current of every-day life, in a way that brings a smile over the
+grave face of Zephaniah, and makes Mrs. Pennel think the boy certainly
+ought to be sent to college.
+
+As for Mara, she is now a child of seven, still adorned with long golden
+curls, still looking dreamily out of soft hazel eyes into some unknown
+future not her own. She has no dreams for herself--they are all for
+Moses. For his sake she has learned all the womanly little
+accomplishments which Mrs. Kittridge has dragooned into Sally. She knits
+his mittens and his stockings, and hems his pocket-handkerchiefs, and
+aspires to make his shirts all herself. Whatever book Moses reads,
+forthwith she aspires to read too, and though three years younger, reads
+with a far more precocious insight.
+
+Her little form is slight and frail, and her cheek has a clear
+transparent brilliancy quite different from the rounded one of the boy;
+she looks not exactly in ill health, but has that sort of transparent
+appearance which one fancies might be an attribute of fairies and
+sylphs. All her outward senses are finer and more acute than his, and
+finer and more delicate all the attributes of her mind. Those who
+contend against giving woman the same education as man do it on the
+ground that it would make the woman unfeminine, as if Nature had done
+her work so slightly that it could be so easily raveled and knit over.
+In fact, there is a masculine and a feminine element in all knowledge,
+and a man and a woman put to the same study extract only what their
+nature fits them to see, so that knowledge can be fully orbed only when
+the two unite in the search and share the spoils.
+
+When Moses was full of Romulus and Numa, Mara pondered the story of the
+nymph Egeria--sweet parable, in which lies all we have been saying. Her
+trust in him was boundless. He was a constant hero in her eyes, and in
+her he found a steadfast believer as to all possible feats and exploits
+to which he felt himself competent, for the boy often had privately
+assured her that he could command the Brilliant as well as father
+himself.
+
+Spring had already come, loosing the chains of ice in all the bays and
+coves round Harpswell, Orr's Island, Maquoit, and Middle Bay. The
+magnificent spruces stood forth in their gala-dresses, tipped on every
+point with vivid emerald; the silver firs exuded from their tender
+shoots the fragrance of ripe pineapple; the white pines shot forth long
+weird fingers at the end of their fringy boughs; and even every little
+mimic evergreen in the shadows at their feet was made beautiful by the
+addition of a vivid border of green on the sombre coloring of its last
+year's leaves. Arbutus, fragrant with its clean, wholesome odors, gave
+forth its thousand dewy pink blossoms, and the trailing Linnea borealis
+hung its pendent twin bells round every mossy stump and old rock damp
+with green forest mould. The green and vermilion matting of the
+partridge-berry was impearled with white velvet blossoms, the
+checkerberry hung forth a translucent bell under its varnished green
+leaf, and a thousand more fairy bells, white or red, hung on blueberry
+and huckleberry bushes. The little Pearl of Orr's Island had wandered
+many an hour gathering bouquets of all these, to fill the brown house
+with sweetness when her grandfather and Moses should come in from work.
+
+The love of flowers seemed to be one of her earliest characteristics,
+and the young spring flowers of New England, in their airy delicacy and
+fragility, were much like herself; and so strong seemed the affinity
+between them, that not only Mrs. Pennel's best India china vases on the
+keeping-room mantel were filled, but here stood a tumbler of scarlet
+rock columbine, and there a bowl of blue and white violets, and in
+another place a saucer of shell-tinted crowfoot, blue liverwort, and
+white anemone, so that Zephaniah Pennel was wont to say there wasn't a
+drink of water to be got, for Mara's flowers; but he always said it with
+a smile that made his weather-beaten, hard features look like a rock lit
+up by a sunbeam. Little Mara was the pearl of the old seaman's life,
+every finer particle of his nature came out in her concentrated and
+polished, and he often wondered at a creature so ethereal belonging to
+him--as if down on some shaggy sea-green rock an old pearl oyster should
+muse and marvel on the strange silvery mystery of beauty that was
+growing in the silence of his heart.
+
+But May has passed; the arbutus and the Linnea are gone from the woods,
+and the pine tips have grown into young shoots, which wilt at noon under
+a direct reflection from sun and sea, and the blue sky has that metallic
+clearness and brilliancy which distinguishes those regions, and the
+planting is at last over, and this very morning Moses is to set off in
+the Brilliant for his first voyage to the Banks. Glorious knight he! the
+world all before him, and the blood of ten years racing and throbbing in
+his veins as he talks knowingly of hooks, and sinkers, and bait, and
+lines, and wears proudly the red flannel shirt which Mara had just
+finished for him.
+
+"How I do wish I were going with you!" she says. "I could do something,
+couldn't I--take care of your hooks, or something?"
+
+"Pooh!" said Moses, sublimely regarding her while he settled the collar
+of his shirt, "you're a girl; and what can girls do at sea? you never
+like to catch fish--it always makes you cry to see 'em flop."
+
+"Oh, yes, poor fish!" said Mara, perplexed between her sympathy for the
+fish and her desire for the glory of her hero, which must be founded on
+their pain; "I can't help feeling sorry when they gasp so."
+
+"Well, and what do you suppose you would do when the men are pulling up
+twenty and forty pounder?" said Moses, striding sublimely. "Why, they
+flop so, they'd knock you over in a minute."
+
+"Do they? Oh, Moses, do be careful. What if they should hurt you?"
+
+"Hurt me!" said Moses, laughing; "that's a good one. I'd like to see a
+fish that could hurt me."
+
+"Do hear that boy talk!" said Mrs. Pennel to her husband, as they stood
+within their chamber-door.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Captain Pennel, smiling; "he's full of the matter. I
+believe he'd take the command of the schooner this morning, if I'd let
+him."
+
+The Brilliant lay all this while courtesying on the waves, which kissed
+and whispered to the little coquettish craft. A fairer June morning had
+not risen on the shores that week; the blue mirror of the ocean was all
+dotted over with the tiny white sails of fishing-craft bound on the same
+errand, and the breeze that was just crisping the waters had the very
+spirit of energy and adventure in it.
+
+Everything and everybody was now on board, and she began to spread her
+fair wings, and slowly and gracefully to retreat from the shore. Little
+Moses stood on the deck, his black curls blowing in the wind, and his
+large eyes dancing with excitement,--his clear olive complexion and
+glowing cheeks well set off by his red shirt.
+
+Mrs. Pennel stood with Mara on the shore to see them go. The fair little
+golden-haired Ariadne shaded her eyes with one arm, and stretched the
+other after her Theseus, till the vessel grew smaller, and finally
+seemed to melt away into the eternal blue. Many be the wives and lovers
+that have watched those little fishing-craft as they went gayly out like
+this, but have waited long--too long--and seen them again no more. In
+night and fog they have gone down under the keel of some ocean packet or
+Indiaman, and sunk with brave hearts and hands, like a bubble in the
+mighty waters. Yet Mrs. Pennel did not turn back to her house in
+apprehension of this. Her husband had made so many voyages, and always
+returned safely, that she confidently expected before long to see them
+home again.
+
+The next Sunday the seat of Zephaniah Pennel was vacant in church.
+According to custom, a note was put up asking prayers for his safe
+return, and then everybody knew that he was gone to the Banks; and as
+the roguish, handsome face of Moses was also missing, Miss Roxy
+whispered to Miss Ruey, "There! Captain Pennel's took Moses on his first
+voyage. We must contrive to call round on Mis' Pennel afore long. She'll
+be lonesome."
+
+Sunday evening Mrs. Pennel was sitting pensively with little Mara by the
+kitchen hearth, where they had been boiling the tea-kettle for their
+solitary meal. They heard a brisk step without, and soon Captain and
+Mrs. Kittridge made their appearance.
+
+"Good evening, Mis' Pennel," said the Captain; "I's a-tellin' my good
+woman we must come down and see how you's a-getting along. It's raly a
+work of necessity and mercy proper for the Lord's day. Rather lonesome,
+now the Captain's gone, ain't ye? Took little Moses, too, I see. Wasn't
+at meetin' to-day, so I says, Mis' Kittridge, we'll just step down and
+chirk 'em up a little."
+
+"I didn't really know how to come," said Mrs. Kittridge, as she allowed
+Mrs. Pennel to take her bonnet; "but Aunt Roxy's to our house now, and
+she said she'd see to Sally. So you've let the boy go to the Banks? He's
+young, ain't he, for that?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Captain Kittridge. "Why, I was off to the Banks
+long afore I was his age, and a capital time we had of it, too. Golly!
+how them fish did bite! We stood up to our knees in fish before we'd
+fished half an hour."
+
+Mara, who had always a shy affinity for the Captain, now drew towards
+him and climbed on his knee. "Did the wind blow very hard?" she said.
+
+"What, my little maid?"
+
+"Does the wind blow at the Banks?"
+
+"Why, yes, my little girl, that it does, sometimes; but then there ain't
+the least danger. Our craft ride out storms like live creatures. I've
+stood it out in gales that was tight enough, I'm sure. 'Member once I
+turned in 'tween twelve and one, and hadn't more'n got asleep, afore I
+came _clump_ out of my berth, and found everything upside down. And
+'stead of goin' upstairs to get on deck, I had to go right down. Fact
+was, that 'ere vessel jist turned clean over in the water, and come
+right side up like a duck."
+
+"Well, now, Cap'n, I wouldn't be tellin' such a story as that," said his
+helpmeet.
+
+"Why, Polly, what do you know about it? you never was to sea. We did
+turn clear over, for I 'member I saw a bunch of seaweed big as a peck
+measure stickin' top of the mast next day. Jist shows how safe them ar
+little fishing craft is,--for all they look like an egg-shell on the
+mighty deep, as Parson Sewell calls it."
+
+"I was very much pleased with Mr. Sewell's exercise in prayer this
+morning," said Mrs. Kittridge; "it must have been a comfort to you, Mis'
+Pennel."
+
+"It was, to be sure," said Mrs. Pennel.
+
+"Puts me in mind of poor Mary Jane Simpson. Her husband went out, you
+know, last June, and hain't been heard of since. Mary Jane don't really
+know whether to put on mourning or not."
+
+"Law! I don't think Mary Jane need give up yet," said the Captain.
+"'Member one year I was out, we got blowed clear up to Baffin's Bay, and
+got shut up in the ice, and had to go ashore and live jist as we could
+among them Esquimaux. Didn't get home for a year. Old folks had clean
+giv' us up. Don't need never despair of folks gone to sea, for they's
+sure to turn up, first or last."
+
+"But I hope," said Mara, apprehensively, "that grandpapa won't get blown
+up to Baffin's Bay. I've seen that on his chart,--it's a good ways."
+
+"And then there's them 'ere icebergs," said Mrs. Kittridge; "I'm always
+'fraid of running into them in the fog."
+
+"Law!" said Captain Kittridge, "I've met 'em bigger than all the
+colleges up to Brunswick,--great white bears on 'em,--hungry as Time in
+the Primer. Once we came kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying
+Betsey hadn't been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been
+stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry, that they
+stood there with the water jist runnin' out of their chops in a perfect
+stream."
+
+"Oh, dear, dear," said Mara, with wide round eyes, "what will Moses do
+if they get on the icebergs?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Kittridge, looking solemnly at the child through the
+black bows of her spectacles, "we can truly say:--
+
+    "'Dangers stand thick through all the ground,
+        To push us to the tomb,'
+
+as the hymn-book says."
+
+The kind-hearted Captain, feeling the fluttering heart of little Mara,
+and seeing the tears start in her eyes, addressed himself forthwith to
+consolation. "Oh, never you mind, Mara," he said, "there won't nothing
+hurt 'em. Look at me. Why, I've been everywhere on the face of the
+earth. I've been on icebergs, and among white bears and Indians, and
+seen storms that would blow the very hair off your head, and here I am,
+dry and tight as ever. You'll see 'em back before long."
+
+The cheerful laugh with which the Captain was wont to chorus his
+sentences sounded like the crackling of dry pine wood on the social
+hearth. One would hardly hear it without being lightened in heart; and
+little Mara gazed at his long, dry, ropy figure, and wrinkled thin face,
+as a sort of monument of hope; and his uproarious laugh, which Mrs.
+Kittridge sometimes ungraciously compared to "the crackling of thorns
+under a pot," seemed to her the most delightful thing in the world.
+
+"Mary Jane was a-tellin' me," resumed Mrs. Kittridge, "that when her
+husband had been out a month, she dreamed she see him, and three other
+men, a-floatin' on an iceberg."
+
+"Laws," said Captain Kittridge, "that's jist what my old mother dreamed
+about me, and 'twas true enough, too, till we got off the ice on to the
+shore up in the Esquimaux territory, as I was a-tellin'. So you tell
+Mary Jane she needn't look out for a second husband _yet_, for that ar
+dream's a sartin sign he'll be back."
+
+"Cap'n Kittridge!" said his helpmeet, drawing herself up, and giving him
+an austere glance over her spectacles; "how often must I tell you that
+there _is_ subjects which shouldn't be treated with levity?"
+
+"Who's been a-treatin' of 'em with levity?" said the Captain. "I'm sure
+I ain't. Mary Jane's good-lookin', and there's plenty of young fellows
+as sees it as well as me. I declare, she looked as pretty as any young
+gal when she ris up in the singers' seats to-day. Put me in mind of you,
+Polly, when I first come home from the Injies."
+
+"Oh, come now, Cap'n Kittridge! we're gettin' too old for that sort o'
+talk."
+
+"We ain't too old, be we, Mara?" said the Captain, trotting the little
+girl gayly on his knee; "and we ain't afraid of icebergs and no sich, be
+we? I tell you they's a fine sight of a bright day; they has millions of
+steeples, all white and glistering, like the New Jerusalem, and the
+white bears have capital times trampin' round on 'em. Wouldn't little
+Mara like a great, nice white bear to ride on, with his white fur, so
+soft and warm, and a saddle made of pearls, and a gold bridle?"
+
+"You haven't seen any little girls ride so," said Mara, doubtfully.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I had; but you see, Mis' Kittridge there, she
+won't let me tell all I know," said the Captain, sinking his voice to a
+confidential tone; "you jist wait till we get alone."
+
+"But, you are sure," said Mara, confidingly, in return, "that white
+bears will be kind to Moses?"
+
+"Lord bless you, yes, child, the kindest critturs in the world they be,
+if you only get the right side of 'em," said the Captain.
+
+"Oh, yes! because," said Mara, "I know how good a wolf was to Romulus
+and Remus once, and nursed them when they were cast out to die. I read
+that in the Roman history."
+
+"Jist so," said the Captain, enchanted at this historic confirmation of
+his apocrypha.
+
+"And so," said Mara, "if Moses should happen to get on an iceberg, a
+bear might take care of him, you know."
+
+"Jist so, jist so," said the Captain; "so don't you worry your little
+curly head one bit. Some time when you come down to see Sally, we'll go
+down to the cove, and I'll tell you lots of stories about chil'en that
+have been fetched up by white bears, jist like Romulus and what's his
+name there."
+
+"Come, Mis' Kittridge," added the cheery Captain; "you and I mustn't be
+keepin' the folks up till nine o'clock."
+
+"Well now," said Mrs. Kittridge, in a doleful tone, as she began to put
+on her bonnet, "Mis' Pennel, you must keep up your spirits--it's one's
+duty to take cheerful views of things. I'm sure many's the night, when
+the Captain's been gone to sea, I've laid and shook in my bed, hearin'
+the wind blow, and thinking what if I should be left a lone widow."
+
+"There'd a-been a dozen fellows a-wanting to get you in six months,
+Polly," interposed the Captain. "Well, good-night, Mis' Pennel; there'll
+be a splendid haul of fish at the Banks this year, or there's no truth
+in signs. Come, my little Mara, got a kiss for the dry old daddy? That's
+my good girl. Well, good night, and the Lord bless you."
+
+And so the cheery Captain took up his line of march homeward, leaving
+little Mara's head full of dazzling visions of the land of romance to
+which Moses had gone. She was yet on that shadowy boundary between the
+dreamland of childhood and the real land of life; so all things looked
+to her quite possible; and gentle white bears, with warm, soft fur and
+pearl and gold saddles, walked through her dreams, and the victorious
+curls of Moses appeared, with his bright eyes and cheeks, over
+glittering pinnacles of frost in the ice-land.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE ENCHANTED ISLAND
+
+
+June and July passed, and the lonely two lived a quiet life in the brown
+house. Everything was so still and fair--no sound but the coming and
+going tide, and the swaying wind among the pine-trees, and the tick of
+the clock, and the whirr of the little wheel as Mrs. Pennel sat spinning
+in her door in the mild weather. Mara read the Roman history through
+again, and began it a third time, and read over and over again the
+stories and prophecies that pleased her in the Bible, and pondered the
+wood-cuts and texts in a very old edition of AEsop's Fables; and as she
+wandered in the woods, picking fragrant bayberries and gathering
+hemlock, checkerberry, and sassafras to put in the beer which her
+grandmother brewed, she mused on the things that she read till her
+little mind became a tabernacle of solemn, quaint, dreamy forms, where
+old Judean kings and prophets, and Roman senators and warriors, marched
+in and out in shadowy rounds. She invented long dramas and conversations
+in which they performed imaginary parts, and it would not have appeared
+to the child in the least degree surprising either to have met an angel
+in the woods, or to have formed an intimacy with some talking wolf or
+bear, such as she read of in AEsop's Fables.
+
+One day, as she was exploring the garret, she found in an old barrel of
+cast-off rubbish a bit of reading which she begged of her grandmother
+for her own. It was the play of the "Tempest," torn from an old edition
+of Shakespeare, and was in that delightfully fragmentary condition
+which most particularly pleases children, because they conceive a
+mutilated treasure thus found to be more especially their own
+property--something like a rare wild-flower or sea-shell. The pleasure
+which thoughtful and imaginative children sometimes take in reading that
+which they do not and cannot fully comprehend is one of the most common
+and curious phenomena of childhood.
+
+And so little Mara would lie for hours stretched out on the pebbly
+beach, with the broad open ocean before her and the whispering pines and
+hemlocks behind her, and pore over this poem, from which she collected
+dim, delightful images of a lonely island, an old enchanter, a beautiful
+girl, and a spirit not quite like those in the Bible, but a very
+probable one to her mode of thinking. As for old Caliban, she fancied
+him with a face much like that of a huge skate-fish she had once seen
+drawn ashore in one of her grandfather's nets; and then there was the
+beautiful young Prince Ferdinand, much like what Moses would be when he
+was grown up--and how glad she would be to pile up his wood for him, if
+any old enchanter should set him to work!
+
+One attribute of the child was a peculiar shamefacedness and shyness
+about her inner thoughts, and therefore the wonder that this new
+treasure excited, the host of surmises and dreams to which it gave rise,
+were never mentioned to anybody. That it was all of it as much authentic
+fact as the Roman history, she did not doubt, but whether it had
+happened on Orr's Island or some of the neighboring ones, she had not
+exactly made up her mind. She resolved at her earliest leisure to
+consult Captain Kittridge on the subject, wisely considering that it
+much resembled some of his fishy and aquatic experiences.
+
+Some of the little songs fixed themselves in her memory, and she would
+hum them as she wandered up and down the beach.
+
+    "Come unto these yellow sands,
+      And then take hands;
+    Courtsied when you have and kissed
+      The wild waves whist,
+    Foot it featly here and there;
+    And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear."
+
+And another which pleased her still more:--
+
+    "Full fathom five thy father lies;
+      Of his bones are coral made,
+    Those are pearls that were his eyes:
+      Nothing of him that can fade
+    But doth suffer a sea-change
+    Into something rich and strange;
+    Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
+    Hark, now I hear them--ding-dong, bell."
+
+These words she pondered very long, gravely revolving in her little head
+whether they described the usual course of things in the mysterious
+under-world that lay beneath that blue spangled floor of the sea;
+whether everybody's eyes changed to pearl, and their bones to coral, if
+they sunk down there; and whether the sea-nymphs spoken of were the same
+as the mermaids that Captain Kittridge had told of. Had he not said that
+the bell rung for church of a Sunday morning down under the waters?
+
+Mara vividly remembered the scene on the sea-beach, the finding of
+little Moses and his mother, the dream of the pale lady that seemed to
+bring him to her; and not one of the conversations that had transpired
+before her among different gossips had been lost on her quiet, listening
+little ears. These pale, still children that play without making any
+noise are deep wells into which drop many things which lie long and
+quietly on the bottom, and come up in after years whole and new, when
+everybody else has forgotten them.
+
+So she had heard surmises as to the remaining crew of that unfortunate
+ship, where, perhaps, Moses had a father. And sometimes she wondered if
+_he_ were lying fathoms deep with sea-nymphs ringing his knell, and
+whether Moses ever thought about him; and yet she could no more have
+asked him a question about it than if she had been born dumb. She
+decided that she should never show him this poetry--it might make him
+feel unhappy.
+
+One bright afternoon, when the sea lay all dead asleep, and the long,
+steady respiration of its tides scarcely disturbed the glassy
+tranquillity of its bosom, Mrs. Pennel sat at her kitchen-door spinning,
+when Captain Kittridge appeared.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mis' Pennel; how ye gettin' along?"
+
+"Oh, pretty well, Captain; won't you walk in and have a glass of beer?"
+
+"Well, thank you," said the Captain, raising his hat and wiping his
+forehead, "I be pretty dry, it's a fact."
+
+Mrs. Pennel hastened to a cask which was kept standing in a corner of
+the kitchen, and drew from thence a mug of her own home-brewed, fragrant
+with the smell of juniper, hemlock, and wintergreen, which she presented
+to the Captain, who sat down in the doorway and discussed it in
+leisurely sips.
+
+"Wal', s'pose it's most time to be lookin' for 'em home, ain't it?" he
+said.
+
+"I _am_ lookin' every day," said Mrs. Pennel, involuntarily glancing
+upward at the sea.
+
+At the word appeared the vision of little Mara, who rose up like a
+spirit from a dusky corner, where she had been stooping over her
+reading.
+
+"Why, little Mara," said the Captain, "you ris up like a ghost all of a
+sudden. I thought you's out to play. I come down a-purpose arter you.
+Mis' Kittridge has gone shoppin' up to Brunswick, and left Sally a
+'stent' to do; and I promised her if she'd clap to and do it quick, I'd
+go up and fetch you down, and we'd have a play in the cove."
+
+Mara's eyes brightened, as they always did at this prospect, and Mrs.
+Pennel said, "Well, I'm glad to have the child go; she seems so kind o'
+still and lonesome since Moses went away; really one feels as if that
+boy took all the noise there was with him. I get tired myself sometimes
+hearing the clock tick. Mara, when she's alone, takes to her book more
+than's good for a child."
+
+"She does, does she? Well, we'll see about that. Come, little Mara, get
+on your sun-bonnet. Sally's sewin' fast as ever she can, and we're goin'
+to dig some clams, and make a fire, and have a chowder; that'll be nice,
+won't it? Don't you want to come, too, Mis' Pennel?"
+
+"Oh, thank you, Captain, but I've got so many things on hand to do afore
+they come home, I don't really think I can. I'll trust Mara to you any
+day."
+
+Mara had run into her own little room and secured her precious fragment
+of treasure, which she wrapped up carefully in her handkerchief,
+resolving to enlighten Sally with the story, and to consult the Captain
+on any nice points of criticism. Arrived at the cove, they found Sally
+already there in advance of them, clapping her hands and dancing in a
+manner which made her black elf-locks fly like those of a distracted
+creature.
+
+"Now, Sally," said the Captain, imitating, in a humble way, his wife's
+manner, "are you sure you've finished your work well?"
+
+"Yes, father, every stitch on't."
+
+"And stuck in your needle, and folded it up, and put it in the drawer,
+and put away your thimble, and shet the drawer, and all the rest on't?"
+said the Captain.
+
+"Yes, father," said Sally, gleefully, "I've done everything I could
+think of."
+
+"'Cause you know your ma'll be arter ye, if you don't leave everything
+straight."
+
+"Oh, never you fear, father, I've done it all half an hour ago, and I've
+found the most capital bed of clams just round the point here; and you
+take care of Mara there, and make up a fire while I dig 'em. If she
+comes, she'll be sure to wet her shoes, or spoil her frock, or
+something."
+
+"Wal', she likes no better fun now," said the Captain, watching Sally,
+as she disappeared round the rock with a bright tin pan.
+
+He then proceeded to construct an extemporary fireplace of loose stones,
+and to put together chips and shavings for the fire,--in which work
+little Mara eagerly assisted; but the fire was crackling and burning
+cheerily long before Sally appeared with her clams, and so the Captain,
+with a pile of hemlock boughs by his side, sat on a stone feeding the
+fire leisurely from time to time with crackling boughs. Now was the time
+for Mara to make her inquiries; her heart beat, she knew not why, for
+she was full of those little timidities and shames that so often
+embarrass children in their attempts to get at the meanings of things in
+this great world, where they are such ignorant spectators.
+
+"Captain Kittridge," she said at last, "do the mermaids toll any bells
+for people when they are drowned?"
+
+Now the Captain had never been known to indicate the least ignorance on
+any subject in heaven or earth, which any one wished his opinion on; he
+therefore leisurely poked another great crackling bough of green hemlock
+into the fire, and, Yankee-like, answered one question by asking
+another.
+
+"What put that into your curly pate?" he said.
+
+"A book I've been reading says they do,--that is, sea-nymphs do. Ain't
+sea-nymphs and mermaids the same thing?"
+
+"Wal', I guess they be, pretty much," said the Captain, rubbing down his
+pantaloons; "yes, they be," he added, after reflection.
+
+"And when people are drowned, how long does it take for their bones to
+turn into coral, and their eyes into pearl?" said little Mara.
+
+"Well, that depends upon circumstances," said the Captain, who wasn't
+going to be posed; "but let me jist see your book you've been reading
+these things out of."
+
+"I found it in a barrel up garret, and grandma gave it to me," said
+Mara, unrolling her handkerchief; "it's a beautiful book,--it tells
+about an island, and there was an old enchanter lived on it, and he had
+one daughter, and there was a spirit they called Ariel, whom a wicked
+old witch fastened in a split of a pine-tree, till the enchanter got him
+out. He was a beautiful spirit, and rode in the curled clouds and hung
+in flowers,--because he could make himself big or little, you see."
+
+"Ah, yes, I see, to be sure," said the Captain, nodding his head.
+
+"Well, that about sea-nymphs ringing his knell is here," Mara added,
+beginning to read the passage with wide, dilated eyes and great
+emphasis. "You see," she went on speaking very fast, "this enchanter had
+been a prince, and a wicked brother had contrived to send him to sea
+with his poor little daughter, in a ship so leaky that the very rats had
+left it."
+
+"Bad business that!" said the Captain, attentively.
+
+"Well," said Mara, "they got cast ashore on this desolate island, where
+they lived together. But once, when a ship was going by on the sea that
+had his wicked brother and his son--a real good, handsome young
+prince--in it, why then he made a storm by magic arts."
+
+"Jist so," said the Captain; "that's been often done, to my sartin
+knowledge."
+
+"And he made the ship be wrecked, and all the people thrown ashore, but
+there wasn't any of 'em drowned, and this handsome prince heard Ariel
+singing this song about his father, and it made him think he was dead."
+
+"Well, what became of 'em?" interposed Sally, who had come up with her
+pan of clams in time to hear this story, to which she had listened with
+breathless interest.
+
+"Oh, the beautiful young prince married the beautiful young lady," said
+Mara.
+
+"Wal'," said the Captain, who by this time had found his soundings;
+"that you've been a-tellin' is what they call a play, and I've seen 'em
+act it at a theatre, when I was to Liverpool once. I know all about it.
+Shakespeare wrote it, and he's a great English poet."
+
+"But did it ever happen?" said Mara, trembling between hope and fear.
+"Is it like the Bible and Roman history?"
+
+"Why, no," said Captain Kittridge, "not exactly; but things jist like
+it, you know. Mermaids and sich is common in foreign parts, and they has
+funerals for drowned sailors. 'Member once when we was sailing near the
+Bermudas by a reef where the Lively Fanny went down, and I heard a kind
+o' ding-dongin',--and the waters there is clear as the sky,--and I
+looked down and see the coral all a-growin', and the sea-plants a-wavin'
+as handsome as a pictur', and the mermaids they was a-singin'. It was
+beautiful; they sung kind o' mournful; and Jack Hubbard, he would have
+it they was a-singin' for the poor fellows that was a-lyin' there round
+under the seaweed."
+
+"But," said Mara, "did you ever see an enchanter that could make
+storms?"
+
+"Wal', there be witches and conjurers that make storms. 'Member once
+when we was crossin' the line, about twelve o'clock at night, there was
+an old man with a long white beard that shone like silver, came and
+stood at the masthead, and he had a pitchfork in one hand, and a lantern
+in the other, and there was great balls of fire as big as my fist came
+out all round in the rigging. And I'll tell you if we didn't get a blow
+that ar night! I thought to my soul we should all go to the bottom."
+
+"Why," said Mara, her eyes staring with excitement, "that was just like
+this shipwreck; and 'twas Ariel made those balls of fire; he says so; he
+said he 'flamed amazement' all over the ship."
+
+"I've heard Miss Roxy tell about witches that made storms," said Sally.
+
+The Captain leisurely proceeded to open the clams, separating from the
+shells the contents, which he threw into a pan, meanwhile placing a
+black pot over the fire in which he had previously arranged certain
+slices of salt pork, which soon began frizzling in the heat.
+
+"Now, Sally, you peel them potatoes, and mind you slice 'em thin," he
+said, and Sally soon was busy with her work.
+
+"Yes," said the Captain, going on with his part of the arrangement,
+"there was old Polly Twitchell, that lived in that ar old tumble-down
+house on Mure P'int; people used to say she brewed storms, and went to
+sea in a sieve."
+
+"Went in a sieve!" said both children; "why a sieve wouldn't swim!"
+
+"No more it wouldn't, in any Christian way," said the Captain; "but that
+was to show what a great witch she was."
+
+"But this was a good enchanter," said Mara, "and he did it all by a book
+and a rod."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Captain; "that ar's the gen'l way magicians do,
+ever since Moses's time in Egypt. 'Member once I was to Alexandria, in
+Egypt, and I saw a magician there that could jist see everything you
+ever did in your life in a drop of ink that he held in his hand."
+
+"He could, father!"
+
+"To be sure he could! told me all about the old folks at home; and
+described our house as natural as if he'd a-been there. He used to
+carry snakes round with him,--a kind so p'ison that it was certain death
+to have 'em bite you; but he played with 'em as if they was kittens."
+
+"Well," said Mara, "my enchanter was a king; and when he got through all
+he wanted, and got his daughter married to the beautiful young prince,
+he said he would break his staff, and deeper than plummet sounded he
+would bury his book."
+
+"It was pretty much the best thing he could do," said the Captain,
+"because the Bible is agin such things."
+
+"Is it?" said Mara; "why, he was a real good man."
+
+"Oh, well, you know, we all on us does what ain't quite right sometimes,
+when we gets pushed up," said the Captain, who now began arranging the
+clams and sliced potatoes in alternate layers with sea-biscuit, strewing
+in salt and pepper as he went on; and, in a few moments, a smell,
+fragrant to hungry senses, began to steam upward, and Sally began
+washing and preparing some mammoth clam-shells, to serve as ladles and
+plates for the future chowder.
+
+Mara, who sat with her morsel of a book in her lap, seemed deeply
+pondering the past conversation. At last she said, "What did you mean by
+saying you'd seen 'em act that at a theatre?"
+
+"Why, they make it all seem real; and they have a shipwreck, and you see
+it all jist right afore your eyes."
+
+"And the Enchanter, and Ariel, and Caliban, and all?" said Mara.
+
+"Yes, all on't,--plain as printing."
+
+"Why, that is by magic, ain't it?" said Mara.
+
+"No; they hes ways to jist make it up; but,"--added the Captain, "Sally,
+you needn't say nothin' to your ma 'bout the theatre, 'cause she
+wouldn't think I's fit to go to meetin' for six months arter, if she
+heard on't."
+
+"Why, ain't theatres good?" said Sally.
+
+"Wal', there's a middlin' sight o' bad things in 'em," said the
+Captain, "that I must say; but as long as folks _is_ folks, why, they
+will be _folksy_;--but there's never any makin' women folk understand
+about them ar things."
+
+"I am sorry they are bad," said Mara; "I want to see them."
+
+"Wal', wal'," said the Captain, "on the hull I've seen real things a
+good deal more wonderful than all their shows, and they hain't no
+make-b'lieve to 'em; but theatres is takin' arter all. But, Sally, mind
+you don't say nothin' to Mis' Kittridge."
+
+A few moments more and all discussion was lost in preparations for the
+meal, and each one, receiving a portion of the savory stew in a large
+shell, made a spoon of a small cockle, and with some slices of bread and
+butter, the evening meal went off merrily. The sun was sloping toward
+the ocean; the wide blue floor was bedropped here and there with rosy
+shadows of sailing clouds. Suddenly the Captain sprang up, calling
+out,--
+
+"Sure as I'm alive, there they be!"
+
+"Who?" exclaimed the children.
+
+"Why, Captain Pennel and Moses; don't you see?"
+
+And, in fact, on the outer circle of the horizon came drifting a line of
+small white-breasted vessels, looking like so many doves.
+
+"Them's 'em," said the Captain, while Mara danced for joy.
+
+"How soon will they be here?"
+
+"Afore long," said the Captain; "so, Mara, I guess you'll want to be
+getting hum."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE HOME COMING
+
+
+Mrs. Pennel, too, had seen the white, dove-like cloud on the horizon,
+and had hurried to make biscuits, and conduct other culinary
+preparations which should welcome the wanderers home.
+
+The sun was just dipping into the great blue sea--a round ball of
+fire--and sending long, slanting tracks of light across the top of each
+wave, when a boat was moored at the beach, and the minister sprang
+out,--not in his suit of ceremony, but attired in fisherman's garb.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mrs. Pennel," he said. "I was out fishing, and I
+thought I saw your husband's schooner in the distance. I thought I'd
+come and tell you."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Sewell. I thought I saw it, but I was not certain. Do
+come in; the Captain would be delighted to see you here."
+
+"We miss your husband in our meetings," said Mr. Sewell; "it will be
+good news for us all when he comes home; he is one of those I depend on
+to help me preach."
+
+"I'm sure you don't preach to anybody who enjoys it more," said Mrs.
+Pennel. "He often tells me that the greatest trouble about his voyages
+to the Banks is that he loses so many sanctuary privileges; though he
+always keeps Sunday on his ship, and reads and sings his psalms; but, he
+says, after all, there's nothing like going to Mount Zion."
+
+"And little Moses has gone on his first voyage?" said the minister.
+
+"Yes, indeed; the child has been teasing to go for more than a year.
+Finally the Cap'n told him if he'd be faithful in the ploughing and
+planting, he should go. You see, he's rather unsteady, and apt to be off
+after other things,--very different from Mara. Whatever you give her to
+do, she always keeps at it till it's done."
+
+"And pray, where is the little lady?" said the minister; "is she gone?"
+
+"Well, Cap'n Kittridge came in this afternoon to take her down to see
+Sally. The Cap'n's always so fond of Mara, and she has always taken to
+him ever since she was a baby."
+
+"The Captain is a curious creature," said the minister, smiling.
+
+Mrs. Pennel smiled also; and it is to be remarked that nobody ever
+mentioned the poor Captain's name without the same curious smile.
+
+"The Cap'n is a good-hearted, obliging creature," said Mrs. Pennel, "and
+a master-hand for telling stories to the children."
+
+"Yes, a perfect 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,'" said Mr. Sewell.
+
+"Well, I really believe the Cap'n believes his own stories," said Mrs.
+Pennel; "he always seems to, and certainly a more obliging man and a
+kinder neighbor couldn't be. He has been in and out almost every day
+since I've been alone, to see if I wanted anything. He would insist on
+chopping wood and splitting kindlings for me, though I told him the
+Cap'n and Moses had left a plenty to last till they came home."
+
+At this moment the subject of their conversation appeared striding along
+the beach, with a large, red lobster in one hand, while with the other
+he held little Mara upon his shoulder, she the while clapping her hands
+and singing merrily, as she saw the Brilliant out on the open blue sea,
+its white sails looking of a rosy purple in the evening light, careering
+gayly homeward.
+
+"There is Captain Kittridge this very minute," said Mrs. Pennel, setting
+down a tea-cup she had been wiping, and going to the door.
+
+"Good evening, Mis' Pennel," said the Captain. "I s'pose you see your
+folks are comin'. I brought down one of these 'ere ready b'iled, 'cause
+I thought it might make out your supper."
+
+"Thank you, Captain; you must stay and take some with us."
+
+"Wal', me and the children have pooty much done our supper," said the
+Captain. "We made a real fust-rate chowder down there to the cove; but
+I'll jist stay and see what the Cap'n's luck is. Massy!" he added, as he
+looked in at the door, "if you hain't got the minister there! Wal', now,
+I come jist as I be," he added, with a glance down at his clothes.
+
+"Never mind, Captain," said Mr. Sewell; "I'm in my fishing-clothes, so
+we're even."
+
+As to little Mara, she had run down to the beach, and stood so near the
+sea, that every dash of the tide-wave forced her little feet to tread an
+inch backward, stretching out her hands eagerly toward the schooner,
+which was standing straight toward the small wharf, not far from their
+door. Already she could see on deck figures moving about, and her sharp
+little eyes made out a small personage in a red shirt that was among the
+most active. Soon all the figures grew distinct, and she could see her
+grandfather's gray head, and alert, active form, and could see, by the
+signs he made, that he had perceived the little blowy figure that stood,
+with hair streaming in the wind, like some flower bent seaward.
+
+And now they are come nearer, and Moses shouts and dances on the deck,
+and the Captain and Mrs. Pennel come running from the house down to the
+shore, and a few minutes more, and all are landed safe and sound, and
+little Mara is carried up to the house in her grandfather's arms, while
+Captain Kittridge stops to have a few moments' gossip with Ben Halliday
+and Tom Scranton before they go to their own resting-places.
+
+Meanwhile Moses loses not a moment in boasting of his heroic exploits to
+Mara.
+
+"Oh, Mara! you've no idea what times we've had! I can fish equal to any
+of 'em, and I can take in sail and tend the helm like anything, and I
+know all the names of everything; and you ought to have seen us catch
+fish! Why, they bit just as fast as we could throw; and it was just
+throw and bite,--throw and bite,--throw and bite; and my hands got
+blistered pulling in, but I didn't mind it,--I was determined no one
+should beat me."
+
+"Oh! did you blister your hands?" said Mara, pitifully.
+
+"Oh, to be sure! Now, you girls think that's a dreadful thing, but we
+men don't mind it. My hands are getting so hard, you've no idea. And,
+Mara, we caught a great shark."
+
+"A shark!--oh, how dreadful! Isn't he dangerous?"
+
+"Dangerous! I guess not. We served him out, I tell you. He'll never eat
+any more people, I tell you, the old wretch!"
+
+"But, poor shark, it isn't his fault that he eats people. He was made
+so," said Mara, unconsciously touching a deep theological mystery.
+
+"Well, I don't know but he was," said Moses; "but sharks that we catch
+never eat any more, I'll bet you."
+
+"Oh, Moses, did you see any icebergs?"
+
+"Icebergs! yes; we passed right by one,--a real grand one."
+
+"Were there any bears on it?"
+
+"Bears! No; we didn't see any."
+
+"Captain Kittridge says there are white bears live on 'em."
+
+"Oh, Captain Kittridge," said Moses, with a toss of superb contempt; "if
+you're going to believe all _he_ says, you've got your hands full."
+
+"Why, Moses, you don't think he tells lies?" said Mara, the tears
+actually starting in her eyes. "I think he is _real_ good, and tells
+nothing but the truth."
+
+"Well, well, you are young yet," said Moses, turning away with an air of
+easy grandeur, "and only a girl besides," he added.
+
+Mara was nettled at this speech. First, it pained her to have her
+child's faith shaken in anything, and particularly in her good old
+friend, the Captain; and next, she felt, with more force than ever she
+did before, the continual disparaging tone in which Moses spoke of her
+girlhood.
+
+"I'm sure," she said to herself, "he oughtn't to feel so about girls and
+women. There was Deborah was a prophetess, and judged Israel; and there
+was Egeria,--she taught Numa Pompilius all his wisdom."
+
+But it was not the little maiden's way to speak when anything thwarted
+or hurt her, but rather to fold all her feelings and thoughts inward, as
+some insects, with fine gauzy wings, draw them under a coat of horny
+concealment. Somehow, there was a shivering sense of disappointment in
+all this meeting with Moses. She had dwelt upon it, and fancied so much,
+and had so many things to say to him; and he had come home so
+self-absorbed and glorious, and seemed to have had so little need of or
+thought for her, that she felt a cold, sad sinking at her heart; and
+walking away very still and white, sat down demurely by her
+grandfather's knee.
+
+"Well, so my little girl is glad grandfather's come," he said, lifting
+her fondly in his arms, and putting her golden head under his coat, as
+he had been wont to do from infancy; "grandpa thought a great deal about
+his little Mara."
+
+The small heart swelled against his. Kind, faithful old grandpa! how
+much more he thought about her than Moses; and yet she had thought so
+much of Moses. And there he sat, this same ungrateful Moses, bright-eyed
+and rosy-cheeked, full of talk and gayety, full of energy and vigor, as
+ignorant as possible of the wound he had given to the little loving
+heart that was silently brooding under her grandfather's
+butternut-colored sea-coat. Not only was he ignorant, but he had not
+even those conditions within himself which made knowledge possible. All
+that there was developed of him, at present, was a fund of energy,
+self-esteem, hope, courage, and daring, the love of action, life, and
+adventure; his life was in the outward and present, not in the inward
+and reflective; he was a true ten-year old boy, in its healthiest and
+most animal perfection. What she was, the small pearl with the golden
+hair, with her frail and high-strung organization, her sensitive nerves,
+her half-spiritual fibres, her ponderings, and marvels, and dreams, her
+power of love, and yearning for self-devotion, our readers may, perhaps,
+have seen. But if ever two children, or two grown people, thus
+organized, are thrown into intimate relations, it follows, from the very
+laws of their being, that one must hurt the other, simply by being
+itself; one must always hunger for what the other has not to give.
+
+It was a merry meal, however, when they all sat down to the tea-table
+once more, and Mara by her grandfather's side, who often stopped what he
+was saying to stroke her head fondly. Moses bore a more prominent part
+in the conversation than he had been wont to do before this voyage, and
+all seemed to listen to him with a kind of indulgence elders often
+accord to a handsome, manly boy, in the first flush of some successful
+enterprise. That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future,
+which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in
+experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.
+
+Gradually, little Mara quieted herself with listening to and admiring
+him. It is not comfortable to have any heart-quarrel with one's
+cherished idol, and everything of the feminine nature, therefore, can
+speedily find fifty good reasons for seeing one's self in the wrong and
+one's graven image in the right; and little Mara soon had said to
+herself, without words, that, of course, Moses couldn't be expected to
+think as much of her as she of him. He was handsomer, cleverer, and had
+a thousand other things to do and to think of--he was a boy, in short,
+and going to be a glorious man and sail all over the world, while she
+could only hem handkerchiefs and knit stockings, and sit at home and
+wait for him to come back. This was about the _resume_ of life as it
+appeared to the little one, who went on from the moment worshiping her
+image with more undivided idolatry than ever, hoping that by and by he
+would think more of her.
+
+Mr. Sewell appeared to study Moses carefully and thoughtfully, and
+encouraged the wild, gleeful frankness which he had brought home from
+his first voyage, as a knowing jockey tries the paces of a high-mettled
+colt.
+
+"Did you get any time to read?" he interposed once, when the boy stopped
+in his account of their adventures.
+
+"No, sir," said Moses; "at least," he added, blushing very deeply, "I
+didn't feel like reading. I had so much to do, and there was so much to
+see."
+
+"It's all new to him now," said Captain Pennel; "but when he comes to
+being, as I've been, day after day, with nothing but sea and sky, he'll
+be glad of a book, just to break the sameness."
+
+"Laws, yes," said Captain Kittridge; "sailor's life ain't all
+apple-pie, as it seems when a boy first goes on a summer trip with his
+daddy--not by no manner o' means."
+
+"But," said Mara, blushing and looking very eagerly at Mr. Sewell,
+"Moses has read a great deal. He read the Roman and the Grecian history
+through before he went away, and knows all about them."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, turning with an amused look towards the tiny
+little champion; "do you read them, too, my little maid?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," said Mara, her eyes kindling; "I have read them a great
+deal since Moses went away--them and the Bible."
+
+Mara did not dare to name her new-found treasure--there was something so
+mysterious about that, that she could not venture to produce it, except
+on the score of extreme intimacy.
+
+"Come, sit by me, little Mara," said the minister, putting out his hand;
+"you and I must be friends, I see."
+
+Mr. Sewell had a certain something of mesmeric power in his eyes which
+children seldom resisted; and with a shrinking movement, as if both
+attracted and repelled, the little girl got upon his knee.
+
+"So you like the Bible and Roman history?" he said to her, making a
+little aside for her, while a brisk conversation was going on between
+Captain Kittridge and Captain Pennel on the fishing bounty for the year.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Mara, blushing in a very guilty way.
+
+"And which do you like the best?"
+
+"I don't know, sir; I sometimes think it is the one, and sometimes the
+other."
+
+"Well, what pleases you in the Roman history?"
+
+"Oh, I like that about Quintus Curtius."
+
+"Quintus Curtius?" said Mr. Sewell, pretending not to remember.
+
+"Oh, don't you remember him? why, there was a great gulf opened in the
+Forum, and the Augurs said that the country would not be saved unless
+some one would offer himself up for it, and so he jumped right in, all
+on horseback. I think that was grand. I should like to have done that,"
+said little Mara, her eyes blazing out with a kind of starry light which
+they had when she was excited.
+
+"And how would you have liked it, if you had been a Roman girl, and
+Moses were Quintus Curtius? would you like to have him give himself up
+for the good of the country?"
+
+"Oh, no, no!" said Mara, instinctively shuddering.
+
+"Don't you think it would be very grand of him?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"And shouldn't we wish our friends to do what is brave and grand?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but then," she added, "it would be so dreadful _never_ to see
+him any more," and a large tear rolled from the great soft eyes and fell
+on the minister's hand.
+
+"Come, come," thought Mr. Sewell, "this sort of experimenting is too
+bad--too much nerve here, too much solitude, too much pine-whispering
+and sea-dashing are going to the making up of this little piece of
+workmanship."
+
+"Tell me," he said, motioning Moses to sit by him, "how _you_ like the
+Roman history."
+
+"I like it first-rate," said Moses. "The Romans were such smashers, and
+beat everybody; nobody could stand against them; and I like Alexander,
+too--I think he was splendid."
+
+"True boy," said Mr. Sewell to himself, "unreflecting brother of the
+wind and the sea, and all that is vigorous and active--no precocious
+development of the moral here."
+
+"Now you have come," said Mr. Sewell, "I will lend you another book."
+
+"Thank you, sir; I love to read them when I'm at home--it's so still
+here. I should be dull if I didn't."
+
+Mara's eyes looked eagerly attentive. Mr. Sewell noticed their hungry
+look when a book was spoken of.
+
+"And you must read it, too, my little girl," he said.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Mara; "I always want to read everything Moses
+does."
+
+"What book is it?" said Moses.
+
+"It is called Plutarch's 'Lives,'" said the minister; "it has more
+particular accounts of the men you read about in history."
+
+"Are there any lives of women?" said Mara.
+
+"No, my dear," said Mr. Sewell; "in the old times, women did not get
+their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better
+worth writing than the men's."
+
+"I should like to be a great general," said Moses, with a toss of his
+head.
+
+"The way to be great lies through books, now, and not through battles,"
+said the minister; "there is more done with pens than swords; so, if you
+want to do anything, you must read and study."
+
+"Do you think of giving this boy a liberal education?" said Mr. Sewell
+some time later in the evening, after Moses and Mara were gone to bed.
+
+"Depends on the boy," said Zephaniah. "I've been up to Brunswick, and
+seen the fellows there in the college. With a good many of 'em, going to
+college seems to be just nothing but a sort of ceremony; they go because
+they're sent, and don't learn anything more'n they can help. That's what
+I call waste of time and money."
+
+"But don't you think Moses shows some taste for reading and study?"
+
+"Pretty well, pretty well!" said Zephaniah; "jist keep him a little
+hungry; not let him get all he wants, you see, and he'll bite the
+sharper. If I want to catch cod, I don't begin with flingin' over a
+barrel o' bait. So with the boys, jist bait 'em with a book here and a
+book there, and kind o' let 'em feel their own way, and then, if nothin'
+will do but a fellow must go to college, give in to him--that'd be _my_
+way."
+
+"And a very good one, too!" said Mr. Sewell. "I'll see if I can't bait
+my hook, so as to make Moses take after Latin this winter. I shall have
+plenty of time to teach him."
+
+"Now, there's Mara!" said the Captain, his face becoming phosphorescent
+with a sort of mild radiance of pleasure as it usually was when he spoke
+of her; "she's real sharp set after books; she's ready to fly out of her
+little skin at the sight of one."
+
+"That child thinks too much, and feels too much, and knows too much for
+her years!" said Mr. Sewell. "If she were a boy, and you would take her
+away cod-fishing, as you have Moses, the sea-winds would blow away some
+of the thinking, and her little body would grow stout, and her mind less
+delicate and sensitive. But she's a woman," he said, with a sigh, "and
+they are all alike. We can't do much for them, but let them come up as
+they will and make the best of it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
+
+
+"Emily," said Mr. Sewell, "did you ever take much notice of that little
+Mara Lincoln?"
+
+"No, brother; why?"
+
+"Because I think her a very uncommon child."
+
+"She is a pretty little creature," said Miss Emily, "but that is all I
+know; modest--blushing to her eyes when a stranger speaks to her."
+
+"She has wonderful eyes," said Mr. Sewell; "when she gets excited, they
+grow so large and so bright, it seems almost unnatural."
+
+"Dear me! has she?" said Miss Emily, in a tone of one who had been
+called upon to do something about it. "Well?" she added, inquiringly.
+
+"That little thing is only seven years old," said Mr. Sewell; "and she
+is thinking and feeling herself all into mere spirit--brain and nerves
+all active, and her little body so frail. She reads incessantly, and
+thinks over and over what she reads."
+
+"Well?" said Miss Emily, winding very swiftly on a skein of black silk,
+and giving a little twitch, every now and then, to a knot to make it
+subservient.
+
+It was commonly the way when Mr. Sewell began to talk with Miss Emily,
+that she constantly answered him with the manner of one who expects some
+immediate, practical proposition to flow from every train of thought.
+Now Mr. Sewell was one of the reflecting kind of men, whose thoughts
+have a thousand meandering paths, that lead nowhere in particular. His
+sister's brisk little "Well's?" and "Ah's!" and "Indeed's!" were
+sometimes the least bit in the world annoying.
+
+"What is to be done?" said Miss Emily; "shall we speak to Mrs. Pennel?"
+
+"Mrs. Pennel would know nothing about her."
+
+"How strangely you talk!--who should, if she doesn't?"
+
+"I mean, she wouldn't understand the dangers of her case."
+
+"Dangers! Do you think she has any disease? She seems to be a healthy
+child enough, I'm sure. She has a lovely color in her cheeks."
+
+Mr. Sewell seemed suddenly to become immersed in a book he was reading.
+
+"There now," said Miss Emily, with a little tone of pique, "that's the
+way you always do. You begin to talk with me, and just as I get
+interested in the conversation, you take up a book. It's too bad."
+
+"Emily," said Mr. Sewell, laying down his book, "I think I shall begin
+to give Moses Pennel Latin lessons this winter."
+
+"Why, what do you undertake that for?" said Miss Emily. "You have enough
+to do without that, I'm sure."
+
+"He is an uncommonly bright boy, and he interests me."
+
+"Now, brother, you needn't tell me; there is some mystery about the
+interest you take in that child, _you know_ there is."
+
+"I am fond of children," said Mr. Sewell, dryly.
+
+"Well, but you don't take as much interest in other boys. I never heard
+of your teaching any of them Latin before."
+
+"Well, Emily, he is an uncommonly interesting child, and the
+providential circumstances under which he came into our neighborhood"--
+
+"Providential fiddlesticks!" said Miss Emily, with heightened color,
+"_I_ believe you knew that boy's mother."
+
+This sudden thrust brought a vivid color into Mr. Sewell's cheeks. To be
+interrupted so unceremoniously, in the midst of so very proper and
+ministerial a remark, was rather provoking, and he answered, with some
+asperity,--
+
+"And suppose I had, Emily, and supposing there were any painful subject
+connected with this past event, you might have sufficient forbearance
+not to try to make me speak on what I do not wish to talk of."
+
+Mr. Sewell was one of your gentle, dignified men, from whom Heaven
+deliver an inquisitive female friend! If such people would only get
+angry, and blow some unbecoming blast, one might make something of them;
+but speaking, as they always do, from the serene heights of immaculate
+propriety, one gets in the wrong before one knows it, and has nothing
+for it but to beg pardon. Miss Emily had, however, a feminine resource:
+she began to cry--wisely confining herself to the simple eloquence of
+tears and sobs. Mr. Sewell sat as awkwardly as if he had trodden on a
+kitten's toe, or brushed down a china cup, feeling as if he were a
+great, horrid, clumsy boor, and his poor little sister a martyr.
+
+"Come, Emily," he said, in a softer tone, when the sobs subsided a
+little.
+
+But Emily didn't "come," but went at it with a fresh burst. Mr. Sewell
+had a vision like that which drowning men are said to have, in which all
+Miss Emily's sisterly devotions, stocking-darnings, account-keepings,
+nursings and tendings, and infinite self-sacrifices, rose up before him:
+and there she was--crying!
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke harshly, Emily. Come, come; that's a good girl."
+
+"I'm a silly fool," said Miss Emily, lifting her head, and wiping the
+tears from her merry little eyes, as she went on winding her silk.
+
+"Perhaps he will tell me now," she thought, as she wound.
+
+But he didn't.
+
+"What I was going to say, Emily," said her brother, "was, that I thought
+it would be a good plan for little Mara to come sometimes with Moses;
+and then, by observing her more particularly, you might be of use to
+her; her little, active mind needs good practical guidance like yours."
+
+Mr. Sewell spoke in a gentle, flattering tone, and Miss Emily was
+flattered; but she soon saw that she had gained nothing by the whole
+breeze, except a little kind of dread, which made her inwardly resolve
+never to touch the knocker of his fortress again. But she entered into
+her brother's scheme with the facile alacrity with which she usually
+seconded any schemes of his proposing.
+
+"I might teach her painting and embroidery," said Miss Emily, glancing,
+with a satisfied air, at a framed piece of her own work which hung over
+the mantelpiece, revealing the state of the fine arts in this country,
+as exhibited in the performances of well-instructed young ladies of that
+period. Miss Emily had performed it under the tuition of a celebrated
+teacher of female accomplishments. It represented a white marble
+obelisk, which an inscription, in legible India ink letters, stated to
+be "Sacred to the memory of Theophilus Sewell," etc. This obelisk stood
+in the midst of a ground made very green by an embroidery of different
+shades of chenille and silk, and was overshadowed by an embroidered
+weeping-willow. Leaning on it, with her face concealed in a plentiful
+flow of white handkerchief, was a female figure in deep mourning,
+designed to represent the desolate widow. A young girl, in a very black
+dress, knelt in front of it, and a very lugubrious-looking young man,
+standing bolt upright on the other side, seemed to hold in his hand one
+end of a wreath of roses, which the girl was presenting, as an
+appropriate decoration for the tomb. The girl and gentleman were, of
+course, the young Theophilus and Miss Emily, and the appalling grief
+conveyed by the expression of their faces was a triumph of the pictorial
+art.
+
+Miss Emily had in her bedroom a similar funeral trophy, sacred to the
+memory of her deceased mother,--besides which there were, framed and
+glazed, in the little sitting-room, two embroidered shepherdesses
+standing with rueful faces, in charge of certain animals of an uncertain
+breed between sheep and pigs. The poor little soul had mentally resolved
+to make Mara the heiress of all the skill and knowledge of the arts by
+which she had been enabled to consummate these marvels.
+
+"She is naturally a lady-like little thing," she said to herself, "and
+if I know anything of accomplishments, she shall have them."
+
+Just about the time that Miss Emily came to this resolution, had she
+been clairvoyant, she might have seen Mara sitting very quietly, busy in
+the solitude of her own room with a little sprig of partridge-berry
+before her, whose round green leaves and brilliant scarlet berries she
+had been for hours trying to imitate, as appeared from the scattered
+sketches and fragments around her. In fact, before Zephaniah started on
+his spring fishing, he had caught her one day very busy at work of the
+same kind, with bits of charcoal, and some colors compounded out of wild
+berries; and so out of his capacious pocket, after his return, he drew a
+little box of water-colors and a lead-pencil and square of India-rubber,
+which he had bought for her in Portland on his way home.
+
+Hour after hour the child works, so still, so fervent, so
+earnest,--going over and over, time after time, her simple, ignorant
+methods to make it "look like," and stopping, at times, to give the true
+artist's sigh, as the little green and scarlet fragment lies there
+hopelessly, unapproachably perfect. Ignorantly to herself, the hands of
+the little pilgrim are knocking at the very door where Giotto and
+Cimabue knocked in the innocent child-life of Italian art.
+
+"Why won't it look round?" she said to Moses, who had come in behind
+her.
+
+"Why, Mara, did you do these?" said Moses, astonished; "why, how well
+they are done! I should know in a minute what they were meant for."
+
+Mara flushed up at being praised by Moses, but heaved a deep sigh as she
+looked back.
+
+"It's so pretty, that sprig," she said; "if I only could make it just
+like"--
+
+"Why, nobody expects _that_," said Moses, "it's like enough, if people
+only know what you mean it for. But come, now, get your bonnet, and come
+with me in the boat. Captain Kittridge has just brought down our new
+one, and I'm going to take you over to Eagle Island, and we'll take our
+dinner and stay all day; mother says so."
+
+"Oh, how nice!" said the little girl, running cheerfully for her
+sun-bonnet.
+
+At the house-door they met Mrs. Pennel, with a little closely covered
+tin pail.
+
+"Here's your dinner, children; and, Moses, mind and take good care of
+her."
+
+"Never fear _me_ mother, I've been to the Banks; there wasn't a man
+there could manage a boat better than I could."
+
+"Yes, grandmother," said Mara, "you ought to see how strong his arms
+are; I believe he will be like Samson one of these days if he keeps
+on."
+
+So away they went. It was a glorious August forenoon, and the sombre
+spruces and shaggy hemlocks that dipped and rippled in the waters were
+penetrated to their deepest recesses with the clear brilliancy of the
+sky,--a true northern sky, without a cloud, without even a softening
+haze, defining every outline, revealing every minute point, cutting with
+sharp decision the form of every promontory and rock, and distant
+island.
+
+The blue of the sea and the blue of the sky were so much the same, that
+when the children had rowed far out, the little boat seemed to float
+midway, poised in the centre of an azure sphere, with a firmament above
+and a firmament below. Mara leaned dreamily over the side of the boat,
+and drew her little hands through the waters as they rippled along to
+the swift oars' strokes, and she saw as the waves broke, and divided and
+shivered around the boat, a hundred little faces, with brown eyes and
+golden hair, gleaming up through the water, and dancing away over
+rippling waves, and thought that so the sea-nymphs might look who came
+up from the coral caves when they ring the knell of drowned people.
+Moses sat opposite to her, with his coat off, and his heavy black curls
+more wavy and glossy than ever, as the exercise made them damp with
+perspiration.
+
+Eagle Island lay on the blue sea, a tangled thicket of
+evergreens,--white pine, spruce, arbor vitae, and fragrant silver firs. A
+little strip of white beach bound it, like a silver setting to a gem.
+And there Moses at length moored his boat, and the children landed. The
+island was wholly solitary, and there is something to children quite
+delightful in feeling that they have a little lonely world all to
+themselves. Childhood is itself such an enchanted island, separated by
+mysterious depths from the mainland of nature, life, and reality.
+
+Moses had subsided a little from the glorious heights on which he
+seemed to be in the first flush of his return, and he and Mara, in
+consequence, were the friends of old time. It is true he thought himself
+quite a man, but the manhood of a boy is only a tiny masquerade,--a
+fantastic, dreamy prevision of real manhood. It was curious that Mara,
+who was by all odds the most precociously developed of the two, never
+thought of asserting herself a woman; in fact, she seldom thought of
+herself at all, but dreamed and pondered of almost everything else.
+
+"I declare," said Moses, looking up into a thick-branched, rugged old
+hemlock, which stood all shaggy, with heavy beards of gray moss drooping
+from its branches, "there's an eagle's nest up there; I mean to go and
+see." And up he went into the gloomy embrace of the old tree, crackling
+the dead branches, wrenching off handfuls of gray moss, rising higher
+and higher, every once in a while turning and showing to Mara his
+glowing face and curly hair through a dusky green frame of boughs, and
+then mounting again. "I'm coming to it," he kept exclaiming.
+
+Meanwhile his proceedings seemed to create a sensation among the
+feathered house-keepers, one of whom rose and sailed screaming away into
+the air. In a moment after there was a swoop of wings, and two eagles
+returned and began flapping and screaming about the head of the boy.
+
+Mara, who stood at the foot of the tree, could not see clearly what was
+going on, for the thickness of the boughs; she only heard a great
+commotion and rattling of the branches, the scream of the birds, and the
+swooping of their wings, and Moses's valorous exclamations, as he seemed
+to be laying about him with a branch which he had broken off.
+
+At last he descended victorious, with the eggs in his pocket. Mara stood
+at the foot of the tree, with her sun-bonnet blown back, her hair
+streaming, and her little arms upstretched, as if to catch him if he
+fell.
+
+"Oh, I was so afraid!" she said, as he set foot on the ground.
+
+"Afraid? Pooh! Who's afraid? Why, you might know the old eagles couldn't
+beat me."
+
+"Ah, well, I know how strong you are; but, you know, I couldn't help it.
+But the poor birds,--do hear 'em scream. Moses, don't you suppose they
+feel bad?"
+
+"No, they're only mad, to think they couldn't beat me. I beat them just
+as the Romans used to beat folks,--I played their nest was a city, and I
+spoiled it."
+
+"I shouldn't want to spoil cities!" said Mara.
+
+"That's 'cause you are a girl,--I'm a man, and men always like war; I've
+taken one city this afternoon, and mean to take a great many more."
+
+"But, Moses, do you think war is right?"
+
+"Right? why, yes, to be sure; if it ain't, it's a pity; for it's all
+that has ever been done in this world. In the Bible, or out, certainly
+it's right. I wish I had a gun now, I'd stop those old eagles'
+screeching."
+
+"But, Moses, we shouldn't want any one to come and steal all our things,
+and then shoot us."
+
+"How long you do think about things!" said Moses, impatient at her
+pertinacity. "I am older than you, and when I tell you a thing's right,
+you ought to believe it. Besides, don't you take hens' eggs every day,
+in the barn? How do you suppose the hens like that?"
+
+This was a home-thrust, and for the moment threw the little casuist off
+the track. She carefully folded up the idea, and laid it away on the
+inner shelves of her mind till she could think more about it. Pliable as
+she was to all outward appearances, the child had her own still,
+interior world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up crisp
+and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If anybody too
+rudely assailed a thought or suggestion she put forth, she drew it back
+again into this quiet inner chamber, and went on. Reader, there are
+some women of this habit; and there is no independence and pertinacity
+of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it
+is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince. Mara, little and
+unformed as she yet was, belonged to the race of those spirits to whom
+is deputed the office of the angel in the Apocalypse, to whom was given
+the golden rod which measured the New Jerusalem. Infant though she was,
+she had ever in her hands that invisible measuring-rod, which she was
+laying to the foundations of all actions and thoughts. There may,
+perhaps, come a time when the saucy boy, who now steps so superbly, and
+predominates so proudly in virtue of his physical strength and daring,
+will learn to tremble at the golden measuring-rod, held in the hand of a
+woman.
+
+"Howbeit, that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is
+natural." Moses is the type of the first unreflecting stage of
+development, in which are only the out-reachings of active faculties,
+the aspirations that tend toward manly accomplishments. Seldom do we
+meet sensitiveness of conscience or discriminating reflection as the
+indigenous growth of a very vigorous physical development. Your true
+healthy boy has the breezy, hearty virtues of a Newfoundland dog, the
+wild fullness of life of the young race-colt. Sentiment, sensibility,
+delicate perceptions, spiritual aspirations, are plants of later growth.
+
+But there are, both of men and women, beings born into this world in
+whom from childhood the spiritual and the reflective predominate over
+the physical. In relation to other human beings, they seem to be
+organized much as birds are in relation to other animals. They are the
+artists, the poets, the unconscious seers, to whom the purer truths of
+spiritual instruction are open. Surveying man merely as an animal, these
+sensitively organized beings, with their feebler physical powers, are
+imperfect specimens of life. Looking from the spiritual side, they seem
+to have a noble strength, a divine force. The types of this latter class
+are more commonly among women than among men. Multitudes of them pass
+away in earlier years, and leave behind in many hearts the anxious
+wonder, why they came so fair only to mock the love they kindled. They
+who live to maturity are the priests and priestesses of the spiritual
+life, ordained of God to keep the balance between the rude but absolute
+necessities of physical life and the higher sphere to which that must at
+length give place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LESSONS
+
+
+Moses felt elevated some inches in the world by the gift of a new Latin
+grammar, which had been bought for him in Brunswick. It was a step
+upward in life; no graduate from a college ever felt more ennobled.
+
+"Wal', now, I tell ye, Moses Pennel," said Miss Roxy, who, with her
+press-board and big flat-iron, was making her autumn sojourn in the
+brown house, "I tell ye Latin ain't just what you think 'tis, steppin'
+round so crank; you must remember what the king of Israel said to
+Benhadad, king of Syria."
+
+"I don't remember; what did he say?"
+
+"I remember," said the soft voice of Mara; "he said, 'Let not him that
+putteth on the harness boast as him that putteth it off.'"
+
+"Good for you, Mara," said Miss Roxy; "if some other folks read their
+Bibles as much as you do, they'd know more."
+
+Between Moses and Miss Roxy there had always been a state of sub-acute
+warfare since the days of his first arrival, she regarding him as an
+unhopeful interloper, and he regarding her as a grim-visaged,
+interfering gnome, whom he disliked with all the intense, unreasoning
+antipathy of childhood.
+
+"I hate that old woman," he said to Mara, as he flung out of the door.
+
+"Why, Moses, what for?" said Mara, who never could comprehend hating
+anybody.
+
+"I do hate her, and Aunt Ruey, too. They are two old scratching cats;
+they hate me, and I hate them; they're always trying to bring me down,
+and I won't be brought down."
+
+Mara had sufficient instinctive insight into the feminine role in the
+domestic concert not to adventure a direct argument just now in favor of
+her friends, and therefore she proposed that they should sit down
+together under a cedar hard by, and look over the first lesson.
+
+"Miss Emily invited me to go over with you," she said, "and I should
+like so much to hear you recite."
+
+Moses thought this very proper, as would any other male person, young or
+old, who has been habitually admired by any other female one. He did not
+doubt that, as in fishing and rowing, and all other things he had
+undertaken as yet, he should win himself distinguished honors.
+
+"See here," he said; "Mr. Sewell told me I might go as far as I liked,
+and I mean to take all the declensions to begin with; there's five of
+'em, and I shall learn them for the first lesson; then I shall take the
+adjectives next, and next the verbs, and so in a fortnight get into
+reading."
+
+Mara heaved a sort of sigh. She wished she had been invited to share
+this glorious race; but she looked on admiring when Moses read, in a
+loud voice, "Penna, pennae, pennae, pennam," etc.
+
+"There now, I believe I've got it," he said, handing Mara the book; and
+he was perfectly astonished to find that, with the book withdrawn, he
+boggled, and blundered, and stumbled ingloriously. In vain Mara softly
+prompted, and looked at him with pitiful eyes as he grew red in the face
+with his efforts to remember.
+
+"Confound it all!" he said, with an angry flush, snatching back the
+book; "it's more trouble than it's worth."
+
+Again he began the repetition, saying it very loud and plain; he said it
+over and over till his mind wandered far out to sea, and while his
+tongue repeated "penna, pennae," he was counting the white sails of the
+fishing-smacks, and thinking of pulling up codfish at the Banks.
+
+"There now, Mara, try me," he said, and handed her the book again; "I'm
+sure I _must_ know it now."
+
+But, alas! with the book the sounds glided away; and "penna" and
+"pennam" and "pennis" and "pennae" were confusedly and indiscriminately
+mingled. He thought it must be Mara's fault; she didn't read right, or
+she told him just as he was going to say it, or she didn't tell him
+right; or was he a fool? or had he lost his senses?
+
+That first declension has been a valley of humiliation to many a sturdy
+boy--to many a bright one, too; and often it is, that the more full of
+thought and vigor the mind is, the more difficult it is to narrow it
+down to the single dry issue of learning those sounds. Heinrich Heine
+said the Romans would never have found time to conquer the world, if
+they had had to learn their own language; but that, luckily for them,
+they were born into the knowledge of what nouns form their accusatives
+in "um."
+
+Long before Moses had learned the first declension, Mara knew it by
+heart; for her intense anxiety for him, and the eagerness and zeal with
+which she listened for each termination, fixed them in her mind.
+Besides, she was naturally of a more quiet and scholar-like turn than
+he,--more intellectually developed. Moses began to think, before that
+memorable day was through, that there was some sense in Aunt Roxy's
+quotation of the saying of the King of Israel, and materially to
+retrench his expectations as to the time it might take to master the
+grammar; but still, his pride and will were both committed, and he
+worked away in this new sort of labor with energy.
+
+It was a fine, frosty November morning, when he rowed Mara across the
+bay in a little boat to recite his first lesson to Mr. Sewell.
+
+Miss Emily had provided a plate of seed-cake, otherwise called cookies,
+for the children, as was a kindly custom of old times, when the little
+people were expected. Miss Emily had a dim idea that she was to do
+something for Mara in her own department, while Moses was reciting his
+lesson; and therefore producing a large sampler, displaying every form
+and variety of marking-stitch, she began questioning the little girl, in
+a low tone, as to her proficiency in that useful accomplishment.
+
+Presently, however, she discovered that the child was restless and
+uneasy, and that she answered without knowing what she was saying. The
+fact was that she was listening, with her whole soul in her eyes, and
+feeling through all her nerves, every word Moses was saying. She knew
+all the critical places, where he was likely to go wrong; and when at
+last, in one place, he gave the wrong termination, she involuntarily
+called out the right one, starting up and turning towards them. In a
+moment she blushed deeply, seeing Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily both looking
+at her with surprise.
+
+"Come here, pussy," said Mr. Sewell, stretching out his hand to her.
+"Can you say this?"
+
+"I believe I could, sir."
+
+"Well, try it."
+
+She went through without missing a word. Mr. Sewell then, for curiosity,
+heard her repeat all the other forms of the lesson. She had them
+perfectly.
+
+"Very well, my little girl," he said, "have you been studying, too?"
+
+"I heard Moses say them so often," said Mara, in an apologetic manner,
+"I couldn't help learning them."
+
+"Would you like to recite with Moses every day?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir, so much."
+
+"Well, you shall. It is better for him to have company."
+
+Mara's face brightened, and Miss Emily looked with a puzzled air at her
+brother.
+
+"So," she said, when the children had gone home, "I thought you wanted
+me to take Mara under my care. I was going to begin and teach her some
+marking stitches, and you put her up to studying Latin. I don't
+understand you."
+
+"Well, Emily, the fact is, the child has a natural turn for study, that
+no child of her age ought to have; and I have done just as people always
+will with such children; there's no sense in it, but I wanted to do it.
+You can teach her marking and embroidery all the same; it would break
+her little heart, now, if I were to turn her back."
+
+"I do not see of what use Latin can be to a woman."
+
+"Of what use is embroidery?"
+
+"Why, that is an accomplishment."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, contemplating the weeping willow and
+tombstone trophy with a singular expression, which it was lucky for Miss
+Emily's peace she did not understand. The fact was, that Mr. Sewell had,
+at one period of his life, had an opportunity of studying and observing
+minutely some really fine works of art, and the remembrance of them
+sometimes rose up to his mind, in the presence of the _chefs-d'oeuvre_
+on which his sister rested with so much complacency. It was a part of
+his quiet interior store of amusement to look at these bits of Byzantine
+embroidery round the room, which affected him always with a subtle sense
+of drollery.
+
+"You see, brother," said Miss Emily, "it is far better for women to be
+accomplished than learned."
+
+"You are quite right in the main," said Mr. Sewell, "only you must let
+me have my own way just for once. One can't be consistent always."
+
+So another Latin grammar was bought, and Moses began to feel a secret
+respect for his little companion, that he had never done before, when
+he saw how easily she walked through the labyrinths which at first so
+confused him. Before this, the comparison had been wholly in points
+where superiority arose from physical daring and vigor; now he became
+aware of the existence of another kind of strength with which he had not
+measured himself. Mara's opinion in their mutual studies began to assume
+a value in his eyes that her opinions on other subjects had never done,
+and she saw and felt, with a secret gratification, that she was becoming
+more to him through their mutual pursuit. To say the truth, it required
+this fellowship to inspire Moses with the patience and perseverance
+necessary for this species of acquisition. His active, daring
+temperament little inclined him to patient, quiet study. For anything
+that could be done by two hands, he was always ready; but to hold hands
+still and work silently in the inner forces was to him a species of
+undertaking that seemed against his very nature; but then he would do
+it--he would not disgrace himself before Mr. Sewell, and let a girl
+younger than himself outdo him.
+
+But the thing, after all, that absorbed more of Moses's thoughts than
+all his lessons was the building and rigging of a small schooner, at
+which he worked assiduously in all his leisure moments. He had dozens of
+blocks of wood, into which he had cut anchor moulds; and the melting of
+lead, the running and shaping of anchors, the whittling of masts and
+spars took up many an hour. Mara entered into all those things readily,
+and was too happy to make herself useful in hemming the sails.
+
+When the schooner was finished, they built some ways down by the sea,
+and invited Sally Kittridge over to see it launched.
+
+"There!" he said, when the little thing skimmed down prosperously into
+the sea and floated gayly on the waters, "when I'm a man, I'll have a
+big ship; I'll build her, and launch her, and command her, all myself;
+and I'll give you and Sally both a passage in it, and we'll go off to
+the East Indies--we'll sail round the world!"
+
+None of the three doubted the feasibility of this scheme; the little
+vessel they had just launched seemed the visible prophecy of such a
+future; and how pleasant it would be to sail off, with the world all
+before them, and winds ready to blow them to any port they might wish!
+
+The three children arranged some bread and cheese and doughnuts on a
+rock on the shore, to represent the collation that was usually spread in
+those parts at a ship launch, and felt quite like grown people--acting
+life beforehand in that sort of shadowy pantomime which so delights
+little people. Happy, happy days--when ships can be made with a
+jack-knife and anchors run in pine blocks, and three children together
+can launch a schooner, and the voyage of the world can all be made in
+one sunny Saturday afternoon!
+
+"Mother says you are going to college," said Sally to Moses.
+
+"Not I, indeed," said Moses; "as soon as I get old enough, I'm going up
+to Umbagog among the lumberers, and I'm going to cut real, splendid
+timber for my ship, and I'm going to get it on the stocks, and have it
+built to suit myself."
+
+"What will you call her?" said Sally.
+
+"I haven't thought of that," said Moses.
+
+"Call her the Ariel," said Mara.
+
+"What! after the spirit you were telling us about?" said Sally.
+
+"Ariel is a pretty name," said Moses. "But what is that about a spirit?"
+
+"Why," said Sally, "Mara read us a story about a ship that was wrecked,
+and a spirit called Ariel, that sang a song about the drowned
+mariners."
+
+Mara gave a shy, apprehensive glance at Moses, to see if this allusion
+called up any painful recollections.
+
+No; instead of this, he was following the motions of his little schooner
+on the waters with the briskest and most unconcerned air in the world.
+
+"Why didn't you ever show me that story, Mara?" said Moses.
+
+Mara colored and hesitated; the real reason she dared not say.
+
+"Why, she read it to father and me down by the cove," said Sally, "the
+afternoon that you came home from the Banks; I remember how we saw you
+coming in; don't you, Mara?"
+
+"What have you done with it?" said Moses.
+
+"I've got it at home," said Mara, in a faint voice; "I'll show it to
+you, if you want to see it; there are such beautiful things in it."
+
+That evening, as Moses sat busy, making some alterations in his darling
+schooner, Mara produced her treasure, and read and explained to him the
+story. He listened with interest, though without any of the extreme
+feeling which Mara had thought possible, and even interrupted her once
+in the middle of the celebrated--
+
+    "Full fathom five thy father lies,"
+
+by asking her to hold up the mast a minute, while he drove in a peg to
+make it rake a little more. He was, evidently, thinking of no drowned
+father, and dreaming of no possible sea-caves, but acutely busy in
+fashioning a present reality; and yet he liked to hear Mara read, and,
+when she had done, told her that he thought it was a pretty--quite a
+pretty story, with such a total absence of recognition that the story
+had any affinities with his own history, that Mara was quite astonished.
+
+She lay and thought about him hours, that night, after she had gone to
+bed; and he lay and thought about a new way of disposing a pulley for
+raising a sail, which he determined to try the effect of early in the
+morning.
+
+What was the absolute truth in regard to the boy? Had he forgotten the
+scenes of his early life, the strange catastrophe that cast him into his
+present circumstances? To this we answer that all the efforts of Nature,
+during the early years of a healthy childhood, are bent on effacing and
+obliterating painful impressions, wiping out from each day the sorrows
+of the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows on the seashore. The
+child that broods, day after day, over some fixed idea, is so far forth
+not a healthy one. It is Nature's way to make first a healthy animal,
+and then develop in it gradually higher faculties. We have seen our two
+children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally developed. There
+will come a time, by and by in the history of the boy, when the haze of
+dreamy curiosity will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague
+yearnings, and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him, but
+it must be some years hence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here for a season we leave both our child friends, and when ten years
+have passed over their heads,--when Moses shall be twenty, and Mara
+seventeen,--we will return again to tell their story, for then there
+will be one to tell. Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara
+read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess with
+Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood,--but how by herself she
+learns, after divers trials, to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and
+trailing arbutus,--how Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally
+grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to the high
+school,--how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and Miss Roxy and Miss
+Ruey nurse and cut and make and mend for the still rising
+generation,--how there are quiltings and tea-drinkings and prayer
+meetings and Sunday sermons,--how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old
+gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the eternal
+silver tide rises and falls around our little gem, Orr's Island.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+SALLY
+
+
+"Now, where's Sally Kittridge! There's the clock striking five, and
+nobody to set the table. Sally, I say! Sally!"
+
+"Why, Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "Sally's gone out more'n an
+hour ago, and I expect she's gone down to Pennel's to see Mara; 'cause,
+you know, she come home from Portland to-day."
+
+"Well, if she's come home, I s'pose I may as well give up havin' any
+good of Sally, for that girl fairly bows down to Mara Lincoln and
+worships her."
+
+"Well, good reason," said the Captain. "There ain't a puttier creature
+breathin'. I'm a'most a mind to worship her myself."
+
+"Captain Kittridge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, at your age,
+talking as you do."
+
+"Why, laws, mother, I don't feel my age," said the frisky Captain,
+giving a sort of skip. "It don't seem more'n yesterday since you and I
+was a-courtin', Polly. What a life you did lead me in them days! I think
+you kep' me on the anxious seat a pretty middlin' spell."
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't talk so. You ought to be ashamed to be triflin'
+round as you do. Come, now, can't you jest tramp over to Pennel's and
+tell Sally I want her?"
+
+"Not I, mother. There ain't but two gals in two miles square here, and I
+ain't a-goin' to be the feller to shoo 'em apart. What's the use of
+bein' gals, and young, and putty, if they can't get together and talk
+about their new gownds and the fellers? That ar's what gals is for."
+
+"I do wish you wouldn't talk in that way before Sally, father, for her
+head is full of all sorts of vanity now; and as to Mara, I never did see
+a more slack-twisted, flimsy thing than she's grown up to be. Now
+Sally's learnt to do something, thanks to me. She can brew, and she can
+make bread and cake and pickles, and spin, and cut, and make. But as to
+Mara, what does she do? Why, she paints pictur's. Mis' Pennel was
+a-showin' on me a blue-jay she painted, and I was a-thinkin' whether she
+could brile a bird fit to be eat if she tried; and she don't know the
+price of nothin'," continued Mrs. Kittridge, with wasteful profusion of
+negatives.
+
+"Well," said the Captain, "the Lord makes some things jist to be looked
+at. Their work is to be putty, and that ar's Mara's sphere. It never
+seemed to me she was cut out for hard work; but she's got sweet ways and
+kind words for everybody, and it's as good as a psalm to look at her."
+
+"And what sort of a wife'll she make, Captain Kittridge?"
+
+"A real sweet, putty one," said the Captain, persistently.
+
+"Well, as to beauty, I'd rather have our Sally any day," said Mrs.
+Kittridge; "and she looks strong and hearty, and seems to be good for
+use."
+
+"So she is, so she is," said the Captain, with fatherly pride. "Sally's
+the very image of her ma at her age--black eyes, black hair, tall and
+trim as a spruce-tree, and steps off as if she had springs in her heels.
+I tell you, the feller'll have to be spry that catches her. There's two
+or three of 'em at it, I see; but Sally won't have nothin' to say to
+'em. I hope she won't, yet awhile."
+
+"Sally is a girl that has as good an eddication as money can give,"
+said Mrs. Kittridge. "If I'd a-had her advantages at her age, I should
+a-been a great deal more'n I am. But we ha'n't spared nothin' for Sally;
+and when nothin' would do but Mara must be sent to Miss Plucher's school
+over in Portland, why, I sent Sally too--for all she's our seventh
+child, and Pennel hasn't but the one."
+
+"You forget Moses," said the Captain.
+
+"Well, he's settin' up on his own account, I guess. They did talk o'
+giving him college eddication; but he was so unstiddy, there weren't no
+use in trying. A real wild ass's colt he was."
+
+"Wal', wal', Moses was in the right on't. He took the cross-lot track
+into life," said the Captain. "Colleges is well enough for your smooth,
+straight-grained lumber, for gen'ral buildin'; but come to fellers
+that's got knots, and streaks, and cross-grains, like Moses Pennel, and
+the best way is to let 'em eddicate 'emselves, as he's a-doin'. He's cut
+out for the sea, plain enough, and he'd better be up to Umbagog, cuttin'
+timber for his ship, than havin' rows with tutors, and blowin' the roof
+off the colleges, as one o' them 'ere kind o' fellers is apt to when he
+don't have work to use up his steam. Why, mother, there's more gas got
+up in them Brunswick buildin's, from young men that are spilin' for hard
+work, than you could shake a stick at! But Mis' Pennel told me yesterday
+she was 'spectin' Moses home to-day."
+
+"Oho! that's at the bottom of Sally's bein' up there," said Mrs.
+Kittridge.
+
+"Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "I take it you ain't the woman as
+would expect a daughter of your bringin' up to be a-runnin' after any
+young chap, be he who he may," said the Captain.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge for once was fairly silenced by this home-thrust;
+nevertheless, she did not the less think it quite possible, from all
+that she knew of Sally; for although that young lady professed great
+hardness of heart and contempt for all the young male generation of her
+acquaintance, yet she had evidently a turn for observing their
+ways--probably purely in the way of philosophical inquiry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+EIGHTEEN
+
+
+In fact, at this very moment our scene-shifter changes the picture. Away
+rolls the image of Mrs. Kittridge's kitchen, with its sanded floor, its
+scoured rows of bright pewter platters, its great, deep fireplace, with
+wide stone hearth, its little looking-glass with a bit of asparagus
+bush, like a green mist, over it. _Exeunt_ the image of Mrs. Kittridge,
+with her hands floury from the bread she has been moulding, and the dry,
+ropy, lean Captain, who has been sitting tilting back in a
+splint-bottomed chair,--and the next scene comes rolling in. It is a
+chamber in the house of Zephaniah Pennel, whose windows present a blue
+panorama of sea and sky. Through two windows you look forth into the
+blue belt of Harpswell Bay, bordered on the farther edge by Harpswell
+Neck, dotted here and there with houses, among which rises the little
+white meeting-house, like a mother-bird among a flock of chickens. The
+third window, on the other side of the room, looks far out to sea, where
+only a group of low, rocky islands interrupts the clear sweep of the
+horizon line, with its blue infinitude of distance.
+
+The furniture of this room, though of the barest and most frigid
+simplicity, is yet relieved by many of those touches of taste and fancy
+which the indwelling of a person of sensibility and imagination will
+shed off upon the physical surroundings. The bed was draped with a white
+spread, embroidered with a kind of knotted tracery, the working of which
+was considered among the female accomplishments of those days, and over
+the head of it was a painting of a bunch of crimson and white trillium,
+executed with a fidelity to Nature that showed the most delicate gifts
+of observation. Over the mantelpiece hung a painting of the Bay of
+Genoa, which had accidentally found a voyage home in Zephaniah Pennel's
+sea-chest, and which skillful fingers had surrounded with a frame
+curiously wrought of moss and sea-shells. Two vases of India china stood
+on the mantel, filled with spring flowers, crowfoot, anemones, and
+liverwort, with drooping bells of the twin-flower. The looking-glass
+that hung over the table in one corner of the room was fancifully webbed
+with long, drooping festoons of that gray moss which hangs in such
+graceful wreaths from the boughs of the pines in the deep forest shadows
+of Orr's Island. On the table below was a collection of books: a whole
+set of Shakespeare which Zephaniah Pennel had bought of a Portland
+bookseller; a selection, in prose and verse, from the best classic
+writers, presented to Mara Lincoln, the fly-leaf said, by her sincere
+friend, Theophilus Sewell; a Virgil, much thumbed, with an old, worn
+cover, which, however, some adroit fingers had concealed under a coating
+of delicately marbled paper;--there was a Latin dictionary, a set of
+Plutarch's Lives, the Mysteries of Udolpho, and Sir Charles Grandison,
+together with Edwards on the Affections, and Boston's Fourfold
+State;--there was an inkstand, curiously contrived from a sea-shell,
+with pens and paper in that phase of arrangement which betokened
+frequency of use; and, lastly, a little work-basket, containing a long
+strip of curious and delicate embroidery, in which the needle yet
+hanging showed that the work was in progress.
+
+By a table at the sea-looking window sits our little Mara, now grown to
+the maturity of eighteen summers, but retaining still unmistakable signs
+of identity with the little golden-haired, dreamy, excitable, fanciful
+"Pearl" of Orr's _Island_.
+
+She is not quite of a middle height, with something beautiful and
+child-like about the moulding of her delicate form. We still see those
+sad, wistful, hazel eyes, over which the lids droop with a dreamy
+languor, and whose dark lustre contrasts singularly with the golden hue
+of the abundant hair which waves in a thousand rippling undulations
+around her face. The impression she produces is not that of paleness,
+though there is no color in her cheek; but her complexion has everywhere
+that delicate pink tinting which one sees in healthy infants, and with
+the least emotion brightens into a fluttering bloom. Such a bloom is on
+her cheek at this moment, as she is working away, copying a bunch of
+scarlet rock-columbine which is in a wine-glass of water before her;
+every few moments stopping and holding her work at a distance, to
+contemplate its effect. At this moment there steps behind her chair a
+tall, lithe figure, a face with a rich Spanish complexion, large black
+eyes, glowing cheeks, marked eyebrows, and lustrous black hair arranged
+in shining braids around her head. It is our old friend, Sally
+Kittridge, whom common fame calls the handsomest girl of all the region
+round Harpswell, Maquoit, and Orr's Island. In truth, a wholesome,
+ruddy, blooming creature she was, the sight of whom cheered and warmed
+one like a good fire in December; and she seemed to have enough and to
+spare of the warmest gifts of vitality and joyous animal life. She had a
+well-formed mouth, but rather large, and a frank laugh which showed all
+her teeth sound--and a fortunate sight it was, considering that they
+were white and even as pearls; and the hand that she laid upon Mara's at
+this moment, though twice as large as that of the little artist, was yet
+in harmony with her vigorous, finely developed figure.
+
+"Mara Lincoln," she said, "you are a witch, a perfect little witch, at
+painting. How you can make things look so like, I don't see. Now, I
+could paint the things we painted at Miss Plucher's; but then, dear me!
+they didn't look at all like flowers. One needed to write under them
+what they were made for."
+
+"Does this look like to you, Sally?" said Mara. "I wish it would to me.
+Just see what a beautiful clear color that flower is. All I can do, I
+can't make one like it. My scarlet and yellows sink dead into the
+paper."
+
+"Why, I think your flowers are wonderful! You are a real genius, that's
+what you are! I am only a common girl; I can't do things as you can."
+
+"You can do things a thousand times more useful, Sally. I don't pretend
+to compare with you in the useful arts, and I am only a bungler in
+ornamental ones. Sally, I feel like a useless little creature. If I
+could go round as you can, and do business, and make bargains, and push
+ahead in the world, I should feel that I was good for something; but
+somehow I can't."
+
+"To be sure you can't," said Sally, laughing. "I should like to see you
+try it."
+
+"Now," pursued Mara, in a tone of lamentation, "I could no more get into
+a carriage and drive to Brunswick as you can, than I could fly. I can't
+drive, Sally--something is the matter with me; and the horses always
+know it the minute I take the reins; they always twitch their ears and
+stare round into the chaise at me, as much as to say, 'What! you there?'
+and I feel sure they never will mind me. And then how you can make those
+wonderful bargains you do, I can't see!--you talk up to the clerks and
+the men, and somehow you talk everybody round; but as for me, if I only
+open my mouth in the humblest way to dispute the price, everybody puts
+me down. I always tremble when I go into a store, and people talk to me
+just as if I was a little girl, and once or twice they have made me buy
+things that I knew I didn't want, just because they will talk me down."
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara," said Sally, laughing till the tears rolled down her
+cheeks, "what do _you_ ever go a-shopping for?--of course you ought
+always to send me. Why, look at this dress--real India chintz; do you
+know I made old Pennywhistle's clerk up in Brunswick give it to me just
+for the price of common cotton? You see there was a yard of it had got
+faded by lying in the shop-window, and there were one or two holes and
+imperfections in it, and you ought to have heard the talk I made! I
+abused it to right and left, and actually at last I brought the poor
+wretch to believe that he ought to be grateful to me for taking it off
+his hands. Well, you see the dress I've made of it. The imperfections
+didn't hurt it the least in the world as I managed it,--and the faded
+breadth makes a good apron, so you see. And just so I got that red
+spotted flannel dress I wore last winter. It was moth-eaten in one or
+two places, and I made them let me have it at half-price;--made exactly
+as good a dress. But after all, Mara, I can't trim a bonnet as you can,
+and I can't come up to your embroidery, nor your lace-work, nor I can't
+draw and paint as you can, and I can't sing like you; and then as to all
+those things you talk with Mr. Sewell about, why they're beyond my
+depth,--that's all I've got to say. Now, you are made to have poetry
+written to you, and all that kind of thing one reads of in novels.
+Nobody would ever think of writing poetry to me, now, or sending me
+flowers and rings, and such things. If a fellow likes me, he gives me a
+quince, or a big apple; but, then, Mara, there ain't any fellows round
+here that are fit to speak to."
+
+"I'm sure, Sally, there always is a train following you everywhere, at
+singing-school and Thursday lecture."
+
+"Yes--but what do I care for 'em?" said Sally, with a toss of her head.
+"Why they follow me, I don't see. I don't do anything to make 'em, and I
+tell 'em all that they tire me to death; and still they will hang
+round. What is the reason, do you suppose?"
+
+"What can it be?" said Mara, with a quiet kind of arch drollery which
+suffused her face, as she bent over her painting.
+
+"Well, you know I can't bear fellows--I think they are hateful."
+
+"What! even Tom Hiers?" said Mara, continuing her painting.
+
+"Tom Hiers! Do you suppose I care for him? He would insist on waiting on
+me round all last winter, taking me over in his boat to Portland, and up
+in his sleigh to Brunswick; but I didn't care for him."
+
+"Well, there's Jimmy Wilson, up at Brunswick."
+
+"What! that little snip of a clerk! You don't suppose I care for him, do
+you?--only he almost runs his head off following me round when I go up
+there shopping; he's nothing but a little dressed-up yard-stick! I never
+saw a fellow yet that I'd cross the street to have another look at. By
+the by, Mara, Miss Roxy told me Sunday that Moses was coming down from
+Umbagog this week."
+
+"Yes, he is," said Mara; "we are looking for him every day."
+
+"You must want to see him. How long is it since you saw him?"
+
+"It is three years," said Mara. "I scarcely know what he is like now. I
+was visiting in Boston when he came home from his three-years' voyage,
+and he was gone into the lumbering country when I came back. He seems
+almost a stranger to me."
+
+"He's pretty good-looking," said Sally. "I saw him on Sunday when he was
+here, but he was off on Monday, and never called on old friends. Does he
+write to you often?"
+
+"Not very," said Mara; "in fact, almost never; and when he does, there
+is so little in his letters."
+
+"Well, I tell you, Mara, you must not expect fellows to write as girls
+can. They don't do it. Now, our boys, when they write home, they tell
+the latitude and longitude, and soil and productions, and such things.
+But if you or I were only there, don't you think we should find
+something more to say? Of course we should,--fifty thousand little
+things that they never think of."
+
+Mara made no reply to this, but went on very intently with her painting.
+A close observer might have noticed a suppressed sigh that seemed to
+retreat far down into her heart. Sally did not notice it.
+
+What was in that sigh? It was the sigh of a long, deep, inner history,
+unwritten and untold--such as are transpiring daily by thousands, and of
+which we take no heed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+REBELLION
+
+
+We have introduced Mara to our readers as she appears in her seventeenth
+year, at the time when she is expecting the return of Moses as a young
+man of twenty; but we cannot do justice to the feelings which are roused
+in her heart by this expectation, without giving a chapter or two to
+tracing the history of Moses since we left him as a boy commencing the
+study of the Latin grammar with Mr. Sewell. The reader must see the
+forces that acted upon his early development, and what they have made of
+him.
+
+It is common for people who write treatises on education to give forth
+their rules and theories with a self-satisfied air, as if a human being
+were a thing to be made up, like a batch of bread, out of a given number
+of materials combined by an infallible recipe. Take your child, and do
+thus and so for a given number of years, and he comes out a thoroughly
+educated individual.
+
+But in fact, education is in many cases nothing more than a blind
+struggle of parents and guardians with the evolutions of some strong,
+predetermined character, individual, obstinate, unreceptive, and seeking
+by an inevitable law of its being to develop itself and gain free
+expression in its own way. Captain Kittridge's confidence that he would
+as soon undertake a boy as a Newfoundland pup, is good for those whose
+idea of what is to be done for a human being are only what would be done
+for a dog, namely, give food, shelter, and world-room, and leave each to
+act out his own nature without let or hindrance.
+
+But everybody takes an embryo human being with some plan of one's own
+what it shall do or be. The child's future shall shape out some darling
+purpose or plan, and fulfill some long unfulfilled expectation of the
+parent. And thus, though the wind of every generation sweeps its hopes
+and plans like forest-leaves, none are whirled and tossed with more
+piteous moans than those which come out green and fresh to shade the
+happy spring-time of the cradle. For the temperaments of children are
+often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been
+filling cradles with changelings.
+
+A meek member of the Peace Society, a tender, devout, poetical
+clergyman, receives an heir from heaven, and straightway devotes him to
+the Christian ministry. But lo! the boy proves a young war-horse,
+neighing for battle, burning for gunpowder and guns, for bowie-knives
+and revolvers, and for every form and expression of physical force;--he
+might make a splendid trapper, an energetic sea-captain, a bold, daring
+military man, but his whole boyhood is full of rebukes and disciplines
+for sins which are only the blind effort of the creature to express a
+nature which his parent does not and cannot understand. So again, the
+son that was to have upheld the old, proud merchant's time-honored firm,
+that should have been mighty in ledgers and great upon 'Change, breaks
+his father's heart by an unintelligible fancy for weaving poems and
+romances. A father of literary aspirations, balked of privileges of
+early education, bends over the cradle of his son with but one idea.
+This child shall have the full advantages of regular college-training;
+and so for years he battles with a boy abhorring study, and fitted only
+for a life of out-door energy and bold adventure,--on whom Latin forms
+and Greek quantities fall and melt aimless and useless, as snow-flakes
+on the hide of a buffalo. Then the secret agonies,--the long years of
+sorrowful watchings of those gentler nurses of humanity who receive the
+infant into their bosom out of the void unknown, and strive to read its
+horoscope through the mists of their prayers and tears!--what
+perplexities,--what confusion! Especially is this so in a community
+where the moral and religious sense is so cultivated as in New England,
+and frail, trembling, self-distrustful mothers are told that the shaping
+and ordering not only of this present life, but of an immortal destiny,
+is in their hands.
+
+On the whole, those who succeed best in the rearing of children are the
+tolerant and easy persons who instinctively follow nature and accept
+without much inquiry whatever she sends; or that far smaller class, wise
+to discern spirits and apt to adopt means to their culture and
+development, who can prudently and carefully train every nature
+according to its true and characteristic ideal.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel was a shrewd old Yankee, whose instincts taught him
+from the first, that the waif that had been so mysteriously washed out
+of the gloom of the sea into his family, was of some different class and
+lineage from that which might have filled a cradle of his own, and of a
+nature which he could not perfectly understand. So he prudently watched
+and waited, only using restraint enough to keep the boy anchored in
+society, and letting him otherwise grow up in the solitary freedom of
+his lonely seafaring life.
+
+The boy was from childhood, although singularly attractive, of a moody,
+fitful, unrestful nature,--eager, earnest, but unsteady,--with varying
+phases of imprudent frankness and of the most stubborn and unfathomable
+secretiveness. He was a creature of unreasoning antipathies and
+attractions. As Zephaniah Pennel said of him, he was as full of hitches
+as an old bureau drawer. His peculiar beauty, and a certain electrical
+power of attraction, seemed to form a constant circle of protection and
+forgiveness around him in the home of his foster-parents; and great as
+was the anxiety and pain which he often gave them, they somehow never
+felt the charge of him as a weariness.
+
+We left him a boy beginning Latin with Mr. Sewell in company with the
+little Mara. This arrangement progressed prosperously for a time, and
+the good clergyman, all whose ideas of education ran through the halls
+of a college, began to have hopes of turning out a choice scholar. But
+when the boy's ship of life came into the breakers of that narrow and
+intricate channel which divides boyhood from manhood, the difficulties
+that had always attended his guidance and management wore an intensified
+form. How much family happiness is wrecked just then and there! How many
+mothers' and sisters' hearts are broken in the wild and confused
+tossings and tearings of that stormy transition! A whole new nature is
+blindly upheaving itself, with cravings and clamorings, which neither
+the boy himself nor often surrounding friends understand.
+
+A shrewd observer has significantly characterized the period as the time
+when the boy wishes he were dead, and everybody else wishes so too. The
+wretched, half-fledged, half-conscious, anomalous creature has all the
+desires of the man, and none of the rights; has a double and triple
+share of nervous edge and intensity in every part of his nature, and no
+definitely perceived objects on which to bestow it,--and, of course, all
+sorts of unreasonable moods and phases are the result.
+
+One of the most common signs of this period, in some natures, is the
+love of contradiction and opposition,--a blind desire to go contrary to
+everything that is commonly received among the older people. The boy
+disparages the minister, quizzes the deacon, thinks the school-master an
+ass, and doesn't believe in the Bible, and seems to be rather pleased
+than otherwise with the shock and flutter that all these announcements
+create among peaceably disposed grown people. No respectable hen that
+ever hatched out a brood of ducks was more puzzled what to do with them
+than was poor Mrs. Pennel when her adopted nursling came into this
+state. Was he a boy? an immortal soul? a reasonable human being? or only
+a handsome goblin sent to torment her?
+
+"What shall we do with him, father?" said she, one Sunday, to Zephaniah,
+as he stood shaving before the little looking-glass in their bedroom.
+"He can't be governed like a child, and he won't govern himself like a
+man."
+
+Zephaniah stopped and strapped his razor reflectively.
+
+"We must cast out anchor and wait for day," he answered. "Prayer is a
+long rope with a strong hold."
+
+It was just at this critical period of life that Moses Pennel was drawn
+into associations which awoke the alarm of all his friends, and from
+which the characteristic willfulness of his nature made it difficult to
+attempt to extricate him.
+
+In order that our readers may fully understand this part of our history,
+we must give some few particulars as to the peculiar scenery of Orr's
+Island and the state of the country at this time.
+
+The coast of Maine, as we have elsewhere said, is remarkable for a
+singular interpenetration of the sea with the land, forming amid its
+dense primeval forests secluded bays, narrow and deep, into which
+vessels might float with the tide, and where they might nestle unseen
+and unsuspected amid the dense shadows of the overhanging forest.
+
+At this time there was a very brisk business done all along the coast of
+Maine in the way of smuggling. Small vessels, lightly built and swift of
+sail, would run up into these sylvan fastnesses, and there make their
+deposits and transact their business so as entirely to elude the
+vigilance of government officers.
+
+It may seem strange that practices of this kind should ever have
+obtained a strong foothold in a community peculiar for its rigid
+morality and its orderly submission to law; but in this case, as in many
+others, contempt of law grew out of weak and unworthy legislation. The
+celebrated embargo of Jefferson stopped at once the whole trade of New
+England, and condemned her thousand ships to rot at the wharves, and
+caused the ruin of thousands of families.
+
+The merchants of the country regarded this as a flagrant, high-handed
+piece of injustice, expressly designed to cripple New England commerce,
+and evasions of this unjust law found everywhere a degree of sympathy,
+even in the breasts of well-disposed and conscientious people. In
+resistance to the law, vessels were constantly fitted out which ran upon
+trading voyages to the West Indies and other places; and although the
+practice was punishable as smuggling, yet it found extensive connivance.
+From this beginning smuggling of all kinds gradually grew up in the
+community, and gained such a foothold that even after the repeal of the
+embargo it still continued to be extensively practiced. Secret
+depositories of contraband goods still existed in many of the lonely
+haunts of islands off the coast of Maine. Hid in deep forest shadows,
+visited only in the darkness of the night, were these illegal stores of
+merchandise. And from these secluded resorts they found their way, no
+one knew or cared to say how, into houses for miles around.
+
+There was no doubt that the practice, like all other illegal ones, was
+demoralizing to the community, and particularly fatal to the character
+of that class of bold, enterprising young men who would be most likely
+to be drawn into it.
+
+Zephaniah Pennel, who was made of a kind of straight-grained,
+uncompromising oaken timber such as built the Mayflower of old, had
+always borne his testimony at home and abroad against any violations of
+the laws of the land, however veiled under the pretext of righting a
+wrong or resisting an injustice, and had done what he could in his
+neighborhood to enable government officers to detect and break up these
+unlawful depositories. This exposed him particularly to the hatred and
+ill-will of the operators concerned in such affairs, and a plot was laid
+by a few of the most daring and determined of them to establish one of
+their depositories on Orr's Island, and to implicate the family of
+Pennel himself in the trade. This would accomplish two purposes, as they
+hoped,--it would be a mortification and defeat to him,--a revenge which
+they coveted; and it would, they thought, insure his silence and
+complicity for the strongest reasons.
+
+The situation and characteristics of Orr's Island peculiarly fitted it
+for the carrying out of a scheme of this kind, and for this purpose we
+must try to give our readers a more definite idea of it.
+
+The traveler who wants a ride through scenery of more varied and
+singular beauty than can ordinarily be found on the shores of any land
+whatever, should start some fine clear day along the clean sandy road,
+ribboned with strips of green grass, that leads through the flat
+pitch-pine forests of Brunswick toward the sea. As he approaches the
+salt water, a succession of the most beautiful and picturesque lakes
+seems to be lying softly cradled in the arms of wild, rocky forest
+shores, whose outlines are ever changing with the windings of the road.
+
+At a distance of about six or eight miles from Brunswick he crosses an
+arm of the sea, and comes upon the first of the interlacing group of
+islands which beautifies the shore. A ride across this island is a
+constant succession of pictures, whose wild and solitary beauty entirely
+distances all power of description. The magnificence of the evergreen
+forests,--their peculiar air of sombre stillness,--the rich
+intermingling ever and anon of groves of birch, beech, and oak, in
+picturesque knots and tufts, as if set for effect by some skillful
+landscape-gardener,--produce a sort of strange dreamy wonder; while the
+sea, breaking forth both on the right hand and the left of the road into
+the most romantic glimpses, seems to flash and glitter like some strange
+gem which every moment shows itself through the framework of a new
+setting. Here and there little secluded coves push in from the sea,
+around which lie soft tracts of green meadow-land, hemmed in and guarded
+by rocky pine-crowned ridges. In such sheltered spots may be seen neat
+white houses, nestling like sheltered doves in the beautiful solitude.
+
+When one has ridden nearly to the end of Great Island, which is about
+four miles across, he sees rising before him, from the sea, a bold
+romantic point of land, uplifting a crown of rich evergreen and forest
+trees over shores of perpendicular rock. This is Orr's Island.
+
+It was not an easy matter in the days of our past experience to guide a
+horse and carriage down the steep, wild shores of Great Island to the
+long bridge that connects it with Orr's. The sense of wild seclusion
+reaches here the highest degree; and one crosses the bridge with a
+feeling as if genii might have built it, and one might be going over it
+to fairy-land. From the bridge the path rises on to a high granite
+ridge, which runs from one end of the island to the other, and has been
+called the Devil's Back, with that superstitious generosity which seems
+to have abandoned all romantic places to so undeserving an owner.
+
+By the side of this ridge of granite is a deep, narrow chasm, running a
+mile and a half or two miles parallel with the road, and veiled by the
+darkest and most solemn shadows of the primeval forest. Here scream the
+jays and the eagles, and fish-hawks make their nests undisturbed; and
+the tide rises and falls under black branches of evergreen, from which
+depend long, light festoons of delicate gray moss. The darkness of the
+forest is relieved by the delicate foliage and the silvery trunks of
+the great white birches, which the solitude of centuries has allowed to
+grow in this spot to a height and size seldom attained elsewhere.
+
+It was this narrow, rocky cove that had been chosen by the smuggler
+Atkinson and his accomplices as a safe and secluded resort for their
+operations. He was a seafaring man of Bath, one of that class who always
+prefer uncertain and doubtful courses to those which are safe and
+reputable. He was possessed of many of those traits calculated to make
+him a hero in the eyes of young men; was dashing, free, and frank in his
+manners, with a fund of humor and an abundance of ready anecdote which
+made his society fascinating; but he concealed beneath all these
+attractions a character of hard, grasping, unscrupulous selfishness, and
+an utter destitution of moral principle.
+
+Moses, now in his sixteenth year, and supposed to be in a general way
+doing well, under the care of the minister, was left free to come and go
+at his own pleasure, unwatched by Zephaniah, whose fishing operations
+often took him for weeks from home. Atkinson hung about the boy's path,
+engaging him first in fishing or hunting enterprises; plied him with
+choice preparations of liquor, with which he would enhance the hilarity
+of their expeditions; and finally worked on his love of adventure and
+that impatient restlessness incident to his period of life to draw him
+fully into his schemes. Moses lost all interest in his lessons, often
+neglecting them for days at a time--accounting for his negligence by
+excuses which were far from satisfactory. When Mara would expostulate
+with him about this, he would break out upon her with a fierce
+irritation. Was he always going to be tied to a girl's apron-string? He
+was tired of study, and tired of old Sewell, whom he declared an old
+granny in a white wig, who knew nothing of the world. He wasn't going to
+college--it was altogether too slow for him--he was going to see life
+and push ahead for himself.
+
+Mara's life during this time was intensely wearing. A frail, slender,
+delicate girl of thirteen, she carried a heart prematurely old with the
+most distressing responsibility of mature life. Her love for Moses had
+always had in it a large admixture of that maternal and care-taking
+element which, in some shape or other, qualities the affection of woman
+to man. Ever since that dream of babyhood, when the vision of a pale
+mother had led the beautiful boy to her arms, Mara had accepted him as
+something exclusively her own, with an intensity of ownership that
+seemed almost to merge her personal identity with his. She felt, and
+saw, and enjoyed, and suffered in him, and yet was conscious of a higher
+nature in herself, by which unwillingly he was often judged and
+condemned. His faults affected her with a kind of guilty pain, as if
+they were her own; his sins were borne bleeding in her heart in silence,
+and with a jealous watchfulness to hide them from every eye but hers.
+She busied herself day and night interceding and making excuses for him,
+first to her own sensitive moral nature, and then with everybody around,
+for with one or another he was coming into constant collision. She felt
+at this time a fearful load of suspicion, which she dared not express to
+a human being.
+
+Up to this period she had always been the only confidant of Moses, who
+poured into her ear without reserve all the good and the evil of his
+nature, and who loved her with all the intensity with which he was
+capable of loving anything. Nothing so much shows what a human being is
+in moral advancement as the quality of his love. Moses Pennel's love was
+egotistic, exacting, tyrannical, and capricious--sometimes venting
+itself in expressions of a passionate fondness, which had a savor of
+protecting generosity in them, and then receding to the icy pole of
+surly petulance. For all that, there was no resisting the magnetic
+attraction with which in his amiable moods he drew those whom he liked
+to himself.
+
+Such people are not very wholesome companions for those who are
+sensitively organized and predisposed to self-sacrificing love. They
+keep the heart in a perpetual freeze and thaw, which, like the American
+northern climate, is so particularly fatal to plants of a delicate
+habit. They could live through the hot summer and the cold winter, but
+they cannot endure the three or four months when it freezes one day and
+melts the next,--when all the buds are started out by a week of genial
+sunshine, and then frozen for a fortnight. These fitful persons are of
+all others most engrossing, because you are always sure in their good
+moods that they are just going to be angels,--an expectation which no
+number of disappointments seems finally to do away. Mara believed in
+Moses's future as she did in her own existence. He was going to do
+something great and good,--that she was certain of. He would be a
+splendid man! Nobody, she thought, knew him as she did; nobody could
+know how good and generous he was _sometimes_, and how frankly he would
+confess his faults, and what noble aspirations he had!
+
+But there was no concealing from her watchful sense that Moses was
+beginning to have secrets from her. He was cloudy and murky; and at some
+of the most harmless inquiries in the world, would flash out with a
+sudden temper, as if she had touched some sore spot. Her bedroom was
+opposite to his; and she became quite sure that night after night, while
+she lay thinking of him, she heard him steal down out of the house
+between two and three o'clock, and not return till a little before
+day-dawn. Where he went, and with whom, and what he was doing, was to
+her an awful mystery,--and it was one she dared not share with a human
+being. If she told her kind old grandfather, she feared that any
+inquiry from him would only light as a spark on that inflammable spirit
+of pride and insubordination that was rising within him, and bring on an
+instantaneous explosion. Mr. Sewell's influence she could hope little
+more from; and as to poor Mrs. Pennel, such communications would only
+weary and distress her, without doing any manner of good. There was,
+therefore, only that one unfailing Confidant--the Invisible Friend to
+whom the solitary child could pour out her heart, and whose inspirations
+of comfort and guidance never fail to come again in return to true
+souls.
+
+One moonlight night, as she lay thus praying, her senses, sharpened by
+watching, discerned a sound of steps treading under her window, and then
+a low whistle. Her heart beat violently, and she soon heard the door of
+Moses's room open, and then the old chamber-stairs gave forth those
+inconsiderate creaks and snaps that garrulous old stairs always will
+when anybody is desirous of making them accomplices in a night-secret.
+Mara rose, and undrawing her curtain, saw three men standing before the
+house, and saw Moses come out and join them. Quick as thought she threw
+on her clothes and wrapping her little form in a dark cloak, with a
+hood, followed them out. She kept at a safe distance behind them,--so
+far back as just to keep them in sight. They never looked back, and
+seemed to say but little till they approached the edge of that deep belt
+of forest which shrouds so large a portion of the island. She hurried
+along, now nearer to them lest they should be lost to view in the deep
+shadows, while they went on crackling and plunging through the dense
+underbrush.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE TEMPTER
+
+
+It was well for Mara that so much of her life had been passed in wild
+forest rambles. She looked frail as the rays of moonbeam which slid down
+the old white-bearded hemlocks, but her limbs were agile and supple as
+steel; and while the party went crashing on before, she followed with
+such lightness that the slight sound of her movements was entirely lost
+in the heavy crackling plunges of the party. Her little heart was
+beating fast and hard; but could any one have seen her face, as it now
+and then came into a spot of moonshine, they might have seen it fixed in
+a deadly expression of resolve and determination. She was going after
+_him_--no matter where; she was resolved to know who and what it was
+that was leading him away, as her heart told her, to no good. Deeper and
+deeper into the shadows of the forest they went, and the child easily
+kept up with them.
+
+Mara had often rambled for whole solitary days in this lonely wood, and
+knew all its rocks and dells the whole three miles to the long bridge at
+the other end of the island. But she had never before seen it under the
+solemn stillness of midnight moonlight, which gives to the most familiar
+objects such a strange, ghostly charm. After they had gone a mile into
+the forest, she could see through the black spruces silver gleams of the
+sea, and hear, amid the whirr and sway of the pine-tops, the dash of the
+ever restless tide which pushed up the long cove. It was at the full, as
+she could discern with a rapid glance of her practiced eye, expertly
+versed in the knowledge of every change of the solitary nature around.
+
+And now the party began to plunge straight down the rocky ledge of the
+Devil's Back, on which they had been walking hitherto, into the deep
+ravine where lay the cove. It was a scrambling, precipitous way, over
+perpendicular walls of rock, whose crevices furnished anchoring-places
+for grand old hemlocks or silver-birches, and whose rough sides,
+leathery with black flaps of lichen, were all tangled and interlaced
+with thick netted bushes. The men plunged down laughing, shouting, and
+swearing at their occasional missteps, and silently as moonbeam or
+thistledown the light-footed shadow went down after them.
+
+She suddenly paused behind a pile of rock, as, through an opening
+between two great spruces, the sea gleamed out like a sheet of
+looking-glass set in a black frame. And here the child saw a small
+vessel swinging at anchor, with the moonlight full on its slack sails,
+and she could hear the gentle gurgle and lick of the green-tongued waves
+as they dashed under it toward the rocky shore.
+
+Mara stopped with a beating heart as she saw the company making for the
+schooner. The tide is high; will they go on board and sail away with him
+where she cannot follow? What could she do? In an ecstasy of fear she
+kneeled down and asked God not to let him go,--to give her at least one
+more chance to save him.
+
+For the pure and pious child had heard enough of the words of these men,
+as she walked behind them, to fill her with horror. She had never before
+heard an oath, but there came back from these men coarse, brutal tones
+and words of blasphemy that froze her blood with horror. And Moses was
+going with them! She felt somehow as if they must be a company of fiends
+bearing him to his ruin.
+
+For some time she kneeled there watching behind the rock, while Moses
+and his companions went on board the little schooner. She had no
+feeling of horror at the loneliness of her own situation, for her
+solitary life had made every woodland thing dear and familiar to her.
+She was cowering down, on a loose, spongy bed of moss, which was all
+threaded through and through with the green vines and pale pink blossoms
+of the mayflower, and she felt its fragrant breath streaming up in the
+moist moonlight. As she leaned forward to look through a rocky crevice,
+her arms rested on a bed of that brittle white moss she had often
+gathered with so much admiration, and a scarlet rock-columbine, such as
+she loved to paint, brushed her cheek,--and all these mute fair things
+seemed to strive to keep her company in her chill suspense of
+watchfulness. Two whippoorwills, from a clump of silvery birches, kept
+calling to each other in melancholy iteration, while she stayed there
+still listening, and knowing by an occasional sound of laughing, or the
+explosion of some oath, that the men were not yet gone. At last they all
+appeared again, and came to a cleared place among the dry leaves, quite
+near to the rock where she was concealed, and kindled a fire which they
+kept snapping and crackling by a constant supply of green resinous
+hemlock branches.
+
+The red flame danced and leaped through the green fuel, and leaping
+upward in tongues of flame, cast ruddy bronze reflections on the old
+pine-trees with their long branches waving with boards of white
+moss,--and by the firelight Mara could see two men in sailor's dress
+with pistols in their belts, and the man Atkinson, whom she had
+recollected as having seen once or twice at her grandfather's. She
+remembered how she had always shrunk from him with a strange instinctive
+dislike, half fear, half disgust, when he had addressed her with that
+kind of free admiration which men of his class often feel themselves at
+liberty to express to a pretty girl of her early age. He was a man that
+might have been handsome, had it not been for a certain strange
+expression of covert wickedness. It was as if some vile evil spirit,
+walking, as the Scriptures say, through dry places, had lighted on a
+comely man's body, in which he had set up housekeeping, making it look
+like a fair house abused by an unclean owner.
+
+As Mara watched his demeanor with Moses, she could think only of a
+loathsome black snake that she had once seen in those solitary
+rocks;--she felt as if his handsome but evil eye were charming him with
+an evil charm to his destruction.
+
+"Well, Mo, my boy," she heard him say,--slapping Moses on the
+shoulder,--"this is something like. We'll have a 'tempus,' as the
+college fellows say,--put down the clams to roast, and I'll mix the
+punch," he said, setting over the fire a tea-kettle which they brought
+from the ship.
+
+After their preparations were finished, all sat down to eat and drink.
+Mara listened with anxiety and horror to a conversation such as she
+never heard or conceived before. It is not often that women hear men
+talk in the undisguised manner which they use among themselves; but the
+conversation of men of unprincipled lives, and low, brutal habits,
+unchecked by the presence of respectable female society, might well
+convey to the horror-struck child a feeling as if she were listening at
+the mouth of hell. Almost every word was preceded or emphasized by an
+oath; and what struck with a death chill to her heart was, that Moses
+swore too, and seemed to show that desperate anxiety to seem _au fait_
+in the language of wickedness, which boys often do at that age, when
+they fancy that to be ignorant of vice is a mark of disgraceful
+greenness. Moses evidently was bent on showing that he was not
+green,--ignorant of the pure ear to which every such word came like the
+blast of death.
+
+He drank a great deal, too, and the mirth among them grew furious and
+terrific. Mara, horrified and shocked as she was, did not, however, lose
+that intense and alert presence of mind, natural to persons in whom
+there is moral strength, however delicate be their physical frame. She
+felt at once that these men were playing upon Moses; that they had an
+object in view; that they were flattering and cajoling him, and leading
+him to drink, that they might work out some fiendish purpose of their
+own. The man called Atkinson related story after story of wild
+adventure, in which sudden fortunes had been made by men who, he said,
+were not afraid to take "the short cut across lots." He told of
+piratical adventures in the West Indies,--of the fun of chasing and
+overhauling ships,--and gave dazzling accounts of the treasures found on
+board. It was observable that all these stories were told on the line
+between joke and earnest,--as frolics, as specimens of good fun, and
+seeing life, etc.
+
+At last came a suggestion,--What if they should start off together some
+fine day, "just for a spree," and try a cruise in the West Indies, to
+see what they could pick up? They had arms, and a gang of fine,
+whole-souled fellows. Moses had been tied to Ma'am Pennel's apron-string
+long enough. And "hark ye," said one of them, "Moses, they say old
+Pennel has lots of dollars in that old sea-chest of his'n. It would be a
+kindness to him to invest them for him in an adventure."
+
+Moses answered with a streak of the boy innocence which often remains
+under the tramping of evil men, like ribbons of green turf in the middle
+of roads:--
+
+"You don't know Father Pennel,--why, he'd no more come into it than"--
+
+A perfect roar of laughter cut short this declaration, and Atkinson,
+slapping Moses on the back, said,--
+
+"By ----, Mo! you are the jolliest green dog! I shall die a-laughing of
+your innocence some day. Why, my boy, can't you see? Pennel's money can
+be invested without asking him."
+
+"Why, he keeps it locked," said Moses.
+
+"And supposing you pick the lock?"
+
+"Not I, indeed," said Moses, making a sudden movement to rise.
+
+Mara almost screamed in her ecstasy, but she had sense enough to hold
+her breath.
+
+"Ho! see him now," said Atkinson, lying back, and holding his sides
+while he laughed, and rolled over; "you can get off anything on that
+muff,--any hoax in the world,--he's so soft! Come, come, my dear boy,
+sit down. I was only seeing how wide I could make you open those great
+black eyes of your'n,--that's all."
+
+"You'd better take care how you joke with me," said Moses, with that
+look of gloomy determination which Mara was quite familiar with of old.
+It was the rallying effort of a boy who had abandoned the first outworks
+of virtue to make a stand for the citadel. And Atkinson, like a prudent
+besieger after a repulse, returned to lie on his arms.
+
+He began talking volubly on other subjects, telling stories, and singing
+songs, and pressing Moses to drink.
+
+Mara was comforted to see that he declined drinking,--that he looked
+gloomy and thoughtful, in spite of the jokes of his companions; but she
+trembled to see, by the following conversation, how Atkinson was
+skillfully and prudently making apparent to Moses the extent to which he
+had him in his power. He seemed to Mara like an ugly spider skillfully
+weaving his web around a fly. She felt cold and faint; but within her
+there was a heroic strength.
+
+She was not going to faint; she would make herself bear up. She was
+going to do something to get Moses out of this snare,--but what? At last
+they rose.
+
+"It is past three o'clock," she heard one of them say.
+
+"I say, Mo," said Atkinson, "you must make tracks for home, or you won't
+be in bed when Mother Pennel calls you."
+
+The men all laughed at this joke, as they turned to go on board the
+schooner.
+
+When they were gone, Moses threw himself down and hid his face in his
+hands. He knew not what pitying little face was looking down upon him
+from the hemlock shadows, what brave little heart was determined to save
+him. He was in one of those great crises of agony that boys pass through
+when they first awake from the fun and frolic of unlawful enterprises to
+find themselves sold under sin, and feel the terrible logic of evil
+which constrains them to pass from the less to greater crime. He felt
+that he was in the power of bad, unprincipled, heartless men, who, if he
+refused to do their bidding, had the power to expose him. All he had
+been doing would come out. His kind old foster-parents would know it.
+Mara would know it. Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily would know the secrets of
+his life that past month. He felt as if they were all looking at him
+now. He had disgraced himself,--had sunk below his education,--had been
+false to all his better knowledge and the past expectations of his
+friends, living a mean, miserable, dishonorable life,--and now the
+ground was fast sliding from under him, and the next plunge might be
+down a precipice from which there would be no return. What he had done
+up to this hour had been done in the roystering, inconsiderate
+gamesomeness of boyhood. It had been represented to himself only as
+"sowing wild oats," "having steep times," "seeing a little of life," and
+so on; but this night he had had propositions of piracy and robbery made
+to him, and he had not dared to knock down the man that made them,--had
+not dared at once to break away from his company. He must meet him
+again,--must go on with him, or--he groaned in agony at the thought.
+
+It was a strong indication of that repressed, considerate habit of mind
+which love had wrought in the child, that when Mara heard the boy's sobs
+rising in the stillness, she did not, as she wished to, rush out and
+throw her arms around his neck and try to comfort him.
+
+But she felt instinctively that she must not do this. She must not let
+him know that she had discovered his secret by stealing after him thus
+in the night shadows. She knew how nervously he had resented even the
+compassionate glances she had cast upon him in his restless, turbid
+intervals during the past few weeks, and the fierceness with which he
+had replied to a few timid inquiries. No,--though her heart was breaking
+for him, it was a shrewd, wise little heart, and resolved not to spoil
+all by yielding to its first untaught impulses. She repressed herself as
+the mother does who refrains from crying out when she sees her
+unconscious little one on the verge of a precipice.
+
+When Moses rose and moodily began walking homeward, she followed at a
+distance. She could now keep farther off, for she knew the way through
+every part of the forest, and she only wanted to keep within sound of
+his footsteps to make sure that he was going home. When he emerged from
+the forest into the open moonlight, she sat down in its shadows and
+watched him as he walked over the open distance between her and the
+house. He went in; and then she waited a little longer for him to be
+quite retired. She thought he would throw himself on the bed, and then
+she could steal in after him. So she sat there quite in the shadows.
+
+The grand full moon was riding high and calm in the purple sky, and
+Harpswell Bay on the one hand, and the wide, open ocean on the other,
+lay all in a silver shimmer of light. There was not a sound save the
+plash of the tide, now beginning to go out, and rolling and rattling
+the pebbles up and down as it came and went, and once in a while the
+distant, mournful intoning of the whippoorwill. There were silent lonely
+ships, sailing slowly to and fro far out to sea, turning their fair
+wings now into bright light and now into shadow, as they moved over the
+glassy stillness. Mara could see all the houses on Harpswell Neck and
+the white church as clear as in the daylight. It seemed to her some
+strange, unearthly dream.
+
+As she sat there, she thought over her whole little life, all full of
+one thought, one purpose, one love, one prayer, for this being so
+strangely given to her out of that silent sea, which lay so like a still
+eternity around her,--and she revolved again what meant the vision of
+her childhood. Did it not mean that she was to watch over him and save
+him from some dreadful danger? That poor mother was lying now silent and
+peaceful under the turf in the little graveyard not far off, and _she_
+must care for her boy.
+
+A strong motherly feeling swelled out the girl's heart,--she felt that
+she _must_, she would, somehow save that treasure which had so
+mysteriously been committed to her. So, when she thought she had given
+time enough for Moses to be quietly asleep in his room, she arose and
+ran with quick footsteps across the moonlit plain to the house.
+
+The front-door was standing wide open, as was always the innocent
+fashion in these regions, with a half-angle of moonlight and shadow
+lying within its dusky depths. Mara listened a moment,--no sound: he had
+gone to bed then. "Poor boy," she said, "I hope he is asleep; how he
+must feel, poor fellow! It's all the fault of those dreadful men!" said
+the little dark shadow to herself, as she stole up the stairs past his
+room as guiltily as if she were the sinner. Once the stairs creaked, and
+her heart was in her mouth, but she gained her room and shut and bolted
+the door. She kneeled down by her little white bed, and thanked God
+that she had come in safe, and then prayed him to teach her what to do
+next. She felt chilly and shivering, and crept into bed, and lay with
+her great soft brown eyes wide open, intently thinking what she should
+do.
+
+Should she tell her grandfather? Something instinctively said No; that
+the first word from him which showed Moses he was detected would at once
+send him off with those wicked men. "He would never, never bear to have
+this known," she said. Mr. Sewell?--ah, that was worse. She herself
+shrank from letting him know what Moses had been doing; she could not
+bear to lower him so much in his eyes. He could not make allowances, she
+thought. He is good, to be sure, but he is so old and grave, and doesn't
+know how much Moses has been tempted by these dreadful men; and then
+perhaps he would tell Miss Emily, and they never would want Moses to
+come there any more.
+
+"What shall I do?" she said to herself. "I must get somebody to help me
+or tell me what to do. I can't tell grandmamma; it would only make her
+ill, and she wouldn't know what to do any more than I. Ah, I know what I
+will do,--I'll tell Captain Kittridge; he was always so kind to me; and
+he has been to sea and seen all sorts of men, and Moses won't care so
+much perhaps to have him know, because the Captain is such a funny man,
+and don't take everything so seriously. Yes, that's it. I'll go right
+down to the cove in the morning. God will bring me through, I know He
+will;" and the little weary head fell back on the pillow asleep. And as
+she slept, a smile settled over her face, perhaps a reflection from the
+face of her good angel, who always beholdeth the face of our Father in
+Heaven.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED
+
+
+Mara was so wearied with her night walk and the agitation she had been
+through, that once asleep she slept long after the early breakfast hour
+of the family. She was surprised on awaking to hear the slow old clock
+downstairs striking eight. She hastily jumped up and looked around with
+a confused wonder, and then slowly the events of the past night came
+back upon her like a remembered dream. She dressed herself quickly, and
+went down to find the breakfast things all washed and put away, and Mrs.
+Pennel spinning.
+
+"Why, dear heart," said the old lady, "how came you to sleep so?--I
+spoke to you twice, but I could not make you hear."
+
+"Has Moses been down, grandma?" said Mara, intent on the sole thought in
+her heart.
+
+"Why, yes, dear, long ago,--and cross enough he was; that boy does get
+to be a trial,--but come, dear, I've saved some hot cakes for you,--sit
+down now and eat your breakfast."
+
+Mara made a feint of eating what her grandmother with fond officiousness
+would put before her, and then rising up she put on her sun-bonnet and
+started down toward the cove to find her old friend.
+
+The queer, dry, lean old Captain had been to her all her life like a
+faithful kobold or brownie, an unquestioning servant of all her gentle
+biddings. She dared tell him anything without diffidence or
+shamefacedness; and she felt that in this trial of her life he might
+have in his sea-receptacle some odd old amulet or spell that should be
+of power to help her. Instinctively she avoided the house, lest Sally
+should see and fly out and seize her. She took a narrow path through the
+cedars down to the little boat cove where the old Captain worked so
+merrily ten years ago, in the beginning of our story, and where she
+found him now, with his coat off, busily planing a board.
+
+"Wal', now,--if this 'ere don't beat all!" he said, looking up and
+seeing her; "why, you're looking after Sally, I s'pose? She's up to the
+house."
+
+"No, Captain Kittridge, I'm come to see _you_."
+
+"You _be_?" said the Captain, "I swow! if I ain't a lucky feller. But
+what's the matter?" he said, suddenly observing her pale face and the
+tears in her eyes. "Hain't nothin' bad happened,--hes there?"
+
+"Oh! Captain Kittridge, something dreadful; and nobody but you can help
+me."
+
+"Want to know, now!" said the Captain, with a grave face. "Well, come
+here, now, and sit down, and tell me all about it. Don't you cry,
+there's a good girl! Don't, now."
+
+Mara began her story, and went through with it in a rapid and agitated
+manner; and the good Captain listened in a fidgety state of interest,
+occasionally relieving his mind by interjecting "Do tell, now!" "I
+swan,--if that ar ain't too bad."
+
+"That ar's rediculous conduct in Atkinson. He ought to be talked to,"
+said the Captain, when she had finished, and then he whistled and put a
+shaving in his mouth, which he chewed reflectively.
+
+"Don't you be a mite worried, Mara," he said. "You did a great deal
+better to come to me than to go to Mr. Sewell or your grand'ther either;
+'cause you see these 'ere wild chaps they'll take things from me they
+wouldn't from a church-member or a minister. Folks mustn't pull 'em up
+with _too_ short a rein,--they must kind o' flatter 'em off. But that ar
+Atkinson's too rediculous for anything; and if he don't mind, I'll serve
+him out. I know a thing or two about him that I shall shake over his
+head if he don't behave. Now I don't think so much of smugglin' as some
+folks," said the Captain, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. "I
+reely don't, now; but come to goin' off piratin',--and tryin' to put a
+young boy up to robbin' his best friends,--why, there ain't no kind o'
+sense in that. It's p'ison mean of Atkinson. I shall tell him so, and I
+shall talk to Moses."
+
+"Oh! I'm afraid to have you," said Mara, apprehensively.
+
+"Why, chickabiddy," said the old Captain, "you don't understand me. I
+ain't goin' at him with no sermons,--I shall jest talk to him this way:
+Look here now, Moses, I shall say, there's Badger's ship goin' to sail
+in a fortnight for China, and they want likely fellers aboard, and I've
+got a hundred dollars that I'd like to send on a venture; if you'll take
+it and go, why, we'll share the profits. I shall talk like that, you
+know. Mebbe I sha'n't let him know what I know, and mebbe I shall; jest
+tip him a wink, you know; it depends on circumstances. But bless you,
+child, these 'ere fellers ain't none of 'em 'fraid o' me, you see,
+'cause they know I know the ropes."
+
+"And can you make that horrid man let him alone?" said Mara, fearfully.
+
+"Calculate I can. 'Spect if I's to tell Atkinson a few things I know,
+he'd be for bein' scase in our parts. Now, you see, I hain't minded
+doin' a small bit o' trade now and then with them ar fellers myself; but
+this 'ere," said the Captain, stopping and looking extremely disgusted,
+"why, it's contemptible, it's rediculous!"
+
+"Do you think I'd better tell grandpapa?" said Mara.
+
+"Don't worry your little head. I'll step up and have a talk with Pennel,
+this evening. He knows as well as I that there is times when chaps must
+be seen to, and no remarks made. Pennel knows that ar. Why, now, Mis'
+Kittridge thinks our boys turned out so well all along of her bringin'
+up, and I let her think so; keeps her sort o' in spirits, you see. But
+Lord bless ye, child, there's been times with Job, and Sam, and Pass,
+and Dass, and Dile, and all on 'em finally, when, if I hadn't jest
+pulled a rope here and turned a screw there, and said nothin' to nobody,
+they'd a-been all gone to smash. I never told Mis' Kittridge none o'
+their didos; bless you, 'twouldn't been o' no use. I never told _them_,
+neither; but I jest kind o' worked 'em off, you know; and they's all
+putty 'spectable men now, as men go, you know; not like Parson Sewell,
+but good, honest mates and ship-masters,--kind o' middlin' people, you
+know. It takes a good many o' sich to make up a world, d'ye see."
+
+"But oh, Captain Kittridge, did any of them use to swear?" said Mara, in
+a faltering voice.
+
+"Wal', they did, consid'able," said the Captain;--then seeing the
+trembling of Mara's lip, he added,--
+
+"Ef you could a-found this 'ere out any other way, it's most a pity
+you'd a-heard him; 'cause he wouldn't never have let out afore you. It
+don't do for gals to hear the fellers talk when they's alone, 'cause
+fellers,--wal', you see, fellers will be fellers, partic'larly when
+they're young. Some on 'em, they never gits over it all their lives
+finally."
+
+"But oh! Captain Kittridge, that talk last night was so dreadfully
+wicked! and Moses!--oh, it was dreadful to hear him!"
+
+"Wal', yes, it was," said the Captain, consolingly; "but don't you cry,
+and don't you break your little heart. I expect he'll come all right,
+and jine the church one of these days; 'cause there's old Pennel, he
+prays,--fact now, I think there's consid'able in some people's prayers,
+and he's one of the sort. And you pray, too; and I'm quite sure the good
+Lord _must_ hear you. I declare sometimes I wish you'd jest say a good
+word to Him for me; I should like to get the hang o' things a little
+better than I do, somehow, I reely should. I've gi'n up swearing years
+ago. Mis' Kittridge, she broke me o' that, and now I don't never go
+further than 'I vum' or 'I swow,' or somethin' o' that sort; but you see
+I'm old;--Moses is young; but then he's got eddication and friends, and
+he'll come all right. Now you jest see ef he don't!"
+
+This miscellaneous budget of personal experiences and friendly
+consolation which the good Captain conveyed to Mara may possibly make
+you laugh, my reader, but the good, ropy brown man was doing his best to
+console his little friend; and as Mara looked at him he was almost
+glorified in her eyes--he had power to save Moses, and he would do it.
+She went home to dinner that day with her heart considerably lightened.
+She refrained, in a guilty way, from even looking at Moses, who was
+gloomy and moody.
+
+Mara had from nature a good endowment of that kind of innocent hypocrisy
+which is needed as a staple in the lives of women who bridge a thousand
+awful chasms with smiling, unconscious looks, and walk, singing and
+scattering flowers, over abysses of fear, while their hearts are dying
+within them.
+
+She talked more volubly than was her wont with Mrs. Pennel, and with her
+old grandfather; she laughed and seemed in more than usual spirits, and
+only once did she look up and catch the gloomy eye of Moses. It had that
+murky, troubled look that one may see in the eye of a boy when those
+evil waters which cast up mire and dirt have once been stirred in his
+soul. They fell under her clear glance, and he made a rapid, impatient
+movement, as if it hurt him to be looked at. The evil spirit in boy or
+man cannot bear the "touch of celestial temper;" and the sensitiveness
+to eyebeams is one of the earliest signs of conscious, inward guilt.
+
+Mara was relieved, as he flung out of the house after dinner, to see the
+long, dry figure of Captain Kittridge coming up and seizing Moses by the
+button. From the window she saw the Captain assuming a confidential air
+with him; and when they had talked together a few moments, she saw Moses
+going with great readiness after him down the road to his house.
+
+In less than a fortnight, it was settled Moses was to sail for China,
+and Mara was deep in the preparations for his outfit. Once she would
+have felt this departure as the most dreadful trial of her life. Now it
+seemed to her a deliverance for him, and she worked with a cheerful
+alacrity, which seemed to Moses more than was proper, considering _he_
+was going away.
+
+For Moses, like many others of his sex, boy or man, had quietly settled
+in his own mind that the whole love of Mara's heart was to be his, to
+have and to hold, to use and to draw on, when and as he liked. He
+reckoned on it as a sort of inexhaustible, uncounted treasure that was
+his own peculiar right and property, and therefore he felt abused at
+what he supposed was a disclosure of some deficiency on her part.
+
+"You seem to be very glad to be rid of me," he said to her in a bitter
+tone one day, as she was earnestly busy in her preparations.
+
+Now the fact was, that Moses had been assiduously making himself
+disagreeable to Mara for the fortnight past, by all sorts of unkind
+sayings and doings; and he knew it too; yet he felt a right to feel very
+much abused at the thought that she could possibly want him to be going.
+If she had been utterly desolate about it, and torn her hair and sobbed
+and wailed, he would have asked what she could be crying about, and
+begged not to be bored with scenes; but as it was, this cheerful
+composure was quite unfeeling.
+
+Now pray don't suppose Moses to be a monster of an uncommon species. We
+take him to be an average specimen of a boy of a certain kind of
+temperament in the transition period of life. Everything is chaos
+within; the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the
+flesh, and "light and darkness, and mind and dust, and passion and pure
+thoughts, mingle and contend," without end or order. He wondered at
+himself sometimes that he could say such cruel things as he did to his
+faithful little friend--to one whom, after all, he did love and trust
+before all other human beings.
+
+There is no saying why it is that a man or a boy, not radically
+destitute of generous comprehensions, will often cruelly torture and
+tyrannize over a woman whom he both loves and reveres, who stands in his
+soul in his best hours as the very impersonation of all that is good and
+beautiful. It is as if some evil spirit at times possessed him, and
+compelled him to utter words which were felt at the moment to be mean
+and hateful. Moses often wondered at himself, as he lay awake nights,
+how he could have said and done the things he had, and felt miserably
+resolved to make it up somehow before he went away; but he did not.
+
+He could not say, "Mara, I have done wrong," though he every day meant
+to do it, and sometimes sat an hour in her presence, feeling murky and
+stony, as if possessed by a dumb spirit; then he would get up and fling
+stormily out of the house.
+
+Poor Mara wondered if he really would go without one kind word. She
+thought of all the years they had been together, and how he had been her
+only thought and love. What had become of her brother?--the Moses that
+once she used to know--frank, careless, not ill-tempered, and who
+sometimes seemed to love her and think she was the best little girl in
+the world? Where was he gone to--this friend and brother of her
+childhood, and would he never come back?
+
+At last came the evening before his parting; the sea-chest was all made
+up and packed; and Mara's fingers had been busy with everything, from
+more substantial garments down to all those little comforts and nameless
+conveniences that only a woman knows how to improvise. Mara thought
+certainly she should get a few kind words, as Moses looked it over. But
+he only said, "All right;" and then added that "there was a button off
+one of the shirts." Mara's busy fingers quickly replaced it, and Moses
+was annoyed at the tear that fell on the button. What was she crying for
+now? He knew very well, but he felt stubborn and cruel. Afterwards he
+lay awake many a night in his berth, and acted this last scene over
+differently. He took Mara in his arms and kissed her; he told her she
+was his best friend, his good angel, and that he was not worthy to kiss
+the hem of her garment; but the next day, when he thought of writing a
+letter to her, he didn't, and the good mood passed away. Boys do not
+acquire an ease of expression in letter-writing as early as girls, and a
+voyage to China furnished opportunities few and far between of sending
+letters.
+
+Now and then, through some sailing ship, came missives which seemed to
+Mara altogether colder and more unsatisfactory than they would have done
+could she have appreciated the difference between a boy and a girl in
+power of epistolary expression; for the power of really representing
+one's heart on paper, which is one of the first spring flowers of early
+womanhood, is the latest blossom on the slow-growing tree of manhood. To
+do Moses justice, these seeming cold letters were often written with a
+choking lump in his throat, caused by thinking over his many sins
+against his little good angel; but then that past account was so long,
+and had so much that it pained him to think of, that he dashed it all
+off in the shortest fashion, and said to himself, "One of these days
+when I see her I'll make it all up."
+
+No man--especially one that is living a rough, busy, out-of-doors
+life--can form the slightest conception of that veiled and secluded life
+which exists in the heart of a sensitive woman, whose sphere is narrow,
+whose external diversions are few, and whose mind, therefore, acts by a
+continual introversion upon itself. They know nothing how their careless
+words and actions are pondered and turned again in weary, quiet hours of
+fruitless questioning. What did he mean by this? and what did he intend
+by that?--while he, the careless buffalo, meant nothing, or has
+forgotten what it was, if he did. Man's utter ignorance of woman's
+nature is a cause of a great deal of unsuspected cruelty which he
+practices toward her.
+
+Mara found one or two opportunities of writing to Moses; but her letters
+were timid and constrained by a sort of frosty, discouraged sense of
+loneliness; and Moses, though he knew he had no earthly right to expect
+this to be otherwise, took upon him to feel as an abused individual,
+whom nobody loved--whose way in the world was destined to be lonely and
+desolate. So when, at the end of three years, he arrived suddenly at
+Brunswick in the beginning of winter, and came, all burning with
+impatience, to the home at Orr's Island, and found that Mara had gone to
+Boston on a visit, he resented it as a personal slight.
+
+He might have inquired why she should expect him, and whether her whole
+life was to be spent in looking out of the window to watch for him. He
+might have remembered that he had warned her of his approach by no
+letter. But no. "Mara didn't care for him--she had forgotten all about
+him--she was having a good time in Boston, just as likely as not with
+some train of admirers, and he had been tossing on the stormy ocean, and
+she had thought nothing of it." How many things he had meant to say! He
+had never felt so good and so affectionate. He would have confessed all
+the sins of his life to her, and asked her pardon--and she wasn't there!
+
+Mrs. Pennel suggested that he might go to Boston after her.
+
+No, he was not going to do that. He would not intrude on her pleasures
+with the memory of a rough, hard-working sailor. He was alone in the
+world, and had his own way to make, and so best go at once up among
+lumbermen, and cut the timber for the ship that was to carry Caesar and
+his fortunes.
+
+When Mara was informed by a letter from Mrs. Pennel, expressed in the
+few brief words in which that good woman generally embodied her
+epistolary communications, that Moses had been at home, and gone to
+Umbagog without seeing her, she felt at her heart only a little closer
+stricture of cold, quiet pain, which had become a habit of her inner
+life.
+
+"He did not love her--he was cold and selfish," said the inner voice.
+And faintly she pleaded, in answer, "He is a man--he has seen the
+world--and has so much to do and think of, no wonder."
+
+In fact, during the last three years that had parted them, the great
+change of life had been consummated in both. They had parted boy and
+girl; they would meet man and woman. The time of this meeting had been
+announced.
+
+And all this is the history of that sigh, so very quiet that Sally
+Kittridge never checked the rattling flow of her conversation to observe
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY
+
+
+We have in the last three chapters brought up the history of our
+characters to the time when our story opens, when Mara and Sally
+Kittridge were discussing the expected return of Moses. Sally was
+persuaded by Mara to stay and spend the night with her, and did so
+without much fear of what her mother would say when she returned; for
+though Mrs. Kittridge still made bustling demonstrations of authority,
+it was quite evident to every one that the handsome grown-up girl had
+got the sceptre into her own hands, and was reigning in the full
+confidence of being, in one way or another, able to bring her mother
+into all her views.
+
+So Sally stayed--to have one of those long night-talks in which girls
+delight, in the course of which all sorts of intimacies and confidences,
+that shun the daylight, open like the night-blooming cereus in strange
+successions. One often wonders by daylight at the things one says very
+naturally in the dark.
+
+So the two girls talked about Moses, and Sally dilated upon his
+handsome, manly air the one Sunday that he had appeared in Harpswell
+meeting-house.
+
+"He didn't know me at all, if you'll believe it," said Sally. "I was
+standing with father when he came out, and he shook hands with him, and
+looked at me as if I'd been an entire stranger."
+
+"I'm not in the least surprised," said Mara; "you're grown so and
+altered."
+
+"Well, now, you'd hardly know him, Mara," said Sally. "He is a man--a
+real man; everything about him is different; he holds up his head in
+such a proud way. Well, he always did that when he was a boy; but when
+he speaks, he has such a deep voice! How boys do alter in a year or
+two!"
+
+"Do you think I have altered much, Sally?" said Mara; "at least, do you
+think _he_ would think so?"
+
+"Why, Mara, you and I have been together so much, I can't tell. We don't
+notice what goes on before us every day. I really should like to see
+what Moses Pennel will think when he sees you. At any rate, he can't
+order you about with such a grand air as he used to when you were
+younger."
+
+"I think sometimes he has quite forgotten about me," said Mara.
+
+"Well, if I were you, I should put him in mind of myself by one or two
+little ways," said Sally. "I'd plague him and tease him. I'd lead him
+such a life that he couldn't forget me,--that's what I would."
+
+"I don't doubt you would, Sally; and he might like you all the better
+for it. But you know that sort of thing isn't my way. People must act in
+character."
+
+"Do you know, Mara," said Sally, "I always thought Moses was hateful in
+his treatment of you? Now I'd no more marry that fellow than I'd walk
+into the fire; but it would be a just punishment for his sins to have to
+marry me! Wouldn't I serve him out, though!"
+
+With which threat of vengeance on her mind Sally Kittridge fell asleep,
+while Mara lay awake pondering,--wondering if Moses would come
+to-morrow, and what he would be like if he did come.
+
+The next morning as the two girls were wiping breakfast dishes in a room
+adjoining the kitchen, a step was heard on the kitchen-floor, and the
+first that Mara knew she found herself lifted from the floor in the
+arms of a tall dark-eyed young man, who was kissing her just as if he
+had a right to. She knew it must be Moses, but it seemed strange as a
+dream, for all she had tried to imagine it beforehand.
+
+He kissed her over and over, and then holding her off at arm's length,
+said, "Why, Mara, you have grown to be a beauty!"
+
+"And what was she, I'd like to know, when you went away, Mr. Moses?"
+said Sally, who could not long keep out of a conversation. "She was
+handsome when you were only a great ugly boy."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Sally!" said Moses, making a profound bow.
+
+"Thank me for what?" said Sally, with a toss.
+
+"For your intimation that I am a handsome young man now," said Moses,
+sitting with his arm around Mara, and her hand in his.
+
+And in truth he was as handsome now for a man as he was in the promise
+of his early childhood. All the oafishness and surly awkwardness of the
+half-boy period was gone. His great black eyes were clear and confident:
+his dark hair clustering in short curls round his well-shaped head; his
+black lashes, and fine form, and a certain confident ease of manner, set
+him off to the greatest advantage.
+
+Mara felt a peculiar dreamy sense of strangeness at this brother who was
+not a brother,--this Moses so different from the one she had known. The
+very tone of his voice, which when he left had the uncertain cracked
+notes which indicate the unformed man, were now mellowed and settled.
+Mara regarded him shyly as he talked, blushed uneasily, and drew away
+from his arm around her, as if this handsome, self-confident young man
+were being too familiar. In fact, she made apology to go out into the
+other room to call Mrs. Pennel.
+
+Moses looked after her as she went with admiration. "What a little woman
+she has grown!" he said, naively.
+
+"And what did you expect she would grow?" said Sally. "You didn't expect
+to find her a girl in short clothes, did you?"
+
+"Not exactly, Miss Sally," said Moses, turning his attention to her;
+"and some other people are changed too."
+
+"Like enough," said Sally, carelessly. "I should think so, since
+somebody never spoke a word to one the Sunday he was at meeting."
+
+"Oh, you remember that, do you? On my word, Sally"--
+
+"Miss Kittridge, if you please, sir," said Sally, turning round with the
+air of an empress.
+
+"Well, then, Miss Kittridge," said Moses, making a bow; "now let me
+finish my sentence. I never dreamed who you were."
+
+"Complimentary," said Sally, pouting.
+
+"Well, hear me through," said Moses; "you had grown so handsome, Miss
+Kittridge."
+
+"Oh! that indeed! I suppose you mean to say I was a fright when you
+left?"
+
+"Not at all--not at all," said Moses; "but handsome things may grow
+handsomer, you know."
+
+"I don't like flattery," said Sally.
+
+"I never flatter, Miss Kittridge," said Moses.
+
+Our young gentleman and young lady of Orr's Island went through with
+this customary little lie of civilized society with as much gravity as
+if they were practicing in the court of Versailles,--she looking out
+from the corner of her eye to watch the effect of her words, and he
+laying his hand on his heart in the most edifying gravity. They
+perfectly understood one another.
+
+But, says the reader, seems to me Sally Kittridge does all the talking!
+So she does,--so she always will,--for it is her nature to be bright,
+noisy, and restless; and one of these girls always overcrows a timid and
+thoughtful one, and makes her, for the time, seem dim and faded, as does
+rose color when put beside scarlet.
+
+Sally was a born coquette. It was as natural for her to want to flirt
+with every man she saw, as for a kitten to scamper after a pin-ball.
+Does the kitten care a fig for the pin-ball, or the dry leaves, which
+she whisks, and frisks, and boxes, and pats, and races round and round
+after? No; it's nothing but kittenhood; every hair of her fur is alive
+with it. Her sleepy green eyes, when she pretends to be dozing, are full
+of it; and though she looks wise a moment, and seems resolved to be a
+discreet young cat, let but a leaf sway--off she goes again, with a
+frisk and a rap. So, though Sally had scolded and flounced about Moses's
+inattention to Mara in advance, she contrived even in this first
+interview to keep him talking with nobody but herself;--not because she
+wanted to draw him from Mara, or meant to; not because she cared a pin
+for him; but because it was her nature, as a frisky young cat. And Moses
+let himself be drawn, between bantering and contradicting, and jest and
+earnest, at some moments almost to forget that Mara was in the room.
+
+She took her sewing and sat with a pleased smile, sometimes breaking
+into the lively flow of conversation, or eagerly appealed to by both
+parties to settle some rising quarrel.
+
+Once, as they were talking, Moses looked up and saw Mara's head, as a
+stray sunbeam falling upon the golden hair seemed to make a halo around
+her face. Her large eyes were fixed upon him with an expression so
+intense and penetrative, that he felt a sort of wincing uneasiness.
+"What makes you look at me so, Mara?" he said, suddenly.
+
+A bright flush came in her cheek as she answered, "I didn't know I was
+looking. It all seems so strange to me. I am trying to make out who and
+what you are."
+
+"It's not best to look too deep," Moses said, laughing, but with a
+slight shade of uneasiness.
+
+When Sally, late in the afternoon, declared that she must go home, she
+couldn't stay another minute, Moses rose to go with her.
+
+"What are you getting up for?" she said to Moses, as he took his hat.
+
+"To go home with you, to be sure."
+
+"Nobody asked you to," said Sally.
+
+"I'm accustomed to asking myself," said Moses.
+
+"Well, I suppose I must have you along," said Sally. "Father will be
+glad to see you, of course."
+
+"You'll be back to tea, Moses," said Mara, "will you not? Grandfather
+will be home, and want to see you."
+
+"Oh, I shall be right back," said Moses, "I have a little business to
+settle with Captain Kittridge."
+
+But Moses, however, did stay at tea with Mrs. Kittridge, who looked
+graciously at him through the bows of her black horn spectacles, having
+heard her liege lord observe that Moses was a smart chap, and had done
+pretty well in a money way.
+
+How came he to stay? Sally told him every other minute to go; and then
+when he had got fairly out of the door, called him back to tell him that
+there was something she had heard about him. And Moses of course came
+back; wanted to know what it was; and couldn't be told, it was a secret;
+and then he would be ordered off, and reminded that he promised to go
+straight home; and then when he got a little farther off she called
+after him a second time, to tell him that he would be very much
+surprised if he knew how she found it out, etc., etc.,--till at last tea
+being ready, there was no reason why he shouldn't have a cup. And so it
+was sober moonrise before Moses found himself going home.
+
+"Hang that girl!" he said to himself; "don't she know what she's about,
+though?"
+
+There our hero was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was
+about,--had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was
+gone laughed to think how many times she had made him come back.
+
+"Now, confound it all," said Moses, "I care more for our little Mara
+than a dozen of her; and what have I been fooling all this time
+for?--now Mara will think I don't love her."
+
+And, in fact, our young gentleman rather set his heart on the sensation
+he was going to make when he got home. It is flattering, after all, to
+feel one's power over a susceptible nature; and Moses, remembering how
+entirely and devotedly Mara had loved him all through childhood, never
+doubted but he was the sole possessor of uncounted treasure in her
+heart, which he could develop at his leisure and use as he pleased. He
+did not calculate for one force which had grown up in the meanwhile
+between them,--and that was the power of womanhood. He did not know the
+intensity of that kind of pride, which is the very life of the female
+nature, and which is most vivid and vigorous in the most timid and
+retiring.
+
+Our little Mara was tender, self-devoting, humble, and religious, but
+she was woman after all to the tips of her fingers,--quick to feel
+slights, and determined with the intensest determination, that no man
+should wrest from her one of those few humble rights and privileges,
+which Nature allows to woman. Something swelled and trembled in her when
+she felt the confident pressure of that bold arm around her waist,--like
+the instinct of a wild bird to fly. Something in the deep, manly voice,
+the determined, self-confident air, aroused a vague feeling of defiance
+and resistance in her which she could scarcely explain to herself. Was
+he to assume a right to her in this way without even asking? When he
+did not come to tea nor long after, and Mrs. Pennel and her grandfather
+wondered, she laughed, and said gayly,--
+
+"Oh, he knows he'll have time enough to see me. Sally seems more like a
+stranger."
+
+But when Moses came home after moonrise, determined to go and console
+Mara for his absence, he was surprised to hear the sound of a rapid and
+pleasant conversation, in which a masculine and feminine voice were
+intermingled in a lively duet. Coming a little nearer, he saw Mara
+sitting knitting in the doorway, and a very good-looking young man
+seated on a stone at her feet, with his straw hat flung on the ground,
+while he was looking up into her face, as young men often do into pretty
+faces seen by moonlight. Mara rose and introduced Mr. Adams of Boston to
+Mr. Moses Pennel.
+
+Moses measured the young man with his eye as if he could have shot him
+with a good will. And his temper was not at all bettered as he observed
+that he had the easy air of a man of fashion and culture, and learned by
+a few moments of the succeeding conversation, that the acquaintance had
+commenced during Mara's winter visit to Boston.
+
+"I was staying a day or two at Mr. Sewell's," he said, carelessly, "and
+the night was so fine I couldn't resist the temptation to row over."
+
+It was now Moses's turn to listen to a conversation in which he could
+bear little part, it being about persons and places and things
+unfamiliar to him; and though he could give no earthly reason why the
+conversation was not the most proper in the world,--yet he found that it
+made him angry.
+
+In the pauses, Mara inquired, prettily, how he found the Kittridges, and
+reproved him playfully for staying, in despite of his promise to come
+home. Moses answered with an effort to appear easy and playful, that
+there was no reason, it appeared, to hurry on her account, since she
+had been so pleasantly engaged.
+
+"That is true," said Mara, quietly; "but then grandpapa and grandmamma
+expected you, and they have gone to bed, as you know they always do
+after tea."
+
+"They'll keep till morning, I suppose," said Moses, rather gruffly.
+
+"Oh yes; but then as you had been gone two or three months, naturally
+they wanted to see a little of you at first."
+
+The stranger now joined in the conversation, and began talking with
+Moses about his experiences in foreign parts, in a manner which showed a
+man of sense and breeding. Moses had a jealous fear of people of
+breeding,--an apprehension lest they should look down on one whose life
+had been laid out of the course of their conventional ideas; and
+therefore, though he had sufficient ability and vigor of mind to acquit
+himself to advantage in this conversation, it gave him all the while a
+secret uneasiness. After a few moments, he rose up moodily, and saying
+that he was very much fatigued, he went into the house to retire.
+
+Mr. Adams rose to go also, and Moses might have felt in a more Christian
+frame of mind, had he listened to the last words of the conversation
+between him and Mara.
+
+"Do you remain long in Harpswell?" she asked.
+
+"That depends on circumstances," he replied. "If I do, may I be
+permitted to visit you?"
+
+"As a friend--yes," said Mara; "I shall always be happy to see you."
+
+"No more?"
+
+"No more," replied Mara.
+
+"I had hoped," he said, "that you would reconsider."
+
+"It is impossible," said she; and soft voices can pronounce that word,
+_impossible_, in a very fateful and decisive manner.
+
+"Well, God bless you, then, Miss Lincoln," he said, and was gone.
+
+Mara stood in the doorway and saw him loosen his boat from its moorings
+and float off in the moonlight, with a long train of silver sparkles
+behind.
+
+A moment after Moses was looking gloomily over her shoulder.
+
+"Who is that puppy?" he said.
+
+"He is not a puppy, but a very fine young man," said Mara.
+
+"Well, that very fine young man, then?"
+
+"I thought I told you. He is a Mr. Adams of Boston, and a distant
+connection of the Sewells. I met him when I was visiting at Judge
+Sewell's in Boston."
+
+"You seemed to be having a very pleasant time together?"
+
+"We were," said Mara, quietly.
+
+"It's a pity I came home as I did. I'm sorry I interrupted you," said
+Moses, with a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"You didn't interrupt us; he had been here almost two hours."
+
+Now Mara saw plainly enough that Moses was displeased and hurt, and had
+it been in the days of her fourteenth summer, she would have thrown her
+arms around his neck, and said, "Moses, I don't care a fig for that man,
+and I love you better than all the world." But this the young lady of
+eighteen would not do; so she wished him good-night very prettily, and
+pretended not to see anything about it.
+
+Mara was as near being a saint as human dust ever is; but--she was a
+woman saint; and therefore may be excused for a little gentle
+vindictiveness. She was, in a merciful way, rather glad that Moses had
+gone to bed dissatisfied, and rather glad that he did not know what she
+might have told him--quite resolved that he should not know at present.
+Was he to know that she liked nobody so much as him? Not he, unless he
+loved her more than all the world, and said so first. Mara was resolved
+upon that. He might go where he liked--flirt with whom he liked--come
+back as late as he pleased; never would she, by word or look, give him
+reason to think she cared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+DESIRES AND DREAMS
+
+
+Moses passed rather a restless and uneasy night on his return to the
+home-roof which had sheltered his childhood. All his life past, and all
+his life expected, seemed to boil and seethe and ferment in his
+thoughts, and to go round and round in never-ceasing circles before him.
+
+Moses was _par excellence_ proud, ambitious, and willful. These words,
+generally supposed to describe positive vices of the mind, in fact are
+only the overaction of certain very valuable portions of our nature,
+since one can conceive all three to raise a man immensely in the scale
+of moral being, simply by being applied to right objects. He who is too
+proud even to admit a mean thought--who is ambitious only of ideal
+excellence--who has an inflexible will only in the pursuit of truth and
+righteousness--may be a saint and a hero.
+
+But Moses was neither a saint nor a hero, but an undeveloped chaotic
+young man, whose pride made him sensitive and restless; whose ambition
+was fixed on wealth and worldly success; whose willfulness was for the
+most part a blind determination to compass his own points, with the
+leave of Providence or without. There was no God in his estimate of
+life--and a sort of secret unsuspected determination at the bottom of
+his heart that there should be none. He feared religion, from a
+suspicion which he entertained that it might hamper some of his future
+schemes. He did not wish to put himself under its rules, lest he might
+find them in some future time inconveniently strict.
+
+With such determinations and feelings, the Bible--necessarily an
+excessively uninteresting book to him--he never read, and satisfied
+himself with determining in a general way that it was not worth reading,
+and, as was the custom with many young men in America at that period,
+announced himself as a skeptic, and seemed to value himself not a little
+on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of
+young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the
+power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a
+celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to
+honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their
+unbelief as a misfortune.
+
+Not that Moses was, after all, without "the angel in him." He had a good
+deal of the susceptibility to poetic feeling, the power of vague and
+dreamy aspiration, the longing after the good and beautiful, which is
+God's witness in the soul. A noble sentiment in poetry, a fine scene in
+nature, had power to bring tears in his great dark eyes, and he had,
+under the influence of such things, brief inspired moments in which he
+vaguely longed to do, or be, something grand or noble. But this,
+however, was something apart from the real purpose of his life,--a sort
+of voice crying in the wilderness,--to which he gave little heed.
+Practically, he was determined with all his might, to have a good time
+in this life, whatever another might be,--if there were one; and that he
+would do it by the strength of his right arm. Wealth he saw to be the
+lamp of Aladdin, which commanded all other things. And the pursuit of
+wealth was therefore the first step in his programme.
+
+As for plans of the heart and domestic life, Moses was one of that very
+common class who had more desire to be loved than power of loving. His
+cravings and dreams were not for somebody to be devoted to, but for
+somebody who should be devoted to him. And, like most people who
+possess this characteristic, he mistook it for an affectionate
+disposition.
+
+Now the chief treasure of his heart had always been his little sister
+Mara, chiefly from his conviction that he was the one absorbing thought
+and love of her heart. He had never figured life to himself otherwise
+than with Mara at his side, his unquestioning, devoted friend. Of course
+he and his plans, his ways and wants, would always be in the future, as
+they always had been, her sole thought. These sleeping partnerships in
+the interchange of affection, which support one's heart with a basis of
+uncounted wealth, and leave one free to come and go, and buy and sell,
+without exaction or interference, are a convenience certainly, and the
+loss of them in any way is like the sudden breaking of a bank in which
+all one's deposits are laid.
+
+It had never occurred to Moses how or in what capacity he should always
+stand banker to the whole wealth of love that there was in Mara's heart,
+and what provision he should make on his part for returning this
+incalculable debt. But the interview of this evening had raised a new
+thought in his mind. Mara, as he saw that day, was no longer a little
+girl in a pink sun-bonnet. She was a woman,--a little one, it is true,
+but every inch a woman,--and a woman invested with a singular poetic
+charm of appearance, which, more than beauty, has the power of awakening
+feeling in the other sex.
+
+He felt in himself, in the experience of that one day, that there was
+something subtle and veiled about her, which set the imagination at
+work; that the wistful, plaintive expression of her dark eyes, and a
+thousand little shy and tremulous movements of her face, affected him
+more than the most brilliant of Sally Kittridge's sprightly sallies.
+Yes, there would be people falling in love with her fast enough, he
+thought even here, where she is as secluded as a pearl in an
+oyster-shell,--it seems means were found to come after her,--and then
+all the love of her heart, that priceless love, would go to another.
+
+Mara would be absorbed in some one else, would love some one else, as he
+knew she could, with heart and soul and mind and strength. When he
+thought of this, it affected him much as it would if one were turned out
+of a warm, smiling apartment into a bleak December storm. What should he
+do, if that treasure which he had taken most for granted in all his
+valuations of life should suddenly be found to belong to another? Who
+was this fellow that seemed so free to visit her, and what had passed
+between them? Was Mara in love with him, or going to be? There is no
+saying how the consideration of this question enhanced in our hero's
+opinion both her beauty and all her other good qualities.
+
+Such a brave little heart! such a good, clear little head! and such a
+pretty hand and foot! She was always so cheerful, so unselfish, so
+devoted! When had he ever seen her angry, except when she had taken up
+some childish quarrel of his, and fought for him like a little Spartan?
+Then she was pious, too. She was born religious, thought our hero, who,
+in common with many men professing skepticism for their own particular
+part, set a great value on religion in that unknown future person whom
+they are fond of designating in advance as "my wife." Yes, Moses meant
+his wife should be pious, and pray for him, while he did as he pleased.
+
+"Now there's that witch of a Sally Kittridge," he said to himself; "I
+wouldn't have such a girl for a wife. Nothing to her but foam and
+frisk,--no heart more than a bobolink! But isn't she amusing? By George!
+isn't she, though?"
+
+"But," thought Moses, "it's time I settled this matter who is to be my
+wife. I won't marry till I'm rich,--that's flat. My wife isn't to rub
+and grub. So at it I must go to raise the wind. I wonder if old Sewell
+really does know anything about my parents. Miss Emily would have it
+that there was some mystery that he had the key of; but I never could
+get any thing from him. He always put me off in such a smooth way that I
+couldn't tell whether he did or he didn't. But, now, supposing I have
+relatives, family connections, then who knows but what there may be
+property coming to me? That's an idea worth looking after, surely."
+
+There's no saying with what vividness ideas and images go through one's
+wakeful brain when the midnight moon is making an exact shadow of your
+window-sash, with panes of light, on your chamber-floor. How vividly we
+all have loved and hated and planned and hoped and feared and desired
+and dreamed, as we tossed and turned to and fro upon such watchful,
+still nights. In the stillness, the tide upon one side of the Island
+replied to the dash on the other side in unbroken symphony, and Moses
+began to remember all the stories gossips had told him of how he had
+floated ashore there, like a fragment of tropical seaweed borne landward
+by a great gale. He positively wondered at himself that he had never
+thought of it more, and the more he meditated, the more mysterious and
+inexplicable he felt. Then he had heard Miss Roxy once speaking
+something about a bracelet, he was sure he had; but afterwards it was
+hushed up, and no one seemed to know anything about it when he inquired.
+But in those days he was a boy,--he was nobody,--now he was a young man.
+He could go to Mr. Sewell, and demand as his right a fair answer to any
+questions he might ask. If he found, as was quite likely, that there was
+nothing to be known, his mind would be thus far settled,--he should
+trust only to his own resources.
+
+So far as the state of the young man's finances were concerned, it
+would be considered in those simple times and regions an auspicious
+beginning of life. The sum intrusted to him by Captain Kittridge had
+been more than doubled by the liberality of Zephaniah Pennel, and Moses
+had traded upon it in foreign parts with a skill and energy that brought
+a very fair return, and gave him, in the eyes of the shrewd, thrifty
+neighbors, the prestige of a young man who was marked for success in the
+world.
+
+He had already formed an advantageous arrangement with his grandfather
+and Captain Kittridge, by which a ship was to be built, which he should
+command, and thus the old Saturday afternoon dream of their childhood be
+fulfilled. As he thought of it, there arose in his mind a picture of
+Mara, with her golden hair and plaintive eyes and little white hands,
+reigning as a fairy queen in the captain's cabin, with a sort of wish to
+carry her off and make sure that no one else ever should get her from
+him.
+
+But these midnight dreams were all sobered down by the plain
+matter-of-fact beams of the morning sun, and nothing remained of
+immediate definite purpose except the resolve, which came strongly upon
+Moses as he looked across the blue band of Harpswell Bay, that he would
+go that morning and have a talk with Mr. Sewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+MISS EMILY
+
+
+Miss Roxy Toothache was seated by the window of the little keeping-room
+where Miss Emily Sewell sat on every-day occasions. Around her were the
+insignia of her power and sway. Her big tailor's goose was heating
+between Miss Emily's bright brass fire-irons; her great pin-cushion was
+by her side, bristling with pins of all sizes, and with broken needles
+thriftily made into pins by heads of red sealing-wax, and with needles
+threaded with all varieties of cotton, silk, and linen; her scissors
+hung martially by her side; her black bombazette work-apron was on; and
+the expression of her iron features was that of deep responsibility, for
+she was making the minister a new Sunday vest!
+
+The good soul looks not a day older than when we left her, ten years
+ago. Like the gray, weather-beaten rocks of her native shore, her strong
+features had an unchangeable identity beyond that of anything fair and
+blooming. There was of course no chance for a gray streak in her stiff,
+uncompromising mohair frisette, which still pushed up her cap-border
+bristlingly as of old, and the clear, high winds and bracing atmosphere
+of that rough coast kept her in an admirable state of preservation.
+
+Miss Emily had now and then a white hair among her soft, pretty brown
+ones, and looked a little thinner; but the round, bright spot of bloom
+on each cheek was there just as of yore,--and just as of yore she was
+thinking of her brother, and filling her little head with endless
+calculations to keep him looking fresh and respectable, and his
+housekeeping comfortable and easy, on very limited means. She was now
+officiously and anxiously attending on Miss Roxy, who was in the midst
+of the responsible operation which should conduce greatly to this end.
+
+"Does that twist work well?" she said, nervously; "because I believe
+I've got some other upstairs in my India box."
+
+Miss Roxy surveyed the article; bit a fragment off, as if she meant to
+taste it; threaded a needle and made a few cabalistical stitches; and
+then pronounced, _ex cathedra_, that it would do. Miss Emily gave a sigh
+of relief. After buttons and tapes and linings, and various other items
+had been also discussed, the conversation began to flow into general
+channels.
+
+"Did you know Moses Pennel had got home from Umbagog?" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"Yes. Captain Kittridge told brother so this morning. I wonder he
+doesn't call over to see us."
+
+"Your brother took a sight of interest in that boy," said Miss Roxy. "I
+was saying to Ruey, this morning, that if Moses Pennel ever did turn out
+well, he ought to have a large share of the credit."
+
+"Brother always did feel a peculiar interest in him; it was such a
+strange providence that seemed to cast in his lot among us," said Miss
+Emily.
+
+"As sure as you live, there he is a-coming to the front door," said Miss
+Roxy.
+
+"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "and here I have on this old faded chintz.
+Just so sure as one puts on any old rag, and thinks nobody will come,
+company is sure to call."
+
+"Law, I'm sure I shouldn't think of calling him company," said Miss
+Roxy.
+
+A rap at the door put an end to this conversation, and very soon Miss
+Emily introduced our hero into the little sitting-room, in the midst of
+a perfect stream of apologies relating to her old dress and the
+littered condition of the sitting-room, for Miss Emily held to the
+doctrine of those who consider any sign of human occupation and
+existence in a room as being disorder--however reputable and respectable
+be the cause of it.
+
+"Well, really," she said, after she had seated Moses by the fire, "how
+time does pass, to be sure; it don't seem more than yesterday since you
+used to come with your Latin books, and now here you are a grown man! I
+must run and tell Mr. Sewell. He will be so glad to see you."
+
+Mr. Sewell soon appeared from his study in morning-gown and slippers,
+and seemed heartily responsive to the proposition which Moses soon made
+to him to have some private conversation with him in his study.
+
+"I declare," said Miss Emily, as soon as the study-door had closed upon
+her brother and Moses, "what a handsome young man he is! and what a
+beautiful way he has with him!--so deferential! A great many young men
+nowadays seem to think nothing of their minister; but he comes to seek
+advice. Very proper. It isn't every young man that appreciates the
+privilege of having elderly friends. I declare, what a beautiful couple
+he and Mara Lincoln would make! Don't Providence seem in a peculiar way
+to have designed them for each other?"
+
+"I hope not," said Miss Roxy, with her grimmest expression.
+
+"You don't! Why not?"
+
+"I never liked him," said Miss Roxy, who had possessed herself of her
+great heavy goose, and was now thumping and squeaking it emphatically on
+the press-board. "She's a thousand times too good for Moses
+Pennel,"--thump. "I ne'er had no faith in him,"--thump. "He's dreffle
+unstiddy,"--thump. "He's handsome, but he knows it,"--thump. "He won't
+never love nobody so much as he does himself,"--thump, _fortissimo con
+spirito_.
+
+"Well, really now, Miss Roxy, you mustn't always remember the sins of
+his youth. Boys must sow their wild oats. He was unsteady for a while,
+but now everybody says he's doing well; and as to his knowing he's
+handsome, and all that, I don't see as he does. See how polite and
+deferential he was to us all, this morning; and he spoke so handsomely
+to you."
+
+"I don't want none of his politeness," said Miss Roxy, inexorably; "and
+as to Mara Lincoln, she might have better than him any day. Miss Badger
+was a-tellin' Captain Brown, Sunday noon, that she was very much admired
+in Boston."
+
+"So she was," said Miss Emily, bridling. "I never reveal secrets, or I
+might tell something,--but there has been a young man,--but I promised
+not to speak of it, and I sha'n't."
+
+"If you mean Mr. Adams," said Miss Roxy, "you needn't worry about
+keepin' that secret, 'cause that ar was all talked over atween meetin's
+a-Sunday noon; for Mis' Kittridge she used to know his aunt Jerushy, her
+that married Solomon Peters, and Mis' Captain Badger she says that he
+has a very good property, and is a professor in the Old South church in
+Boston."
+
+"Dear me," said Miss Emily, "how things do get about!"
+
+"People will talk, there ain't no use trying to help it," said Miss
+Roxy; "but it's strongly borne in on my mind that it ain't Adams, nor 't
+ain't Moses Pennel that's to marry her. I've had peculiar exercises of
+mind about that ar child,--well I have;" and Miss Roxy pulled a large
+spotted bandanna handkerchief out of her pocket, and blew her nose like
+a trumpet, and then wiped the withered corners of her eyes, which were
+humid as some old Orr's Island rock wet with sea-spray.
+
+Miss Emily had a secret love of romancing. It was one of the
+recreations of her quiet, monotonous life to build air-castles, which
+she furnished regardless of expense, and in which she set up at
+housekeeping her various friends and acquaintances, and she had always
+been bent on weaving a romance on the history of Mara and Moses Pennel.
+The good little body had done her best to second Mr. Sewell's attempts
+toward the education of the children. It was little busy Miss Emily who
+persuaded honest Zephaniah and Mary Pennel that talents such as Mara's
+ought to be cultivated, and that ended in sending her to Miss Plucher's
+school in Portland. There her artistic faculties were trained into
+creating funereal monuments out of chenille embroidery, fully equal to
+Miss Emily's own; also to painting landscapes, in which the ground and
+all the trees were one unvarying tint of blue-green; and also to
+creating flowers of a new and particular construction, which, as Sally
+Kittridge remarked, were pretty, but did not look like anything in
+heaven or earth. Mara had obediently and patiently done all these
+things; and solaced herself with copying flowers and birds and
+landscapes as near as possible like nature, as a recreation from these
+more dignified toils.
+
+Miss Emily also had been the means of getting Mara invited to Boston,
+where she saw some really polished society, and gained as much knowledge
+of the forms of artificial life as a nature so wholly and strongly
+individual could obtain. So little Miss Emily regarded Mara as her
+godchild, and was intent on finishing her up into a romance in real
+life, of which a handsome young man, who had been washed ashore in a
+shipwreck, should be the hero.
+
+What would she have said could she have heard the conversation that was
+passing in her brother's study? Little could she dream that the mystery,
+about which she had timidly nibbled for years, was now about to be
+unrolled;--but it was even so. But, upon what she does not see, good
+reader, you and I, following invisibly on tiptoe, will make our
+observations.
+
+When Moses was first ushered into Mr. Sewell's study, and found himself
+quite alone, with the door shut, his heart beat so that he fancied the
+good man must hear it. He knew well what he wanted and meant to say, but
+he found in himself all that shrinking and nervous repugnance which
+always attends the proposing of any decisive question.
+
+"I thought it proper," he began, "that I should call and express my
+sense of obligation to you, sir, for all the kindness you showed me when
+a boy. I'm afraid in those thoughtless days I did not seem to appreciate
+it so much as I do now."
+
+As Moses said this, the color rose in his cheeks, and his fine eyes grew
+moist with a sort of subdued feeling that made his face for the moment
+more than usually beautiful.
+
+Mr. Sewell looked at him with an expression of peculiar interest, which
+seemed to have something almost of pain in it, and answered with a
+degree of feeling more than he commonly showed,--
+
+"It has been a pleasure to me to do anything I could for you, my young
+friend. I only wish it could have been more. I congratulate you on your
+present prospects in life. You have perfect health; you have energy and
+enterprise; you are courageous and self-reliant, and, I trust, your
+habits are pure and virtuous. It only remains that you add to all this
+that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom."
+
+Moses bowed his head respectfully, and then sat silent a moment, as if
+he were looking through some cloud where he vainly tried to discover
+objects.
+
+Mr. Sewell continued, gravely,--
+
+"You have the greatest reason to bless the kind Providence which has
+cast your lot in such a family, in such a community. I have had some
+means in my youth of comparing other parts of the country with our New
+England, and it is my opinion that a young man could not ask a better
+introduction into life than the wholesome nurture of a Christian family
+in our favored land."
+
+"Mr. Sewell," said Moses, raising his head, and suddenly looking him
+straight in the eyes, "do you know anything of my family?"
+
+The question was so point-blank and sudden, that for a moment Mr. Sewell
+made a sort of motion as if he dodged a pistol-shot, and then his face
+assumed an expression of grave thoughtfulness, while Moses drew a long
+breath. It was out,--the question had been asked.
+
+"My son," replied Mr. Sewell, "it has always been my intention, when you
+had arrived at years of discretion, to make you acquainted with all that
+I know or suspect in regard to your life. I trust that when I tell you
+all I do know, you will see that I have acted for the best in the
+matter. It has been my study and my prayer to do so."
+
+Mr. Sewell then rose, and unlocking the cabinet, of which we have before
+made mention, in his apartment, drew forth a very yellow and time-worn
+package of papers, which he untied. From these he selected one which
+enveloped an old-fashioned miniature case.
+
+"I am going to show you," he said, "what only you and my God know that I
+possess. I have not looked at it now for ten years, but I have no doubt
+that it is the likeness of your mother."
+
+Moses took it in his hand, and for a few moments there came a mist over
+his eyes,--he could not see clearly. He walked to the window as if
+needing a clearer light.
+
+What he saw was a painting of a beautiful young girl, with large
+melancholy eyes, and a clustering abundance of black, curly hair. The
+face was of a beautiful, clear oval, with that warm brunette tint in
+which the Italian painters delight. The black eyebrows were strongly
+and clearly defined, and there was in the face an indescribable
+expression of childish innocence and shyness, mingled with a kind of
+confiding frankness, that gave the picture the charm which sometimes
+fixes itself in faces for which we involuntarily make a history. She was
+represented as simply attired in a white muslin, made low in the neck,
+and the hands and arms were singularly beautiful. The picture, as Moses
+looked at it, seemed to stand smiling at him with a childish grace,--a
+tender, ignorant innocence which affected him deeply.
+
+"My young friend," said Mr. Sewell, "I have written all that I know of
+the original of this picture, and the reasons I have for thinking her
+your mother.
+
+"You will find it all in this paper, which, if I had been providentially
+removed, was to have been given you in your twenty-first year. You will
+see in the delicate nature of the narrative that it could not properly
+have been imparted to you till you had arrived at years of
+understanding. I trust when you know all that you will be satisfied with
+the course I have pursued. You will read it at your leisure, and after
+reading I shall be happy to see you again."
+
+Moses took the package, and after exchanging salutations with Mr.
+Sewell, hastily left the house and sought his boat.
+
+When one has suddenly come into possession of a letter or paper in which
+is known to be hidden the solution of some long-pondered secret, of the
+decision of fate with regard to some long-cherished desire, who has not
+been conscious of a sort of pain,--an unwillingness at once to know what
+is therein? We turn the letter again and again, we lay it by and return
+to it, and defer from moment to moment the opening of it. So Moses did
+not sit down in the first retired spot to ponder the paper. He put it
+in the breast pocket of his coat, and then, taking up his oars, rowed
+across the bay. He did not land at the house, but passed around the
+south point of the Island, and rowed up the other side to seek a
+solitary retreat in the rocks, which had always been a favorite with him
+in his early days.
+
+The shores of the Island, as we have said, are a precipitous wall of
+rock, whose long, ribbed ledges extend far out into the sea. At high
+tide these ledges are covered with the smooth blue sea quite up to the
+precipitous shore. There was a place, however, where the rocky shore
+shelved over, forming between two ledges a sort of grotto, whose smooth
+floor of shells and many-colored pebbles was never wet by the rising
+tide. It had been the delight of Moses when a boy, to come here and
+watch the gradual rise of the tide till the grotto was entirely cut off
+from all approach, and then to look out in a sort of hermit-like
+security over the open ocean that stretched before him. Many an hour he
+had sat there and dreamed of all the possible fortunes that might be
+found for him when he should launch away into that blue smiling
+futurity.
+
+It was now about half-tide, and Moses left his boat and made his way
+over the ledge of rocks toward his retreat. They were all shaggy and
+slippery with yellow seaweeds, with here and there among them wide
+crystal pools, where purple and lilac and green mosses unfolded their
+delicate threads, and thousands of curious little shell-fish were
+tranquilly pursuing their quiet life. The rocks where the pellucid water
+lay were in some places crusted with barnacles, which were opening and
+shutting the little white scaly doors of their tiny houses, and drawing
+in and out those delicate pink plumes which seem to be their nerves of
+enjoyment. Moses and Mara had rambled and played here many hours of
+their childhood, amusing themselves with catching crabs and young
+lobsters and various little fish for these rocky aquariums, and then
+studying at their leisure their various ways. Now he had come hither a
+man, to learn the secret of his life.
+
+Moses stretched himself down on the clean pebbly shore of the grotto,
+and drew forth Mr. Sewell's letter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+DOLORES
+
+
+Mr. Sewell's letter ran as follows:--
+
+MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,--It has always been my intention when you arrived
+at years of maturity to acquaint you with some circumstances which have
+given me reason to conjecture your true parentage, and to let you know
+what steps I have taken to satisfy my own mind in relation to these
+conjectures. In order to do this, it will be necessary for me to go back
+to the earlier years of my life, and give you the history of some
+incidents which are known to none of my most intimate friends. I trust I
+may rely on your honor that they will ever remain as secrets with you.
+
+I graduated from Harvard University in ----. At the time I was suffering
+somewhat from an affection of the lungs, which occasioned great alarm to
+my mother, many of whose family had died of consumption. In order to
+allay her uneasiness, and also for the purpose of raising funds for the
+pursuit of my professional studies, I accepted a position as tutor in
+the family of a wealthy gentleman at St. Augustine, in Florida.
+
+I cannot do justice to myself,--to the motives which actuated me in the
+events which took place in this family, without speaking with the most
+undisguised freedom of the character of all the parties with whom I was
+connected.
+
+Don Jose Mendoza was a Spanish gentleman of large property, who had
+emigrated from the Spanish West Indies to Florida, bringing with him an
+only daughter, who had been left an orphan by the death of her mother
+at a very early age. He brought to this country a large number of
+slaves;--and shortly after his arrival, married an American lady: a
+widow with three children. By her he had four other children. And thus
+it will appear that the family was made up of such a variety of elements
+as only the most judicious care could harmonize. But the character of
+the father and mother was such that judicious care was a thing not to be
+expected of either.
+
+Don Jose was extremely ignorant and proud, and had lived a life of the
+grossest dissipation. Habits of absolute authority in the midst of a
+community of a very low moral standard had produced in him all the worst
+vices of despots. He was cruel, overbearing, and dreadfully passionate.
+His wife was a woman who had pretensions to beauty, and at times could
+make herself agreeable, and even fascinating, but she was possessed of a
+temper quite as violent and ungoverned as his own.
+
+Imagine now two classes of slaves, the one belonging to the mistress,
+and the other brought into the country by the master, and each animated
+by a party spirit and jealousy;--imagine children of different
+marriages, inheriting from their parents violent tempers and stubborn
+wills, flattered and fawned on by slaves, and alternately petted or
+stormed at, now by this parent and now by that, and you will have some
+idea of the task which I undertook in being tutor in this family.
+
+I was young and fearless in those days, as you are now, and the
+difficulties of the position, instead of exciting apprehension, only
+awakened the spirit of enterprise and adventure.
+
+The whole arrangements of the household, to me fresh from the simplicity
+and order of New England, had a singular and wild sort of novelty which
+was attractive rather than otherwise. I was well recommended in the
+family by an influential and wealthy gentleman of Boston, who
+represented my family, as indeed it was, as among the oldest and most
+respectable of Boston, and spoke in such terms of me, personally, as I
+should not have ventured to use in relation to myself. When I arrived, I
+found that two or three tutors, who had endeavored to bear rule in this
+tempestuous family, had thrown up the command after a short trial, and
+that the parents felt some little apprehension of not being able to
+secure the services of another,--a circumstance which I did not fail to
+improve in making my preliminary arrangements. I assumed an air of grave
+hauteur, was very exacting in all my requisitions and stipulations, and
+would give no promise of doing more than to give the situation a
+temporary trial. I put on an air of supreme indifference as to my
+continuance, and acted in fact rather on the assumption that I should
+confer a favor by remaining.
+
+In this way I succeeded in obtaining at the outset a position of more
+respect and deference than had been enjoyed by any of my predecessors. I
+had a fine apartment, a servant exclusively devoted to me, a horse for
+riding, and saw myself treated among the servants as a person of
+consideration and distinction.
+
+Don Jose and his wife both had in fact a very strong desire to retain my
+services, when after the trial of a week or two, it was found that I
+really could make their discordant and turbulent children to some extent
+obedient and studious during certain portions of the day; and in fact I
+soon acquired in the whole family that ascendancy which a well-bred
+person who respects himself, and can keep his temper, must have over
+passionate and undisciplined natures.
+
+I became the receptacle of the complaints of all, and a sort of
+confidential adviser. Don Jose imparted to me with more frankness than
+good taste his chagrins with regard to his wife's indolence,
+ill-temper, and bad management, and his wife in turn omitted no
+opportunity to vent complaints against her husband for similar reasons.
+I endeavored, to the best of my ability, to act a friendly part by both.
+It never was in my nature to see anything that needed to be done without
+trying to do it, and it was impossible to work at all without becoming
+so interested in my work as to do far more than I had agreed to do. I
+assisted Don Jose about many of his affairs; brought his neglected
+accounts into order; and suggested from time to time arrangements which
+relieved the difficulties which had been brought on by disorder and
+neglect. In fact, I became, as he said, quite a necessary of life to
+him.
+
+In regard to the children, I had a more difficult task. The children of
+Don Jose by his present wife had been systematically stimulated by the
+negroes into a chronic habit of dislike and jealousy toward her children
+by a former husband. On the slightest pretext, they were constantly
+running to their father with complaints; and as the mother warmly
+espoused the cause of her first children, criminations and
+recriminations often convulsed the whole family.
+
+In ill-regulated families in that region, the care of the children is
+from the first in the hands of half-barbarized negroes, whose power of
+moulding and assimilating childish minds is peculiar, so that the
+teacher has to contend constantly with a savage element in the children
+which seems to have been drawn in with the mother's milk. It is, in a
+modified way, something the same result as if the child had formed its
+manners in Dahomey or on the coast of Guinea. In the fierce quarrels
+which were carried on between the children of this family, I had
+frequent occasion to observe this strange, savage element, which
+sometimes led to expressions and actions which would seem incredible in
+civilized society.
+
+The three children by Madame Mendoza's former husband were two girls of
+sixteen and eighteen and a boy of fourteen. The four children of the
+second marriage consisted of three boys and a daughter,--the eldest
+being not more than thirteen.
+
+The natural capacity of all the children was good, although, from
+self-will and indolence, they had grown up in a degree of ignorance
+which could not have been tolerated except in a family living an
+isolated plantation life in the midst of barbarized dependents. Savage
+and untaught and passionate as they were, the work of teaching them was
+not without its interest to me. A power of control was with me a natural
+gift; and then that command of temper which is the common attribute of
+well-trained persons in the Northern states, was something so singular
+in this family as to invest its possessor with a certain awe; and my
+calm, energetic voice, and determined manner, often acted as a charm on
+their stormy natures.
+
+But there was one member of the family of whom I have not yet
+spoken,--and yet all this letter is about her,--the daughter of Don Jose
+by his first marriage. Poor Dolores! poor child! God grant she may have
+entered into his rest!
+
+I need not describe her. You have seen her picture. And in the wild,
+rude, discordant family, she always reminded me of the words, "a lily
+among thorns." She was in her nature unlike all the rest, and, I may
+say, unlike any one I ever saw. She seemed to live a lonely kind of life
+in this disorderly household, often marked out as the object of the
+spites and petty tyrannies of both parties. She was regarded with bitter
+hatred and jealousy by Madame Mendoza, who was sure to visit her with
+unsparing bitterness and cruelty after the occasional demonstrations of
+fondness she received from her father. Her exquisite beauty and the
+gentle softness of her manners made her such a contrast to her sisters
+as constantly excited their ill-will. Unlike them all, she was
+fastidiously neat in her personal habits, and orderly in all the little
+arrangements of life.
+
+She seemed to me in this family to be like some shy, beautiful pet
+creature in the hands of rude, unappreciated owners, hunted from quarter
+to quarter, and finding rest only by stealth. Yet she seemed to have no
+perception of the harshness and cruelty with which she was treated. She
+had grown up with it; it was the habit of her life to study peaceable
+methods of averting or avoiding the various inconveniences and
+annoyances of her lot, and secure to herself a little quiet.
+
+It not unfrequently happened, amid the cabals and storms which shook the
+family, that one party or the other took up and patronized Dolores for a
+while, more, as it would appear, out of hatred for the other than any
+real love to her. At such times it was really affecting to see with what
+warmth the poor child would receive these equivocal demonstrations of
+good-will--the nearest approaches to affection which she had ever
+known--and the bitterness with which she would mourn when they were
+capriciously withdrawn again. With a heart full of affection, she
+reminded me of some delicate, climbing plant trying vainly to ascend the
+slippery side of an inhospitable wall, and throwing its neglected
+tendrils around every weed for support.
+
+Her only fast, unfailing friend was her old negro nurse, or Mammy, as
+the children called her. This old creature, with the cunning and
+subtlety which had grown up from years of servitude, watched and waited
+upon the interests of her little mistress, and contrived to carry many
+points for her in the confused household. Her young mistress was her one
+thought and purpose in living. She would have gone through fire and
+water to serve her; and this faithful, devoted heart, blind and
+ignorant though it were, was the only unfailing refuge and solace of the
+poor hunted child.
+
+Dolores, of course, became my pupil among the rest. Like the others, she
+had suffered by the neglect and interruptions in the education of the
+family, but she was intelligent and docile, and learned with a
+surprising rapidity. It was not astonishing that she should soon have
+formed an enthusiastic attachment to me, as I was the only intelligent,
+cultivated person she had ever seen, and treated her with unvarying
+consideration and delicacy. The poor thing had been so accustomed to
+barbarous words and manners that simple politeness and the usages of
+good society seemed to her cause for the most boundless gratitude.
+
+It is due to myself, in view of what follows, to say that I was from the
+first aware of the very obvious danger which lay in my path in finding
+myself brought into close and daily relations with a young creature so
+confiding, so attractive, and so singularly circumstanced. I knew that
+it would be in the highest degree dishonorable to make the slightest
+advances toward gaining from her that kind of affection which might
+interfere with her happiness in such future relations as her father
+might arrange for her. According to the European fashion, I know that
+Dolores was in her father's hands, to be disposed of for life according
+to his pleasure, as absolutely as if she had been one of his slaves. I
+had every reason to think that his plans on this subject were matured,
+and only waited for a little more teaching and training on my part, and
+her fuller development in womanhood, to be announced to her.
+
+In looking back over the past, therefore, I have not to reproach myself
+with any dishonest and dishonorable breach of trust; for I was from the
+first upon my guard, and so much so that even the jealousy my other
+scholars never accused me of partiality. I was not in the habit of
+giving very warm praise, and was in my general management anxious
+rather to be just than conciliatory, knowing that with the kind of
+spirits I had to deal with, firmness and justice went farther than
+anything else. If I approved Dolores oftener than the rest, it was seen
+to be because she never failed in a duty; if I spent more time with her
+lessons, it was because her enthusiasm for study led her to learn longer
+ones and study more things; but I am sure there was never a look or a
+word toward her that went beyond the proprieties of my position.
+
+But yet I could not so well guard my heart. I was young and full of
+feeling. She was beautiful; and more than that, there was something in
+her Spanish nature at once so warm and simple, so artless and yet so
+unconsciously poetic, that her presence was a continual charm. How well
+I remember her now,--all her little ways,--the movements of her pretty
+little hands,--the expression of her changeful face as she recited to
+me,--the grave, rapt earnestness with which she listened to all my
+instructions!
+
+I had not been with her many weeks before I felt conscious that it was
+her presence that charmed the whole house, and made the otherwise
+perplexing and distasteful details of my situation agreeable. I had a
+dim perception that this growing passion was a dangerous thing for
+myself; but was it a reason, I asked, why I should relinquish a position
+in which I felt that I was useful, and when I could do for this lovely
+child what no one else could do? I call her a child,--she always
+impressed me as such,--though she was in her sixteenth year and had the
+early womanly development of Southern climates. She seemed to me like
+something frail and precious, needing to be guarded and cared for; and
+when reason told me that I risked my own happiness in holding my
+position, love argued on the other hand that I was her only friend, and
+that I should be willing to risk something myself for the sake of
+protecting and shielding her. For there was no doubt that my presence in
+the family was a restraint upon the passions which formerly vented
+themselves so recklessly on her, and established a sort of order in
+which she found more peace than she had ever known before.
+
+For a long time in our intercourse I was in the habit of looking on
+myself as the only party in danger. It did not occur to me that this
+heart, so beautiful and so lonely, might, in the want of all natural and
+appropriate objects of attachment, fasten itself on me unsolicited, from
+the mere necessity of loving. She seemed to me so much too beautiful,
+too perfect, to belong to a lot in life like mine, that I could not
+suppose it possible this could occur without the most blameworthy
+solicitation on my part; and it is the saddest and most affecting proof
+to me how this poor child had been starved for sympathy and love, that
+she should have repaid such cold services as mine with such an entire
+devotion. At first her feelings were expressed openly toward me, with
+the dutiful air of a good child. She placed flowers on my desk in the
+morning, and made quaint little nosegays in the Spanish fashion, which
+she gave me, and busied her leisure with various ingenious little
+knick-knacks of fancy work, which she brought me. I treated them all as
+the offerings of a child while with her, but I kept them sacredly in my
+own room. To tell the truth, I have some of the poor little things now.
+
+But after a while I could not help seeing how she loved me; and then I
+felt as if I ought to go; but how could I? The pain to myself I could
+have borne; but how could I leave her to all the misery of her bleak,
+ungenial position? She, poor thing, was so unconscious of what I
+knew,--for I was made clear-sighted by love. I tried the more strictly
+to keep to the path I had marked out for myself, but I fear I did not
+always do it; in fact, many things seemed to conspire to throw us
+together. The sisters, who were sometimes invited out to visit on
+neighboring estates, were glad enough to dispense with the presence and
+attractions of Dolores, and so she was frequently left at home to study
+with me in their absence. As to Don Jose, although he always treated me
+with civility, yet he had such an ingrained and deep-rooted idea of his
+own superiority of position, that I suppose he would as soon have
+imagined the possibility of his daughter's falling in love with one of
+his horses. I was a great convenience to him. I had a knack of governing
+and carrying points in his family that it had always troubled and
+fatigued him to endeavor to arrange,--and that was all. So that my
+intercourse with Dolores was as free and unwatched, and gave me as many
+opportunities of enjoying her undisturbed society, as heart could
+desire.
+
+At last came the crisis, however. After breakfast one morning, Don Jose
+called Dolores into his library and announced to her that he had
+concluded for her a treaty of marriage, and expected her husband to
+arrive in a few days. He expected that this news would be received by
+her with the glee with which a young girl hears of a new dress or of a
+ball-ticket, and was quite confounded at the grave and mournful silence
+in which she received it. She said no word, made no opposition, but went
+out from the room and shut herself up in her own apartment, and spent
+the day in tears and sobs.
+
+Don Jose, who had rather a greater regard for Dolores than for any
+creature living, and who had confidently expected to give great delight
+by the news he had imparted, was quite confounded by this turn of
+things. If there had been one word of either expostulation or argument,
+he would have blazed and stormed in a fury of passion; but as it was,
+this broken-hearted submission, though vexatious, was perplexing. He
+sent for me, and opened his mind, and begged me to talk with Dolores
+and show her the advantages of the alliance, which the poor foolish
+child, he said, did not seem to comprehend. The man was immensely rich,
+and had a splendid estate in Cuba. It was a most desirable thing.
+
+I ventured to inquire whether his person and manners were such as would
+be pleasing to a young girl, and could gather only that he was a man of
+about fifty, who had been most of his life in the military service, and
+was now desirous of making an establishment for the repose of his latter
+days, at the head of which he would place a handsome and tractable
+woman, and do well by her.
+
+I represented that it would perhaps be safer to say no more on the
+subject until Dolores had seen him, and to this he agreed. Madame
+Mendoza was very zealous in the affair, for the sake of getting clear of
+the presence of Dolores in the family, and her sisters laughed at her
+for her dejected appearance. They only wished, they said, that so much
+luck might happen to them. For myself, I endeavored to take as little
+notice as possible of the affair, though what I felt may be conjectured.
+I knew,--I was perfectly certain,--that Dolores loved me as I loved her.
+I knew that she had one of those simple and unworldly natures which
+wealth and splendor could not satisfy, and whose life would lie entirely
+in her affections. Sometimes I violently debated with myself whether
+honor required me to sacrifice her happiness as well as my own, and I
+felt the strongest temptation to ask her to be my wife and fly with me
+to the Northern states, where I did not doubt my ability to make for her
+a humble and happy home.
+
+But the sense of honor is often stronger than all reasoning, and I felt
+that such a course would be the betrayal of a trust; and I determined at
+least to command myself till I should see the character of the man who
+was destined to be her husband.
+
+Meanwhile the whole manner of Dolores was changed. She maintained a
+stony, gloomy silence, performed all her duties in a listless way, and
+occasionally, when I commented on anything in her lessons or exercises,
+would break into little flashes of petulance, most strange and unnatural
+in her. Sometimes I could feel that she was looking at me earnestly, but
+if I turned my eyes toward her, hers were instantly averted; but there
+was in her eyes a peculiar expression at times, such as I have seen in
+the eye of a hunted animal when it turned at bay,--a sort of desperate
+resistance,--which, taken in connection with her fragile form and lovely
+face, produced a mournful impression.
+
+One morning I found Dolores sitting alone in the schoolroom, leaning her
+head on her arms. She had on her wrist a bracelet of peculiar
+workmanship, which she always wore,--the bracelet which was afterwards
+the means of confirming her identity. She sat thus some moments in
+silence, and then she raised her head and began turning this bracelet
+round and round upon her arm, while she looked fixedly before her. At
+last she spoke abruptly, and said,--
+
+"Did I ever tell you that this was _my mother's_ hair? It is my mother's
+hair,--and she was the only one that ever loved me; except poor old
+Mammy, nobody else loves me,--nobody ever will."
+
+"My dear Miss Dolores," I began.
+
+"Don't call me dear," she said; "you don't care for me,--nobody
+does,--papa doesn't, and I always loved him; everybody in the house
+wants to get rid of me, whether I like to go or not. I have always tried
+to be good and do all you wanted, and I should think _you_ might care
+for me a little, but you don't."
+
+"Dolores," I said, "I do care for you more than I do for any one in the
+world; I love you more than my own soul."
+
+These were the very words I never meant to say, but somehow they seemed
+to utter themselves against my will. She looked at me for a moment as if
+she could not believe her hearing, and then the blood flushed her face,
+and she laid her head down on her arms.
+
+At this moment Madame Mendoza and the other girls came into the room in
+a clamor of admiration about a diamond bracelet which had just arrived
+as a present from her future husband. It was a splendid thing, and had
+for its clasp his miniature, surrounded by the largest brilliants.
+
+The enthusiasm of the party even at this moment could not say anything
+in favor of the beauty of this miniature, which, though painted on
+ivory, gave the impression of a coarse-featured man, with a scar across
+one eye.
+
+"No matter for the beauty," said one of the girls, "so long as it is set
+with such diamonds."
+
+"Come, Dolores," said another, giving her the present, "pull off that
+old hair bracelet, and try this on."
+
+Dolores threw the diamond bracelet from her with a vehemence so unlike
+her gentle self as to startle every one.
+
+"I shall not take off my mother's bracelet for a gift from a man I never
+knew," she said. "I hate diamonds. I wish those who like such things
+might have them."
+
+"Was ever anything so odd?" said Madame Mendoza.
+
+"Dolores always was odd," said another of the girls; "nobody ever could
+tell what she would like."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+HIDDEN THINGS
+
+
+The next day Senor Don Guzman de Cardona arrived, and the whole house
+was in a commotion of excitement. There was to be no school, and
+everything was bustle and confusion. I passed my time in my own room in
+reflecting severely upon myself for the imprudent words by which I had
+thrown one more difficulty in the way of this poor harassed child.
+
+Dolores this day seemed perfectly passive in the hands of her mother and
+sisters, who appeared disposed to show her great attention. She allowed
+them to array her in her most becoming dress, and made no objection to
+anything except removing the bracelet from her arm. "Nobody's gifts
+should take the place of her mother's," she said, and they were obliged
+to be content with her wearing of the diamond bracelet on the other arm.
+
+Don Guzman was a large, plethoric man, with coarse features and heavy
+gait. Besides the scar I have spoken of, his face was adorned here and
+there with pimples, which were not set down in the miniature. In the
+course of the first hour's study, I saw him to be a man of much the same
+stamp as Dolores's father--sensual, tyrannical, passionate. He seemed in
+his own way to be much struck with the beauty of his intended wife, and
+was not wanting in efforts to please her. All that I could see in her
+was the settled, passive paleness of despair. She played, sang,
+exhibited her embroidery and painting, at the command of Madame Mendoza,
+with the air of an automaton; and Don Guzman remarked to her father on
+the passive obedience as a proper and hopeful trait. Once only when he,
+in presenting her a flower, took the liberty of kissing her cheek, did I
+observe the flashing of her eye and a movement of disgust and
+impatience, that she seemed scarcely able to restrain.
+
+The marriage was announced to take place the next week, and a holiday
+was declared through the house. Nothing was talked of or discussed but
+the _corbeille de mariage_ which the bridegroom had brought--the
+dresses, laces, sets of jewels, and cashmere shawls. Dolores never had
+been treated with such attention by the family in her life. She rose
+immeasurably in the eyes of all as the future possessor of such wealth
+and such an establishment as awaited her. Madame Mendoza had visions of
+future visits in Cuba rising before her mind, and overwhelmed her
+daughter-in-law with flatteries and caresses, which she received in the
+same passive silence as she did everything else.
+
+For my own part, I tried to keep entirely by myself. I remained in my
+room reading, and took my daily rides, accompanied by my servant--seeing
+Dolores only at mealtimes, when I scarcely ventured to look at her. One
+night, however, as I was walking through a lonely part of the garden,
+Dolores suddenly stepped out from the shrubbery and stood before me. It
+was bright moonlight, by which her face and person were distinctly
+shown. How well I remember her as she looked then! She was dressed in
+white muslin, as she was fond of being, but it had been torn and
+disordered by the haste with which she had come through the shrubbery.
+Her face was fearfully pale, and her great, dark eyes had an unnatural
+brightness. She laid hold on my arm.
+
+"Look here," she said, "I saw you and came down to speak with you."
+
+She panted and trembled, so that for some moments she could not speak
+another word. "I want to ask you," she gasped, after a pause, "whether I
+heard you right? Did you say"--
+
+"Yes, Dolores, you did. I did say what I had no right to say, like a
+dishonorable man."
+
+"But is it true? Are you sure it is true?" she said, scarcely seeming to
+hear my words.
+
+"God knows it is," said I despairingly.
+
+"Then why don't you save me? Why do you let them sell me to this
+dreadful man? He don't love me--he never will. Can't you take me away?"
+
+"Dolores, I am a poor man. I cannot give you any of these splendors your
+father desires for you."
+
+"Do you think I care for them? I love you more than all the world
+together. And if you do really love me, why should we not be happy with
+each other?"
+
+"Dolores," I said, with a last effort to keep calm, "I am much older
+than you, and know the world, and ought not to take advantage of your
+simplicity. You have been so accustomed to abundant wealth and all it
+can give, that you cannot form an idea of what the hardships and
+discomforts of marrying a poor man would be. You are unused to having
+the least care, or making the least exertion for yourself. All the world
+would say that I acted a very dishonorable part to take you from a
+position which offers you wealth, splendor, and ease, to one of
+comparative hardship. Perhaps some day you would think so yourself."
+
+While I was speaking, Dolores turned me toward the moonlight, and fixed
+her great dark eyes piercingly upon me, as if she wanted to read my
+soul. "Is that all?" she said; "is that the only reason?"
+
+"I do not understand you," said I.
+
+She gave me such a desolate look, and answered in a tone of utter
+dejection, "Oh, I didn't know, but perhaps _you_ might not want me. All
+the rest are so glad to sell me to anybody that will take me. But you
+really do love me, don't you?" she added, laying her hand on mine.
+
+What answer I made I cannot say. I only know that every vestige of what
+is called reason and common sense left me at that moment, and that there
+followed an hour of delirium in which I--we both were _very_ happy--we
+forgot everything but each other, and we arranged all our plans for
+flight. There was fortunately a ship lying in the harbor of St.
+Augustine, the captain of which was known to me. In course of a day or
+two passage was taken, and my effects transported on board. Nobody
+seemed to suspect us. Everything went on quietly up to the day before
+that appointed for sailing. I took my usual rides, and did everything as
+much as possible in my ordinary way, to disarm suspicion, and none
+seemed to exist. The needed preparations went gayly forward. On the day
+I mentioned, when I had ridden some distance from the house, a messenger
+came post-haste after me. It was a boy who belonged specially to
+Dolores. He gave me a little hurried note. I copy it:--
+
+    "Papa has found all out, and it is dreadful. No one else knows, and
+    he means to kill you when you come back. Do, if you love me, hurry
+    and get on board the ship. I shall never get over it, if evil comes
+    on you for my sake. I shall let them do what they please with me, if
+    God will only save _you_. I will try to be good. Perhaps if I bear
+    my trials well, he will let me die soon. That is all I ask. I love
+    you, and always shall, to death and after.
+
+    DOLORES."
+
+There was the end of it all. I escaped on the ship. I read the marriage
+in the paper. Incidentally I afterwards heard of her as living in Cuba,
+but I never saw her again till I saw her in her coffin. Sorrow and
+death had changed her so much that at first the sight of her awakened
+only a vague, painful remembrance. The sight of the hair bracelet which
+I had seen on her arm brought all back, and I felt sure that my poor
+Dolores had strangely come to sleep her last sleep near me.
+
+Immediately after I became satisfied who you were, I felt a painful
+degree of responsibility for the knowledge. I wrote at once to a friend
+of mine in the neighborhood of St. Augustine, to find out any
+particulars of the Mendoza family. I learned that its history had been
+like that of many others in that region. Don Jose had died in a bilious
+fever, brought on by excessive dissipation, and at his death the estate
+was found to be so incumbered that the whole was sold at auction. The
+slaves were scattered hither and thither to different owners, and Madame
+Mendoza, with her children and remains of fortune, had gone to live in
+New Orleans.
+
+Of Dolores he had heard but once since her marriage. A friend had
+visited Don Guzman's estates in Cuba. He was living in great splendor,
+but bore the character of a hard, cruel, tyrannical master, and an
+overbearing man. His wife was spoken of as being in very delicate
+health,--avoiding society and devoting herself to religion.
+
+I would here take occasion to say that it was understood when I went
+into the family of Don Jose, that I should not in any way interfere with
+the religious faith of the children, the family being understood to
+belong to the Roman Catholic Church. There was so little like religion
+of any kind in the family, that the idea of their belonging to any faith
+savored something of the ludicrous. In the case of poor Dolores,
+however, it was different. The earnestness of her nature would always
+have made any religious form a reality to her. In her case I was glad to
+remember that the Romish Church, amid many corruptions, preserves all
+the essential beliefs necessary for our salvation, and that many holy
+souls have gone to heaven through its doors. I therefore was only
+careful to direct her principal attention to the more spiritual parts of
+her own faith, and to dwell on the great themes which all Christian
+people hold in common.
+
+Many of my persuasion would not have felt free to do this, but my
+liberty of conscience in this respect was perfect. I have seen that if
+you break the cup out of which a soul has been used to take the wine of
+the gospel, you often spill the very wine itself. And after all, these
+forms are but shadows of which the substance is Christ.
+
+I am free to say, therefore, that the thought that your poor mother was
+devoting herself earnestly to religion, although after the forms of a
+church with which I differ, was to me a source of great consolation,
+because I knew that in that way alone could a soul like hers find peace.
+
+I have never rested from my efforts to obtain more information. A short
+time before the incident which cast you upon our shore, I conversed with
+a sea-captain who had returned from Cuba. He stated that there had been
+an attempt at insurrection among the slaves of Don Guzman, in which a
+large part of the buildings and out-houses of the estate had been
+consumed by fire. On subsequent inquiry I learned that Don Guzman had
+sold his estates and embarked for Boston with his wife and family, and
+that nothing had subsequently been heard of him.
+
+Thus, my young friend, I have told you all that I know of those singular
+circumstances which have cast your lot on our shores. I do not expect at
+your time of life you will take the same view of this event that I do.
+You may possibly--very probably will--consider it a loss not to have
+been brought up as you might have been in the splendid establishment of
+Don Guzman, and found yourself heir to wealth and pleasure without
+labor or exertion. Yet I am quite sure in that case that your value as a
+human being would have been immeasurably less. I think I have seen in
+you the elements of passions, which luxury and idleness and the too
+early possession of irresponsible power, might have developed with fatal
+results. You have simply to reflect whether you would rather be an
+energetic, intelligent, self-controlled man, capable of guiding the
+affairs of life and of acquiring its prizes,--or to be the reverse of
+all this, with its prizes bought for you by the wealth of parents. I
+hope mature reflection will teach you to regard with gratitude that
+disposition of the All-Wise, which cast your lot as it has been cast.
+
+Let me ask one thing in closing. I have written for you here many things
+most painful for me to remember, because I wanted you to love and honor
+the memory of your mother. I wanted that her memory should have
+something such a charm for you as it has for me. With me, her image has
+always stood between me and all other women; but I have never even
+intimated to a living being that such a passage in my history ever
+occurred,--no, not even to my sister, who is nearer to me than any other
+earthly creature.
+
+In some respects I am a singular person in my habits, and having once
+written this, you will pardon me if I observe that it will never be
+agreeable to me to have the subject named between us. Look upon me
+always as a friend, who would regard nothing as a hardship by which he
+might serve the son of one so dear.
+
+I have hesitated whether I ought to add one circumstance more. I think I
+will do so, trusting to your good sense not to give it any undue weight.
+
+I have never ceased making inquiries in Cuba, as I found opportunity, in
+regard to your father's property, and late investigations have led me to
+the conclusion that he left a considerable sum of money in the hands of
+a notary, whose address I have, which, if your identity could be proved,
+would come in course of law to you. I have written an account of all the
+circumstances which, in my view, identify you as the son of Don Guzman
+de Cardona, and had them properly attested in legal form.
+
+This, together with your mother's picture and the bracelet, I recommend
+you to take on your next voyage, and to see what may result from the
+attempt. How considerable the sum may be which will result from this, I
+cannot say, but as Don Guzman's fortune was very large, I am in hopes it
+may prove something worth attention.
+
+At any time you may wish to call, I will have all these things ready for
+you.
+
+    I am, with warm regard,
+            Your sincere friend,
+                  THEOPHILUS SEWELL.
+
+When Moses had finished reading this letter, he laid it down on the
+pebbles beside him, and, leaning back against a rock, looked moodily out
+to sea. The tide had washed quite up to within a short distance of his
+feet, completely isolating the little grotto where he sat from all the
+surrounding scenery, and before him, passing and repassing on the blue
+bright solitude of the sea, were silent ships, going on their wondrous
+pathless ways to unknown lands. The letter had stirred all within him
+that was dreamy and poetic: he felt somehow like a leaf torn from a
+romance, and blown strangely into the hollow of those rocks. Something
+too of ambition and pride stirred within him. He had been born an heir
+of wealth and power, little as they had done for the happiness of his
+poor mother; and when he thought he might have had these two wild horses
+which have run away with so many young men, he felt, as young men all
+do, an impetuous desire for their possession, and he thought as so many
+do, "Give them to me, and I'll risk my character,--I'll risk my
+happiness."
+
+The letter opened a future before him which was something to speculate
+upon, even though his reason told him it was uncertain, and he lay there
+dreamily piling one air-castle on another,--unsubstantial as the great
+islands of white cloud that sailed through the sky and dropped their
+shadows in the blue sea.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when he bethought him he must return home,
+and so climbing from rock to rock he swung himself upward on to the
+island, and sought the brown cottage. As he passed by the open window he
+caught a glimpse of Mara sewing. He walked softly up to look in without
+her seeing him. She was sitting with the various articles of his
+wardrobe around her, quietly and deftly mending his linen, singing soft
+snatches of an old psalm-tune.
+
+She seemed to have resumed quite naturally that quiet care of him and
+his, which she had in all the earlier years of their life. He noticed
+again her little hands,--they seemed a sort of wonder to him. Why had he
+never seen, when a boy, how pretty they were? And she had such dainty
+little ways of taking up and putting down things as she measured and
+clipped; it seemed so pleasant to have her handling his things; it was
+as if a good fairy were touching them, whose touch brought back peace.
+But then, he thought, by and by she will do all this for some one else.
+The thought made him angry. He really felt abused in anticipation. She
+was doing all this for him just in sisterly kindness, and likely as not
+thinking of somebody else whom she loved better all the time. It is
+astonishing how cool and dignified this consideration made our hero as
+he faced up to the window. He was, after all, in hopes she might blush,
+and look agitated at seeing him suddenly; but she did not. The foolish
+boy did not know the quick wits of a girl, and that all the while that
+he had supposed himself so sly, and been holding his breath to observe,
+Mara had been perfectly cognizant of his presence, and had been
+schooling herself to look as unconscious and natural as possible. So she
+did,--only saying,--
+
+"Oh, Moses, is that you? Where have you been all day?"
+
+"Oh, I went over to see Parson Sewell, and get my pastoral lecture, you
+know."
+
+"And did you stay to dinner?"
+
+"No; I came home and went rambling round the rocks, and got into our old
+cave, and never knew how the time passed."
+
+"Why, then you've had no dinner, poor boy," said Mara, rising suddenly.
+"Come in quick, you must be fed, or you'll get dangerous and eat
+somebody."
+
+"No, no, don't get anything," said Moses, "it's almost supper-time, and
+I'm not hungry."
+
+And Moses threw himself into a chair, and began abstractedly snipping a
+piece of tape with Mara's very best scissors.
+
+"If you please, sir, don't demolish that; I was going to stay one of
+your collars with it," said Mara.
+
+"Oh, hang it, I'm always in mischief among girls' things," said Moses,
+putting down the scissors and picking up a bit of white wax, which with
+equal unconsciousness, he began kneading in his hands, while he was
+dreaming over the strange contents of the morning's letter.
+
+"I hope Mr. Sewell didn't say anything to make you look so very gloomy,"
+said Mara.
+
+"Mr. Sewell?" said Moses, starting; "no, he didn't; in fact, I had a
+pleasant call there; and there was that confounded old sphinx of a Miss
+Roxy there. Why don't she die? She must be somewhere near a hundred
+years old by this time."
+
+"Never thought to ask her why she didn't die," said Mara; "but I presume
+she has the best of reasons for living."
+
+"Yes, that's so," said Moses; "every old toadstool, and burdock, and
+mullein lives and thrives and lasts; no danger of their dying."
+
+"You seem to be in a charitable frame of mind," said Mara.
+
+"Confound it all! I hate this world. If I could have my own way now,--if
+I could have just what I wanted, and do just as I please exactly, I
+might make a pretty good thing of it."
+
+"And pray what would you have?" said Mara.
+
+"Well, in the first place, riches."
+
+"In the first place?"
+
+"Yes, in the first place, I say; for money buys everything else."
+
+"Well, supposing so," said Mara, "for argument's sake, what would you
+buy with it?"
+
+"Position in society, respect, consideration,--and I'd have a splendid
+place, with everything elegant. I have ideas enough, only give me the
+means. And then I'd have a wife, of course."
+
+"And how much would you pay for her?" said Mara, looking quite cool.
+
+"I'd buy her with all the rest,--a girl that wouldn't look at _me_ as I
+am,--would take me for all the rest, you know,--that's the way of the
+world."
+
+"It is, is it?" said Mara. "I don't understand such matters much."
+
+"Yes; it's the way with all you girls," said Moses; "it's the way you'll
+marry when you do."
+
+"Don't be so fierce about it. I haven't done it yet," said Mara; "but
+now, really, I must go and set the supper-table when I have put these
+things away,"--and Mara gathered an armful of things together, and
+tripped singing upstairs, and arranged them in the drawer of Moses's
+room. "Will his wife like to do all these little things for him as I
+do?" she thought. "It's natural I should. I grew up with him, and love
+him, just as if he were my own brother,--he is all the brother I ever
+had. I love him more than anything else in the world, and this wife he
+talks about could do no more."
+
+"She don't care a pin about me," thought Moses; "it's only a habit she
+has got, and her strict notions of duty, that's all. She is housewifely
+in her instincts, and seizes all neglected linen and garments as her
+lawful prey,--she would do it just the same for her grandfather;" and
+Moses drummed moodily on the window-pane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+A COQUETTE
+
+
+The timbers of the ship which was to carry the fortunes of our hero were
+laid by the side of Middle Bay, and all these romantic shores could
+hardly present a lovelier scene. This beautiful sheet of water separates
+Harpswell from a portion of Brunswick. Its shores are rocky and
+pine-crowned, and display the most picturesque variety of outline. Eagle
+Island, Shelter Island, and one or two smaller ones, lie on the glassy
+surface like soft clouds of green foliage pierced through by the
+steel-blue tops of arrowy pine-trees.
+
+There were a goodly number of shareholders in the projected vessel; some
+among the most substantial men in the vicinity. Zephaniah Pennel had
+invested there quite a solid sum, as had also our friend Captain
+Kittridge. Moses had placed therein the proceeds of his recent voyage,
+which enabled him to buy a certain number of shares, and he secretly
+revolved in his mind whether the sum of money left by his father might
+not enable him to buy the whole ship. Then a few prosperous voyages, and
+his fortune was made!
+
+He went into the business of building the new vessel with all the
+enthusiasm with which he used, when a boy, to plan ships and mould
+anchors. Every day he was off at early dawn in his working-clothes, and
+labored steadily among the men till evening. No matter how early he
+rose, however, he always found that a good fairy had been before him and
+prepared his dinner, daintily sometimes adding thereto a fragrant
+little bunch of flowers. But when his boat returned home at evening, he
+no longer saw her as in the days of girlhood waiting far out on the
+farthest point of rock for his return. Not that she did not watch for it
+and run out many times toward sunset; but the moment she had made out
+that it was surely he, she would run back into the house, and very
+likely find an errand in her own room, where she would be so deeply
+engaged that it would be necessary for him to call her down before she
+could make her appearance. Then she came smiling, chatty, always
+gracious, and ready to go or to come as he requested,--the very
+cheerfulest of household fairies,--but yet for all that there was a
+cobweb invisible barrier around her that for some reason or other he
+could not break over. It vexed and perplexed him, and day after day he
+determined to whistle it down,--ride over it rough-shod,--and be as free
+as he chose with this apparently soft, unresistant, airy being, who
+seemed so accessible. Why shouldn't he kiss her when he chose, and sit
+with his arm around her waist, and draw her familiarly upon his
+knee,--this little child-woman, who was as a sister to him? Why, to be
+sure? Had she ever frowned or scolded as Sally Kittridge did when he
+attempted to pass the air-line that divides man from womanhood? Not at
+all. She had neither blushed nor laughed, nor ran away. If he kissed
+her, she took it with the most matter-of-fact composure; if he passed
+his arm around her, she let it remain with unmoved calmness; and so
+somehow he did these things less and less, and wondered why.
+
+The fact is, our hero had begun an experiment with his little friend
+that we would never advise a young man to try on one of these intense,
+quiet, soft-seeming women, whose whole life is inward. He had determined
+to find out whether she loved him before he committed himself to her;
+and the strength of a whole book of martyrs is in women to endure and
+to bear without flinching before they will surrender the gate of this
+citadel of silence. Moreover, our hero had begun his siege with
+precisely the worst weapons.
+
+For on the night that he returned and found Mara conversing with a
+stranger, the suspicion arose in his mind that somehow Mara might be
+particularly interested in him, and instead of asking her, which anybody
+might consider the most feasible step in the case, he asked Sally
+Kittridge.
+
+Sally's inborn, inherent love of teasing was up in a moment. Did she
+know anything of that Mr. Adams? Of course she did,--a young lawyer of
+one of the best Boston families,--a splendid fellow; she wished any such
+luck might happen to her! Was Mara engaged to him? What would he give to
+know? Why didn't he ask Mara? Did he expect her to reveal her friend's
+secrets? Well, she shouldn't,--report said Mr. Adams was well-to-do in
+the world, and had expectations from an uncle,--and didn't Moses think
+he was interesting in conversation? Everybody said what a conquest it
+was for an Orr's Island girl, etc., etc. And Sally said the rest with
+many a malicious toss and wink and sly twinkle of the dimples of her
+cheek, which might mean more or less, as a young man of imaginative
+temperament was disposed to view it. Now this was all done in pure
+simple love of teasing. We incline to think phrenologists have as yet
+been very incomplete in their classification of faculties, or they would
+have appointed a separate organ for this propensity of human nature.
+Certain persons, often the most kind-hearted in the world, and who would
+not give pain in any serious matter, seem to have an insatiable appetite
+for those small annoyances we commonly denominate teasing,--and Sally
+was one of this number.
+
+She diverted herself infinitely in playing upon the excitability of
+Moses,--in awaking his curiosity, and baffling it, and tormenting him
+with a whole phantasmagoria of suggestions and assertions, which played
+along so near the line of probability, that one could never tell which
+might be fancy and which might be fact.
+
+Moses therefore pursued the line of tactics for such cases made and
+provided, and strove to awaken jealousy in Mara by paying marked and
+violent attentions to Sally. He went there evening after evening,
+leaving Mara to sit alone at home. He made secrets with her, and alluded
+to them before Mara. He proposed calling his new vessel the Sally
+Kittridge; but whether all these things made Mara jealous or not, he
+could never determine. Mara had no peculiar gift for acting, except in
+this one point; but here all the vitality of nature rallied to her
+support, and enabled her to preserve an air of the most unperceiving
+serenity. If she shed any tears when she spent a long, lonesome evening,
+she was quite particular to be looking in a very placid frame when Moses
+returned, and to give such an account of the books, or the work, or
+paintings which had interested her, that Moses was sure to be vexed.
+Never were her inquiries for Sally more cordial,--never did she seem
+inspired by a more ardent affection for her.
+
+Whatever may have been the result of this state of things in regard to
+Mara, it is certain that Moses succeeded in convincing the common fame
+of that district that he and Sally were destined for each other, and the
+thing was regularly discussed at quilting frolics and tea-drinkings
+around, much to Miss Emily's disgust and Aunt Roxy's grave satisfaction,
+who declared that "Mara was altogether too good for Moses Pennel, but
+Sally Kittridge would make him stand round,"--by which expression she
+was understood to intimate that Sally had in her the rudiments of the
+same kind of domestic discipline which had operated so favorably in the
+case of Captain Kittridge.
+
+These things, of course, had come to Mara's ears. She had overheard the
+discussions on Sunday noons as the people between meetings sat over
+their doughnuts and cheese, and analyzed their neighbors' affairs, and
+she seemed to smile at them all. Sally only laughed, and declared that
+it was no such thing; that she would no more marry Moses Pennel, or any
+other fellow, than she would put her head into the fire. What did she
+want of any of them? She knew too much to get married,--that she did.
+She was going to have her liberty for one while yet to come, etc., etc.;
+but all these assertions were of course supposed to mean nothing but the
+usual declarations in such cases. Mara among the rest thought it quite
+likely that this thing was yet to be.
+
+So she struggled and tried to reason down a pain which constantly ached
+in her heart when she thought of this. She ought to have foreseen that
+it must some time end in this way. Of course she must have known that
+Moses would some time choose a wife; and how fortunate that, instead of
+a stranger, he had chosen her most intimate friend. Sally was careless
+and thoughtless, to be sure, but she had a good generous heart at the
+bottom, and she hoped she would love Moses at least as well as _she_
+did, and then she would always live with them, and think of any little
+things that Sally might forget.
+
+After all, Sally was so much more capable and efficient a person than
+herself,--so much more bustling and energetic, she would make altogether
+a better housekeeper, and doubtless a better wife for Moses. But then it
+was so hard that he did not tell her about it. Was she not his
+sister?--his confidant for all his childhood?--and why should he shut up
+his heart from her now? But then she must guard herself from being
+jealous,--that would be mean and wicked. So Mara, in her zeal of
+self-discipline, pushed on matters; invited Sally to tea to meet Moses;
+and when she came, left them alone together while she busied herself in
+hospitable cares. She sent Moses with errands and commissions to Sally,
+which he was sure to improve into protracted visits; and in short, no
+young match-maker ever showed more good-will to forward the union of two
+chosen friends than Mara showed to unite Moses and Sally.
+
+So the flirtation went on all summer, like a ship under full sail, with
+prosperous breezes; and Mara, in the many hours that her two best
+friends were together, tried heroically to persuade herself that she was
+not unhappy. She said to herself constantly that she never had loved
+Moses other than as a brother, and repeated and dwelt upon the fact to
+her own mind with a pertinacity which might have led her to suspect the
+reality of the fact, had she had experience enough to look closer. True,
+it was rather lonely, she said, but that she was used to,--she always
+had been and always should be. Nobody would ever love her in return as
+she loved; which sentence she did not analyze very closely, or she might
+have remembered Mr. Adams and one or two others, who had professed more
+for her than she had found herself able to return. That general
+proposition about nobody is commonly found, if sifted to the bottom, to
+have specific relation to somebody whose name never appears in the
+record.
+
+Nobody could have conjectured from Mara's calm, gentle cheerfulness of
+demeanor, that any sorrow lay at the bottom of her heart; she would not
+have owned it to herself.
+
+There are griefs which grow with years, which have no marked
+beginnings,--no especial dates; they are not events, but slow
+perceptions of disappointment, which bear down on the heart with a
+constant and equable pressure like the weight of the atmosphere, and
+these things are never named or counted in words among life's sorrows;
+yet through them, as through an unsuspected inward wound, life, energy,
+and vigor slowly bleed away, and the persons, never owning even to
+themselves the weight of the pressure,--standing, to all appearance,
+fair and cheerful, are still undermined with a secret wear of this inner
+current, and ready to fall with the first external pressure.
+
+There are persons often brought into near contact by the relations of
+life, and bound to each other by a love so close, that they are
+perfectly indispensable to each other, who yet act upon each other as a
+file upon a diamond, by a slow and gradual friction, the pain of which
+is so equable, so constantly diffused through life, as scarcely ever at
+any time to force itself upon the mind as a reality.
+
+Such had been the history of the affection of Mara for Moses. It had
+been a deep, inward, concentrated passion that had almost absorbed
+self-consciousness, and made her keenly alive to all the moody,
+restless, passionate changes of his nature; it had brought with it that
+craving for sympathy and return which such love ever will, and yet it
+was fixed upon a nature so different and so uncomprehending that the
+action had for years been one of pain more than pleasure. Even now, when
+she had him at home with her and busied herself with constant cares for
+him, there was a sort of disturbing, unquiet element in the history of
+every day. The longing for him to come home at night,--the wish that he
+would stay with her,--the uncertainty whether he would or would not go
+and spend the evening with Sally,--the musing during the day over all
+that he had done and said the day before, were a constant interior
+excitement. For Moses, besides being in his moods quite variable and
+changeable, had also a good deal of the dramatic element in him, and put
+on sundry appearances in the way of experiment.
+
+He would feign to have quarreled with Sally, that he might detect
+whether Mara would betray some gladness; but she only evinced concern
+and a desire to make up the difficulty. He would discuss her character
+and her fitness to make a man happy in matrimony in the style that
+young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great
+consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and
+sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal style possible, and
+caution him against trifling with her affections. Then again he would be
+lavish in his praise of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara
+would join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes he
+ventured, on the other side, to rally her on some future husband, and
+predict the days when all the attentions which she was daily bestowing
+on him would be for another; and here, as everywhere else, he found his
+little Sphinx perfectly inscrutable. Instinct teaches the grass-bird,
+who hides her eggs under long meadow grass, to creep timidly yards from
+the nest, and then fly up boldly in the wrong place; and a like instinct
+teaches shy girls all kinds of unconscious stratagems when the one
+secret of their life is approached. They may be as truthful in all other
+things as the strictest Puritan, but here they deceive by an infallible
+necessity. And meanwhile, where was Sally Kittridge in all this matter?
+Was her heart in the least touched by the black eyes and long lashes?
+Who can say? Had she a heart? Well, Sally was a good girl. When one got
+sufficiently far down through the foam and froth of the surface to find
+what was in the depths of her nature, there was abundance there of good
+womanly feeling, generous and strong, if one could but get at it.
+
+She was the best and brightest of daughters to the old Captain, whose
+accounts she kept, whose clothes she mended, whose dinner she often
+dressed and carried to him, from loving choice; and Mrs. Kittridge
+regarded her housewifely accomplishments with pride, though she never
+spoke to her otherwise than in words of criticism and rebuke, as in her
+view an honest mother should who means to keep a flourishing sprig of a
+daughter within limits of a proper humility.
+
+But as for any sentiment or love toward any person of the other sex,
+Sally, as yet, had it not. Her numerous admirers were only so many
+subjects for the exercise of her dear delight of teasing, and Moses
+Pennel, the last and most considerable, differed from the rest only in
+the fact that he was a match for her in this redoubtable art and
+science, and this made the game she was playing with him altogether more
+stimulating than that she had carried on with any other of her admirers.
+For Moses could sulk and storm for effect, and clear off as bright as
+Harpswell Bay after a thunder-storm--for effect also. Moses could play
+jealous, and make believe all those thousand-and-one shadowy nothings
+that coquettes, male and female, get up to carry their points with; and
+so their quarrels and their makings-up were as manifold as the
+sea-breezes that ruffled the ocean before the Captain's door.
+
+There is but one danger in play of this kind, and that is, that deep
+down in the breast of every slippery, frothy, elfish Undine sleeps the
+germ of an unawakened soul, which suddenly, in the course of some such
+trafficking with the outward shows and seemings of affection, may wake
+up and make of the teasing, tricksy elf a sad and earnest woman--a
+creature of loves and self-denials and faithfulness unto death--in
+short, something altogether too good, too sacred to be trifled with; and
+when a man enters the game protected by a previous attachment which
+absorbs all his nature, and the woman awakes in all her depth and
+strength to feel the real meaning of love and life, she finds that she
+has played with one stronger than she, at a terrible disadvantage.
+
+Is this mine lying dark and evil under the saucy little feet of our
+Sally? Well, we should not of course be surprised some day to find it
+so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+NIGHT TALKS
+
+
+October is come, and among the black glooms of the pine forests flare
+out the scarlet branches of the rock-maple, and the beech-groves are all
+arrayed in gold, through which the sunlight streams in subdued richness.
+October is come with long, bright, hazy days, swathing in purple mists
+the rainbow brightness of the forests, and blending the otherwise gaudy
+and flaunting colors into wondrous harmonies of splendor. And Moses
+Pennel's ship is all built and ready, waiting only a favorable day for
+her launching.
+
+And just at this moment Moses is sauntering home from Captain
+Kittridge's in company with Sally, for Mara has sent him to bring her to
+tea with them. Moses is in high spirits; everything has succeeded to his
+wishes; and as the two walk along the high, bold, rocky shore, his eye
+glances out to the open ocean, where the sun is setting, and the fresh
+wind blowing, and the white sails flying, and already fancies himself a
+sea-king, commanding his own place, and going from land to land.
+
+"There hasn't been a more beautiful ship built here these twenty years,"
+he says, in triumph.
+
+"Oho, Mr. Conceit," said Sally, "that's only because it's yours
+now--your geese are all swans. I wish you could have seen the Typhoon,
+that Ben Drummond sailed in--a real handsome fellow he was. What a pity
+there aren't more like him!"
+
+"I don't enter on the merits of Ben Drummond's beauty," said Moses; "but
+I don't believe the Typhoon was one whit superior to our ship. Besides,
+Miss Sally, I thought you were going to take it under your especial
+patronage, and let me honor it with your name."
+
+"How absurd you always will be talking about that--why don't you call it
+after Mara?"
+
+"After Mara?" said Moses. "I don't want to--it wouldn't be
+appropriate--one wants a different kind of girl to name a ship
+after--something bold and bright and dashing!"
+
+"Thank you, sir, but I prefer not to have my bold and dashing qualities
+immortalized in this way," said Sally; "besides, sir, how do I know that
+you wouldn't run me on a rock the very first thing? When I give my name
+to a ship, it must have an experienced commander," she added,
+maliciously, for she knew that Moses was specially vulnerable on this
+point.
+
+"As you please," said Moses, with heightened color. "Allow me to remark
+that he who shall ever undertake to command the 'Sally Kittridge' will
+have need of all his experience--and then, perhaps, not be able to know
+the ways of the craft."
+
+"See him now," said Sally, with a malicious laugh; "we are getting
+wrathy, are we?"
+
+"Not I," said Moses; "it would cost altogether too much exertion to get
+angry at every teasing thing you choose to say, Miss Sally. By and by I
+shall be gone, and then won't your conscience trouble you?"
+
+"My conscience is all easy, so far as you are concerned, sir; your
+self-esteem is too deep-rooted to suffer much from my poor little
+nips--they produce no more impression than a cat-bird pecking at the
+cones of that spruce-tree yonder. Now don't you put your hand where your
+heart is supposed to be--there's nobody at home there, you know. There's
+Mara coming to meet us;" and Sally bounded forward to meet Mara with all
+those demonstrations of extreme delight which young girls are fond of
+showering on each other.
+
+"It's such a beautiful evening," said Mara, "and we are all in such good
+spirits about Moses's ship, and I told him you must come down and hold
+counsel with us as to what was to be done about the launching; and the
+name, you know, that is to be decided on--are you going to let it be
+called after you?"
+
+"Not I, indeed. I should always be reading in the papers of horrible
+accidents that had happened to the 'Sally Kittridge.'"
+
+"Sally has so set her heart on my being unlucky," said Moses, "that I
+believe if I make a prosperous voyage, the disappointment would injure
+her health."
+
+"She doesn't mean what she says," said Mara; "but I think there are some
+objections in a young lady's name being given to a ship."
+
+"Then I suppose, Mara," said Moses, "that you would not have yours
+either?"
+
+"I would be glad to accommodate you in anything _but_ that," said Mara,
+quietly; but she added, "Why need the ship be named for anybody? A ship
+is such a beautiful, graceful thing, it should have a fancy name."
+
+"Well, suggest one," said Moses.
+
+"Don't you remember," said Mara, "one Saturday afternoon, when you and
+Sally and I launched your little ship down in the cove after you had
+come from your first voyage at the Banks?"
+
+"I do," said Sally. "We called that the Ariel, Mara, after that old torn
+play you were so fond of. That's a pretty name for a ship."
+
+"Why not take that?" said Mara.
+
+"I bow to the decree," said Moses. "The Ariel it shall be."
+
+"Yes; and you remember," said Sally, "Mr. Moses here promised at that
+time that he would build a ship, and take us two round the world with
+him."
+
+Moses's eyes fell upon Mara as Sally said these words with a sort of
+sudden earnestness of expression which struck her. He was really feeling
+very much about something, under all the bantering disguise of his
+demeanor, she said to herself. Could it be that he felt unhappy about
+his prospects with Sally? That careless liveliness of hers might wound
+him perhaps now, when he felt that he was soon to leave her.
+
+Mara was conscious herself of a deep undercurrent of sadness as the time
+approached for the ship to sail that should carry Moses from her, and
+she could not but think some such feeling must possess her mind. In vain
+she looked into Sally's great Spanish eyes for any signs of a lurking
+softness or tenderness concealed under her sparkling vivacity. Sally's
+eyes were admirable windows of exactly the right size and color for an
+earnest, tender spirit to look out of, but just now there was nobody at
+the casement but a slippery elf peering out in tricksy defiance.
+
+When the three arrived at the house, tea was waiting on the table for
+them. Mara fancied that Moses looked sad and preoccupied as they sat
+down to the tea-table, which Mrs. Pennel had set forth festively, with
+the best china and the finest tablecloth and the choicest sweetmeats. In
+fact, Moses did feel that sort of tumult and upheaving of the soul which
+a young man experiences when the great crisis comes which is to plunge
+him into the struggles of manhood. It is a time when he wants sympathy
+and is grated upon by uncomprehending merriment, and therefore his
+answers to Sally grew brief and even harsh at times, and Mara sometimes
+perceived him looking at herself with a singular fixedness of
+expression, though he withdrew his eyes whenever she turned hers to look
+on him. Like many another little woman, she had fixed a theory about
+her friends, into which she was steadily interweaving all the facts she
+saw. Sally _must_ love Moses, because she had known her from childhood
+as a good and affectionate girl, and it was impossible that she could
+have been going on with Moses as she had for the last six months without
+loving him. She must evidently have seen that he cared for her; and in
+how many ways had she shown that she liked his society and him! But then
+evidently she did not understand him, and Mara felt a little womanly
+self-pluming on the thought that _she_ knew him so much better. She was
+resolved that she would talk with Sally about it, and show her that she
+was disappointing Moses and hurting his feelings. Yes, she said to
+herself, Sally has a kind heart, and her coquettish desire to conceal
+from him the extent of her affection ought now to give way to the
+outspoken tenderness of real love.
+
+So Mara pressed Sally with the old-times request to stay and sleep with
+her; for these two, the only young girls in so lonely a neighborhood,
+had no means of excitement or dissipation beyond this occasional
+sleeping together--by which is meant, of course, lying awake all night
+talking.
+
+When they were alone together in their chamber, Sally let down her long
+black hair, and stood with her back to Mara brushing it. Mara sat
+looking out of the window, where the moon was making a wide sheet of
+silver-sparkling water. Everything was so quiet that the restless dash
+of the tide could be plainly heard. Sally was rattling away with her
+usual gayety.
+
+"And so the launching is to come off next Thursday. What shall you
+wear?"
+
+"I'm sure I haven't thought," said Mara.
+
+"Well, I shall try and finish my blue merino for the occasion. What fun
+it will be! I never was on a ship when it was launched, and I think it
+will be something perfectly splendid!"
+
+"But doesn't it sometimes seem sad to think that after all this Moses
+will leave us to be gone so long?"
+
+"What do I care?" said Sally, tossing back her long hair as she brushed
+it, and then stopping to examine one of her eyelashes.
+
+"Sally dear, you often speak in that way," said Mara, "but really and
+seriously, you do yourself great injustice. You could not certainly have
+been going on as you have these six months past with a man you did not
+care for."
+
+"Well, I do care for him, 'sort o','" said Sally; "but is that any
+reason I should break my heart for his going?--that's too much for any
+man."
+
+"But, Sally, you _must_ know that Moses loves you."
+
+"I'm not so sure," said Sally, freakishly tossing her head and laughing.
+
+"If he did not," said Mara, "why has he sought you so much, and taken
+every opportunity to be with you? I'm sure I've been left here alone
+hour after hour, when my only comfort was that it was because my two
+best friends loved each other, as I know they must some time love some
+one better than they do me."
+
+The most practiced self-control must fail some time, and Mara's voice
+faltered on these last words, and she put her hands over her eyes. Sally
+turned quickly and looked at her, then giving her hair a sudden fold
+round her shoulders, and running to her friend, she kneeled down on the
+floor by her, and put her arms round her waist, and looked up into her
+face with an air of more gravity than she commonly used.
+
+"Now, Mara, what a wicked, inconsistent fool I have been! Did you feel
+lonesome?--did you care? I ought to have seen that; but I'm selfish, I
+love admiration, and I love to have some one to flatter me, and run
+after me; and so I've been going on and on in this silly way. But I
+didn't know you cared--indeed, I didn't--you are such a deep little
+thing. Nobody can ever tell what you feel. I never shall forgive myself,
+if you have been lonesome, for you are worth five hundred times as much
+as I am. You really do love Moses. I don't."
+
+"I do love him as a dear brother," said Mara.
+
+"Dear fiddlestick," said Sally. "Love is love; and when a person loves
+all she can, it isn't much use to talk so. I've been a wicked sinner,
+that I have. Love? Do you suppose I would bear with Moses Pennel all his
+ins and outs and ups and downs, and be always putting him before myself
+in everything, as you do? No, I couldn't; I haven't it in me; but you
+have. He's a sinner, too, and deserves to get me for a wife. But, Mara,
+I have tormented him well--there's some comfort in that."
+
+"It's no comfort to me," said Mara. "I see his heart is set on you--the
+happiness of his life depends on you--and that he is pained and hurt
+when you give him only cold, trifling words when he needs real true
+love. It is a serious thing, dear, to have a strong man set his whole
+heart on you. It will do him a great good or a great evil, and you ought
+not to make light of it."
+
+"Oh, pshaw, Mara, you don't know these fellows; they are only playing
+games with us. If they once catch us, they have no mercy; and for one
+here's a child that isn't going to be caught. I can see plain enough
+that Moses Pennel has been trying to get me in love with him, but he
+doesn't love me. No, he doesn't," said Sally, reflectively. "He only
+wants to make a conquest of me, and I'm just the same. I want to make a
+conquest of him,--at least I have been wanting to,--but now I see it's a
+false, wicked kind of way to do as we've been doing."
+
+"And is it really possible, Sally, that you don't love him?" said Mara,
+her large, serious eyes looking into Sally's. "What! be with him so
+much,--seem to like him so much,--look at him as I have seen you
+do,--and not love him!"
+
+"I can't help my eyes; they will look so," said Sally, hiding her face
+in Mara's lap with a sort of coquettish consciousness. "I tell you I've
+been silly and wicked; but he's just the same exactly."
+
+"And you have worn his ring all summer?"
+
+"Yes, and he has worn mine; and I have a lock of his hair, and he has a
+lock of mine; yet I don't believe he cares for them a bit. Oh, his heart
+is safe enough. If he has any, it isn't with me: that I know."
+
+"But if you found it were, Sally? Suppose you found that, after all, you
+were the one love and hope of his life; that all he was doing and
+thinking was for you; that he was laboring, and toiling, and leaving
+home, so that he might some day offer you a heart and home, and be your
+best friend for life? Perhaps he dares not tell you how he really does
+feel."
+
+"It's no such thing! it's no such thing!" said Sally, lifting up her
+head, with her eyes full of tears, which she dashed angrily away. "What
+am I crying for? I hate him. I'm glad he's going away. Lately it has
+been such a trouble to me to have things go on so. I'm really getting to
+dislike him. You are the one he ought to love. Perhaps all this time you
+are the one he does love," said Sally, with a sudden energy, as if a new
+thought had dawned in her mind.
+
+"Oh, no; he does not even love me as he once did, when we were
+children," said Mara. "He is so shut up in himself, so reserved, I know
+nothing about what passes in his heart."
+
+"No more does anybody," said Sally. "Moses Pennel isn't one that says
+and does things straightforward because he feels so; but he says and
+does them to see what _you_ will do. That's his way. Nobody knows why he
+has been going on with me as he has. He has had his own reasons,
+doubtless, as I have had mine."
+
+"He has admired you very much, Sally," said Mara, "and praised you to me
+very warmly. He thinks you are so handsome. I could tell you ever so
+many things he has said about you. He knows as I do that you are a more
+enterprising, practical sort of body than I am, too. Everybody thinks
+you are engaged. I have heard it spoken of everywhere."
+
+"Everybody is mistaken, then, as usual," said Sally. "Perhaps Aunt Roxy
+was in the right of it when she said that Moses would never be in love
+with anybody but himself."
+
+"Aunt Roxy has always been prejudiced and unjust to Moses," said Mara,
+her cheeks flushing. "She never liked him from a child, and she never
+can be made to see anything good in him. I know that he has a deep
+heart,--a nature that craves affection and sympathy; and it is only
+because he is so sensitive that he is so reserved and conceals his
+feelings so much. He has a noble, kind heart, and I believe he truly
+loves you, Sally; it must be so."
+
+Sally rose from the floor and went on arranging her hair without
+speaking. Something seemed to disturb her mind. She bit her lip, and
+threw down the brush and comb violently. In the clear depths of the
+little square of looking-glass a face looked into hers, whose eyes were
+perturbed as if with the shadows of some coming inward storm; the black
+brows were knit, and the lips quivered. She drew a long breath and burst
+out into a loud laugh.
+
+"What _are_ you laughing at now?" said Mara, who stood in her white
+night-dress by the window, with her hair falling in golden waves about
+her face.
+
+"Oh, because these fellows are so funny," said Sally; "it's such fun to
+see their actions. Come now," she added, turning to Mara, "don't look so
+grave and sanctified. It's better to laugh than cry about things, any
+time. It's a great deal better to be made hard-hearted like me, and not
+care for anybody, than to be like you, for instance. The idea of any
+one's being in love is the drollest thing to me. I haven't the least
+idea how it feels. I wonder if I ever shall be in love!"
+
+"It will come to you in its time, Sally."
+
+"Oh, yes,--I suppose like the chicken-pox or the whooping cough," said
+Sally; "one of the things to be gone through with, and rather
+disagreeable while it lasts,--so I hope to put it off as long as
+possible."
+
+"Well, come," said Mara, "we must not sit up all night."
+
+After the two girls were nestled into bed and the light out, instead of
+the brisk chatter there fell a great silence between them. The full
+round moon cast the reflection of the window on the white bed, and the
+ever restless moan of the sea became more audible in the fixed
+stillness. The two faces, both young and fair, yet so different in their
+expression, lay each still on its pillow,--their wide-open eyes gleaming
+out in the shadow like mystical gems. Each was breathing softly, as if
+afraid of disturbing the other. At last Sally gave an impatient
+movement.
+
+"How lonesome the sea sounds in the night," she said. "I wish it would
+ever be still."
+
+"I like to hear it," said Mara. "When I was in Boston, for a while I
+thought I could not sleep, I used to miss it so much."
+
+There was another silence, which lasted so long that each girl thought
+the other asleep, and moved softly, but at a restless movement from
+Sally, Mara spoke again.
+
+"Sally,--you asleep?"
+
+"No,--I thought you were."
+
+"I wanted to ask you," said Mara, "did Moses ever say anything to you
+about me?--you know I told you how much he said about you."
+
+"Yes; he asked me once if you were engaged to Mr. Adams."
+
+"And what did you tell him?" said Mara, with increasing interest.
+
+"Well, I only plagued him. I sometimes made him think you were, and
+sometimes that you were not; and then again, that there was a deep
+mystery in hand. But I praised and glorified Mr. Adams, and told him
+what a splendid match it would be, and put on any little bits of
+embroidery here and there that I could lay hands on. I used to make him
+sulky and gloomy for a whole evening sometimes. In that way it was one
+of the best weapons I had."
+
+"Sally, what does make you love to tease people so?" said Mara.
+
+"Why, you know the hymn says,--
+
+    'Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+      For God hath made them so;
+    Let bears and lions growl and fight,
+      For 'tis their nature too.'
+
+That's all the account I can give of it."
+
+"But," said Mara, "I never can rest easy a moment when I see I am making
+a person uncomfortable."
+
+"Well, I don't tease anybody but the men. I don't tease father or mother
+or you,--but men are fair game; they are such thumby, blundering
+creatures, and we can confuse them so."
+
+"Take care, Sally, it's playing with edge tools; you may lose your heart
+some day in this kind of game."
+
+"Never you fear," said Sally; "but aren't you sleepy?--let's go to
+sleep."
+
+Both girls turned their faces resolutely in opposite directions, and
+remained for an hour with their large eyes looking out into the moonlit
+chamber, like the fixed stars over Harpswell Bay. At last sleep drew
+softly down the fringy curtains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE LAUNCH OF THE ARIEL
+
+
+In the plain, simple regions we are describing,--where the sea is the
+great avenue of active life, and the pine forests are the great source
+of wealth,--ship-building is an engrossing interest, and there is no
+fete that calls forth the community like the launching of a vessel. And
+no wonder; for what is there belonging to this workaday world of ours
+that has such a never-failing fund of poetry and grace as a ship? A ship
+is a beauty and a mystery wherever we see it: its white wings touch the
+regions of the unknown and the imaginative; they seem to us full of the
+odors of quaint, strange, foreign shores, where life, we fondly dream,
+moves in brighter currents than the muddy, tranquil tides of every day.
+
+Who that sees one bound outward, with her white breasts swelling and
+heaving, as if with a reaching expectancy, does not feel his own heart
+swell with a longing impulse to go with her to the far-off shores? Even
+at dingy, crowded wharves, amid the stir and tumult of great cities, the
+coming in of a ship is an event that never can lose its interest. But on
+these romantic shores of Maine, where all is so wild and still, and the
+blue sea lies embraced in the arms of dark, solitary forests, the sudden
+incoming of a ship from a distant voyage is a sort of romance. Who that
+has stood by the blue waters of Middle Bay, engirdled as it is by soft
+slopes of green farming land, interchanged here and there with heavy
+billows of forest-trees, or rocky, pine-crowned promontories, has not
+felt that sense of seclusion and solitude which is so delightful? And
+then what a wonder! There comes a ship from China, drifting in like a
+white cloud,--the gallant creature! how the waters hiss and foam before
+her! with what a great free, generous plash she throws out her anchors,
+as if she said a cheerful "Well done!" to some glorious work
+accomplished! The very life and spirit of strange romantic lands come
+with her; suggestions of sandal-wood and spice breathe through the
+pine-woods; she is an oriental queen, with hands full of mystical gifts;
+"all her garments smell of myrrh and cassia, out of the ivory palaces,
+whereby they have made her glad." No wonder men have loved ships like
+birds, and that there have been found brave, rough hearts that in fatal
+wrecks chose rather to go down with their ocean love than to leave her
+in the last throes of her death-agony.
+
+A ship-building, a ship-sailing community has an unconscious poetry ever
+underlying its existence. Exotic ideas from foreign lands relieve the
+trite monotony of life; the ship-owner lives in communion with the whole
+world, and is less likely to fall into the petty commonplaces that
+infest the routine of inland life.
+
+Never arose a clearer or lovelier October morning than that which was to
+start the Ariel on her watery pilgrimage. Moses had risen while the
+stars were yet twinkling over their own images in Middle Bay, to go down
+and see that everything was right; and in all the houses that we know in
+the vicinity, everybody woke with the one thought of being ready to go
+to the launching.
+
+Mrs. Pennel and Mara were also up by starlight, busy over the provisions
+for the ample cold collation that was to be spread in a barn adjoining
+the scene,--the materials for which they were packing into baskets
+covered with nice clean linen cloths, ready for the little sail-boat
+which lay within a stone's throw of the door in the brightening dawn,
+her white sails looking rosy in the advancing light.
+
+It had been agreed that the Pennels and the Kittridges should cross
+together in this boat with their contributions of good cheer.
+
+The Kittridges, too, had been astir with the dawn, intent on their quota
+of the festive preparations, in which Dame Kittridge's housewifely
+reputation was involved,--for it had been a disputed point in the
+neighborhood whether she or Mrs. Pennel made the best doughnuts; and of
+course, with this fact before her mind, her efforts in this line had
+been all but superhuman.
+
+The Captain skipped in and out in high feather,--occasionally pinching
+Sally's cheek, and asking if she were going as captain or mate upon the
+vessel after it was launched, for which he got in return a fillip of his
+sleeve or a sly twitch of his coat-tails, for Sally and her old father
+were on romping terms with each other from early childhood, a thing
+which drew frequent lectures from the always exhorting Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Such levity!" she said, as she saw Sally in full chase after his
+retreating figure, in order to be revenged for some sly allusions he had
+whispered in her ear.
+
+"Sally Kittridge! Sally Kittridge!" she called, "come back this minute.
+What are you about? I should think your father was old enough to know
+better."
+
+"Lawful sakes, Polly, it kind o' renews one's youth to get a new ship
+done," said the Captain, skipping in at another door. "Sort o' puts me
+in mind o' that _I_ went out cap'en in when I was jist beginning to
+court you, as somebody else is courtin' our Sally here."
+
+"Now, father," said Sally, threateningly, "what did I tell you?"
+
+"It's really _lemancholy_," said the Captain, "to think how it does
+distress gals to talk to 'em 'bout the fellers, when they ain't thinkin'
+o' nothin' else all the time. They can't even laugh without sayin'
+he-he-he!"
+
+"Now, father, you know I've told you five hundred times that I don't
+care a cent for Moses Pennel,--that he's a hateful creature," said
+Sally, looking very red and determined.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "I take that ar's the reason you've ben
+a-wearin' the ring he gin you and them ribbins you've got on your neck
+this blessed minute, and why you've giggled off to singin'-school, and
+Lord knows where with him all summer,--that ar's clear now."
+
+"But, father," said Sally, getting redder and more earnest, "I don't
+care for him really, and I've told him so. I keep telling him so, and he
+will run after me."
+
+"Haw! haw!" laughed the Captain; "he will, will he? Jist so, Sally; that
+ar's jist the way your ma there talked to me, and it kind o' 'couraged
+me along. I knew that gals always has to be read back'ard jist like the
+writin' in the Barbary States."
+
+"Captain Kittridge, will you stop such ridiculous talk?" said his
+helpmeet; "and jist carry this 'ere basket of cold chicken down to the
+landin' agin the Pennels come round in the boat; and you must step spry,
+for there's two more baskets a-comin'."
+
+The Captain shouldered the basket and walked toward the sea with it, and
+Sally retired to her own little room to hold a farewell consultation
+with her mirror before she went.
+
+You will perhaps think from the conversation that you heard the other
+night, that Sally now will cease all thought of coquettish allurement in
+her acquaintance with Moses, and cause him to see by an immediate and
+marked change her entire indifference. Probably, as she stands
+thoughtfully before her mirror, she is meditating on the propriety of
+laying aside the ribbons he gave her--perhaps she will alter that
+arrangement of her hair which is one that he himself particularly
+dictated as most becoming to the character of her face. She opens a
+little drawer, which looks like a flower garden, all full of little
+knots of pink and blue and red, and various fancies of the toilet, and
+looks into it reflectively. She looses the ribbon from her hair and
+chooses another,--but Moses gave her that too, and said, she remembers,
+that when she wore that "he should know she had been thinking of him."
+Sally is Sally yet--as full of sly dashes of coquetry as a tulip is of
+streaks.
+
+"There's no reason I should make myself look like a fright because I
+don't care for him," she says; "besides, after all that he has said, he
+ought to say more,--he ought at least to give me a chance to say no,--he
+_shall_, too," said the gypsy, winking at the bright, elfish face in the
+glass.
+
+"Sally Kittridge, Sally Kittridge," called her mother, "how long will
+you stay prinkin'?--come down this minute."
+
+"Law now, mother," said the Captain, "gals must prink afore such times;
+it's as natural as for hens to dress their feathers afore a
+thunder-storm."
+
+Sally at last appeared, all in a flutter of ribbons and scarfs, whose
+bright, high colors assorted well with the ultramarine blue of her
+dress, and the vivid pomegranate hue of her cheeks. The boat with its
+white sails flapping was balancing and courtesying up and down on the
+waters, and in the stern sat Mara; her shining white straw hat trimmed
+with blue ribbons set off her golden hair and pink shell complexion. The
+dark, even penciling of her eyebrows, and the beauty of the brow above,
+the brown translucent clearness of her thoughtful eyes, made her face
+striking even with its extreme delicacy of tone. She was unusually
+animated and excited, and her cheeks had a rich bloom of that pure deep
+rose-color which flushes up in fair complexions under excitement, and
+her eyes had a kind of intense expression, for which they had always
+been remarkable. All the deep secluded yearning of repressed nature was
+looking out of them, giving that pathos which every one has felt at
+times in the silence of eyes.
+
+"Now bless that ar gal," said the Captain, when he saw her. "Our Sally
+here's handsome, but she's got the real New-Jerusalem look, she
+has--like them in the Revelations that wears the fine linen, clean and
+white."
+
+"Bless you, Captain Kittridge! don't be a-makin' a fool of yourself
+about no girl at your time o' life," said Mrs. Kittridge, speaking under
+her breath in a nipping, energetic tone, for they were coming too near
+the boat to speak very loud.
+
+"Good mornin', Mis' Pennel; we've got a good day, and a mercy it is so.
+'Member when we launched the North Star, that it rained guns all the
+mornin', and the water got into the baskets when we was a-fetchin' the
+things over, and made a sight o' pester."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Pennel, with an air of placid satisfaction, "everything
+seems to be going right about this vessel."
+
+Mrs. Kittridge and Sally were soon accommodated with seats, and
+Zephaniah Pennel and the Captain began trimming sail. The day was one of
+those perfect gems of days which are to be found only in the
+jewel-casket of October, a day neither hot nor cold, with an air so
+clear that every distant pine-tree top stood out in vivid separateness,
+and every woody point and rocky island seemed cut out in crystalline
+clearness against the sky. There was so brisk a breeze that the boat
+slanted quite to the water's edge on one side, and Mara leaned over and
+pensively drew her little pearly hand through the water, and thought of
+the days when she and Moses took this sail together--she in her pink
+sun-bonnet, and he in his round straw hat, with a tin dinner-pail
+between them; and now, to-day the ship of her childish dreams was to be
+launched. That launching was something she regarded almost with
+superstitious awe. The ship, built on one element, but designed to have
+its life in another, seemed an image of the soul, framed and fashioned
+with many a weary hammer-stroke in this life, but finding its true
+element only when it sails out into the ocean of eternity. Such was her
+thought as she looked down the clear, translucent depths; but would it
+have been of any use to try to utter it to anybody?--to Sally Kittridge,
+for example, who sat all in a cheerful rustle of bright ribbons beside
+her, and who would have shown her white teeth all round at such a
+suggestion, and said, "Now, Mara, who but you would have thought of
+that?"
+
+But there are souls sent into this world who seem to have always
+mysterious affinities for the invisible and the unknown--who see the
+face of everything beautiful through a thin veil of mystery and sadness.
+The Germans call this yearning of spirit home-sickness--the dim
+remembrances of a spirit once affiliated to some higher sphere, of whose
+lost brightness all things fair are the vague reminders. As Mara looked
+pensively into the water, it seemed to her that every incident of life
+came up out of its depths to meet her. Her own face reflected in a
+wavering image, sometimes shaped itself to her gaze in the likeness of
+the pale lady of her childhood, who seemed to look up at her from the
+waters with dark, mysterious eyes of tender longing. Once or twice this
+dreamy effect grew so vivid that she shivered, and drawing herself up
+from the water, tried to take an interest in a very minute account which
+Mrs. Kittridge was giving of the way to make corn-fritters which should
+taste exactly like oysters. The closing direction about the quantity of
+mace Mrs. Kittridge felt was too sacred for common ears, and therefore
+whispered it into Mrs. Pennel's bonnet with a knowing nod and a look
+from her black spectacles which would not have been bad for a priestess
+of Dodona in giving out an oracle. In this secret direction about the
+_mace_ lay the whole mystery of corn-oysters; and who can say what
+consequences might ensue from casting it in an unguarded manner before
+the world?
+
+And now the boat which has rounded Harpswell Point is skimming across to
+the head of Middle Bay, where the new ship can distinctly be discerned
+standing upon her ways, while moving clusters of people were walking up
+and down her decks or lining the shore in the vicinity. All sorts of
+gossiping and neighborly chit-chat is being interchanged in the little
+world assembling there.
+
+"I hain't seen the Pennels nor the Kittridges yet," said Aunt Ruey,
+whose little roly-poly figure was made illustrious in her best
+cinnamon-colored dyed silk. "There's Moses Pennel a-goin' up that ar
+ladder. Dear me, what a beautiful feller he is! it's a pity he ain't
+a-goin' to marry Mara Lincoln, after all."
+
+"Ruey, do hush up," said Miss Roxy, frowning sternly down from under the
+shadow of a preternatural black straw bonnet, trimmed with huge bows of
+black ribbon, which head-piece sat above her curls like a helmet. "Don't
+be a-gettin' sentimental, Ruey, whatever else you get--and talkin' like
+Miss Emily Sewell about match-makin'; I can't stand it; it rises on my
+stomach, such talk does. As to that ar Moses Pennel, folks ain't so
+certain as they thinks what he'll do. Sally Kittridge may think he's
+a-goin' to have her, because he's been a-foolin' round with her all
+summer, and Sally Kittridge may jist find she's mistaken, that's all."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Ruey, "I 'member when I was a girl my old aunt, Jerushy
+Hopkins, used to be always a-dwellin' on this Scripture, and I've been
+havin' it brought up to me this mornin': 'There are three things which
+are too wonderful for me, yea, four, which I know not: the way of an
+eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in
+the sea, and the way of a man with a maid.' She used to say it as a
+kind o' caution to me when she used to think Abram Peters was bein'
+attentive to me. I've often reflected what a massy it was that ar never
+come to nothin', for he's a poor drunken critter now."
+
+"Well, for my part," said Miss Roxy, fixing her eyes critically on the
+boat that was just at the landing, "I should say the ways of a maid with
+a man was full as particular as any of the rest of 'em. Do look at Sally
+Kittridge now. There's Tom Hiers a-helpin' her out of the boat; and did
+you see the look she gin Moses Pennel as she went by him? Wal', Moses has
+got Mara on his arm anyhow; there's a gal worth six-and-twenty of the
+other. Do see them ribbins and scarfs, and the furbelows, and the way
+that ar Sally Kittridge handles her eyes. She's one that one feller
+ain't never enough for."
+
+Mara's heart beat fast when the boat touched the shore, and Moses and
+one or two other young men came to assist in their landing. Never had he
+looked more beautiful than at this moment, when flushed with excitement
+and satisfaction he stood on the shore, his straw hat off, and his black
+curls blowing in the sea-breeze. He looked at Sally with a look of frank
+admiration as she stood there dropping her long black lashes over her
+bright cheeks, and coquettishly looking out from under them, but she
+stepped forward with a little energy of movement, and took the offered
+hand of Tom Hiers, who was gazing at her too with undisguised rapture,
+and Moses, stepping into the boat, helped Mrs. Pennel on shore, and then
+took Mara on his arm, looking her over as he did so with a glance far
+less assured and direct than he had given to Sally.
+
+"You won't be afraid to climb the ladders, Mara?" said he.
+
+"Not if you help me," she said.
+
+Sally and Tom Hiers had already walked on toward the vessel, she
+ostentatiously chatting and laughing with him. Moses's brow clouded a
+little, and Mara noticed it. Moses thought he did not care for Sally; he
+knew that the little hand that was now lying on his arm was the one he
+wanted, and yet he felt vexed when he saw Sally walk off triumphantly
+with another. It was the dog-in-the-manger feeling which possesses
+coquettes of both sexes. Sally, on all former occasions, had shown a
+marked preference for him, and professed supreme indifference to Tom
+Hiers.
+
+"It's all well enough," he said to himself, and he helped Mara up the
+ladders with the greatest deference and tenderness. "This little woman
+is worth ten such girls as Sally, if one only could get her heart. Here
+we are on our ship, Mara," he said, as he lifted her over the last
+barrier and set her down on the deck. "Look over there, do you see Eagle
+Island? Did you dream when we used to go over there and spend the day
+that you ever would be on _my_ ship, as you are to-day? You won't be
+afraid, will you, when the ship starts?"
+
+"I am too much of a sea-girl to fear on anything that sails in water,"
+said Mara with enthusiasm. "What a splendid ship! how nicely it all
+looks!"
+
+"Come, let me take you over it," said Moses, "and show you my cabin."
+
+Meanwhile the graceful little vessel was the subject of various comments
+by the crowd of spectators below, and the clatter of workmen's hammers
+busy in some of the last preparations could yet be heard like a shower
+of hail-stones under her.
+
+"I hope the ways are well greased," said old Captain Eldritch. "'Member
+how the John Peters stuck in her ways for want of their being greased?"
+
+"Don't you remember the Grand Turk, that keeled over five minutes after
+she was launched?" said the quavering voice of Miss Ruey; "there was
+jist such a company of thoughtless young creatures aboard as there is
+now."
+
+"Well, there wasn't nobody hurt," said Captain Kittridge. "If Mis'
+Kittridge would let me, I'd be glad to go aboard this 'ere, and be
+launched with 'em."
+
+"I tell the Cap'n he's too old to be climbin' round and mixin' with
+young folks' frolics," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"I suppose, Cap'n Pennel, you've seen that the ways is all right," said
+Captain Broad, returning to the old subject.
+
+"Oh yes, it's all done as well as hands can do it," said Zephaniah.
+"Moses has been here since starlight this morning, and Moses has pretty
+good faculty about such matters."
+
+"Where's Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily?" said Miss Ruey. "Oh, there they are
+over on that pile of rocks; they get a pretty fair view there."
+
+Mr. Sewell and Miss Emily were sitting under a cedar-tree, with two or
+three others, on a projecting point whence they could have a clear view
+of the launching. They were so near that they could distinguish clearly
+the figures on deck, and see Moses standing with his hat off, the wind
+blowing his curls back, talking earnestly to the golden-haired little
+woman on his arm.
+
+"It is a launch into life for him," said Mr. Sewell, with suppressed
+feeling.
+
+"Yes, and he has Mara on his arm," said Miss Emily; "that's as it should
+be. Who is that that Sally Kittridge is flirting with now? Oh, Tom
+Hiers. Well! he's good enough for her. Why don't she take him?" said
+Miss Emily, in her zeal jogging her brother's elbow.
+
+"I'm sure, Emily, I don't know," said Mr. Sewell dryly; "perhaps he
+won't be taken."
+
+"Don't you think Moses looks handsome?" said Miss Emily. "I declare
+there is something quite romantic and Spanish about him; don't you think
+so, Theophilus?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," said her brother, quietly looking, externally, the
+meekest and most matter-of-fact of persons, but deep within him a voice
+sighed, "Poor Dolores, be comforted, your boy is beautiful and
+prosperous!"
+
+"There, there!" said Miss Emily, "I believe she is starting."
+
+All eyes of the crowd were now fixed on the ship; the sound of hammers
+stopped; the workmen were seen flying in every direction to gain good
+positions to see her go,--that sight so often seen on those shores, yet
+to which use cannot dull the most insensible.
+
+First came a slight, almost imperceptible, movement, then a swift
+exultant rush, a dash into the hissing water, and the air was rent with
+hurrahs as the beautiful ship went floating far out on the blue seas,
+where her fairer life was henceforth to be.
+
+Mara was leaning on Moses's arm at the instant the ship began to move,
+but in the moment of the last dizzy rush she felt his arm go tightly
+round her, holding her so close that she could hear the beating of his
+heart.
+
+"Hurrah!" he said, letting go his hold the moment the ship floated free,
+and swinging his hat in answer to the hats, scarfs, and handkerchiefs,
+which fluttered from the crowd on the shore. His eyes sparkled with a
+proud light as he stretched himself upward, raising his head and
+throwing back his shoulders with a triumphant movement. He looked like a
+young sea-king just crowned; and the fact is the less wonderful,
+therefore, that Mara felt her heart throb as she looked at him, and that
+a treacherous throb of the same nature shook the breezy ribbons
+fluttering over the careless heart of Sally. A handsome young
+sea-captain, treading the deck of his own vessel, is, in his time and
+place, a prince.
+
+Moses looked haughtily across at Sally, and then passed a half-laughing
+defiant flash of eyes between them. He looked at Mara, who could
+certainly not have known what was in her eyes at the moment,--an
+expression that made his heart give a great throb, and wonder if he saw
+aright: but it was gone a moment after, as all gathered around in a knot
+exchanging congratulations on the fortunate way in which the affair had
+gone off. Then came the launching in boats to go back to the collation
+on shore, where were high merry-makings for the space of one or two
+hours: and thus was fulfilled the first part of Moses Pennel's Saturday
+afternoon prediction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+GREEK MEETS GREEK
+
+
+Moses was now within a day or two of the time of his sailing, and yet
+the distance between him and Mara seemed greater than ever. It is
+astonishing, when two people are once started on a wrong understanding
+with each other, how near they may live, how intimate they may be, how
+many things they may have in common, how many words they may speak, how
+closely they may seem to simulate intimacy, confidence, friendship,
+while yet there lies a gulf between them that neither crosses,--a
+reserve that neither explores.
+
+Like most shy girls, Mara became more shy the more really she understood
+the nature of her own feelings. The conversation with Sally had opened
+her eyes to the secret of her own heart, and she had a guilty feeling as
+if what she had discovered must be discovered by every one else. Yes, it
+was clear she loved Moses in a way that made him, she thought, more
+necessary to her happiness than she could ever be to his,--in a way that
+made it impossible to think of him as wholly and for life devoted to
+another, without a constant inner conflict. In vain had been all her
+little stratagems practiced upon herself the whole summer long, to prove
+to herself that she was glad that the choice had fallen upon Sally. She
+saw clearly enough now that she was not glad,--that there was no woman
+or girl living, however dear, who could come for life between him and
+her, without casting on her heart the shuddering sorrow of a dim
+eclipse.
+
+But now the truth was plain to herself, her whole force was directed
+toward the keeping of her secret. "I may suffer," she thought, "but I
+will have strength not to be silly and weak. Nobody shall know,--nobody
+shall dream it,--and in the long, long time that he is away, I shall
+have strength given me to overcome."
+
+So Mara put on her most cheerful and matter-of-fact kind of face, and
+plunged into the making of shirts and knitting of stockings, and talked
+of the coming voyage with such a total absence of any concern, that
+Moses began to think, after all, there could be no depth to her
+feelings, or that the deeper ones were all absorbed by some one else.
+
+"You really seem to enjoy the prospect of my going away," said he to
+her, one morning, as she was energetically busying herself with her
+preparations.
+
+"Well, of course; you know your career must begin. You must make your
+fortune; and it is pleasant to think how favorably everything is shaping
+for you."
+
+"One likes, however, to be a little regretted," said Moses, in a tone of
+pique.
+
+"A little regretted!" Mara's heart beat at these words, but her
+hypocrisy was well practiced. She put down the rebellious throb, and
+assuming a look of open, sisterly friendliness, said, quite naturally,
+"Why, we shall all miss you, of course."
+
+"Of course," said Moses,--"one would be glad to be missed some other way
+than _of course_."
+
+"Oh, as to that, make yourself easy," said Mara. "We shall all be dull
+enough when you are gone to content the most exacting." Still she spoke,
+not stopping her stitching, and raising her soft brown eyes with a
+frank, open look into Moses's--no tremor, not even of an eyelid.
+
+"You men must have everything," she continued, gayly, "the enterprise,
+the adventure, the novelty, the pleasure of feeling that you are
+something, and can do something in the world; and besides all this, you
+want the satisfaction of knowing that we women are following in chains
+behind your triumphal car!"
+
+There was a dash of bitterness in this, which was a rare ingredient in
+Mara's conversation.
+
+Moses took the word. "And you women sit easy at home, sewing and
+singing, and forming romantic pictures of our life as like its homely
+reality as romances generally are to reality; and while we are off in
+the hard struggle for position and the means of life, you hold your
+hearts ready for the first rich man that offers a fortune ready made."
+
+"The first!" said Mara. "Oh, you naughty! sometimes we try two or
+three."
+
+"Well, then, I suppose this is from one of them," said Moses, flapping
+down a letter from Boston, directed in a masculine hand, which he had
+got at the post-office that morning.
+
+Now Mara knew that this letter was nothing in particular, but she was
+taken by surprise, and her skin was delicate as peach-blossom, and so
+she could not help a sudden blush, which rose even to her golden hair,
+vexed as she was to feel it coming. She put the letter quietly in her
+pocket, and for a moment seemed too discomposed to answer.
+
+"You do well to keep your own counsel," said Moses. "No friend so near
+as one's self, is a good maxim. One does not expect young girls to learn
+it so early, but it seems they do."
+
+"And why shouldn't they as well as young men?" said Mara. "Confidence
+begets confidence, they say."
+
+"I have no ambition to play confidant," said Moses; "although as one who
+stands to you in the relation of older brother and guardian, and just on
+the verge of a long voyage, I might be supposed anxious to know."
+
+"And I have no ambition to be confidant," said Mara, all her spirit
+sparkling in her eyes; "although when one stands to you in the relation
+of an only sister, I might be supposed perhaps to feel some interest to
+be in your confidence."
+
+The words "older brother" and "only sister" grated on the ears of both
+the combatants as a decisive sentence. Mara never looked so pretty in
+her life, for the whole force of her being was awake, glowing and
+watchful, to guard passage, door, and window of her soul, that no
+treacherous hint might escape. Had he not just reminded her that he was
+only an older brother? and what would he think if he knew the
+truth?--and Moses thought the words _only sister_ unequivocal
+declaration of how the matter stood in her view, and so he rose, and
+saying, "I won't detain you longer from your letter," took his hat and
+went out.
+
+"Are you going down to Sally's?" said Mara, coming to the door and
+looking out after him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, ask her to come home with you and spend the evening. I have ever
+so many things to tell her."
+
+"I will," said Moses, as he lounged away.
+
+"The thing is clear enough," said Moses to himself. "Why should I make a
+fool of myself any further? What possesses us men always to set our
+hearts precisely on what isn't to be had? There's Sally Kittridge likes
+me; I can see that plainly enough, for all her mincing; and why couldn't
+I have had the sense to fall in love with her? She will make a splendid,
+showy woman. She has talent and tact enough to rise to any position I
+may rise to, let me rise as high as I will. She will always have skill
+and energy in the conduct of life; and when all the froth and foam of
+youth has subsided, she will make a noble woman. Why, then, do I cling
+to this fancy? I feel that this little flossy cloud, this delicate,
+quiet little puff of thistledown, on which I have set my heart, is the
+only thing for me, and that without her my life will always be
+incomplete. I remember all our early life. It was she who sought me, and
+ran after me, and where has all that love gone to? Gone to this fellow;
+that's plain enough. When a girl like her is so comfortably cool and
+easy, it's because her heart is off somewhere else."
+
+This conversation took place about four o'clock in as fine an October
+afternoon as you could wish to see. The sun, sloping westward, turned to
+gold the thousand blue scales of the ever-heaving sea, and soft,
+pine-scented winds were breathing everywhere through the forests, waving
+the long, swaying films of heavy moss, and twinkling the leaves of the
+silver birches that fluttered through the leafy gloom. The moon, already
+in the sky, gave promise of a fine moonlight night; and the wild and
+lonely stillness of the island, and the thoughts of leaving in a few
+days, all conspired to foster the restless excitement in our hero's mind
+into a kind of romantic unrest.
+
+Now, in some such states, a man disappointed in one woman will turn to
+another, because, in a certain way and measure, her presence stills the
+craving and fills the void. It is a sort of supposititious courtship,--a
+saying to one woman, who is sympathetic and receptive, the words of
+longing and love that another will not receive. To be sure it is a game
+unworthy of any true man,--a piece of sheer, reckless, inconsiderate
+selfishness. But men do it, as they do many other unworthy things, from
+the mere promptings of present impulse, and let consequences take care
+of themselves. Moses met Sally that afternoon in just the frame to play
+the lover in this hypothetical, supposititious way, with words and looks
+and tones that came from feelings given to another. And as to Sally?
+Well, for once, Greek met Greek; for although Sally, as we showed her,
+was a girl of generous impulses, she was yet in no danger of immediate
+translation on account of superhuman goodness. In short, Sally had made
+up her mind that Moses should give her a chance to say that precious and
+golden _No_, which should enable her to count him as one of her
+captives,--and then he might go where he liked for all her.
+
+So said the wicked elf, as she looked into her own great eyes in the
+little square of mirror shaded by a misty asparagus bush; and to this
+end there were various braidings and adornings of the lustrous black
+hair, and coquettish earrings were mounted that hung glancing and
+twinkling just by the smooth outline of her glowing cheek,--and then
+Sally looked at herself in a friendly way of approbation, and nodded at
+the bright dimpled shadow with a look of secret understanding. The real
+Sally and the Sally of the looking-glass were on admirable terms with
+each other, and both of one mind about the plan of campaign against the
+common enemy. Sally thought of him as he stood kingly and triumphant on
+the deck of his vessel, his great black eyes flashing confident glances
+into hers, and she felt a rebellious rustle of all her plumage. "No,
+sir," she said to herself, "you don't do it. You shall never find me
+among your slaves,"--"that you know of," added a doubtful voice within
+her. "Never to your knowledge," she said, as she turned away. "I wonder
+if he will come here this evening," she said, as she began to work upon
+a pillow-case,--one of a set which Mrs. Kittridge had confided to her
+nimble fingers. The seam was long, straight, and monotonous, and Sally
+was restless and fidgety; her thread would catch in knots, and when she
+tried to loosen it, would break, and the needle had to be threaded over.
+Somehow the work was terribly irksome to her, and the house looked so
+still and dim and lonesome, and the tick-tock of the kitchen-clock was
+insufferable, and Sally let her work fall in her lap and looked out of
+the open window, far to the open ocean, where a fresh breeze was
+blowing toward her, and her eyes grew deep and dreamy following the
+gliding ship sails. Sally was getting romantic. Had she been reading
+novels? Novels! What can a pretty woman find in a novel equal to the
+romance that is all the while weaving and unweaving about her, and of
+which no human foresight can tell her the catastrophe? It is _novels_
+that give false views of life. Is there not an eternal novel, with all
+these false, cheating views, written in the breast of every beautiful
+and attractive girl whose witcheries make every man that comes near her
+talk like a fool? Like a sovereign princess, she never hears the truth,
+unless it be from the one manly man in a thousand, who understands both
+himself and her. From all the rest she hears only flatteries more or
+less ingenious, according to the ability of the framer. Compare, for
+instance, what Tom Brown says to little Seraphina at the party to-night,
+with what Tom Brown sober says to sober sister Maria _about_ her
+to-morrow. Tom remembers that he was a fool last night, and knows what
+he thinks and always has thought to-day; but pretty Seraphina thinks he
+adores her, so that no matter what she does he will never see a flaw,
+she is sure of that,--poor little puss! She does not know that
+philosophic Tom looks at her as he does at a glass of champagne, or a
+dose of exhilarating gas, and calculates how much it will do for him to
+take of the stimulus without interfering with his serious and settled
+plans of life, which, of course, he doesn't mean to give up for her. The
+one-thousand-and-first man in creation is he that can feel the
+fascination but will not flatter, and that tries to tell to the little
+tyrant the rare word of truth that may save her; he is, as we say, the
+one-thousand-and-first. Well, as Sally sat with her great dark eyes
+dreamily following the ship, she mentally thought over all the
+compliments Moses had paid her, expressed or understood, and those of
+all her other admirers, who had built up a sort of cloud-world around
+her, so that her little feet never rested on the soil of reality. Sally
+was shrewd and keen, and had a native mother-wit in the discernment of
+spirits, that made her feel that somehow this was all false coin; but
+still she counted it over, and it looked so pretty and bright that she
+sighed to think it was not real.
+
+"If it only had been," she thought; "if there were only any truth to the
+creature; he is so handsome,--it's a pity. But I do believe in his
+secret heart he is in love with Mara; he is in love with some one, I
+know. I have seen looks that must come from something real; but they
+were not for me. I have a kind of power over him, though," she said,
+resuming her old wicked look, "and I'll puzzle him a little, and torment
+him. He shall find his match in me," and Sally nodded to a cat-bird that
+sat perched on a pine-tree, as if she had a secret understanding with
+him, and the cat-bird went off into a perfect roulade of imitations of
+all that was going on in the late bird-operas of the season.
+
+Sally was roused from her revery by a spray of goldenrod that was thrown
+into her lap by an invisible hand, and Moses soon appeared at the
+window.
+
+"There's a plume that would be becoming to your hair," he said; "stay,
+let me arrange it."
+
+"No, no; you'll tumble my hair,--what can you know of such things?"
+
+Moses held the spray aloft, and leaned toward her with a sort of quiet,
+determined insistence.
+
+"By your leave, fair lady," he said, wreathing it in her hair, and then
+drawing back a little, he looked at her with so much admiration that
+Sally felt herself blush.
+
+"Come, now, I dare say you've made a fright of me," she said, rising and
+instinctively turning to the looking-glass; but she had too much
+coquetry not to see how admirably the golden plume suited her black
+hair, and the brilliant eyes and cheeks; she turned to Moses again, and
+courtesied, saying "Thank you, sir," dropping her eyelashes with a mock
+humility.
+
+"Come, now," said Moses; "I am sent after you to come and spend the
+evening; let's walk along the seashore, and get there by degrees."
+
+And so they set out; but the path was circuitous, for Moses was always
+stopping, now at this point and now at that, and enacting some of those
+thousand little by-plays which a man can get up with a pretty woman.
+They searched for smooth pebbles where the waves had left
+them,--many-colored, pink and crimson and yellow and brown, all smooth
+and rounded by the eternal tossings of the old sea that had made
+playthings of them for centuries, and with every pebble given and taken
+were things said which should have meant more and more, had the play
+been earnest. Had Moses any idea of offering himself to Sally? No; but
+he was in one of those fluctuating, unresisting moods of mind in which
+he was willing to lie like a chip on the tide of present emotion, and
+let it rise and fall and dash him when it liked; and Sally never had
+seemed more beautiful and attractive to him than that afternoon, because
+there was a shade of reality and depth about her that he had never seen
+before.
+
+"Come on, and let me show you my hermitage," said Moses, guiding her
+along the slippery projecting rocks, all covered with yellow tresses of
+seaweed. Sally often slipped on this treacherous footing, and Moses was
+obliged to hold her up, and instinctively he threw a meaning into his
+manner so much more than ever he had before, that by the time they had
+gained the little cove both were really agitated and excited. He felt
+that temporary delirium which is often the mesmeric effect of a strong
+womanly presence, and she felt that agitation which every woman must
+when a determined hand is striking on the great vital chord of her
+being. When they had stepped round the last point of rock they found
+themselves driven by the advancing tide up into the little lonely
+grotto,--and there they were with no lookout but the wide blue sea, all
+spread out in rose and gold under the twilight skies, with a silver moon
+looking down upon them.
+
+"Sally," said Moses, in a low, earnest whisper, "you love me,--do you
+not?" and he tried to pass his arm around her.
+
+She turned and flashed at him a look of mingled terror and defiance, and
+struck out her hands at him; then impetuously turning away and
+retreating to the other end of the grotto, she sat down on a rock and
+began to cry.
+
+Moses came toward her, and kneeling, tried to take her hand. She raised
+her head angrily, and again repulsed him.
+
+"Go!" she said. "What right had you to say that? What right had you even
+to think it?"
+
+"Sally, you do love me. It cannot but be. You are a woman; you could not
+have been with me as we have and not feel more than friendship."
+
+"Oh, you men!--your conceit passes understanding," said Sally. "You
+think we are born to be your bond slaves,--but for once you are
+mistaken, sir. I _don't_ love you; and what's more, you don't love
+me,--you know you don't; you know that you love somebody else. You love
+Mara,--you know you do; there's no truth in you," she said, rising
+indignantly.
+
+Moses felt himself color. There was an embarrassed pause, and then he
+answered,--
+
+"Sally, why should I love Mara? Her heart is all given to another,--you
+yourself know it."
+
+"I don't know it either," said Sally; "I know it isn't so."
+
+"But you gave me to understand so."
+
+"Well, sir, you put prying questions about what you ought to have asked
+her, and so what was I to do? Besides, I did want to show you how much
+better Mara could do than to take you; besides, I didn't know till
+lately. I never thought she could care much for any man more than I
+could."
+
+"And you think she loves me?" said Moses, eagerly, a flash of joy
+illuminating his face; "do you, really?"
+
+"There you are," said Sally; "it's a shame I have let you know! Yes,
+Moses Pennel, she loves you like an angel, as none of you men deserve to
+be loved,--as you in particular don't."
+
+Moses sat down on a point of rock, and looked on the ground
+discountenanced. Sally stood up glowing and triumphant, as if she had
+her foot on the neck of her oppressor and meant to make the most of it.
+
+"Now what do you think of yourself for all this summer's work?--for what
+you have just said, asking me if I didn't love you? Supposing, now, I
+had done as other girls would, played the fool and blushed, and said
+yes? Why, to-morrow you would have been thinking how to be rid of me! I
+shall save you all that trouble, sir."
+
+"Sally, I own I have been acting like a fool," said Moses, humbly.
+
+"You have done more than that,--you have acted wickedly," said Sally.
+
+"And am I the only one to blame?" said Moses, lifting his head with a
+show of resistance.
+
+"Listen, sir!" said Sally, energetically; "I have played the fool and
+acted wrong too, but there is just this difference between you and me:
+you had nothing to lose, and I a great deal; your heart, such as it was,
+was safely disposed of. But supposing you had won mine, what would you
+have done with it? That was the last thing you considered."
+
+"Go on, Sally, don't spare; I'm a vile dog, unworthy of either of you,"
+said Moses.
+
+Sally looked down on her handsome penitent with some relenting, as he
+sat quite dejected, his strong arms drooping, and his long eyelashes
+cast down.
+
+"I'll be friends with you," she said, "because, after all, I'm not so
+very much better than you. We have both done wrong, and made dear Mara
+very unhappy. But after all, I was not so much to blame as you; because,
+if there had been any reality in your love, I could have paid it
+honestly. I had a heart to give,--I have it now, and hope long to keep
+it," said Sally.
+
+"Sally, you are a right noble girl. I never knew what you were till
+now," said Moses, looking at her with admiration.
+
+"It's the first time for all these six months that we have either of us
+spoken a word of truth or sense to each other. I never did anything but
+trifle with you, and you the same. Now we've come to some plain dry
+land, we may walk on and be friends. So now help me up these rocks, and
+I will go home."
+
+"And you'll not come home with me?"
+
+"Of course not. I think you may now go home and have one talk with Mara
+without witnesses."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE BETROTHAL
+
+
+Moses walked slowly home from his interview with Sally, in a sort of
+maze of confused thought. In general, men understand women only from the
+outside, and judge them with about as much real comprehension as an
+eagle might judge a canary-bird. The difficulty of real understanding
+intensifies in proportion as the man is distinctively manly, and the
+woman womanly. There are men with a large infusion of the feminine
+element in their composition who read the female nature with more
+understanding than commonly falls to the lot of men; but in general,
+when a man passes beyond the mere outside artifices and unrealities
+which lie between the two sexes, and really touches his finger to any
+vital chord in the heart of a fair neighbor, he is astonished at the
+quality of the vibration.
+
+"I could not have dreamed there was so much in her," thought Moses, as
+he turned away from Sally Kittridge. He felt humbled as well as
+astonished by the moral lecture which this frisky elf with whom he had
+all summer been amusing himself, preached to him from the depths of a
+real woman's heart. What she said of Mara's loving him filled his eyes
+with remorseful tears,--and for the moment he asked himself whether this
+restless, jealous, exacting desire which he felt to appropriate her
+whole life and heart to himself were as really worthy of the name of
+love as the generous self-devotion with which she had, all her life,
+made all his interests her own.
+
+Was he to go to her now and tell her that he loved her, and therefore
+he had teased and vexed her,--therefore he had seemed to prefer another
+before her,--therefore he had practiced and experimented upon her
+nature? A suspicion rather stole upon him that love which expresses
+itself principally in making exactions and giving pain is not exactly
+worthy of the name. And yet he had been secretly angry with her all
+summer for being the very reverse of this; for her apparent cheerful
+willingness to see him happy with another; for the absence of all signs
+of jealousy,--all desire of exclusive appropriation. It showed, he said
+to himself, that there was no love; and now when it dawned on him that
+this might be the very heroism of self-devotion, he asked himself which
+was best worthy to be called love.
+
+"She did love him, then!" The thought blazed up through the smouldering
+embers of thought in his heart like a tongue of flame. She loved him! He
+felt a sort of triumph in it, for he was sure Sally must know, they were
+so intimate. Well, he would go to her, and tell her all, confess all his
+sins, and be forgiven.
+
+When he came back to the house, all was still evening. The moon, which
+was playing brightly on the distant sea, left one side of the brown
+house in shadow. Moses saw a light gleaming behind the curtain in the
+little room on the lower floor, which had been his peculiar sanctum
+during the summer past. He had made a sort of library of it, keeping
+there his books and papers. Upon the white curtain flitted, from time to
+time, a delicate, busy shadow; now it rose and now it stooped, and then
+it rose again--grew dim and vanished, and then came out again. His heart
+beat quick.
+
+Mara was in his room, busy, as she always had been before his
+departures, in cares for him. How many things had she made for him, and
+done and arranged for him, all his life long! things which he had taken
+as much as a matter of course as the shining of that moon. His thought
+went back to the times of his first going to sea,--he a rough, chaotic
+boy, sensitive and surly, and she the ever thoughtful good angel of a
+little girl, whose loving-kindness he had felt free to use and to abuse.
+He remembered that he made her cry there when he should have spoken
+lovingly and gratefully to her, and that the words of acknowledgment
+that ought to have been spoken, never had been said,--remained unsaid to
+that hour. He stooped low, and came quite close to the muslin curtain.
+All was bright in the room, and shadowy without; he could see her
+movements as through a thin white haze. She was packing his sea-chest;
+his things were lying about her, folded or rolled nicely. Now he saw her
+on her knees writing something with a pencil in a book, and then she
+enveloped it very carefully in silk paper, and tied it trimly, and hid
+it away at the bottom of the chest. Then she remained a moment kneeling
+at the chest, her head resting in her hands. A sort of strange, sacred
+feeling came over him as he heard a low murmur, and knew that she felt a
+Presence that he never felt or acknowledged. He felt somehow that he was
+doing her a wrong thus to be prying upon moments when she thought
+herself alone with God; a sort of vague remorse filled him; he felt as
+if she were too good for him. He turned away, and entering the front
+door of the house, stepped noiselessly along and lifted the latch of the
+door. He heard a rustle as of one rising hastily as he opened it and
+stood before Mara. He had made up his mind what to say; but when she
+stood there before him, with her surprised, inquiring eyes, he felt
+confused.
+
+"What, home so soon?" she said.
+
+"You did not expect me, then?"
+
+"Of course not,--not for these two hours; so," she said, looking about,
+"I found some mischief to do among your things. If you had waited as
+long as I expected, they would all have been quite right again, and you
+would never have known."
+
+Moses sat down and drew her toward him, as if he were going to say
+something, and then stopped and began confusedly playing with her
+work-box.
+
+"Now, please don't," said she, archly. "You know what a little old maid
+I am about my things!"
+
+"Mara," said Moses, "people have asked you to marry them, have they
+not?"
+
+"People asked me to marry them!" said Mara. "I hope not. What an odd
+question!"
+
+"You know what I mean," said Moses; "you have had offers of
+marriage--from Mr. Adams, for example."
+
+"And what if I have?"
+
+"You did not accept him, Mara?" said Moses.
+
+"No, I did not."
+
+"And yet he was a fine man, I am told, and well fitted to make you
+happy."
+
+"I believe he was," said Mara, quietly.
+
+"And why were you so foolish?"
+
+Mara was fretted at this question. She supposed Moses had come to tell
+her of his engagement to Sally, and that this was a kind of preface, and
+she answered,--
+
+"I don't know why you call it foolish. I was a true friend to Mr. Adams.
+I saw intellectually that he might have the power of making any
+reasonable woman happy. I think now that the woman will be fortunate who
+becomes his wife; but I did not wish to marry him."
+
+"Is there anybody you prefer to him, Mara?" said Moses.
+
+She started up with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+"You have no right to ask me that, though you are my brother."
+
+"I am not your brother, Mara," said Moses, rising and going toward her,
+"and that is why I ask you. I feel I have a right to ask you."
+
+"I do not understand you," she said, faintly.
+
+"I can speak plainer, then. I wish to put in my poor venture. I love
+you, Mara--not as a brother. I wish you to be my wife, if you will."
+
+While Moses was saying these words, Mara felt a sort of whirling in her
+head, and it grew dark before her eyes; but she had a strong, firm will,
+and she mastered herself and answered, after a moment, in a quiet,
+sorrowful tone, "How can I believe this, Moses? If it is true, why have
+you done as you have this summer?"
+
+"Because I was a fool, Mara,--because I was jealous of Mr.
+Adams,--because I somehow hoped, after all, that you either loved me or
+that I might make you think more of me through jealousy of another. They
+say that love always is shown by jealousy."
+
+"Not true love, I should think," said Mara. "How _could_ you do so?--it
+was cruel to her,--cruel to me."
+
+"I admit it,--anything, everything you can say. I have acted like a fool
+and a knave, if you will; but after all, Mara, I do love you. I know I
+am not worthy of you--never was--never can be; you are in all things a
+true, noble woman, and I have been unmanly."
+
+It is not to be supposed that all this was spoken without accompaniments
+of looks, movements, and expressions of face such as we cannot give, but
+such as doubled their power to the parties concerned; and the "I love
+you" had its usual conclusive force as argument, apology,
+promise,--covering, like charity, a multitude of sins.
+
+Half an hour after, you might have seen a youth and a maiden coming
+together out of the door of the brown house, and walking arm in arm
+toward the sea-beach.
+
+It was one of those wonderfully clear moonlight evenings, when the
+ocean, like a great reflecting mirror, seems to double the brightness of
+the sky,--and its vast expanse lay all around them in its stillness,
+like an eternity of waveless peace. Mara remembered that time in her
+girlhood when she had followed Moses into the woods on just such a
+night,--how she had sat there under the shadows of the trees, and looked
+over to Harpswell and noticed the white houses and the meeting-house,
+all so bright and clear in the moonlight, and then off again on the
+other side of the island where silent ships were coming and going in the
+mysterious stillness. They were talking together now with that
+outflowing fullness which comes when the seal of some great reserve has
+just been broken,--going back over their lives from day to day, bringing
+up incidents of childhood, and turning them gleefully like two children.
+
+And then Moses had all the story of his life to relate, and to tell Mara
+all he had learned of his mother,--going over with all the narrative
+contained in Mr. Sewell's letter.
+
+"You see, Mara, that it was intended that you should be my fate," he
+ended; "so the winds and waves took me up and carried me to the lonely
+island where the magic princess dwelt."
+
+"You are Prince Ferdinand," said Mara.
+
+"And you are Miranda," said he.
+
+"Ah!" she said with fervor, "how plainly we can see that our heavenly
+Father has been guiding our way! How good He is,--and how we must try to
+live for Him,--both of us."
+
+A sort of cloud passed over Moses's brow. He looked embarrassed, and
+there was a pause between them, and then he turned the conversation.
+
+Mara felt pained; it was like a sudden discord; such thoughts and
+feelings were the very breath of her life; she could not speak in
+perfect confidence and unreserve, as she then spoke, without uttering
+them; and her finely organized nature felt a sort of electric
+consciousness of repulsion and dissent. She grew abstracted, and they
+walked on in silence.
+
+"I see now, Mara, I have pained you," said Moses, "but there are a class
+of feelings that you have that I have not and cannot have. No, I cannot
+feign anything. I can understand what religion is in you, I can admire
+its results. I can be happy, if it gives you any comfort; but people are
+differently constituted. I never can feel as you do."
+
+"Oh, don't say never," said Mara, with an intensity that nearly startled
+him; "it has been the one prayer, the one hope, of my life, that you
+might have these comforts,--this peace."
+
+"I need no comfort or peace except what I shall find in you," said
+Moses, drawing her to himself, and looking admiringly at her; "but pray
+for me still. I always thought that my wife must be one of the sort of
+women who pray."
+
+"And why?" said Mara, in surprise.
+
+"Because I need to be loved a great deal, and it is only that kind who
+pray who know how to love really. If you had not prayed for me all this
+time, you never would have loved me in spite of all my faults, as you
+did, and do, and will, as I know you will," he said, folding her in his
+arms, and in his secret heart he said, "Some of this intensity, this
+devotion, which went upward to heaven, will be mine one day. She will
+worship me."
+
+"The fact is, Mara," he said, "I am a child of this world. I have no
+sympathy with things not seen. You are a half-spiritual creature,--a
+child of air; and but for the great woman's heart in you, I should feel
+that you were something uncanny and unnatural. I am selfish, I know; I
+frankly admit, I never disguised it; but I love your religion because it
+makes you love me. It is an incident to that loving, trusting nature
+which makes you all and wholly mine, as I want you to be. I want you all
+and wholly; every thought, every feeling,--the whole strength of your
+being. I don't care if I say it: I would not wish to be second in your
+heart even to God himself!"
+
+"Oh, Moses!" said Mara, almost starting away from him, "such words are
+dreadful; they will surely bring evil upon us."
+
+"I only breathed out my nature, as you did yours. Why should you love an
+unseen and distant Being more than you do one whom you can feel and see,
+who holds you in his arms, whose heart beats like your own?"
+
+"Moses," said Mara, stopping and looking at him in the clear moonlight,
+"God has always been to me not so much like a father as like a dear and
+tender mother. Perhaps it was because I was a poor orphan, and my father
+and mother died at my birth, that He has been so loving to me. I never
+remember the time when I did not feel His presence in my joys and my
+sorrows. I never had a thought of joy and sorrow that I could not say to
+Him. I never woke in the night that I did not feel that He was loving
+and watching me, and that I loved Him in return. Oh, how many, many
+things I have said to Him about you! My heart would have broken years
+ago, had it not been for Him; because, though you did not know it, you
+often seemed unkind; you hurt me very often when you did not mean to.
+His love is so much a part of my life that I cannot conceive of life
+without it. It is the very air I breathe."
+
+Moses stood still a moment, for Mara spoke with a fervor that affected
+him; then he drew her to his heart, and said,--
+
+"Oh, what could ever make you love me?"
+
+"He sent you and gave you to me," she answered, "to be mine in time and
+eternity."
+
+The words were spoken in a kind of enthusiasm so different from the
+usual reserve of Mara, that they seemed like a prophecy. That night, for
+the first time in her life, had she broken the reserve which was her
+very nature, and spoken of that which was the intimate and hidden
+history of her soul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+AT A QUILTING
+
+
+"And so," said Mrs. Captain Badger to Miss Roxy Toothacre, "it seems
+that Moses Pennel ain't going to have Sally Kittridge after all,--he's
+engaged to Mara Lincoln."
+
+"More shame for him," said Miss Roxy, with a frown that made her mohair
+curls look really tremendous.
+
+Miss Roxy and Mrs. Badger were the advance party at a quilting, to be
+holden at the house of Mr. Sewell, and had come at one o'clock to do the
+marking upon the quilt, which was to be filled up by the busy fingers of
+all the women in the parish. Said quilt was to have a bordering of a
+pattern commonly denominated in those parts clam-shell, and this Miss
+Roxy was diligently marking with indigo.
+
+"What makes you say so, now?" said Mrs. Badger, a fat, comfortable,
+motherly matron, who always patronized the last matrimonial venture that
+put forth among the young people.
+
+"What business had he to flirt and gallivant all summer with Sally
+Kittridge, and make everybody think he was going to have her, and then
+turn round to Mara Lincoln at the last minute? I wish I'd been in Mara's
+place."
+
+In Miss Roxy's martial enthusiasm, she gave a sudden poke to her
+frisette, giving to it a diagonal bristle which extremely increased its
+usually severe expression; and any one contemplating her at the moment
+would have thought that for Moses Pennel, or any other young man, to
+come with tender propositions in that direction would have been indeed
+a venturesome enterprise.
+
+"I tell you what 'tis, Mis' Badger," she said, "I've known Mara since
+she was born,--I may say I fetched her up myself, for if I hadn't
+trotted and tended her them first four weeks of her life, Mis' Pennel'd
+never have got her through; and I've watched her every year since; and
+havin' Moses Pennel is the only silly thing I ever knew her to do; but
+you never can tell what a girl will do when it comes to
+marryin',--never!"
+
+"But he's a real stirrin', likely young man, and captain of a fine
+ship," said Mrs. Badger.
+
+"Don't care if he's captain of twenty ships," said Miss Roxy,
+obdurately; "he ain't a professor of religion, and I believe he's an
+infidel, and she's one of the Lord's people."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Badger, "you know the unbelievin' husband shall be
+sanctified by the believin' wife."
+
+"Much sanctifyin' he'll get," said Miss Roxy, contemptuously. "I don't
+believe he loves her any more than fancy; she's the last plaything, and
+when he's got her, he'll be tired of her, as he always was with anything
+he got ever since. I tell you, Moses Pennel is all for pride and
+ambition and the world; and his wife, when he gets used to her, 'll be
+only a circumstance,--that's all."
+
+"Come, now, Miss Roxy," said Miss Emily, who in her best silk and
+smoothly-brushed hair had just come in, "we must _not_ let you talk so.
+Moses Pennel has had long talks with brother, and he thinks him in a
+very hopeful way, and we are all delighted; and as to Mara, she is as
+fresh and happy as a little rose."
+
+"So I tell Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who had been absent from the room to
+hold private consultations with Miss Emily concerning the biscuits and
+sponge-cake for tea, and who now sat down to the quilt and began to
+unroll a capacious and very limp calico thread-case; and placing her
+spectacles awry on her little pug nose, she began a series of ingenious
+dodges with her thread, designed to hit the eye of her needle.
+
+"The old folks," she continued, "are e'en a'most tickled to
+pieces,--'cause they think it'll jist be the salvation of him to get
+Mara."
+
+"I ain't one of the sort that wants to be a-usin' up girls for the
+salvation of fellers," said Miss Roxy, severely. "Ever since he nearly
+like to have got her eat up by sharks, by giggiting her off in the boat
+out to sea when she wa'n't more'n three years old, I always have
+thought he was a misfortin' in that family, and I think so now."
+
+Here broke in Mrs. Eaton, a thrifty energetic widow of a deceased
+sea-captain, who had been left with a tidy little fortune which
+commanded the respect of the neighborhood. Mrs. Eaton had entered
+silently during the discussion, but of course had come, as every other
+woman had that afternoon, with views to be expressed upon the subject.
+
+"For my part," she said, as she stuck a decisive needle into the first
+clam-shell pattern, "I ain't so sure that all the advantage in this
+match is on Moses Pennel's part. Mara Lincoln is a good little thing,
+but she ain't fitted to help a man along,--she'll always be wantin'
+somebody to help her. Why, I 'member goin' a voyage with Cap'n Eaton,
+when I saved the ship, if anybody did,--it was allowed on all hands.
+Cap'n Eaton wasn't hearty at that time, he was jist gettin' up from a
+fever,--it was when Marthy Ann was a baby, and I jist took her and went
+to sea and took care of him. I used to work the longitude for him and
+help him lay the ship's course when his head was bad,--and when we came
+on the coast, we were kept out of harbor beatin' about nearly three
+weeks, and all the ship's tacklin' was stiff with ice, and I tell you
+the men never would have stood it through and got the ship in, if it
+hadn't been for me. I kept their mittens and stockings all the while
+a-dryin' at my stove in the cabin, and hot coffee all the while
+a-boilin' for 'em, or I believe they'd a-frozen their hands and feet,
+and never been able to work the ship in. That's the way _I_ did. Now
+Sally Kittridge is a great deal more like that than Mara."
+
+"There's no doubt that Sally is smart," said Mrs. Badger, "but then it
+ain't every one can do like you, Mrs. Eaton."
+
+"Oh no, oh no," was murmured from mouth to mouth; "Mrs. Eaton mustn't
+think she's any rule for others,--everybody knows she can do more than
+most people;" whereat the pacified Mrs. Eaton said "she didn't know as
+it was anything remarkable,--it showed what anybody might do, if they'd
+only _try_ and have resolution; but that Mara never had been brought up
+to have resolution, and her mother never had resolution before her, it
+wasn't in any of Mary Pennel's family; she knew their grandmother and
+all their aunts, and they were all a weakly set, and not fitted to get
+along in life,--they were a kind of people that somehow didn't seem to
+know how to take hold of things."
+
+At this moment the consultation was hushed up by the entrance of Sally
+Kittridge and Mara, evidently on the closest terms of intimacy, and more
+than usually demonstrative and affectionate; they would sit together and
+use each other's needles, scissors, thread, and thimbles
+interchangeably, as if anxious to express every minute the most
+overflowing confidence. Sly winks and didactic nods were covertly
+exchanged among the elderly people, and when Mrs. Kittridge entered with
+more than usual airs of impressive solemnity, several of these were
+covertly directed toward her, as a matron whose views in life must have
+been considerably darkened by the recent event.
+
+Mrs. Kittridge, however, found an opportunity to whisper under her
+breath to Miss Ruey what a relief to her it was that the affair had
+taken such a turn. She had felt uneasy all summer for fear of what might
+come. Sally was so thoughtless and worldly, she felt afraid that he
+would lead her astray. She didn't see, for her part, how a professor of
+religion like Mara could make up her mind to such an unsettled kind of
+fellow, even if he did seem to be rich and well-to-do. But then she had
+done looking for consistency; and she sighed and vigorously applied
+herself to quilting like one who has done with the world.
+
+In return, Miss Ruey sighed and took snuff, and related for the
+hundredth time to Mrs. Kittridge the great escape she once had from the
+addresses of Abraham Peters, who had turned out a "poor drunken
+creetur." But then it was only natural that Mara should be interested in
+Moses; and the good soul went off into her favorite verse:--
+
+    "The fondness of a creature's love,
+      How strong it strikes the sense!
+    Thither the warm affections move,
+      Nor can we drive them thence."
+
+In fact, Miss Ruey's sentimental vein was in quite a gushing state, for
+she more than once extracted from the dark corners of the limp calico
+thread-case we have spoken of certain long-treasured _morceaux_ of
+newspaper poetry, of a tender and sentimental cast, which she had laid
+up with true Yankee economy, in case any one should ever be in a
+situation to need them. They related principally to the union of kindred
+hearts, and the joys of reciprocated feeling and the pains of absence.
+Good Miss Ruey occasionally passed these to Mara, with glances full of
+meaning, which caused the poor old thing to resemble a sentimental
+goblin, keeping Sally Kittridge in a perfect hysterical tempest of
+suppressed laughter, and making it difficult for Mara to preserve the
+decencies of life toward her well-intending old friend. The trouble with
+poor Miss Ruey was that, while her body had grown old and crazy, her
+soul was just as juvenile as ever,--and a simple, juvenile soul
+disporting itself in a crazy, battered old body, is at great
+disadvantage. It was lucky for her, however, that she lived in the most
+sacred unconsciousness of the ludicrous effect of her little
+indulgences, and the pleasure she took in them was certainly of the most
+harmless kind. The world would be a far better and more enjoyable place
+than it is, if all people who are old and uncomely could find amusement
+as innocent and Christian-like as Miss Ruey's inoffensive thread-case
+collection of sentimental truisms.
+
+This quilting of which we speak was a solemn, festive occasion of the
+parish, held a week after Moses had sailed away; and so _piquant_ a
+morsel as a recent engagement could not, of course, fail to be served up
+for the company in every variety of garnishing which individual tastes
+might suggest.
+
+It became an ascertained fact, however, in the course of the evening
+festivities, that the minister was serenely approbative of the event;
+that Captain Kittridge was at length brought to a sense of the errors of
+his way in supposing that Sally had ever cared a pin for Moses more than
+as a mutual friend and confidant; and the great affair was settled
+without more ripples of discomposure than usually attend similar
+announcements in more refined society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+FRIENDS
+
+
+The quilting broke up at the primitive hour of nine o'clock, at which,
+in early New England days, all social gatherings always dispersed.
+Captain Kittridge rowed his helpmeet, with Mara and Sally, across the
+Bay to the island.
+
+"Come and stay with me to-night, Sally," said Mara.
+
+"I think Sally had best be at home," said Mrs. Kittridge. "There's no
+sense in girls talking all night."
+
+"There ain't sense in nothin' else, mother," said the Captain. "Next to
+sparkin', which is the Christianist thing I knows on, comes gals' talks
+'bout their sparks; they's as natural as crowsfoot and red columbines
+in the spring, and spring don't come but once a year neither,--and so
+let 'em take the comfort on't. I warrant now, Polly, you've laid awake
+nights and talked about me."
+
+"We've all been foolish once," said Mrs. Kittridge.
+
+"Well, mother, we want to be foolish too," said Sally.
+
+"Well, you and your father are too much for me," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+plaintively; "you always get your own way."
+
+"How lucky that my way is always a good one!" said Sally.
+
+"Well, you know, Sally, you are going to make the beer to-morrow," still
+objected her mother.
+
+"Oh, yes; that's another reason," said Sally. "Mara and I shall come
+home through the woods in the morning, and we can get whole apronfuls of
+young wintergreen, and besides, I know where there's a lot of sassafras
+root. We'll dig it, won't we, Mara?"
+
+"Yes; and I'll come down and help you brew," said Mara. "Don't you
+remember the beer I made when Moses came home?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I remember," said the Captain, "you sent us a couple of
+bottles."
+
+"We can make better yet now," said Mara. "The wintergreen is young, and
+the green tips on the spruce boughs are so full of strength. Everything
+is lively and sunny now."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Captain, "and I 'spect I know why things do look
+pretty lively to some folks, don't they?"
+
+"I don't know what sort of work you'll make of the beer among you," said
+Mrs. Kittridge; "but you must have it your own way."
+
+Mrs. Kittridge, who never did anything else among her tea-drinking
+acquaintances but laud and magnify Sally's good traits and domestic
+acquirements, felt constantly bound to keep up a faint show of
+controversy and authority in her dealings with her,--the fading remains
+of the strict government of her childhood; but it was, nevertheless,
+very perfectly understood, in a general way, that Sally was to do as she
+pleased; and so, when the boat came to shore, she took the arm of Mara
+and started up toward the brown house.
+
+The air was soft and balmy, and though the moon by which the troth of
+Mara and Moses had been plighted had waned into the latest hours of the
+night, still a thousand stars were lying in twinkling brightness,
+reflected from the undulating waves all around them, and the tide, as it
+rose and fell, made a sound as gentle and soft as the respiration of a
+peaceful sleeper.
+
+"Well, Mara," said Sally, after an interval of silence, "all has come
+out right. You see that it was you whom he loved. What a lucky thing
+for me that I am made so heartless, or I might not be as glad as I am."
+
+"You are not heartless, Sally," said Mara; "it's the enchanted princess
+asleep; the right one hasn't come to waken her."
+
+"Maybe so," said Sally, with her old light laugh. "If I only were sure
+he would make you happy now,--half as happy as you deserve,--I'd forgive
+him his share of this summer's mischief. The fault was just half mine,
+you see, for I witched with him. I confess it. I have my own little
+spider-webs for these great lordly flies, and I like to hear them buzz."
+
+"Take care, Sally; never do it again, or the spider-web may get round
+you," said Mara.
+
+"Never fear me," said Sally. "But, Mara, I wish I felt sure that Moses
+could make you happy. Do you really, now, when you think seriously, feel
+as if he would?"
+
+"I never thought seriously about it," said Mara; "but I know he needs
+me; that I can do for him what no one else can. I have always felt all
+my life that he was to be mine; that he was sent to me, ordained for me
+to care for and to love."
+
+"You are well mated," said Sally. "He wants to be loved very much, and
+you want to love. There's the active and passive voice, as they used to
+say at Miss Plucher's. But yet in your natures you are opposite as any
+two could well be."
+
+Mara felt that there was in these chance words of Sally more than she
+perceived. No one could feel as intensely as she could that the mind and
+heart so dear to her were yet, as to all that was most vital and real in
+her inner life, unsympathizing. To her the spiritual world was a
+reality; God an ever-present consciousness; and the line of this present
+life seemed so to melt and lose itself in the anticipation of a future
+and brighter one, that it was impossible for her to speak intimately and
+not unconsciously to betray the fact. To him there was only the life of
+this world: there was no present God; and from all thought of a future
+life he shrank with a shuddering aversion, as from something ghastly and
+unnatural. She had realized this difference more in the few days that
+followed her betrothal than all her life before, for now first the
+barrier of mutual constraint and misunderstanding having melted away,
+each spoke with an _abandon_ and unreserve which made the acquaintance
+more vitally intimate than ever it had been before. It was then that
+Mara felt that while her sympathies could follow him through all his
+plans and interests, there was a whole world of thought and feeling in
+her heart where his could not follow her; and she asked herself, Would
+it be so always? Must she walk at his side forever repressing the
+utterance of that which was most sacred and intimate, living in a
+nominal and external communion only? How could it be that what was so
+lovely and clear in its reality to her, that which was to her as
+life-blood, that which was the vital air in which she lived and moved
+and had her being, could be absolutely nothing to him? Was it really
+possible, as he said, that God had no existence for him except in a
+nominal cold belief; that the spiritual world was to him only a land of
+pale shades and doubtful glooms, from which he shrank with dread, and
+the least allusion to which was distasteful? and would this always be
+so? and if so, could she be happy?
+
+But Mara said the truth in saying that the question of personal
+happiness never entered her thoughts. She loved Moses in a way that made
+it necessary to her happiness to devote herself to him, to watch over
+and care for him; and though she knew not how, she felt a sort of
+presentiment that it was through her that he must be brought into
+sympathy with a spiritual and immortal life.
+
+All this passed through Mara's mind in the reverie into which Sally's
+last words threw her, as she sat on the door-sill and looked off into
+the starry distance and heard the weird murmur of the sea.
+
+"How lonesome the sea at night always is," said Sally. "I declare, Mara,
+I don't wonder you miss that creature, for, to tell the truth, I do a
+little bit. It was something, you know, to have somebody to come in, and
+to joke with, and to say how he liked one's hair and one's ribbons, and
+all that. I quite got up a friendship for Moses, so that I can feel how
+dull you must be;" and Sally gave a half sigh, and then whistled a tune
+as adroitly as a blackbird.
+
+"Yes," said Mara, "we two girls down on this lonely island need some one
+to connect us with the great world; and he was so full of life, and so
+certain and confident, he seemed to open a way before one out into
+life."
+
+"Well, of course, while he is gone there will be plenty to do getting
+ready to be married," said Sally. "By the by, when I was over to
+Portland the other day, Maria Potter showed me a new pattern for a
+bed-quilt, the sweetest thing you can imagine,--it is called the morning
+star. There is a great star in the centre, and little stars all
+around,--white on a blue ground. I mean to begin one for you."
+
+"I am going to begin spinning some very fine flax next week," said Mara;
+"and have I shown you the new pattern I drew for a counterpane? it is to
+be morning-glories, leaves and flowers, you know,--a pretty idea, isn't
+it?"
+
+And so, the conversation falling from the region of the sentimental to
+the practical, the two girls went in and spent an hour in discussions so
+purely feminine that we will not enlighten the reader further therewith.
+Sally seemed to be investing all her energies in the preparation of the
+wedding outfit of her friend, about which she talked with a constant and
+restless activity, and for which she formed a thousand plans, and
+projected shopping tours to Portland, Brunswick, and even to
+Boston,--this last being about as far off a venture at that time as
+Paris now seems to a Boston belle.
+
+"When you are married," said Sally, "you'll have to take me to live with
+you; that creature sha'n't have you _all_ to himself. I hate men, they
+are so exorbitant,--they spoil all our playmates; and what shall I do
+when _you_ are gone?"
+
+"You will go with Mr.--what's his name?" said Mara.
+
+"Pshaw, I don't know him. I shall be an old maid," said Sally; "and
+really there isn't much harm in that, if one could have company,--if
+somebody or other wouldn't marry all one's friends,--that's lonesome,"
+she said, winking a tear out of her black eyes and laughing. "If I were
+only a young fellow now, Mara, I'd have you myself, and that would be
+just the thing; and I'd shoot Moses, if he said a word; and I'd have
+money, and I'd have honors, and I'd carry you off to Europe, and take
+you to Paris and Rome, and nobody knows where; and we'd live in peace,
+as the story-books say."
+
+"Come, Sally, how wild you are talking," said Mara, "and the clock has
+just struck one; let's try to go to sleep."
+
+Sally put her face to Mara's and kissed her, and Mara felt a moist spot
+on her cheek,--could it be a tear?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE TOOTHACRE COTTAGE
+
+
+Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey Toothacre lived in a little one-story
+gambrel-roofed cottage, on the side of Harpswell Bay, just at the head
+of the long cove which we have already described. The windows on two
+sides commanded the beautiful bay and the opposite shores, and on the
+other they looked out into the dense forest, through whose deep shadows
+of white birch and pine the silver rise and fall of the sea daily
+revealed itself.
+
+The house itself was a miracle of neatness within, for the two thrifty
+sisters were worshipers of soap and sand, and these two tutelary deities
+had kept every board of the house-floor white and smooth, and also every
+table and bench and tub of household use. There was a sacred care over
+each article, however small and insignificant, which composed their
+slender household stock. The loss or breakage of one of them would have
+made a visible crack in the hearts of the worthy sisters,--for every
+plate, knife, fork, spoon, cup, or glass was as intimate with them, as
+instinct with home feeling, as if it had a soul; each defect or spot had
+its history, and a cracked dish or article of furniture received as
+tender and considerate medical treatment as if it were capable of
+understanding and feeling the attention.
+
+It was now a warm, spicy day in June,--one of those which bring out the
+pineapple fragrance from the fir-shoots, and cause the spruce and
+hemlocks to exude a warm, resinous perfume. The two sisters, for a
+wonder, were having a day to themselves, free from the numerous calls
+of the vicinity for twelve miles round. The room in which they were
+sitting was bestrewn with fragments of dresses and bonnets, which were
+being torn to pieces in a most wholesale way, with a view to a general
+rejuvenescence. A person of unsympathetic temperament, and disposed to
+take sarcastic views of life, might perhaps wonder what possible object
+these two battered and weather-beaten old bodies proposed to themselves
+in this process,--whether Miss Roxy's gaunt black-straw helmet, which
+she had worn defiantly all winter, was likely to receive much lustre
+from being pressed over and trimmed with an old green ribbon which that
+energetic female had colored black by a domestic recipe; and whether
+Miss Roxy's rusty bombazette would really seem to the world any fresher
+for being ripped, and washed, and turned, for the second or third time,
+and made over with every breadth in a different situation. Probably
+after a week of efficient labor, busily expended in bleaching, dyeing,
+pressing, sewing, and ripping, an unenlightened spectator, seeing them
+come into the meeting-house, would simply think, "There are those two
+old frights with the same old things on they have worn these fifty
+years." Happily the weird sisters were contentedly ignorant of any such
+remarks, for no duchesses could have enjoyed a more quiet belief in
+their own social position, and their semi-annual spring and fall
+rehabilitation was therefore entered into with the most simple-hearted
+satisfaction.
+
+"I'm a-thinkin', Roxy," said Aunt Ruey, considerately turning and
+turning on her hand an old straw bonnet, on which were streaked all the
+marks of the former trimming in lighter lines, which revealed too
+clearly the effects of wind and weather,--"I'm a-thinkin' whether or no
+this 'ere mightn't as well be dyed and done with it as try to bleach it
+out. I've had it ten years last May, and it's kind o' losin' its
+freshness, you know. I don't believe these 'ere streaks will bleach
+out."
+
+"Never mind, Ruey," said Miss Roxy, authoritatively, "I'm goin' to do
+Mis' Badger's leg'orn, and it won't cost nothin'; so hang your'n in the
+barrel along with it,--the same smoke'll do 'em both. Mis' Badger she
+finds the brimstone, and next fall you can put it in the dye when we do
+the yarn."
+
+"That ar straw is a beautiful straw!" said Miss Ruey, in a plaintive
+tone, tenderly examining the battered old head-piece,--"I braided every
+stroke on it myself, and I don't know as I could do it ag'in. My fingers
+ain't quite so limber as they was! I don't think I shall put green
+ribbon on it ag'in; 'cause green is such a color to ruin, if a body gets
+caught out in a shower! There's these green streaks come that day I left
+my amberil at Captain Broad's, and went to meetin'. Mis' Broad she says
+to me, 'Aunt Ruey, it won't rain.' And says I to her, 'Well, Mis' Broad,
+I'll try it; though I never did leave my amberil at home but what it
+rained.' And so I went, and sure enough it rained cats and dogs, and
+streaked my bonnet all up; and them ar streaks won't bleach out, I'm
+feared."
+
+"How long is it Mis' Badger has had that ar leg'orn?"
+
+"Why, you know, the Cap'n he brought it home when he came from his
+voyage from Marseilles. That ar was when Phebe Ann was born, and she's
+fifteen year old. It was a most elegant thing when he brought it; but I
+think it kind o' led Mis' Badger on to extravagant ways,--for gettin'
+new trimmin' spring and fall so uses up money as fast as new bonnets;
+but Mis' Badger's got the money, and she's got a right to use it if she
+pleases; but if I'd a-had new trimmin's spring and fall, I shouldn't
+a-put away what I have in the bank."
+
+"Have you seen the straw Sally Kittridge is braidin' for Mara Lincoln's
+weddin' bonnet?" said Miss Ruey. "It's jist the finest thing ever you
+did see,--and the whitest. I was a-tellin' Sally that I could do as well
+once myself, but my mantle was a-fallin' on her. Sally don't seem to act
+a bit like a disap'inted gal. She is as chipper as she can be about
+Mara's weddin', and seems like she couldn't do too much. But laws,
+everybody seems to want to be a-doin' for her. Miss Emily was a-showin'
+me a fine double damask tablecloth that she was goin' to give her; and
+Mis' Pennel, she's been a-spinnin' and layin' up sheets and towels and
+tablecloths all her life,--and then she has all Naomi's things. Mis'
+Pennel was talkin' to me the other day about bleachin' 'em out 'cause
+they'd got yellow a-lyin'. I kind o' felt as if 'twas unlucky to be
+a-fittin' out a bride with her dead mother's things, but I didn't like
+to say nothin'."
+
+"Ruey," said Miss Roxy impressively, "I hain't never had but jist one
+mind about Mara Lincoln's weddin',--it's to be,--but it won't be the way
+people think. I hain't nussed and watched and sot up nights sixty years
+for nothin'. I can see beyond what most folks can,--her weddin' garments
+is bought and paid for, and she'll wear 'em, but she won't be Moses
+Pennel's wife,--now you see."
+
+"Why, whose wife will she be then?" said Miss Ruey; "'cause that ar Mr.
+Adams is married. I saw it in the paper last week when I was up to Mis'
+Badger's."
+
+Miss Roxy shut her lips with oracular sternness and went on with her
+sewing.
+
+"Who's that comin' in the back door?" said Miss Ruey, as the sound of a
+footstep fell upon her ear. "Bless me," she added, as she started up to
+look, "if folks ain't always nearest when you're talkin' about 'em. Why,
+Mara; you come down here and catched us in all our dirt! Well now, we're
+glad to see you, if we be," said Miss Ruey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE SHADOW OF DEATH
+
+
+It was in truth Mara herself who came and stood in the doorway. She
+appeared overwearied with her walk, for her cheeks had a vivid
+brightness unlike their usual tender pink. Her eyes had, too, a
+brilliancy almost painful to look upon. They seemed like ardent fires,
+in which the life was slowly burning away.
+
+"Sit down, sit down, little Mara," said Aunt Ruey. "Why, how like a
+picture you look this mornin',--one needn't ask you how you do,--it's
+plain enough that you are pretty well."
+
+"Yes, I am, Aunt Ruey," she answered, sinking into a chair; "only it is
+warm to-day, and the sun is so hot, that's all, I believe; but I am very
+tired."
+
+"So you are now, poor thing," said Miss Ruey. "Roxy, where's my
+turkey-feather fan? Oh, here 'tis; there, take it, and fan you, child;
+and maybe you'll have a glass of our spruce beer?"
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Roxy. I brought you some young wintergreen," said Mara,
+unrolling from her handkerchief a small knot of those fragrant leaves,
+which were wilted by the heat.
+
+"Thank you, I'm sure," said Miss Ruey, in delight; "you always fetch
+something, Mara,--always would, ever since you could toddle. Roxy and I
+was jist talkin' about your weddin'. I s'pose you're gettin' things well
+along down to your house. Well, here's the beer. I don't hardly know
+whether you'll think it worked enough, though. I set it Saturday
+afternoon, for all Mis' Twitchell said it was wicked for beer to work
+Sundays," said Miss Ruey, with a feeble cackle at her own joke.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Ruey; it is excellent, as your things always are. I was
+very thirsty."
+
+"I s'pose you hear from Moses pretty often now," said Aunt Ruey. "How
+kind o' providential it happened about his getting that property; he'll
+be a rich man now; and Mara, you'll come to grandeur, won't you? Well, I
+don't know anybody deserves it more,--I r'ally don't. Mis' Badger was
+a-sayin' so a-Sunday, and Cap'n Kittridge and all on 'em. I s'pose
+though we've got to lose you,--you'll be goin' off to Boston, or New
+York, or somewhere."
+
+"We can't tell what may happen, Aunt Ruey," said Mara, and there was a
+slight tremor in her voice as she spoke.
+
+Miss Roxy, who beyond the first salutations had taken no part in this
+conversation, had from time to time regarded Mara over the tops of her
+spectacles with looks of grave apprehension; and Mara, looking up, now
+encountered one of these glances.
+
+"Have you taken the dock and dandelion tea I told you about?" said the
+wise woman, rather abruptly.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Roxy, I have taken them faithfully for two weeks past."
+
+"And do they seem to set you up any?" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"No, I don't think they do. Grandma thinks I'm better, and grandpa, and
+I let them think so; but Miss Roxy, _can't_ you think of something
+else?"
+
+Miss Roxy laid aside the straw bonnet which she was ripping, and
+motioned Mara into the outer room,--the sink-room, as the sisters called
+it. It was the scullery of their little establishment,--the place where
+all dish-washing and clothes-washing was generally performed,--but the
+boards of the floor were white as snow, and the place had the odor of
+neatness. The open door looked out pleasantly into the deep forest,
+where the waters of the cove, now at high tide, could be seen glittering
+through the trees. Soft moving spots of sunlight fell, checkering the
+feathery ferns and small piney tribes of evergreen which ran in ruffling
+wreaths of green through the dry, brown matting of fallen pine needles.
+Birds were singing and calling to each other merrily from the green
+shadows of the forest,--everything had a sylvan fullness and freshness
+of life. There are moods of mind when the sight of the bloom and
+freshness of nature affects us painfully, like the want of sympathy in a
+dear friend. Mara had been all her days a child of the woods; her
+delicate life had grown up in them like one of their own cool shaded
+flowers; and there was not a moss, not a fern, not an upspringing thing
+that waved a leaf or threw forth a flower-bell, that was not a
+well-known friend to her; she had watched for years its haunts, known
+the time of its coming and its going, studied its shy and veiled habits,
+and interwoven with its life each year a portion of her own; and now she
+looked out into the old mossy woods, with their wavering spots of sun
+and shadow, with a yearning pain, as if she wanted help or sympathy to
+come from their silent recesses.
+
+She sat down on the clean, scoured door-sill, and took off her straw
+hat. Her golden-brown hair was moist with the damps of fatigue, which
+made it curl and wave in darker little rings about her forehead; her
+eyes,--those longing, wistful eyes,--had a deeper pathos of sadness than
+ever they had worn before; and her delicate lips trembled with some
+strong suppressed emotion.
+
+"Aunt Roxy," she said suddenly, "I _must_ speak to somebody. I can't go
+on and keep up without telling some one, and it had better be you,
+because you have skill and experience, and can help me if anybody can.
+I've been going on for six months now, taking this and taking that, and
+trying to get better, but it's of no use. Aunt Roxy, I feel my life
+going,--going just as steadily and as quietly every day as the sand goes
+out of your hour-glass. I want to live,--oh, I never wanted to live so
+much, and I can't,--oh, I know I can't. Can I now,--do you think I can?"
+
+Mara looked imploringly at Miss Roxy. The hard-visaged woman sat down on
+the wash-bench, and, covering her worn, stony visage with her checked
+apron, sobbed aloud.
+
+Mara was confounded. This implacably withered, sensible, dry woman,
+beneficently impassive in sickness and sorrow, weeping!--it was awful,
+as if one of the Fates had laid down her fatal distaff to weep.
+
+Mara sprung up impulsively and threw her arms round her neck.
+
+"Now don't, Aunt Roxy, don't. I didn't think you would feel bad, or I
+wouldn't have told you; but oh, you don't know how hard it is to keep
+such a secret all to one's self. I have to make believe all the time
+that I am feeling well and getting better. I really say what isn't true
+every day, because, poor grandmamma, how could I bear to see her
+distress? and grandpapa,--oh, I wish people didn't love me so! Why
+cannot they let me go? And oh, Aunt Roxy, I had a letter only yesterday,
+and he is so sure we shall be married this fall,--and I know it cannot
+be." Mara's voice gave way in sobs, and the two wept together,--the old
+grim, gray woman holding the soft golden head against her breast with a
+convulsive grasp. "Oh, Aunt Roxy, do you love me, too?" said Mara. "I
+didn't know you did."
+
+"Love ye, child?" said Miss Roxy; "yes, I love ye like my life. I ain't
+one that makes talk about things, but I do; you come into my arms fust
+of anybody's in this world,--and except poor little Hitty, I never loved
+nobody as I have you."
+
+"Ah! that was your sister, whose grave I have seen," said Mara, speaking
+in a soothing, caressing tone, and putting her little thin hand against
+the grim, wasted cheek, which was now moist with tears.
+
+"Jes' so, child, she died when she was a year younger than you be; she
+was not lost, for God took her. Poor Hitty! her life jest dried up like
+a brook in August,--jest so. Well, she was hopefully pious, and it was
+better for her."
+
+"Did she go like me, Aunt Roxy?" said Mara.
+
+"Well, yes, dear; she did begin jest so, and I gave her everything I
+could think of; and we had doctors for her far and near; but _'twasn't
+to be_,--that's all we could say; she was called, and her time was
+come."
+
+"Well, now, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, "at any rate, it's a relief to speak
+out to some one. It's more than two months that I have felt every day
+more and more that there was no hope,--life has hung on me like a
+weight. I have had to _make_ myself keep up, and make myself do
+everything, and no one knows how it has tried me. I am so tired all the
+time, I could cry; and yet when I go to bed nights I can't sleep, I lie
+in such a hot, restless way; and then before morning I am drenched with
+cold sweat, and feel so weak and wretched. I force myself to eat, and I
+force myself to talk and laugh, and it's all pretense; and it wears me
+out,--it would be better if I stopped trying,--it would be better to
+give up and act as weak as I feel; but how can I let them know?"
+
+"My dear child," said Aunt Roxy, "the truth is the kindest thing we can
+give folks in the end. When folks know jest where they are, why they can
+walk; you'll all be supported; you must trust in the Lord. I have been
+more'n forty years with sick rooms and dyin' beds, and I never knew it
+fail that those that trusted in the Lord was brought through."
+
+"Oh, Aunt Roxy, it is so hard for me to give up,--to give up hoping to
+live. There were a good many years when I thought I should love to
+depart,--not that I was really unhappy, but I longed to go to heaven,
+though I knew it was selfish, when I knew how lonesome I should leave my
+friends. But now, oh, life has looked so bright; I have clung to it so;
+I do now. I lie awake nights and pray, and try to give it up and be
+resigned, and I can't. Is it wicked?"
+
+"Well, it's natur' to want to live," said Miss Roxy. "Life is sweet, and
+in a gen'l way we was made to live. Don't worry; the Lord'll bring you
+right when His time comes. Folks isn't always supported jest when they
+want to be, nor _as_ they want to be; but yet they're supported fust and
+last. Ef I was to tell you how as I has hope in your case, I shouldn't
+be a-tellin' you the truth. I hasn't much of any; only all things is
+possible with God. If you could kind o' give it all up and rest easy in
+His hands, and keep a-doin' what you can,--why, while there's life
+there's hope, you know; and if you are to be made well, you will be all
+the sooner."
+
+"Aunt Roxy, it's all right; I know it's all right. God knows best; He
+will do what is best; I know that; but my heart bleeds, and is sore. And
+when I get his letters,--I got one yesterday,--it brings it all back
+again. Everything is going on so well; he says he has done more than all
+he ever hoped; his letters are full of jokes, full of spirit. Ah, he
+little knows,--and how can I tell him?"
+
+"Child, you needn't yet. You can jest kind o' prepare his mind a
+little."
+
+"Aunt Roxy, have you spoken of my case to any one,--have you told what
+you know of me?"
+
+"No, child, I hain't said nothin' more than that you was a little weakly
+now and then."
+
+"I have such a color every afternoon," said Mara. "Grandpapa talks about
+my roses, and Captain Kittridge jokes me about growing so handsome;
+nobody seems to realize how I feel. I have kept up with all the strength
+I had. I have tried to shake it off, and to feel that nothing was the
+matter,--really there is nothing much, only this weakness. This morning
+I thought it would do me good to walk down here. I remember times when I
+could ramble whole days in the woods, but I was so tired before I got
+half way here that I had to stop a long while and rest. Aunt Roxy, if
+you would only tell grandpapa and grandmamma just how things are, and
+what the danger is, and let them stop talking to me about wedding
+things,--for really and truly I am too unwell to keep up any longer."
+
+"Well, child, I will," said Miss Roxy. "Your grandfather will be
+supported, and hold you up, for he's one of the sort as has the secret
+of the Lord,--I remember him of old. Why, the day your father and mother
+was buried he stood up and sung old China, and his face was wonderful to
+see. He seemed to be standin' with the world under his feet and heaven
+opening. He's a master Christian, your grandfather is; and now you jest
+go and lie down in the little bedroom, and rest you a bit, and by and
+by, in the cool of the afternoon, I'll walk along home with you."
+
+Miss Roxy opened the door of a little room, whose white fringy
+window-curtains were blown inward by breezes from the blue sea, and laid
+the child down to rest on a clean sweet-smelling bed with as deft and
+tender care as if she were not a bony, hard-visaged, angular female, in
+a black mohair frisette.
+
+She stopped a moment wistfully before a little profile head, of a kind
+which resembles a black shadow on a white ground. "That was Hitty!" she
+said.
+
+Mara had often seen in the graveyard a mound inscribed to this young
+person, and heard traditionally of a young and pretty sister of Miss
+Roxy who had died very many years before. But the grave was overgrown
+with blackberry-vines, and gray moss had grown into the crevices of the
+slab which served for a tombstone, and never before that day had she
+heard Miss Roxy speak of her. Miss Roxy took down the little black
+object and handed it to Mara. "You can't tell much by that, but she was
+a most beautiful creatur'. Well, it's all best as it is." Mara saw
+nothing but a little black shadow cast on white paper, yet she was
+affected by the perception how bright, how beautiful, was the image in
+the memory of that seemingly stern, commonplace woman, and how of all
+that in her mind's eye she saw and remembered, she could find no outward
+witness but this black block. "So some day my friends will speak of me
+as a distant shadow," she said, as with a sigh she turned her head on
+the pillow.
+
+Miss Roxy shut the door gently as she went out, and betrayed the
+unwonted rush of softer feelings which had come over her only by being
+more dictatorial and commanding than usual in her treatment of her
+sister, who was sitting in fidgety curiosity to know what could have
+been the subject of the private conference.
+
+"I s'pose Mara wanted to get some advice about makin' up her weddin'
+things," said Miss Ruey, with a sort of humble quiver, as Miss Roxy
+began ripping and tearing fiercely at her old straw bonnet, as if she
+really purposed its utter and immediate demolition.
+
+"No she didn't, neither," said Miss Roxy, fiercely. "I declare, Ruey,
+you are silly; your head is always full of weddin's, weddin's,
+weddin's--nothin' else--from mornin' till night, and night till mornin'.
+I tell you there's other things have got to be thought of in this world
+besides weddin' clothes, and it would be well, if people would think
+more o' gettin' their weddin' garments ready for the kingdom of heaven.
+That's what Mara's got to think of; for, mark my words, Ruey, there is
+no marryin' and givin' in marriage for her in this world."
+
+"Why, bless me, Roxy, now you don't say so!" said Miss Ruey; "why I knew
+she was kind o' weakly and ailin', but"--
+
+"Kind o' weakly and ailin'!" said Miss Roxy, taking up Miss Ruey's words
+in a tone of high disgust, "I should rather think she was; and more'n
+that, too: she's marked for death, and that before long, too. It may be
+that Moses Pennel'll never see her again--he never half knew what she
+was worth--maybe he'll know when he's lost her, that's one comfort!"
+
+"But," said Miss Ruey, "everybody has been a-sayin' what a beautiful
+color she was a-gettin' in her cheeks."
+
+"Color in her cheeks!" snorted Miss Roxy; "so does a rock-maple get
+color in September and turn all scarlet, and what for? why, the frost
+has been at it, and its time is out. That's what your bright colors
+stand for. Hain't you noticed that little gravestone cough, jest the
+faintest in the world, and it don't come from a cold, and it hangs on. I
+tell you you can't cheat me, she's goin' jest as Mehitabel went, jest as
+Sally Ann Smith went, jest as Louisa Pearson went. I could count now on
+my fingers twenty girls that have gone that way. Nobody saw 'em goin'
+till they was gone."
+
+"Well, now, I don't think the old folks have the least idea on't," said
+Miss Ruey. "Only last Saturday Mis' Pennel was a-talkin' to me about the
+sheets and tablecloths she's got out a-bleachin'; and she said that the
+weddin' dress was to be made over to Mis' Mosely's in Portland, 'cause
+Moses he's so particular about havin' things genteel."
+
+"Well, Master Moses'll jest have to give up his particular notions,"
+said Miss Roxy, "and come down in the dust, like all the rest on us,
+when the Lord sends an east wind and withers our gourds. Moses Pennel's
+one of the sort that expects to drive all before him with the strong
+arm, and sech has to learn that things ain't to go as they please in the
+Lord's world. Sech always has to come to spots that they can't get over
+nor under nor round, to have their own way, but jest has to give right
+up square."
+
+"Well, Roxy," said Miss Ruey, "how does the poor little thing take it?
+Has she got reconciled?"
+
+"Reconciled! Ruey, how you do ask questions!" said Miss Roxy, fiercely
+pulling a bandanna silk handkerchief out of her pocket, with which she
+wiped her eyes in a defiant manner. "Reconciled! It's easy enough to
+talk, Ruey, but how would you like it, when everything was goin' smooth
+and playin' into your hands, and all the world smooth and shiny, to be
+took short up? I guess you wouldn't be reconciled. That's what I guess."
+
+"Dear me, Roxy, who said I should?" said Miss Ruey. "I wa'n't blamin'
+the poor child, not a grain."
+
+"Well, who said you was, Ruey?" answered Miss Roxy, in the same high
+key.
+
+"You needn't take my head off," said Aunt Ruey, roused as much as her
+adipose, comfortable nature could be. "You've been a-talkin' at me ever
+since you came in from the sink-room, as if I was to blame; and snappin'
+at me as if I hadn't a right to ask civil questions; and I won't stan'
+it," said Miss Ruey. "And while I'm about it, I'll say that you always
+have snubbed me and contradicted and ordered me round. I won't bear it
+no longer."
+
+"Come, Ruey, don't make a fool of yourself at your time of life," said
+Miss Roxy. "Things is bad enough in this world without two lone sisters
+and church-members turnin' agin each other. You must take me as I am,
+Ruey; my bark's worse than my bite, as you know."
+
+Miss Ruey sank back pacified into her usual state of pillowy dependence;
+it was so much easier to be good-natured than to contend. As for Miss
+Roxy, if you have ever carefully examined a chestnut-burr, you will
+remember that, hard as it is to handle, no plush of downiest texture can
+exceed the satin smoothness of the fibres which line its heart. There
+are a class of people in New England who betray the uprising of the
+softer feelings of our nature only by an increase of outward asperity--a
+sort of bashfulness and shyness leaves them no power of expression for
+these unwonted guests of the heart--they hurry them into inner chambers
+and slam the doors upon them, as if they were vexed at their appearance.
+
+Now if poor Miss Roxy had been like you, my dear young lady--if her soul
+had been encased in a round, rosy, and comely body, and looked out of
+tender blue eyes shaded by golden hair, probably the grief and love she
+felt would have shown themselves only in bursts of feeling most graceful
+to see, and engaging the sympathy of all; but this same soul, imprisoned
+in a dry, angular body, stiff and old, and looking out under beetling
+eyebrows, over withered high cheek-bones, could only utter itself by a
+passionate tempest--unlovely utterance of a lovely impulse--dear only to
+Him who sees with a Father's heart the real beauty of spirits. It is our
+firm faith that bright solemn angels in celestial watchings were
+frequent guests in the homely room of the two sisters, and that passing
+by all accidents of age and poverty, withered skins, bony features, and
+grotesque movements and shabby clothing, they saw more real beauty there
+than in many a scented boudoir where seeming angels smile in lace and
+satin.
+
+"Ruey," said Miss Roxy, in a more composed voice, while her hard, bony
+hands still trembled with excitement, "this 'ere's been on my mind a
+good while. I hain't said nothin' to nobody, but I've seen it a-comin'.
+I always thought that child wa'n't for a long life. Lives is run in
+different lengths, and nobody can say what's the matter with some folks,
+only that their thread's run out; there's more on one spool and less on
+another. I thought, when we laid Hitty in the grave, that I shouldn't
+never set my heart on nothin' else--but we can't jest say we will or we
+won't. Ef we are to be sorely afflicted at any time, the Lord lets us
+set our hearts before we know it. This 'ere's a great affliction to me,
+Ruey, but I must jest shoulder my cross and go through with it. I'm
+goin' down to-night to tell the old folks, and to make arrangements so
+that the poor little lamb may have the care she needs. She's been
+a-keepin' up so long, 'cause she dreaded to let 'em know, but this 'ere
+has got to be looked right in the face, and I hope there'll be grace
+given to do it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE VICTORY
+
+
+Meanwhile Mara had been lying in the passive calm of fatigue and
+exhaustion, her eyes fixed on the window, where, as the white curtain
+drew inward, she could catch glimpses of the bay. Gradually her eyelids
+fell, and she dropped into that kind of half-waking doze, when the outer
+senses are at rest, and the mind is all the more calm and clear for
+their repose. In such hours a spiritual clairvoyance often seems to lift
+for a while the whole stifling cloud that lies like a confusing mist
+over the problem of life, and the soul has sudden glimpses of things
+unutterable which lie beyond. Then the narrow straits, that look so full
+of rocks and quicksands, widen into a broad, clear passage, and one
+after another, rosy with a celestial dawn, and ringing silver bells of
+gladness, the isles of the blessed lift themselves up on the horizon,
+and the soul is flooded with an atmosphere of light and joy. As the
+burden of Christian fell off at the cross and was lost in the sepulchre,
+so in these hours of celestial vision the whole weight of life's anguish
+is lifted, and passes away like a dream; and the soul, seeing the
+boundless ocean of Divine love, wherein all human hopes and joys and
+sorrows lie so tenderly upholden, comes and casts the one little drop of
+its personal will and personal existence with gladness into that
+Fatherly depth. Henceforth, with it, God and Saviour is no more word of
+mine and thine, for in that hour the child of earth feels himself heir
+of all things: "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is
+God's."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The child is asleep," said Miss Roxy, as she stole on tiptoe into the
+room when their noon meal was prepared. A plate and knife had been laid
+for her, and they had placed for her a tumbler of quaint old engraved
+glass, reputed to have been brought over from foreign parts, and which
+had been given to Miss Roxy as her share in the effects of the
+mysterious Mr. Swadkins. Tea also was served in some egg-like India
+china cups, which saw the light only on the most high and festive
+occasions.
+
+"Hadn't you better wake her?" said Miss Ruey; "a cup of hot tea would do
+her so much good."
+
+Miss Ruey could conceive of few sorrows or ailments which would not be
+materially better for a cup of hot tea. If not the very elixir of life,
+it was indeed the next thing to it.
+
+"Well," said Miss Roxy, after laying her hand for a moment with great
+gentleness on that of the sleeping girl, "she don't wake easy, and she's
+tired; and she seems to be enjoying it so. The Bible says, 'He giveth
+his beloved sleep,' and I won't interfere. I've seen more good come of
+sleep than most things in my nursin' experience," said Miss Roxy, and
+she shut the door gently, and the two sisters sat down to their noontide
+meal.
+
+"How long the child does sleep!" said Miss Ruey as the old clock struck
+four.
+
+"It was too much for her, this walk down here," said Aunt Roxy. "She's
+been doin' too much for a long time. I'm a-goin' to put an end to that.
+Well, nobody needn't say Mara hain't got resolution. I never see a
+little thing have more. She always did have, when she was the leastest
+little thing. She was always quiet and white and still, but she did
+whatever she sot out to."
+
+At this moment, to their surprise, the door opened, and Mara came in,
+and both sisters were struck with a change that had passed over her. It
+was more than the result of mere physical repose. Not only had every
+sign of weariness and bodily languor vanished, but there was about her
+an air of solemn serenity and high repose that made her seem, as Miss
+Ruey afterwards said, "like an angel jest walked out of the big Bible."
+
+"Why, dear child, how you have slept, and how bright and rested you
+look," said Miss Ruey.
+
+"I am rested," said Mara; "oh how much! And happy," she added, laying
+her little hand on Miss Roxy's shoulder. "I thank you, dear friend, for
+all your kindness to me. I am sorry I made you feel so sadly; but now
+you mustn't feel so any more, for all is well--yes, all is well. I see
+now that it is so. I have passed beyond sorrow--yes, forever."
+
+Soft-hearted Miss Ruey here broke into audible sobbing, hiding her face
+in her hands, and looking like a tumbled heap of old faded calico in a
+state of convulsion.
+
+"Dear Aunt Ruey, you mustn't," said Mara, with a voice of gentle
+authority. "We mustn't any of us feel so any more. There is no harm
+done, no real evil is coming, only a good which we do not understand. I
+am perfectly satisfied--perfectly at rest now. I was foolish and weak to
+feel as I did this morning, but I shall not feel so any more. I shall
+comfort you all. Is it anything so dreadful for me to go to heaven? How
+little while it will be before you all come to me! Oh, how
+little--little while!"
+
+"I told you, Mara, that you'd be supported in the Lord's time," said
+Miss Roxy, who watched her with an air of grave and solemn attention.
+"First and last, folks allers is supported; but sometimes there is a
+long wrestlin'. The Lord's give you the victory early."
+
+"Victory!" said the girl, speaking as in a deep muse, and with a
+mysterious brightness in her eyes; "yes, that is the word--it _is_ a
+victory--no other word expresses it. Come, Aunt Roxy, we will go home. I
+am not afraid now to tell grandpapa and grandmamma. God will care for
+them; He will wipe away all tears."
+
+"Well, though, you mus'n't think of goin' till you've had a cup of tea,"
+said Aunt Ruey, wiping her eyes. "I've kep' the tea-pot hot by the fire,
+and you must eat a little somethin', for it's long past dinner-time."
+
+"Is it?" said Mara. "I had no idea I had slept so long--how thoughtful
+and kind you are!"
+
+"I do wish I could only do more for you," said Miss Ruey. "I don't seem
+to get reconciled no ways; it seems dreffle hard--dreffle; but I'm glad
+you _can_ feel so;" and the good old soul proceeded to press upon the
+child not only the tea, which she drank with feverish relish, but every
+hoarded dainty which their limited housekeeping commanded.
+
+It was toward sunset before Miss Roxy and Mara started on their walk
+homeward. Their way lay over the high stony ridge which forms the
+central part of the island. On one side, through the pines, they looked
+out into the boundless blue of the ocean, and on the other caught
+glimpses of Harpswell Bay as it lay glorified in the evening light. The
+fresh cool breeze blowing landward brought with it an invigorating
+influence, which Mara felt through all her feverish frame. She walked
+with an energy to which she had long been a stranger. She said little,
+but there was a sweetness, a repose, in her manner contrasting
+singularly with the passionate melancholy which she had that morning
+expressed.
+
+Miss Roxy did not interrupt her meditations. The nature of her
+profession had rendered her familiar with all the changing mental and
+physical phenomena that attend the development of disease and the
+gradual loosening of the silver cords of a present life. Certain
+well-understood phrases everywhere current among the mass of the people
+in New England, strikingly tell of the deep foundations of religious
+earnestness on which its daily life is built. "A triumphant death" was a
+matter often casually spoken of among the records of the neighborhood;
+and Miss Roxy felt that there was a vague and solemn charm about its
+approach. Yet the soul of the gray, dry woman was hot within her, for
+the conversation of the morning had probed depths in her own nature of
+whose existence she had never before been so conscious. The roughest and
+most matter-of-fact minds have a craving for the ideal somewhere; and
+often this craving, forbidden by uncomeliness and ungenial surroundings
+from having any personal history of its own, attaches itself to the
+fortune of some other one in a kind of strange disinterestedness. Some
+one young and beautiful is to live the life denied to them--to be the
+poem and the romance; it is the young mistress of the poor black
+slave--the pretty sister of the homely old spinster--or the clever son
+of the consciously ill-educated father. Something of this unconscious
+personal investment had there been on the part of Miss Roxy in the
+nursling whose singular loveliness she had watched for so many years,
+and on whose fair virgin orb she had marked the growing shadow of a
+fatal eclipse, and as she saw her glowing and serene, with that peculiar
+brightness that she felt came from no earthly presence or influence, she
+could scarcely keep the tears from her honest gray eyes.
+
+When they arrived at the door of the house, Zephaniah Pennel was sitting
+in it, looking toward the sunset.
+
+"Why, reely," he said, "Miss Roxy, we thought you must a-run away with
+Mara; she's been gone a'most all day."
+
+"I expect she's had enough to talk with Aunt Roxy about," said Mrs.
+Pennel. "Girls goin' to get married have a deal to talk about, what with
+patterns and contrivin' and makin' up. But come in, Miss Roxy; we're
+glad to see you."
+
+Mara turned to Miss Roxy, and gave her a look of peculiar meaning. "Aunt
+Roxy," she said, "you must tell them what we have been talking about
+to-day;" and then she went up to her room and shut the door.
+
+Miss Roxy accomplished her task with a matter-of-fact distinctness to
+which her business-like habits of dealing with sickness and death had
+accustomed her, yet with a sympathetic tremor in her voice which
+softened the hard directness of her words. "You can take her over to
+Portland, if you say so, and get Dr. Wilson's opinion," she said, in
+conclusion. "It's best to have all done that can be, though in my mind
+the case is decided."
+
+The silence that fell between the three was broken at last by the sound
+of a light footstep descending the stairs, and Mara entered among them.
+
+She came forward and threw her arms round Mrs. Pennel's neck, and kissed
+her; and then turning, she nestled down in the arms of her old
+grandfather, as she had often done in the old days of childhood, and
+laid her hand upon his shoulder. There was no sound for a few moments
+but one of suppressed weeping; but _she_ did not weep--she lay with
+bright calm eyes, as if looking upon some celestial vision.
+
+"It is not so very sad," she said at last, in a gentle voice, "that I
+should go there; you are going, too, and grandmamma; we are all going;
+and we shall be forever with the Lord. Think of it! think of it!"
+
+Many were the words spoken in that strange communing; and before Miss
+Roxy went away, a calmness of solemn rest had settled down on all. The
+old family Bible was brought forth, and Zephaniah Pennel read from it
+those strange words of strong consolation, which take the sting from
+death and the victory from the grave:--
+
+"And I heard a great voice out of heaven. Behold the tabernacle of God
+is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people;
+and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe
+away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,
+neither sorrow nor crying, for the former things are passed away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+OPEN VISION
+
+
+As Miss Roxy was leaving the dwelling of the Pennels, she met Sally
+Kittridge coming toward the house, laughing and singing, as was her
+wont. She raised her long, lean forefinger with a gesture of warning.
+
+"What's the matter now, Aunt Roxy? You look as solemn as a hearse."
+
+"None o' your jokin' now, Miss Sally; there _is_ such a thing as serious
+things in this 'ere world of our'n, for all you girls never seems to
+know it."
+
+"What is the matter, Aunt Roxy?--has anything happened?--is anything the
+matter with Mara?"
+
+"Matter enough. I've known it a long time," said Miss Roxy. "She's been
+goin' down for three months now; and she's got that on her that will
+carry her off before the year's out."
+
+"Pshaw, Aunt Roxy! how lugubriously you old nurses always talk! I hope
+now you haven't been filling Mara's head with any such notions--people
+can be frightened into anything."
+
+"Sally Kittridge, don't be a-talkin' of what you don't know nothin'
+about! It stands to reason that a body that was bearin' the heat and
+burden of the day long before you was born or thought on in this world
+_should_ know a thing or two more'n you. Why, I've laid you on your
+stomach and trotted you to trot up the wind many a day, and I was pretty
+experienced then, and it ain't likely that I'm a-goin' to take sa'ce
+from you. Mara Pennel is a gal as has every bit and grain as much
+resolution and ambition as you have, for all you flap your wings and
+crow so much louder, and she's one of the close-mouthed sort, that don't
+make no talk, and she's been a-bearin' up and bearin' up, and comin' to
+me on the sly for strengthenin' things. She's took camomile and
+orange-peel, and snake-root and boneset, and dash-root and
+dandelion--and there hain't nothin' done her no good. She told me to-day
+she couldn't keep up no longer, and I've been a-tellin' Mis' Pennel and
+her grand'ther. I tell you it has been a solemn time; and if you're
+goin' in, don't go in with none o' your light triflin' ways, 'cause 'as
+vinegar upon nitre is he that singeth songs on a heavy heart,' the
+Scriptur' says."
+
+"Oh, Miss Roxy, do tell me truly," said Sally, much moved. "What do you
+think is the matter with Mara? I've noticed myself that she got tired
+easy, and that she was short-breathed--but she seemed so cheerful. Can
+anything really be the matter?"
+
+"It's consumption, Sally Kittridge," said Miss Roxy, "neither more nor
+less; that ar is the long and the short. They're going to take her over
+to Portland to see Dr. Wilson--it won't do no harm, and it won't do no
+good."
+
+"You seem to be determined she shall die," said Sally in a tone of
+pique.
+
+"Determined, am I? Is it I that determines that the maple leaves shall
+fall next October? Yet I know they will--folks can't help knowin' what
+they know, and shuttin' one's eyes won't alter one's road. I s'pose you
+think 'cause you're young and middlin' good-lookin' that you have
+feelin's and I hasn't; well, you're mistaken, that's all. I don't
+believe there's one person in the world that would go farther or do more
+to save Mara Pennel than I would,--and yet I've been in the world long
+enough to see that livin' ain't no great shakes neither. Ef one is
+hopefully prepared in the days of their youth, why they escape a good
+deal, ef they get took cross-lots into heaven."
+
+Sally turned away thoughtfully into the house; there was no one in the
+kitchen, and the tick of the old clock sounded lonely and sepulchral.
+She went upstairs to Mara's room; the door was ajar. Mara was sitting at
+the open window that looked forth toward the ocean, busily engaged in
+writing. The glow of evening shone on the golden waves of her hair, and
+tinged the pearly outline of her cheek. Sally noticed the translucent
+clearness of her complexion, and the deep burning color and the
+transparency of the little hands, which seemed as if they might transmit
+the light like Sevres porcelain. She was writing with an expression of
+tender calm, and sometimes stopping to consult an open letter that Sally
+knew came from Moses.
+
+So fair and sweet and serene she looked that a painter might have chosen
+her for an embodiment of twilight, and one might not be surprised to see
+a clear star shining out over her forehead. Yet in the tender serenity
+of the face there dwelt a pathos of expression that spoke of struggles
+and sufferings past, like the traces of tears on the face of a restful
+infant that has grieved itself to sleep.
+
+Sally came softly in on tiptoe, threw her arms around her, and kissed
+her, with a half laugh, then bursting into tears, sobbed upon her
+shoulder.
+
+"Dear Sally, what is the matter?" said Mara, looking up.
+
+"Oh, Mara, I just met Miss Roxy, and she told me"--
+
+Sally only sobbed passionately.
+
+"It is very sad to make all one's friends so unhappy," said Mara, in a
+soothing voice, stroking Sally's hair. "You don't know how much I have
+suffered dreading it. Sally, it is a long time since I began to expect
+and dread and fear. My time of anguish was then--then when I first felt
+that it could be possible that I should not live after all. There was a
+long time I dared not even think of it; I could not even tell such a
+fear to myself; and I did far more than I felt able to do to convince
+myself that I was not weak and failing. I have been often to Miss Roxy,
+and once, when nobody knew it, I went to a doctor in Brunswick, but then
+I was afraid to tell him half, lest he should say something about me,
+and it should get out; and so I went on getting worse and worse, and
+feeling every day as if I could not keep up, and yet afraid to lie down
+for fear grandmamma would suspect me. But this morning it was pleasant
+and bright, and something came over me that said I _must_ tell somebody,
+and so, as it was cool and pleasant, I walked up to Aunt Roxy's and told
+her. I thought, you know, that she knew the most, and would feel it the
+least; but oh, Sally, she has such a feeling heart, and loves me so; it
+is strange she should."
+
+"Is it?" said Sally, tightening her clasp around Mara's neck; and then
+with a hysterical shadow of gayety she said, "I suppose you think that
+you are such a hobgoblin that nobody could be expected to do that. After
+all, though, I should have as soon expected roses to bloom in a juniper
+clump as love from Aunt Roxy."
+
+"Well, she does love me," said Mara. "No mother could be kinder. Poor
+thing, she really sobbed and cried when I told her. I was very tired,
+and she told me she would take care of me, and tell grandpapa and
+grandmamma,--_that_ had been lying on my heart as such a dreadful thing
+to do,--and she laid me down to rest on her bed, and spoke so lovingly
+to me! I wish you could have seen her. And while I lay there, I fell
+into a strange, sweet sort of rest. I can't describe it; but since then
+everything has been changed. I wish I could tell any one how I saw
+things then."
+
+"Do try to tell me, Mara," said Sally, "for I need comfort too, if there
+is any to be had."
+
+"Well, then, I lay on the bed, and the wind drew in from the sea and
+just lifted the window-curtain, and I could see the sea shining and hear
+the waves making a pleasant little dash, and then my head seemed to
+swim. I thought I was walking out by the pleasant shore, and everything
+seemed so strangely beautiful, and grandpapa and grandmamma were there,
+and Moses had come home, and you were there, and we were all so happy.
+And then I felt a sort of strange sense that something was coming--some
+great trial or affliction--and I groaned and clung to Moses, and asked
+him to put his arm around me and hold me.
+
+"Then it seemed to be not by our seashore that this was happening, but
+by the Sea of Galilee, just as it tells about it in the Bible, and there
+were fishermen mending their nets, and men sitting counting their money,
+and I saw Jesus come walking along, and heard him say to this one and
+that one, 'Leave all and follow me,' and it seemed that the moment he
+spoke they did it, and then he came to me, and I felt his eyes in my
+very soul, and he said, 'Wilt _thou_ leave _all_ and follow me?' I
+cannot tell now what a pain I felt--what an anguish. I wanted to leave
+all, but my heart felt as if it were tied and woven with a thousand
+threads, and while I waited he seemed to fade away, and I found myself
+then alone and unhappy, wishing that I could, and mourning that I had
+not; and then something shone out warm like the sun, and I looked up,
+and he stood there looking pitifully, and he said again just as he did
+before, 'Wilt thou leave all and follow me?' Every word was so gentle
+and full of pity, and I looked into his eyes and could not look away;
+they drew me, they warmed me, and I felt a strange, wonderful sense of
+his greatness and sweetness. It seemed as if I felt within me cord after
+cord breaking, I felt so free, so happy; and I said, 'I will, I will,
+with all my heart;' and I woke then, so happy, so sure of God's love.
+
+"I saw so clearly how his love is in everything, and these words came
+into my mind as if an angel had spoken them, 'God shall wipe away all
+tears from their eyes.' Since then I cannot be unhappy. I was so myself
+only this morning, and now I wonder that any one can have a grief when
+God is so loving and good, and cares so sweetly for us all. Why, Sally,
+if I could see Christ and hear him speak, I could not be more certain
+that he will make this sorrow such a blessing to us all that we shall
+never be able to thank him enough for it."
+
+"Oh Mara," said Sally, sighing deeply, while her cheek was wet with
+tears, "it is beautiful to hear you talk; but there is one that I am
+sure will not and cannot feel so."
+
+"God will care for him," said Mara; "oh, I am sure of it; He is love
+itself, and He values his love in us, and He never, never would have
+brought such a trial, if it had not been the true and only way to our
+best good. We shall not shed one needless tear. Yes, if God loved us so
+that he spared not his own Son, he will surely give us all the good here
+that we possibly can have without risking our eternal happiness."
+
+"You are writing to Moses, now?" said Sally.
+
+"Yes, I am answering his letter; it is so full of spirit and life and
+hope--but all hope in this world--all, all earthly, as much as if there
+was no God and no world to come. Sally, perhaps our Father saw that I
+could not have strength to live with him and keep my faith. I should be
+drawn by him earthward instead of drawing him heavenward; and so this is
+in mercy to us both."
+
+"And are you telling him the whole truth, Mara?"
+
+"Not all, no," said Mara; "he could not bear it at once. I only tell him
+that my health is failing, and that my friends are seriously alarmed,
+and then I speak as if it were doubtful, in my mind, what the result
+might be."
+
+"I don't think you can make him feel as you do. Moses Pennel has a
+tremendous will, and he never yielded to any one. You bend, Mara, like
+the little blue harebells, and so the storm goes over you; but he will
+stand up against it, and it will wrench and shatter him. I am afraid,
+instead of making him better, it will only make him bitter and
+rebellious."
+
+"He has a Father in heaven who knows how to care for him," said Mara. "I
+am persuaded--I feel certain that he will be blessed in the end; not
+perhaps in the time and way I should have chosen, but in the end. I have
+always felt that he was mine, ever since he came a little shipwrecked
+boy to me--a little girl. And now I have given him up to his Saviour and
+my Saviour--to his God and my God--and I am perfectly at peace. All will
+be well."
+
+Mara spoke with a look of such solemn, bright assurance as made her, in
+the dusky, golden twilight, seem like some serene angel sent down to
+comfort, rather than a hapless mortal just wrenched from life and hope.
+
+Sally rose up and kissed her silently. "Mara," she said, "I shall come
+to-morrow to see what I can do for you. I will not interrupt you now.
+Good-by, dear."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are no doubt many, who have followed this history so long as it
+danced like a gay little boat over sunny waters, and who would have
+followed it gayly to the end, had it closed with ringing of
+marriage-bells, who turn from it indignantly, when they see that its
+course runs through the dark valley. This, they say, is an imposition, a
+trick upon our feelings. We want to read only stories which end in joy
+and prosperity.
+
+But have we then settled it in our own mind that there is no such thing
+as a fortunate issue in a history which does not terminate in the way of
+earthly success and good fortune? Are we Christians or heathen? It is
+now eighteen centuries since, as we hold, the "highly favored among
+women" was pronounced to be one whose earthly hopes were all cut off in
+the blossom,--whose noblest and dearest in the morning of his days went
+down into the shadows of death.
+
+Was Mary the highly-favored among women, and was Jesus indeed the
+blessed,--or was the angel mistaken? If they were these, if we are
+Christians, it ought to be a settled and established habit of our souls
+to regard something else as prosperity than worldly success and happy
+marriages. That life is a success which, like the life of Jesus, in its
+beginning, middle, and close, has borne a perfect witness to the truth
+and the highest form of truth. It is true that God has given to us, and
+inwoven in our nature a desire for a perfection and completeness made
+manifest to our senses in this mortal life. To see the daughter bloom
+into youth and womanhood, the son into manhood, to see them marry and
+become themselves parents, and gradually ripen and develop in the
+maturities of middle life, gradually wear into a sunny autumn, and so be
+gathered in fullness of time to their fathers,--such, one says, is the
+programme which God has made us to desire; such the ideal of happiness
+which he has interwoven with our nerves, and for which our heart and our
+flesh crieth out; to which every stroke of a knell is a violence, and
+every thought of an early death is an abhorrence.
+
+But the life of Christ and his mother sets the foot on this lower ideal
+of happiness, and teaches us that there is something higher. His
+ministry began with declaring, "Blessed are they that mourn." It has
+been well said that prosperity was the blessing of the Old Testament,
+and adversity of the New. Christ came to show us a nobler style of
+living and bearing; and so far as he had a personal and earthly life, he
+buried it as a corner-stone on which to erect a new immortal style of
+architecture.
+
+Of his own, he had nothing, neither houses, nor lands, nor family ties,
+nor human hopes, nor earthly sphere of success; and as a human life, it
+was all a sacrifice and a defeat. He was rejected by his countrymen,
+whom the passionate anguish of his love and the unwearied devotion of
+his life could not save from an awful doom. He was betrayed by weak
+friends, prevailed against by slanderers, overwhelmed with an
+ignominious death in the morning of youth, and his mother stood by his
+cross, and she was the only woman whom God ever called highly favored in
+this world.
+
+This, then, is the great and perfect ideal of what God honors. Christ
+speaks of himself as bread to be eaten,--bread, simple, humble,
+unpretending, vitally necessary to human life, made by the bruising and
+grinding of the grain, unostentatiously having no life or worth of its
+own except as it is absorbed into the life of others and lives in them.
+We wished in this history to speak of a class of lives formed on the
+model of Christ, and like his, obscure and unpretending, like his,
+seeming to end in darkness and defeat, but which yet have this
+preciousness and value that the dear saints who live them come nearest
+in their mission to the mission of Jesus. They are made, not for a
+career and history of their own, but to be bread of life to others. In
+every household or house have been some of these, and if we look on
+their lives and deaths with the unbaptized eyes of nature, we shall see
+only most mournful and unaccountable failure, when, if we could look
+with the eye of faith, we should see that their living and dying has
+been bread of life to those they left behind. Fairest of these, and
+least developed, are the holy innocents who come into our households to
+smile with the smile of angels, who sleep in our bosoms, and win us with
+the softness of tender little hands, and pass away like the lamb that
+was slain before they have ever learned the speech of mortals. Not vain
+are even these silent lives of Christ's lambs, whom many an earth-bound
+heart has been roused to follow when the Shepherd bore them to the
+higher pastures. And so the daughter who died so early, whose
+wedding-bells were never rung except in heaven,--the son who had no
+career of ambition or a manly duty except among the angels,--the patient
+sufferers, whose only lot on earth seemed to be to endure, whose life
+bled away drop by drop in the shadows of the sick-room--all these are
+among those whose life was like Christ's in that they were made, not for
+themselves, but to become bread to us.
+
+It is expedient for us that they go away. Like their Lord, they come to
+suffer, and to die; they take part in his sacrifice; their life is
+incomplete without their death, and not till they are gone away does the
+Comforter fully come to us.
+
+It is a beautiful legend which one sees often represented in the
+churches of Europe, that when the grave of the mother of Jesus was
+opened, it was found full of blossoming lilies,--fit emblem of the
+thousand flowers of holy thought and purpose which spring up in our
+hearts from the memory of our sainted dead.
+
+Cannot many, who read these lines, bethink them of such rooms that have
+been the most cheerful places in the family,--when the heart of the
+smitten one seemed the band that bound all the rest together,--and have
+there not been dying hours which shed such a joy and radiance on all
+around, that it was long before the mourners remembered to mourn? Is it
+not a misuse of words to call such a heavenly translation _death_? and
+to call most things that are lived out on this earth _life_?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE LAND OF BEULAH
+
+
+It is now about a month after the conversation which we have recorded,
+and during that time the process which was to loose from this present
+life had been going on in Mara with a soft, insensible, but steady
+power. When she ceased to make efforts beyond her strength, and allowed
+herself that languor and repose which nature claimed, all around her
+soon became aware how her strength was failing; and yet a cheerful
+repose seemed to hallow the atmosphere around her. The sight of her
+every day in family worship, sitting by in such tender tranquillity,
+with such a smile on her face, seemed like a present inspiration. And
+though the aged pair knew that she was no more for this world, yet she
+was comforting and inspiring to their view as the angel who of old
+rolled back the stone from the sepulchre and sat upon it. They saw in
+her eyes, not death, but the solemn victory which Christ gives over
+death.
+
+Bunyan has no more lovely poem than the image he gives of that land of
+pleasant waiting which borders the river of death, where the chosen of
+the Lord repose, while shining messengers, constantly passing and
+repassing, bear tidings from the celestial shore, opening a way between
+earth and heaven. It was so, that through the very thought of Mara an
+influence of tenderness and tranquillity passed through the whole
+neighborhood, keeping hearts fresh with sympathy, and causing thought
+and conversation to rest on those bright mysteries of eternal joy which
+were reflected on her face.
+
+Sally Kittridge was almost a constant inmate of the brown house, ever
+ready in watching and waiting; and one only needed to mark the
+expression of her face to feel that a holy charm was silently working
+upon her higher and spiritual nature. Those great, dark, sparkling eyes
+that once seemed to express only the brightness of animal vivacity, and
+glittered like a brook in unsympathetic gayety, had in them now
+mysterious depths, and tender, fleeting shadows, and the very tone of
+her voice had a subdued tremor. The capricious elf, the tricksy sprite,
+was melting away in the immortal soul, and the deep pathetic power of a
+noble heart was being born. Some influence sprung of sorrow is necessary
+always to perfect beauty in womanly nature. We feel its absence in many
+whose sparkling wit and high spirits give grace and vivacity to life,
+but in whom we vainly seek for some spot of quiet tenderness and
+sympathetic repose. Sally was, ignorantly to herself, changing in the
+expression of her face and the tone of her character, as she ministered
+in the daily wants which sickness brings in a simple household.
+
+For the rest of the neighborhood, the shelves and larder of Mrs. Pennel
+were constantly crowded with the tributes which one or another sent in
+for the invalid. There was jelly of Iceland moss sent across by Miss
+Emily, and brought by Mr. Sewell, whose calls were almost daily. There
+were custards and preserves, and every form of cake and other
+confections in which the housekeeping talent of the neighbors delighted,
+and which were sent in under the old superstition that sick people must
+be kept eating at all hazards.
+
+At church, Sunday after Sunday, the simple note requested the prayers of
+the church and congregation for Mara Lincoln, who was, as the note
+phrased it, drawing near her end, that she and all concerned might be
+prepared for the great and last change. One familiar with New England
+customs must have remembered with what a plaintive power the reading of
+such a note, from Sunday to Sunday, has drawn the thoughts and
+sympathies of a congregation to some chamber of sickness; and in a
+village church, where every individual is known from childhood to every
+other, the power of this simple custom is still greater.
+
+Then the prayers of the minister would dwell on the case, and thanks
+would be rendered to God for the great light and peace with which he had
+deigned to visit his young handmaid; and then would follow a prayer that
+when these sad tidings should reach a distant friend who had gone down
+to do business on the great waters, they might be sanctified to his
+spiritual and everlasting good. Then on Sunday noons, as the people ate
+their dinners together in a room adjoining the church, all that she said
+and did was talked over and over,--how quickly she had gained the
+victory of submission, the peace of a will united with God's, mixed with
+harmless gossip of the sick chamber,--as to what she ate and how she
+slept, and who had sent her gruel with raisins in it, and who jelly with
+wine, and how she had praised this and eaten that twice with a relish,
+but how the other had seemed to disagree with her. Thereafter would come
+scraps of nursing information, recipes against coughing, specifics
+against short breath, speculations about watchers, how soon she would
+need them, and long legends of other death-beds where the fear of death
+had been slain by the power of an endless life.
+
+Yet through all the gossip, and through much that might have been called
+at other times commonplace cant of religion, there was spread a tender
+earnestness, and the whole air seemed to be enchanted with the fragrance
+of that fading rose. Each one spoke more gently, more lovingly to each,
+for the thought of her.
+
+It was now a bright September morning, and the early frosts had changed
+the maples in the pine-woods to scarlet, and touched the white birches
+with gold, when one morning Miss Roxy presented herself at an early hour
+at Captain Kittridge's.
+
+They were at breakfast, and Sally was dispensing the tea at the head of
+the table, Mrs. Kittridge having been prevailed on to abdicate in her
+favor.
+
+"It is such a fine morning," she said, looking out at the window, which
+showed a waveless expanse of ocean. "I do hope Mara has had a good
+night."
+
+"I'm a-goin' to make her some jelly this very forenoon," said Mrs.
+Kittridge. "Aunt Roxy was a-tellin' me yesterday that she was a-goin'
+down to stay at the house regular, for she needed so much done now."
+
+"It's 'most an amazin' thing we don't hear from Moses Pennel," said
+Captain Kittridge. "If he don't make haste, he may never see her."
+
+"There's Aunt Roxy at this minute," said Sally.
+
+In truth, the door opened at this moment, and Aunt Roxy entered with a
+little blue bandbox and a bundle tied up in a checked handkerchief.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Roxy," said Mrs. Kittridge, "you are on your way, are you? Do
+sit down, right here, and get a cup of strong tea."
+
+"Thank you," said Aunt Roxy, "but Ruey gave me a humming cup before I
+came away."
+
+"Aunt Roxy, have they heard anything from Moses?" said the Captain.
+
+"No, father, I know they haven't," said Sally. "Mara has written to him,
+and so has Mr. Sewell, but it is very uncertain whether he ever got the
+letters."
+
+"It's most time to be a-lookin' for him home," said the Captain. "I
+shouldn't be surprised to see him any day."
+
+At this moment Sally, who sat where she could see from the window, gave
+a sudden start and a half scream, and rising from the table, darted
+first to the window and then to the door, whence she rushed out eagerly.
+
+"Well, what now?" said the Captain.
+
+"I am sure I don't know what's come over her," said Mrs. Kittridge,
+rising to look out.
+
+"Why, Aunt Roxy, do look; I believe to my soul that ar's Moses Pennel!"
+
+And so it was. He met Sally, as she ran out, with a gloomy brow and
+scarcely a look even of recognition; but he seized her hand and wrung it
+in the stress of his emotion so that she almost screamed with the pain.
+
+"Tell me, Sally," he said, "tell me the truth. I dared not go home
+without I knew. Those gossiping, lying reports are always exaggerated.
+They are dreadful exaggerations,--they frighten a sick person into the
+grave; but you have good sense and a hopeful, cheerful temper,--you must
+see and know how things are. Mara is not so very--very"--He held Sally's
+hand and looked at her with a burning eagerness. "Say, what do you think
+of her?"
+
+"We all think that we cannot long keep her with us," said Sally. "And
+oh, Moses, I am so glad you have come."
+
+"It's false,--it must be false," he said, violently; "nothing is more
+deceptive than these ideas that doctors and nurses pile on when a
+sensitive person is going down a little. I know Mara; everything depends
+on the mind with her. I shall wake her up out of this dream. She is not
+to die. She shall not die,--I come to save her."
+
+"Oh, if you could!" said Sally, mournfully.
+
+"It cannot be; it is not to be," he said again, as if to convince
+himself. "No such thing is to be thought of. Tell me, Sally, have you
+tried to keep up the cheerful side of things to her,--have you?"
+
+"Oh, you cannot tell, Moses, how it is, unless you see her. She is
+cheerful, happy; the only really joyous one among us."
+
+"Cheerful! joyous! happy! She does not believe, then, these frightful
+things? I thought she would keep up; she is a brave little thing."
+
+"No, Moses, she does believe. She has given up all hope of life,--all
+wish to live; and oh, she is so lovely,--so sweet,--so dear."
+
+Sally covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Moses stood still,
+looking at her a moment in a confused way, and then he answered,--
+
+"Come, get your bonnet, Sally, and go with me. You must go in and tell
+them; tell her that I am come, you know."
+
+"Yes, I will," said Sally, as she ran quickly back to the house.
+
+Moses stood listlessly looking after her. A moment after she came out of
+the door again, and Miss Roxy behind. Sally hurried up to Moses.
+
+"Where's that black old raven going?" said Moses, in a low voice,
+looking back on Miss Roxy, who stood on the steps.
+
+"What, Aunt Roxy?" said Sally; "why, she's going up to nurse Mara, and
+take care of her. Mrs. Pennel is so old and infirm she needs somebody to
+depend on."
+
+"I can't bear her," said Moses. "I always think of sick-rooms and
+coffins and a stifling smell of camphor when I see her. I never could
+endure her. She's an old harpy going to carry off my dove."
+
+"Now, Moses, you must _not_ talk so. She loves Mara dearly, the poor
+old soul, and Mara loves her, and there is no earthly thing she would
+not do for her. And she knows what to do for sickness better than you or
+I. I have found out one thing, that it isn't mere love and good-will
+that is needed in a sick-room; it needs knowledge and experience."
+
+Moses assented in gloomy silence, and they walked on together the way
+that they had so often taken laughing and chatting. When they came
+within sight of the house, Moses said,--
+
+"Here she came running to meet us; do you remember?"
+
+"Yes," said Sally.
+
+"I was never half worthy of her. I never said half what I ought to," he
+added. "She _must_ live! I must have one more chance."
+
+When they came up to the house, Zephaniah Pennel was sitting in the
+door, with his gray head bent over the leaves of the great family Bible.
+
+He rose up at their coming, and with that suppression of all external
+signs of feeling for which the New Englander is remarkable, simply shook
+the hand of Moses, saying,--
+
+"Well, my boy, we are glad you have come."
+
+Mrs. Pennel, who was busied in some domestic work in the back part of
+the kitchen, turned away and hid her face in her apron when she saw him.
+There fell a great silence among them, in the midst of which the old
+clock ticked loudly and importunately, like the inevitable approach of
+fate.
+
+"I will go up and see her, and get her ready," said Sally, in a whisper
+to Moses. "I'll come and call you."
+
+Moses sat down and looked around on the old familiar scene; there was
+the great fireplace where, in their childish days, they had sat together
+winter nights,--her fair, spiritual face enlivened by the blaze, while
+she knit and looked thoughtfully into the coals; there she had played
+checkers, or fox and geese, with him; or studied with him the Latin
+lessons; or sat by, grave and thoughtful, hemming his toyship sails,
+while he cut the moulds for his anchors, or tried experiments on
+pulleys; and in all these years he could not remember one selfish
+action,--one unlovely word,--and he thought to himself, "I hoped to
+possess this angel as a mortal wife! God forgive my presumption."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+THE MEETING
+
+
+Sally found Mara sitting in an easy-chair that had been sent to her by
+the provident love of Miss Emily. It was wheeled in front of her room
+window, from whence she could look out upon the wide expanse of the
+ocean. It was a gloriously bright, calm morning, and the water lay clear
+and still, with scarce a ripple, to the far distant pearly horizon. She
+seemed to be looking at it in a kind of calm ecstasy, and murmuring the
+words of a hymn:--
+
+    "Nor wreck nor ruin there is seen,
+      There not a wave of trouble rolls,
+    But the bright rainbow round the throne
+      Peals endless peace to all their souls."
+
+Sally came softly behind her on tiptoe to kiss her. "Good-morning, dear,
+how do you find yourself?"
+
+"Quite well," was the answer.
+
+"Mara, is not there anything you want?"
+
+"There might be many things; but His will is mine."
+
+"You want to see Moses?"
+
+"Very much; but I shall see him as soon as it is best for us both."
+
+"Mara,--he is come."
+
+The quick blood flushed over the pale, transparent face as a virgin
+glacier flushes at sunrise, and she looked up eagerly. "Come!"
+
+"Yes, he is below-stairs wanting to see you."
+
+She seemed about to speak eagerly, and then checked herself and mused a
+moment. "Poor, poor boy!" she said. "Yes, Sally, let him come at once."
+
+There were a few dazzling, dreamy minutes when Moses first held that
+frail form in his arms, which but for its tender, mortal warmth, might
+have seemed to him a spirit. It was no spirit, but a woman whose heart
+he could feel thrilling against his own; who seemed to him like some
+frail, fluttering bird; but somehow, as he looked into her clear,
+transparent face, and pressed her thin little hands in his, the
+conviction stole over him overpoweringly that she was indeed fading away
+and going from him,--drawn from him by that mysterious, irresistible
+power against which human strength, even in the strongest, has no
+chance.
+
+It is dreadful to a strong man who has felt the influence of his
+strength,--who has always been ready with a resource for every
+emergency, and a weapon for every battle,--when first he meets that
+mighty invisible power by which a beloved life--a life he would give his
+own blood to save--melts and dissolves like smoke before his eyes.
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara," he groaned, "this is too dreadful, too cruel; it is
+cruel."
+
+"You will think so at first, but not always," she said, soothingly. "You
+will live to see a joy come out of this sorrow."
+
+"Never, Mara, never. I cannot believe that kind of talk. I see no love,
+no mercy in it. Of course, if there is any life after death you will be
+happy; if there is a heaven you will be there; but can this dim,
+unsubstantial, cloudy prospect make you happy in leaving me and giving
+up one's lover? Oh, Mara, you cannot love as I do, or you could not"--
+
+"Moses, I have suffered,--oh, very, very much. It was many months ago
+when I first thought that I must give everything up,--when I thought
+that we must part; but Christ helped me; he showed me his wonderful
+love,--the love that surrounds us all our life, that follows us in all
+our wanderings, and sustains us in all our weaknesses,--and then I felt
+that whatever He wills for us is in love; oh, believe it,--believe it
+for my sake, for your own."
+
+"Oh, I cannot, I cannot," said Moses; but as he looked at the bright,
+pale face, and felt how the tempest of his feelings shook the frail
+form, he checked himself. "I do wrong to agitate you so, Mara. I will
+try to be calm."
+
+"And to pray?" she said, beseechingly.
+
+He shut his lips in gloomy silence.
+
+"Promise me," she said.
+
+"I have prayed ever since I got your first letter, and I see it does no
+good," he answered. "Our prayers cannot alter fate."
+
+"Fate! there is no fate," she answered; "there is a strong and loving
+Father who guides the way, though we know it not. We cannot resist His
+will; but it is all love,--pure, pure love."
+
+At this moment Sally came softly into the room. A gentle air of womanly
+authority seemed to express itself in that once gay and giddy face, at
+which Moses, in the midst of his misery, marveled.
+
+"You must not stay any longer now," she said; "it would be too much for
+her strength; this is enough for this morning."
+
+Moses turned away, and silently left the room, and Sally said to Mara,--
+
+"You must lie down now, and rest."
+
+"Sally," said Mara, "promise me one thing."
+
+"Well, Mara; of course I will."
+
+"Promise to love him and care for him when I am gone; he will be so
+lonely."
+
+"I will do all I can, Mara," said Sally, soothingly; "so now you must
+take a little wine and lie down. You know what you have so often said,
+that all will yet be well with him."
+
+"Oh, I know it, I am sure," said Mara, "but oh, his sorrow shook my very
+heart."
+
+"You must not talk another word about it," said Sally, peremptorily, "Do
+you know Aunt Roxy is coming to see you? I see her out of the window
+this very moment."
+
+And Sally assisted to lay her friend on the bed, and then, administering
+a stimulant, she drew down the curtains, and, sitting beside her, began
+repeating, in a soft monotonous tone, the words of a favorite hymn:--
+
+    "The Lord my shepherd is,
+      I shall be well supplied;
+    Since He is mine, and I am His,
+      What can I want beside?"
+
+Before she had finished, Mara was asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+CONSOLATION
+
+
+Moses came down from the chamber of Mara in a tempest of contending
+emotions. He had all that constitutional horror of death and the
+spiritual world which is an attribute of some particularly strong and
+well-endowed physical natures, and he had all that instinctive
+resistance of the will which such natures offer to anything which
+strikes athwart their cherished hopes and plans. To be wrenched suddenly
+from the sphere of an earthly life and made to confront the unclosed
+doors of a spiritual world on the behalf of the one dearest to him, was
+to him a dreary horror uncheered by one filial belief in God. He felt,
+furthermore, that blind animal irritation which assails one under a
+sudden blow, whether of the body or of the soul,--an anguish of
+resistance, a vague blind anger.
+
+Mr. Sewell was sitting in the kitchen,--he had called to see Mara, and
+waited for the close of the interview above. He rose and offered his
+hand to Moses, who took it in gloomy silence, without a smile or word.
+
+"'My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord,'" said Mr.
+Sewell.
+
+"I cannot bear that sort of thing," said Moses abruptly, and almost
+fiercely. "I beg your pardon, sir, but it irritates me."
+
+"Do you not believe that afflictions are sent for our improvement?" said
+Mr. Sewell.
+
+"No! how can I? What improvement will there be to me in taking from me
+the angel who guided me to all good, and kept me from all evil; the one
+pure motive and holy influence of my life? If you call this the
+chastening of a loving father, I must say it looks more to me like the
+caprice of an evil spirit."
+
+"Had you ever thanked the God of your life for this gift, or felt your
+dependence on him to keep it? Have you not blindly idolized the creature
+and forgotten Him who gave it?" said Mr. Sewell.
+
+Moses was silent a moment.
+
+"I cannot believe there is a God," he said. "Since this fear came on me
+I have prayed,--yes, and humbled myself; for I know I have not always
+been what I ought. I promised if he would grant me this one thing, I
+would seek him in future; but it did no good,--it's of no use to pray. I
+would have been good in this way, if she might be spared, and I cannot
+in any other."
+
+"My son, our Lord and Master will have no such conditions from us," said
+Mr. Sewell. "We must submit unconditionally. _She_ has done it, and her
+peace is as firm as the everlasting hills. God's will is a great current
+that flows in spite of us; if we go with it, it carries us to endless
+rest,--if we resist, we only wear our lives out in useless struggles."
+
+Moses stood a moment in silence, and then, turning away without a word,
+hurried from the house. He strode along the high rocky bluff, through
+tangled junipers and pine thickets, till he came above the rocky cove
+which had been his favorite retreat on so many occasions. He swung
+himself down over the cliffs into the grotto, where, shut in by the high
+tide, he felt himself alone. There he had read Mr. Sewell's letter, and
+dreamed vain dreams of wealth and worldly success, now all to him so
+void. He felt to-day, as he sat there and watched the ships go by, how
+utterly nothing all the wealth in the world was, in the loss of that one
+heart. Unconsciously, even to himself, sorrow was doing her ennobling
+ministry within him, melting off in her fierce fires trivial ambitions
+and low desires, and making him feel the sole worth and value of love.
+That which in other days had seemed only as one good thing among many
+now seemed the _only_ thing in life. And he who has learned the
+paramount value of love has taken one step from an earthly to a
+spiritual existence.
+
+But as he lay there on the pebbly shore, hour after hour glided by, his
+whole past life lived itself over to his eye; he saw a thousand actions,
+he heard a thousand words, whose beauty and significance never came to
+him till now. And alas! he saw so many when, on his part, the responsive
+word that should have been spoken, and the deed that should have been
+done, was forever wanting. He had all his life carried within him a
+vague consciousness that he had not been to Mara what he should have
+been, but he had hoped to make amends for all in that future which lay
+before him,--that future now, alas! dissolving and fading away like the
+white cloud-islands which the wind was drifting from the sky. A voice
+seemed saying in his ears, "Ye know that when he would have inherited a
+blessing he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though
+he sought it carefully with tears." Something that he had never felt
+before struck him as appalling in the awful fixedness of all past deeds
+and words,--the unkind words once said, which no tears could unsay,--the
+kind ones suppressed, to which no agony of wishfulness could give a past
+reality. There were particular times in their past history that he
+remembered so vividly, when he saw her so clearly,--doing some little
+thing for him, and shyly watching for the word of acknowledgment, which
+he did not give. Some willful wayward demon withheld him at the moment,
+and the light on the little wishful face slowly faded. True, all had
+been a thousand times forgiven and forgotten between them, but it is the
+ministry of these great vital hours of sorrow to teach us that nothing
+in the soul's history ever dies or is forgotten, and when the beloved
+one lies stricken and ready to pass away, comes the judgment-day of
+love, and all the dead moments of the past arise and live again.
+
+He lay there musing and dreaming till the sun grew low in the afternoon
+sky, and the tide that isolated the little grotto had gone far out into
+the ocean, leaving long, low reefs of sunken rocks, all matted and
+tangled with the yellow hair of the seaweed, with little crystal pools
+of salt water between. He heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and
+Captain Kittridge came slowly picking his way round among the shingle
+and pebbles.
+
+"Wal', now, I thought I'd find ye here!" he said: "I kind o' thought I
+wanted to see ye,--ye see."
+
+Moses looked up half moody, half astonished, while the Captain seated
+himself upon a fragment of rock and began brushing the knees of his
+trousers industriously, until soon the tears rained down from his eyes
+upon his dry withered hands.
+
+"Wal', now ye see, I can't help it, darned if I can; knowed her ever
+since she's that high. She's done me good, she has. Mis' Kittridge has
+been pretty faithful. I've had folks here and there talk to me
+consid'able, but Lord bless you, I never had nothin' go to my heart like
+this 'ere--Why to look on her there couldn't nobody doubt but what there
+was somethin' in religion. You never knew half what she did for you,
+Moses Pennel, you didn't know that the night you was off down to the
+long cove with Skipper Atkinson, that 'ere blessed child was a-follerin'
+you, but she was, and she come to me next day to get me to do somethin'
+for you. That was how your grand'ther and I got ye off to sea so quick,
+and she such a little thing then; that ar child was the savin' of ye,
+Moses Pennel."
+
+Moses hid his head in his hands with a sort of groan.
+
+"Wal', wal'," said the Captain, "I don't wonder now ye feel so,--I don't
+see how ye can stan' it no ways--only by thinkin' o' where she's goin'
+to--Them ar bells in the Celestial City must all be a-ringin' for
+her,--there'll be joy that side o' the river I reckon, when she gets
+acrost. If she'd jest leave me a hem o' her garment to get in by, I'd be
+glad; but she was one o' the sort that was jest _made_ to go to heaven.
+She only stopped a few days in our world, like the robins when they's
+goin' south; but there'll be a good many fust and last that'll get into
+the kingdom for love of her. She never said much to me, but she kind o'
+drew me. Ef ever I should get in there, it'll be _she_ led me. But come,
+now, Moses, ye oughtn't fur to be a-settin' here catchin' cold--jest
+come round to our house and let Sally gin you a warm cup o' tea--do
+come, now."
+
+"Thank you, Captain," said Moses, "but I will go home; I must see her
+again to-night."
+
+"Wal', don't let her see you grieve too much, ye know; we must be a
+little sort o' manly, ye know, 'cause her body's weak, if her heart is
+strong."
+
+Now Moses was in a mood of dry, proud, fierce, self-consuming sorrow,
+least likely to open his heart or seek sympathy from any one; and no
+friend or acquaintance would probably have dared to intrude on his
+grief. But there are moods of the mind which cannot be touched or
+handled by one on an equal level with us that yield at once to the
+sympathy of something below. A dog who comes with his great honest,
+sorrowful face and lays his mute paw of inquiry on your knee, will
+sometimes open floodgates of sober feeling, that have remained closed to
+every human touch;--the dumb simplicity and ignorance of his sympathy
+makes it irresistible. In like manner the downright grief of the
+good-natured old Captain, and the child-like ignorance with which he
+ventured upon a ministry of consolation from which a more cultivated
+person would have shrunk away, were irresistibly touching. Moses grasped
+the dry, withered hand and said, "Thank you, thank you, Captain
+Kittridge; you're a true friend."
+
+"Wal', I be, that's a fact, Moses. Lord bless me, I ain't no great--I
+ain't nobody--I'm jest an old last-year's mullein-stalk in the Lord's
+vineyard; but that 'ere blessed little thing allers had a good word for
+me. She gave me a hymn-book and marked some hymns in it, and read 'em to
+me herself, and her voice was jest as sweet as the sea of a warm
+evening. Them hymns come to me kind o' powerful when I'm at my work
+planin' and sawin'. Mis' Kittridge, she allers talks to me as ef I was a
+terrible sinner; and I suppose I be, but this 'ere blessed child, she's
+so kind o' good and innocent, she thinks I'm good; kind o' takes it for
+granted I'm one o' the Lord's people, ye know. It kind o' makes me want
+to be, ye know."
+
+The Captain here produced from his coat-pocket a much worn hymn-book,
+and showed Moses where leaves were folded down. "Now here's this 'ere,"
+he said; "you get her to say it to you," he added, pointing to the
+well-known sacred idyl which has refreshed so many hearts:--
+
+    "There is a land of pure delight
+      Where saints immortal reign;
+    Eternal day excludes the night,
+      And pleasures banish pain.
+
+    "There everlasting spring abides,
+      And never-fading flowers;
+    Death like a narrow sea divides
+      This happy land from ours."
+
+"Now that ar beats everything," said the Captain, "and we must kind o'
+think of it for her, 'cause she's goin' to see all that, and ef it's our
+loss it's her gain, ye know."
+
+"I know," said Moses; "our grief is selfish."
+
+"Jest so. Wal', we're selfish critters, we be," said the Captain; "but
+arter all, 't ain't as ef we was heathen and didn't know where they was
+a-goin' to. We jest ought to be a-lookin' about and tryin' to foller
+'em, ye know."
+
+"Yes, yes, I do know," said Moses; "it's easy to say, but hard to do."
+
+"But law, man, she prays for you; she did years and years ago, when you
+was a boy and she a girl. You know it tells in the Revelations how the
+angels has golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of saints. I
+tell ye Moses, you ought to get into heaven, if no one else does. I
+expect you are pretty well known among the angels by this time. I tell
+ye what 'tis, Moses, fellers think it a mighty pretty thing to be
+a-steppin' high, and a-sayin' they don't believe the Bible, and all that
+ar, so long as the world goes well. This 'ere old Bible--why it's jest
+like yer mother,--ye rove and ramble, and cut up round the world without
+her a spell, and mebbe think the old woman ain't so fashionable as some;
+but when sickness and sorrow comes, why, there ain't nothin' else to go
+back to. Is there, now?"
+
+Moses did not answer, but he shook the hand of the Captain and turned
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+LAST WORDS
+
+
+The setting sun gleamed in at the window of Mara's chamber, tinted with
+rose and violet hues from a great cloud-castle that lay upon the smooth
+ocean over against the window. Mara was lying upon the bed, but she
+raised herself upon her elbow to look out.
+
+"Dear Aunt Roxy," she said, "raise me up and put the pillows behind me,
+so that I can see out--it is splendid."
+
+Aunt Roxy came and arranged the pillows, and lifted the girl with her
+long, strong arms, then stooping over her a moment she finished her
+arrangements by softly smoothing the hair from her forehead with a
+caressing movement most unlike her usual precise business-like
+proceedings.
+
+"I love you, Aunt Roxy," said Mara, looking up with a smile.
+
+Aunt Roxy made a strange wry face, which caused her to look harder than
+usual. She was choked with tenderness, and had only this uncomely way of
+showing it.
+
+"Law now, Mara, I don't see how ye can; I ain't nothin' but an old
+burdock-bush; love ain't for me."
+
+"Yes it is too," said Mara, drawing her down and kissing her withered
+cheek, "and you sha'n't call yourself an old burdock. God sees that you
+are beautiful, and in the resurrection everybody will see it."
+
+"I was always homely as an owl," said Miss Roxy, unconsciously speaking
+out what had lain like a stone at the bottom of even her sensible heart.
+"I always had sense to know it, and knew my sphere. Homely folks would
+like to say pretty things, and to have pretty things said to them, but
+they never do. I made up my mind pretty early that my part in the
+vineyard was to have hard work and no posies."
+
+"Well, you will have all the more in heaven; I love you dearly, and I
+like your looks, too. You look kind and true and good, and that's beauty
+in the country where we are going."
+
+Miss Roxy sprang up quickly from the bed, and turning her back began to
+arrange the bottles on the table with great zeal.
+
+"Has Moses come in yet?" said Mara.
+
+"No, there ain't nobody seen a thing of him since he went out this
+morning."
+
+"Poor boy!" said Mara, "it is too hard upon him. Aunt Roxy, please pick
+some roses off the bush from under the window and put in the vases;
+let's have the room as sweet and cheerful as we can. I hope God will let
+me live long enough to comfort him. It is not so very terrible, if one
+would only think so, to cross that river. All looks so bright to me now
+that I have forgotten how sorrow seemed. Poor Moses! he will have a hard
+struggle, but he will get the victory, too. I am very weak to-night, but
+to-morrow I shall feel better, and I shall sit up, and perhaps I can
+paint a little on that flower I was doing for him. We will not have
+things look sickly or deathly. There, Aunt Roxy, he has come in; I hear
+his step."
+
+"I didn't hear it," said Miss Roxy, surprised at the acute senses which
+sickness had etherealized to an almost spirit-like intensity. "Shall I
+call him?"
+
+"Yes, do," said Mara. "He can sit with me a little while to-night."
+
+The light in the room was a strange dusky mingling of gold and gloom,
+when Moses stole softly in. The great cloud-castle that a little while
+since had glowed like living gold from turret and battlement, now dim,
+changed for the most part to a sombre gray, enlivened with a dull glow
+of crimson; but there was still a golden light where the sun had sunk
+into the sea. Moses saw the little thin hand stretched out to him.
+
+"Sit down," she said; "it has been such a beautiful sunset. Did you
+notice it?"
+
+He sat down by the bed, leaning his forehead on his hand, but saying
+nothing.
+
+She drew her fingers through his dark hair. "I am so glad to see you,"
+she said. "It is such a comfort to me that you have come; and I hope it
+will be to you. You know I shall be better to-morrow than I am to-night,
+and I hope we shall have some pleasant days together yet. We mustn't
+reject what little we may have, because it cannot be more."
+
+"Oh, Mara," said Moses, "I would give my life, if I could take back the
+past. I have never been worthy of you; never knew your worth; never made
+you happy. You always lived for me, and I lived for myself. I deserve to
+lose you, but it is none the less bitter."
+
+"Don't say lose. Why must you? I cannot think of losing you. I know I
+shall not. God has given you to me. You will come to me and be mine at
+last. I feel sure of it."
+
+"You don't know me," said Moses.
+
+"Christ does, though," she said; "and He has promised to care for you.
+Yes, you will live to see many flowers grow out of my grave. You cannot
+think so now; but it will be so--believe me."
+
+"Mara," said Moses, "I never lived through such a day as this. It seems
+as if every moment of my life had been passing before me, and every
+moment of yours. I have seen how true and loving in thought and word and
+deed you have been, and I have been doing nothing but take. You have
+given love as the skies give rain, and I have drunk it up like the hot
+dusty earth."
+
+Mara knew in her own heart that this was all true, and she was too real
+to use any of the terms of affected humiliation which many think a kind
+of spiritual court language. She looked at him and answered, "Moses, I
+always knew I loved most. It was my nature; God gave it to me, and it
+was a gift for which I give him thanks--not a merit. I knew you had a
+larger, wider nature than mine,--a wider sphere to live in, and that you
+could not live in your heart as I did. Mine was all thought and feeling,
+and the narrow little duties of this little home. Yours went all round
+the world."
+
+"But, oh Mara--oh, my angel! to think I should lose you when I am just
+beginning to know your worth. I always had a sort of superstitious
+feeling,--a sacred presentiment about you,--that my spiritual life, if
+ever I had any, would come through you. It seemed if there ever was such
+a thing as God's providence, which some folks believe in, it was in
+leading me to you, and giving you to me. And now, to have all
+lashed--all destroyed--It makes me feel as if all was blind chance; no
+guiding God; for if he wanted me to be good, he would spare you."
+
+Mara lay with her large eyes fixed on the now faded sky. The dusky
+shadows had dropped like a black crape veil around her pale face. In a
+few moments she repeated to herself, as if she were musing upon them,
+those mysterious words of Him who liveth and was dead, "Except a corn of
+wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; if it die, it
+bringeth forth much fruit."
+
+"Moses," she said, "for all I know you have loved me dearly, yet I have
+felt that in all that was deepest and dearest to me, I was alone. You
+did not come near to me, nor touch me where I feel most deeply. If I had
+lived to be your wife, I cannot say but this distance in our spiritual
+nature might have widened. You know, what we live with we get used to;
+it grows an old story. Your love to me might have grown old and worn
+out. If we lived together in the commonplace toils of life, you would
+see only a poor threadbare wife. I might have lost what little charm I
+ever had for you; but I feel that if I die, this will not be. There is
+something sacred and beautiful in death; and I may have more power over
+you, when I seem to be gone, than I should have had living."
+
+"Oh, Mara, Mara, don't say that."
+
+"Dear Moses, it is so. Think how many lovers marry, and how few lovers
+are left in middle life; and how few love and reverence living friends
+as they do the dead. There are only a very few to whom it is given to do
+that."
+
+Something in the heart of Moses told him that this was true. In this one
+day--the sacred revealing light of approaching death--he had seen more
+of the real spiritual beauty and significance of Mara's life than in
+years before, and felt upspringing in his heart, from the deep pathetic
+influence of the approaching spiritual world a new and stronger power of
+loving. It may be that it is not merely a perception of love that we
+were not aware of before, that wakes up when we approach the solemn
+shadows with a friend. It may be that the soul has compressed and
+unconscious powers which are stirred and wrought upon as it looks over
+the borders into its future home,--its loves and its longings so swell
+and beat, that they astonish itself. We are greater than we know, and
+dimly feel it with every approach to the great hereafter. "It doth not
+yet appear what we shall be."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what 'tis," said Aunt Roxy, opening the door, "all
+the strength this 'ere girl spends a-talkin' to-night, will be so much
+taken out o' the whole cloth to-morrow."
+
+Moses started up. "I ought to have thought of that, Mara."
+
+"Ye see," said Miss Roxy, "she's been through a good deal to-day, and
+she must be got to sleep at some rate or other to-night. 'Lord, if he
+sleep he shall do well,' the Bible says, and it's one of my best nussin'
+maxims."
+
+"And a good one, too, Aunt Roxy," said Mara. "Good-night, dear boy; you
+see we must all mind Aunt Roxy."
+
+Moses bent down and kissed her, and felt her arms around his neck.
+
+"Let not your heart be troubled," she whispered. In spite of himself
+Moses felt the storm that had risen in his bosom that morning soothed by
+the gentle influences which Mara breathed upon it. There is a
+sympathetic power in all states of mind, and they who have reached the
+deep secret of eternal rest have a strange power of imparting calm to
+others.
+
+It was in the very crisis of the battle that Christ said to his
+disciples, "_My peace I give unto you_," and they that are made one with
+him acquire like precious power of shedding round them repose, as
+evening flowers shed odors. Moses went to his pillow sorrowful and
+heart-stricken, but bitter or despairing he could not be with the
+consciousness of that present angel in the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+THE PEARL
+
+
+The next morning rose calm and bright with that wonderful and mystical
+stillness and serenity which glorify autumn days. It was impossible that
+such skies could smile and such gentle airs blow the sea into one great
+waving floor of sparkling sapphires without bringing cheerfulness to
+human hearts. You must be very despairing indeed, when Nature is doing
+her best, to look her in the face sullen and defiant. So long as there
+is a drop of good in your cup, a penny in your exchequer of happiness, a
+bright day reminds you to look at it, and feel that all is not gone yet.
+
+So felt Moses when he stood in the door of the brown house, while Mrs.
+Pennel was clinking plates and spoons as she set the breakfast-table,
+and Zephaniah Pennel in his shirt-sleeves was washing in the back-room,
+while Miss Roxy came downstairs in a business-like fashion, bringing
+sundry bowls, plates, dishes, and mysterious pitchers from the
+sick-room.
+
+"Well, Aunt Roxy, you ain't one that lets the grass grow under your
+feet," said Mrs. Pennel. "How is the dear child, this morning?"
+
+"Well, she had a better night than one could have expected," said Miss
+Roxy, "and by the time she's had her breakfast, she expects to sit up a
+little and see her friends." Miss Roxy said this in a cheerful tone,
+looking encouragingly at Moses, whom she began to pity and patronize,
+now she saw how real was his affliction.
+
+After breakfast Moses went to see her; she was sitting up in her white
+dressing-gown, looking so thin and poorly, and everything in the room
+was fragrant with the spicy smell of the monthly roses, whose late buds
+and blossoms Miss Roxy had gathered for the vases. She seemed so
+natural, so calm and cheerful, so interested in all that went on around
+her, that one almost forgot that the time of her stay must be so short.
+She called Moses to come and look at her drawings, and paintings of
+flowers and birds,--full of reminders they were of old times,--and then
+she would have her pencils and colors, and work a little on a bunch of
+red rock-columbine, that she had begun to do for him; and she chatted of
+all the old familiar places where flowers grew, and of the old talks
+they had had there, till Moses quite forgot himself; forgot that he was
+in a sick room, till Aunt Roxy, warned by the deepening color on Mara's
+cheeks, interposed her "nussing" authority, that she must do no more
+that day.
+
+Then Moses laid her down, and arranged her pillows so that she could
+look out on the sea, and sat and read to her till it was time for her
+afternoon nap; and when the evening shadows drew on, he marveled with
+himself how the day had gone.
+
+Many such there were, all that pleasant month of September, and he was
+with her all the time, watching her wants and doing her
+bidding,--reading over and over with a softened modulation her favorite
+hymns and chapters, arranging her flowers, and bringing her home wild
+bouquets from all her favorite wood-haunts, which made her sick-room
+seem like some sylvan bower. Sally Kittridge was there too, almost every
+day, with always some friendly offering or some helpful deed of
+kindness, and sometimes they two together would keep guard over the
+invalid while Miss Roxy went home to attend to some of her own more
+peculiar concerns. Mara seemed to rule all around her with calm
+sweetness and wisdom, speaking unconsciously only the speech of heaven,
+talking of spiritual things, not in an excited rapture or wild ecstasy,
+but with the sober certainty of waking bliss. She seemed like one of the
+sweet friendly angels one reads of in the Old Testament, so lovingly
+companionable, walking and talking, eating and drinking, with mortals,
+yet ready at any unknown moment to ascend with the flame of some
+sacrifice and be gone. There are those (a few at least) whose blessing
+it has been to have kept for many days, in bonds of earthly fellowship,
+a perfected spirit in whom the work of purifying love was wholly done,
+who lived in calm victory over sin and sorrow and death, ready at any
+moment to be called to the final mystery of joy.
+
+Yet it must come at last, the moment when heaven claims its own, and it
+came at last in the cottage on Orr's Island. There came a day when the
+room so sacredly cheerful was hushed to a breathless stillness; the bed
+was then all snowy white, and that soft still sealed face, the parted
+waves of golden hair, the little hands folded over the white robe, all
+had a sacred and wonderful calm, a rapture of repose that seemed to say
+"it is done."
+
+They who looked on her wondered; it was a look that sunk deep into every
+heart; it hushed down the common cant of those who, according to country
+custom, went to stare blindly at the great mystery of death,--for all
+that came out of that chamber smote upon their breasts and went away in
+silence, revolving strangely whence might come that unearthly beauty,
+that celestial joy.
+
+Once more, in that very room where James and Naomi Lincoln had lain side
+by side in their coffins, sleeping restfully, there was laid another
+form, shrouded and coffined, but with such a fairness and tender purity,
+such a mysterious fullness of joy in its expression, that it seemed more
+natural to speak of that rest as some higher form of life than of
+death.
+
+Once more were gathered the neighborhood; all the faces known in this
+history shone out in one solemn picture, of which that sweet restful
+form was the centre. Zephaniah Pennel and Mary his wife, Moses and
+Sally, the dry form of Captain Kittridge and the solemn face of his
+wife, Aunt Roxy and Aunt Ruey, Miss Emily and Mr. Sewell; but their
+faces all wore a tender brightness, such as we see falling like a thin
+celestial veil over all the faces in an old Florentine painting. The
+room was full of sweet memories, of words of cheer, words of assurance,
+words of triumph, and the mysterious brightness of that young face
+forbade them to weep. Solemnly Mr. Sewell read,--
+
+"He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away
+tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take
+away from off all the earth; for the Lord hath spoken it. And it shall
+be said in that day, Lo this is our God; we have waited for him, and he
+will save us; this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad
+and rejoice in his salvation."
+
+Then the prayer trembled up to heaven with thanksgiving, for the early
+entrance of that fair young saint into glory, and then the same old
+funeral hymn, with its mournful triumph:--
+
+    "Why should we mourn departed friends,
+      Or shake at death's alarms,
+    'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends
+      To call them to his arms."
+
+Then in a few words Mr. Sewell reminded them how that hymn had been sung
+in this room so many years ago, when that frail, fluttering orphan soul
+had been baptized into the love and care of Jesus, and how her whole
+life, passing before them in its simplicity and beauty, had come to so
+holy and beautiful a close; and when, pointing to the calm sleeping face
+he asked, "Would we call her back?" there was not a heart at that moment
+that dared answer, Yes. Even he that should have been her bridegroom
+could not at that moment have unsealed the holy charm, and so they bore
+her away, and laid the calm smiling face beneath the soil, by the side
+of poor Dolores.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I had a beautiful dream last night," said Zephaniah Pennel, the next
+morning after the funeral, as he opened his Bible to conduct family
+worship.
+
+"What was it?" said Miss Roxy.
+
+"Well, ye see, I thought I was out a-walkin' up and down, and lookin'
+and lookin' for something that I'd lost. What it was I couldn't quite
+make out, but my heart felt heavy as if it would break, and I was
+lookin' all up and down the sands by the seashore, and somebody said I
+was like the merchantman, seeking goodly pearls. I said I had lost my
+pearl--my pearl of great price--and then I looked up, and far off on the
+beach, shining softly on the wet sands, lay my pearl. I thought it was
+Mara, but it seemed a great pearl with a soft moonlight on it; and I was
+running for it when some one said 'hush,' and I looked and I saw _Him_
+a-coming--Jesus of Nazareth, jist as he walked by the sea of Galilee. It
+was all dark night around Him, but I could see Him by the light that
+came from his face, and the long hair was hanging down on his shoulders.
+He came and took up my pearl and put it on his forehead, and it shone
+out like a star, and shone into my heart, and I felt happy; and he
+looked at me steadily, and rose and rose in the air, and melted in the
+clouds, and I awoke so happy, and so calm!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+FOUR YEARS AFTER
+
+
+It was a splendid evening in July, and the sky was filled high with
+gorgeous tabernacles of purple and gold, the remains of a grand
+thunder-shower which had freshened the air and set a separate jewel on
+every needle leaf of the old pines.
+
+Four years had passed since the fair Pearl of Orr's Island had been laid
+beneath the gentle soil, which every year sent monthly tributes of
+flowers to adorn her rest, great blue violets, and starry flocks of
+ethereal eye-brights in spring, and fringy asters, and goldenrod in
+autumn. In those days, the tender sentiment which now makes the
+burial-place a cultivated garden was excluded by the rigid spiritualism
+of the Puritan life, which, ever jealous of that which concerned the
+body, lest it should claim what belonged to the immortal alone, had
+frowned on all watching of graves, as an earthward tendency, and
+enjoined the flight of faith with the spirit, rather than the yearning
+for its cast-off garments.
+
+But Sally Kittridge, being lonely, found something in her heart which
+could only be comforted by visits to that grave. So she had planted
+there roses and trailing myrtle, and tended and watered them; a
+proceeding which was much commented on Sunday noons, when people were
+eating their dinners and discussing their neighbors.
+
+It is possible good Mrs. Kittridge might have been much scandalized by
+it, had she been in a condition to think on the matter at all; but a
+very short time after the funeral she was seized with a paralytic
+shock, which left her for a while as helpless as an infant; and then she
+sank away into the grave, leaving Sally the sole care of the old
+Captain.
+
+A cheerful home she made, too, for his old age, adorning the house with
+many little tasteful fancies unknown in her mother's days; reading the
+Bible to him and singing Mara's favorite hymns, with a voice as sweet as
+the spring blue-bird. The spirit of the departed friend seemed to hallow
+the dwelling where these two worshiped her memory, in simple-hearted
+love. Her paintings, framed in quaint woodland frames of moss and
+pine-cones by Sally's own ingenuity, adorned the walls. Her books were
+on the table, and among them many that she had given to Moses.
+
+"I am going to be a wanderer for many years," he said in parting, "keep
+these for me until I come back."
+
+And so from time to time passed long letters between the two
+friends,--each telling to the other the same story,--that they were
+lonely, and that their hearts yearned for the communion of one who could
+no longer be manifest to the senses. And each spoke to the other of a
+world of hopes and memories buried with her, "Which," each so constantly
+said, "no one could understand but you." Each, too, was firm in the
+faith that buried love must have no earthly resurrection. Every letter
+strenuously insisted that they should call each other brother and
+sister, and under cover of those names the letters grew longer and more
+frequent, and with every chance opportunity came presents from the
+absent brother, which made the little old cottage quaintly suggestive
+with smell of spice and sandal-wood.
+
+But, as we said, this is a glorious July evening,--and you may discern
+two figures picking their way over those low sunken rocks, yellowed with
+seaweed, of which we have often spoken. They are Moses and Sally going
+on an evening walk to that favorite grotto retreat, which has so often
+been spoken of in the course of this history.
+
+Moses has come home from long wanderings. It is four years since they
+parted, and now they meet and have looked into each other's eyes, not as
+of old, when they met in the first giddy flush of youth, but as fully
+developed man and woman. Moses and Sally had just risen from the
+tea-table, where she had presided with a thoughtful housewifery gravity,
+just pleasantly dashed with quaint streaks of her old merry willfulness,
+while the old Captain, warmed up like a rheumatic grasshopper in a fine
+autumn day, chirruped feebly, and told some of his old stories, which
+now he told every day, forgetting that they had ever been heard before.
+Somehow all three had been very happy; the more so, from a shadowy sense
+of some sympathizing presence which was rejoicing to see them together
+again, and which, stealing soft-footed and noiseless everywhere, touched
+and lighted up every old familiar object with sweet memories.
+
+And so they had gone out together to walk; to walk towards the grotto
+where Sally had caused a seat to be made, and where she declared she had
+passed hours and hours, knitting, sewing, or reading.
+
+"Sally," said Moses, "do you know I am tired of wandering? I am coming
+home now. I begin to want a home of my own." This he said as they sat
+together on the rustic seat and looked off on the blue sea.
+
+"Yes, you must," said Sally. "How lovely that ship looks, just coming in
+there."
+
+"Yes, they are beautiful," said Moses abstractedly; and Sally rattled on
+about the difference between sloops and brigs; seeming determined that
+there should be no silence, such as often comes in ominous gaps between
+two friends who have long been separated, and have each many things to
+say with which the other is not familiar.
+
+"Sally!" said Moses, breaking in with a deep voice on one of these
+monologues. "Do you remember some presumptuous things I once said to
+you, in this place?"
+
+Sally did not answer, and there was a dead silence in which they could
+hear the tide gently dashing on the weedy rocks.
+
+"You and I are neither of us what we were then, Sally," said Moses. "We
+are as different as if we were each another person. We have been trained
+in another life,--educated by a great sorrow,--is it not so?"
+
+"I know it," said Sally.
+
+"And why should we two, who have a world of thoughts and memories which
+no one can understand but the other,--why should we, each of us, go on
+alone? If we must, why then, Sally, I must leave you, and I must write
+and receive no more letters, for I have found that you are becoming so
+wholly necessary to me, that if any other should claim you, I could not
+feel as I ought. Must I go?"
+
+Sally's answer is not on record; but one infers what it was from the
+fact that they sat there very late, and before they knew it, the tide
+rose up and shut them in, and the moon rose up in full glory out of the
+water, and still they sat and talked, leaning on each other, till a
+cracked, feeble voice called down through the pine-trees above, like a
+hoarse old cricket,--
+
+"Children, be you there?"
+
+"Yes, father," said Sally, blushing and conscious.
+
+"Yes, all right," said the deep bass of Moses. "I'll bring her back when
+I've done with her, Captain."
+
+"Wal',--wal'; I was gettin' consarned; but I see I don't need to. I hope
+you won't get no colds nor nothin'."
+
+They did not; but in the course of a month there was a wedding at the
+brown house of the old Captain, which everybody in the parish was glad
+of, and was voted without dissent to be just the thing.
+
+Miss Roxy, grimly approbative, presided over the preparations, and all
+the characters of our story appeared, and more, having on their
+wedding-garments. Nor was the wedding less joyful, that all felt the
+presence of a heavenly guest, silent and loving, seeing and blessing
+all, whose voice seemed to say in every heart,--
+
+"He turneth the shadow of death into morning."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Pearl of Orr's Island, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #31522 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31522)