Читать книгу Cape Cod Folks - Sarah Pratt McLean Greene - Страница 10

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"We have our r'al, good, comfortin' meal at night," Grandma Keeler had said, and the thought was uppermost in my mind at the close of my first day's labor in Wallencamp. I had taken a walk to the beach; a strong east wind had come up, and the surf was rolling in magnificently; a wild scene, from a wild shore, more awful then, in the gathering gloom. The long rays of light streaming out of the windows of the Ark guided me back across the fields. Within, all was warmth and cheer and festive expectation. Grandma Keeler was in such spirits; a wave of mirthful inspiration would strike her, she would sink into a chair, the tears would roll down her cheeks, and she would shake with irrepressible laughter. It was in one of her serious moments that she said to me:—

"Thar', teacher, I actually believe that I ain't made you acquainted with my two tea-kettles." They stood side by side on the stove, one very tall and lean, the other very short and plump. "This 'ere," said Grandma, pointing to the short one; "is Rachel, and this 'ere," pointing to the tall one, "is Abigail, and Abigail's a graceful creetur' to be sure," Grandma reflected admiringly; "but then Rachel has the most powerful delivery!"

I was thus enabled to understand the allusions I had already heard to Rachel's being "dry," or Abigail's being as "full as a tick," or vice versa.

The table was neatly spread with a white cloth; there was an empty bowl and a spoon at each individual's place. In the centre of the table stood a pitcher of milk and a bowl of sugar. Grandpa Keeler having asked the blessing after the approved manner of the morning, there was a general uprising and moving, bowl in hand, towards the cauldron of hulled corn on the stove. This was lively, and there was a pleasurable excitement about skimming the swollen kernels of corn out of the boiling, seething liquid in which they were immersed. Eaten afterwards with milk and sugar and a little salt, the compound became possessed of a truly "comforting" nature.

I stood, for the second time, over the kettle with my eye-glasses securely adjusted, very earnestly and thoughtfully occupied in wielding the skimmer, when the door of the Ark suddenly opened and a mischievously smiling young man appeared on the threshold. He was not a Wallencamper, I saw at a glance. There was about him an unmistakable air of the great world. He was fashionably dressed and rather good-looking, with a short upper lip and a decided tinge of red in his hair. He stood staring at me with such manifest appreciation of the situation in his laughing eyes, that I felt a barbarous impulse to throw the skimmer of hot corn at him. It was as though some flimsy product of an advanced civilization had come in to sneer at the sacred customs of antiquity.

"I beg your pardon," the intruder began, addressing the Keeler family with exceeding urbanity of voice and manner; "I fear that I have happened in rather inopportunely, but I dared not of course transgress our happy Arcadian laws by knocking at the door."

"Oh, Lordy, yis, yis, and the fewer words the better. You know our ways by this time, fisherman," exclaimed Grandpa Keeler. "Come in! come in! Nobody that calls me friend need knock at my door."

"Come in! come in, fisherman! Won't you set, fisherman?" hospitably chimed in Grandma Keeler.

"Ah, thank you! may I consider your kind invitation deferred, merely," said the fisherman, suavely, "and excuse me if I introduce a little matter of business with the Captain. We carelessly left our oars on the banks yesterday, Captain Keeler, they were washed off, I have ordered some more, but can't get them by to-morrow. I hear you have a pair laid by, I should like to purchase."

"What, is it the old oars ye want?" interrupted Grandpa, "why, Lord a massy! you know whar' they be, fisherman, alongside that old pile o' rubbish on hither side o' the barn, and don't talk about purchasin'—take 'em and keep 'em as long as ye want, they ain't no account to me now."

"I am very much obliged to you, Captain," the fisherman said, "I am very sorry to have interrupted this—a—"

"Why, no interruption, I'm sure," said Grandma Keeler, good-naturedly, "we've kep' right along eatin'."

"Want a lantern to look for 'em eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler, for the fisherman lingered, hesitating, on the threshold.

"This is our teacher, fisherman," said Grandma, in her gentle, tranquillizing tones, "and this 'ere is one of Emily's fishermen, teacher, and may the Lord bless ye in yer acquaintance," she added with simple fervor.

The fisherman saluted me with a bow which reflected great credit on his former dancing-master. He murmured the polite formula in a low tone, at the same time shooting another covertly laughing glance at me out of his eyes. As the door closed behind him, "Ah, that's a sleek devil!" said Grandpa Keeler, giving me a meaning glance from under his shaggy eyebrows.

"Wall, thar' now, pa, I wouldn't blaspheme, not if I'd made the professions you have," said Grandma, with grave reproval.

"A sleek dog," continued Grandpa Keeler; "tongue as smooth as butter, all 'how d' yer do!' and 'how d' yer do!' but I don't trust them fishermen much, myself, teacher."

"Who are the fishermen?" I inquired.

"They board up to Emily's," said Grandma. "They come from Providence and around, and they stay here, off and on, a week or two to a time, along through the winter, some of 'em. They fish pickerel on the river, and sometimes they're blue-fishin' out in the bay, and quite generally they're just kitin' round as young men will, I suppose. Sometimes they have vittles sent to 'em and Emily she cooks for 'em.'"

"Why, they're off on a spree, that's all," said Grandpa Keeler, comprehensively, giving me another significant glance; "they're off on a spree, and ye see they think this 'ere is jest a right fur enough out the way place for 'em. This 'ere red-haired one that was in here this evenin', Rollin his name is, he's a dreadful rich one, I suppose, dreadful rich! I've heered all about him. He's an old bachelder, I reckon, that is, he keeps mighty spruce, but I reckon he's hard on to thirty. Emily's got a cousin that works for some o' them big folks down to Providence, and she's heered all about him, this red-haired one, and how he keeps a big house down thar', and sarvants enough, massy! and half the time he's hither and yon, and a throwin' out money like water. His father and mother they're dead, so I've heered, and he used to have gardeens over him, but he haint kep' no gardeens lately, I reckon," said Grandpa, with grim facetiousness.

"Why, he's been a waitin' on Weir's daughter, down here—Becky. She goes to school to you, teacher," the old man added, presently, brightening with a senile predilection for gossip.

"Becky's a very sensible girl," said Grandma Keeler; "and don't cast no sheep's eyes, but goes right along and minds her own business. Becky plays very purty on the music, too."

"Yes. But you know Dave Rollin wouldn't any more think of marrying Becky Weir than he would of marrying me," cried Mrs. Philander. "Of all the fishermen that have come down here not one of them ever married in Wallencamp. He's just trifling, and she thinks he's in real earnest; anybody can see that. You've only to mention his name to see her flush up as red as a rose. I tell you this is a strange world," Madeline snapped out sharply; "and Dave Rollin, I suppose, is one of the gentlemen."

"We ain't no right to say but what he's honest," said Grandma Keeler; "Becky she's honest herself, and she takes it in other folks. She's more quiet than some of our girls be, and higher notions, and she's young and haint never been away nowhere, and no wonder if he waits on her she should take a kind o' fancy to him."

"You know, ma," continued Madeline, "that Dave Rollin would never take her home among his folks, never; and if I was Becky's mother I'd shut the door in his face before I'd ever have him fooling around my house, and she should never stir out of the house with him, never!"

"I don't suppose there's much use in talking to the girl," said Grandma: "Emily was in here the other day, and Becky, she happened to come in the same time, and I didn't see no use in Emily's speaking up in the way she did; for, says she, 'What do you have that Dave Rollin flirtin' around you for, Beck? What do you suppose he wants o' you 'cept to amuse himself a little when he ain't nothin' better to do, and then go off and forgit he's seen ye!' And Becky didn't say nothin', but she give Emily a dreadful long, quiet kind of a look out of her eyes."

"She hasn't lost quite all of Weir's temper since she's been seeking religion," said Madeline, in a strangely light and vivacious tone. Grandma and Grandpa Keeler, by the way, were good Methodists, but Madeline was not a "professor."

"Seeking religion, eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler. "She'd better let Dave Rollin alone, then," he added.

"Let us hope that we shall all on us be brought to a better state of mind," concluded Grandma Keeler, with solemn pertinency.

Before the meal was finished and the table cleared away, the latch of the Ark had been often lifted.

On all occasions, afterwards, there was a marked and cheerful variety in the nature of the droppers-in at the Ark—the children and all the young men and maidens making their appearance with a promiscuousness which precluded the possibility of design—but to-night the Wallencamp mind had evidently aimed at some great system of conventionality, and had been eminently successful in evolving a plan.

The callers were young men exclusively—the native youth of Wallencamp. Their blowzy, well-favored faces, which ever afterward appeared to beam with good nature, to-night expressed a sense of some grave affliction heroically to be endured.

Their best clothes, it was obvious, had been purchased by them "ready-made," and had been designed, originally, for the sons of a less stalwart community. The young men were especially pinched as to their expansive chests, the broadcloth coming much too short at this point, and shrugging up oddly enough at the shoulders, while the phenomenally slick arrangement of their hair was calculated to produce a depressing effect on the mind of the observer.

As they came in one by one, in a matter of fact way, and Grandma Keeler announced hopefully to each in turn—"and this is our teacher!" they accepted the fact with no more flattering sign than that of a dumb and helpless resignation to the inevitable. They seated themselves about the room in punctilious order, assuming positions painfully suggestive of a conscientious disregard for ease, and seemed to draw some silent support and sympathy out of their hats, which they caressed with lingering affection touching to behold.

Grandma beckoned me aside into the pantry which immediately adjoined the kitchen, and informed me in one of her reverberating whispers, that I "mustn't mind the boys being slicked up, for they'd sorter dropped in to make my acquaintance, and, if we wanted the pop-corn, it was in a bag down under where the almanac hung, to the furtherest corner of the wood-box."

I pondered these mysterious injunctions in silence, and realizing the fact that the Wallencamp beaux had appeared in a body for the express purpose of making my acquaintance, I essayed to show my appreciation of this amiable design by an attempt to engage them in conversation. My various efforts in this line proved alike futile, and they seemed but to grow impressed with a deeper sense of misery.

I had a vague intention of going in search of the pop-corn, when, to my sudden dismay, Grandma Keeler and Madeline, who had been noiselessly clearing off the table, emerged from a brief consultation in the pantry, bearing with them a lighted candle, and having given Grandpa Keeler a nod of unmistakable force and significance, disappeared through the door which led into that indefinite extension of the Ark beyond.

But Grandpa Keeler remained wilfully indifferent to these broadly insinuating tactics. He fancied, poor, deluded old man, that here was a choice opportunity to tell a tale of the seas after a fashion dear to his own heart, unshackled by the restraints of family surveillance.

A singularly childlike and unapprehensive smile played across his features. He drew his chair up closer to the stove and began: "Jest after I was a roundin' Cape Horn the fourth time, I believe—yis, yis, le'me see—twenty times I've rounded the Horn—wall, this ere, I reckon, was somewhere nigh about the fourth time."

Scarcely had Grandpa arranged the merest preliminaries of his tale when ominous footsteps were heard returning along the way whither Grandma and Madeline had so recently departed, and he was interrupted by a strangely calm though authoritative voice from behind the door; "Pa!"

"Wall, wall, ma! what ye want, ma?" exclaimed Grandpa, turning his head aside, with a slight shade of annoyance on his face.

No answer immediately forthcoming, that wofully illusory smile returned again to his features. He moved still nearer to the stove, and was just at the point of resuming the thread of his narrative when—

"Bijonah Keeler!" came from behind the door in accents still calm, indeed, but freighted with a significance which words have faint power to express.

"Yis, yis, ma! I'm a coming, ma!" replied Grandpa, rising hastily and shuffling toward the door; "I'm a coming, ma! I'm a coming!"

The door opened wide enough to receive him, and then closed upon him in all his ignominy.

The sound of his voice in irate expostulation, mingled with the steady flow of those serener tones, grew gradually faint in the distance, and I was left alone with the sepulchral group of young men.

They arose, still maintaining the weighty aspect of those elected to the hour, and abruptly opened their lips in song.

There was no repression now; the Ark fairly rang with the sonorous strains of that wild Jubilate.

They sang:—

"Light in the darkness, sailor,

Day is at hand;

See, o'er the foaming billows,

Fair haven stands."

Their voices rolling in at the chorus with the resistless sweep of the ocean-waves:—

"Pull for the shore, sailor,

Pull for the shore;

Heed not the rolling waves,

But bend to the oar:"

and with a final "Pull for the shore," that sent that imaginary life-boat bounding high and dry on the strand at the hands of its impulsive crew.

Then they sat down and wiped the perspiration from their faces, which had become transfigured with a sudden zest and radiance.

I recovered myself sufficiently to express a bewildered sense of pleasure and gratitude.

"Do you sing, teacher?" asked Harvey Dole, a round-faced youth with an irrepressible fund of mirth in his eyes, who had broken in on the former silence with an unguarded little snicker.

Lovell Barlow, he of the dignified countenance and spade-shaped beard, had faintly and helplessly echoed that snicker, and now repeated Harvey's words:—

"Ahem, certainly—Do you sing, teacher? Do you, now? Do you sing, you know?"

I had some new and seriously awakened doubts on the subject. However, the degree of attainment not being brought into question, I felt that I could answer in the affirmative.

The countenances of the group brightened still more perceptibly.

"And do you sing No. 2?" inquired Harvey, eagerly.

I tried to assume, in reply, a tone of equal animation.

"Is it something new? I don't think I've heard of it before."

"Why, it's the Moody and Sankey hymn-book!" exclaimed Harvey, looking suddenly blank.

I strove to soften the effect of this blow by a lively show of recognition.

"Oh, yes, I know perfectly now. It's 'Hold the Fort,' 'Ring the Bells of Heaven,' and all those songs, isn't it?"

"'Hold the Fort' 's in No. 1," said George Olver, a new speaker, with beautiful, brave, brown eyes, and a soldierly bearing.

He spoke, correcting me, but with the tender consideration which a father might display toward an unenlightened child.

"There's three numbers," said Harvey Dole, "and you ought to learn to sing 'em, teacher. We sing 'em all the time, down here."

"You are fond of singing?" I questioned.

Ned Vickery, of lithe figure and straight black hair, a denizen of the Indian encampment, started up, flushing through his dark skin.

"I lul-love it!" he said.

Ned Vickery sang with the most exquisite smoothness, but stumbled a little in prosaical conversation.

A silent Norwegian, Lars Thorjon, who had sat gazing at me and smiling, flushed also at the words, and murmured something rapturous with a foreign accent.

"Yes, we're rather fond of singing." I heard George Giver's resolute tones.

Harvey Dole gave a low, expressive whistle.

"I like it, certainly, ahem! I do. I like it, you know," said Lovell Barlow.

"We have a singin' time generally every night," said Harvey. "Sometimes Madeline plays for us on her music, and sometimes we go down to Becky's. Madeline's melodeon is very soft and purty, but George here, he likes the tone of Beck's organ best, I reckon. Eh, George?"

Harvey winked facetiously at George Olver, who reddened deeply but did not cast down his eyes.

"If I was you, George," continued the merciless Harvey; "I'd lay for that Rollin. Gad, I'd set a match to his hair. I'd nettle him!"

"I'd show him his p-p-place!" stammered Ned Vickery, with considerable warmth.

"I would, certainly," reiterated the automatic Lovell "I'd show him his place, you know; I would certainly."

The big veins swollen out in George Giver's forehead knitted themselves there for an instant sternly.

"I don't interfere with no man's business," said he. "So long as he means honorable, and car'ies out his actions fa'r and squar', I don't begrudge him his chance nor meddle in his affa'rs."

Our attention was suddenly diverted from this subject, which was evidently growing to be a painful one to one of the company, by the sound of a violin played with, singular skill and correctness just outside the window.

"Glory, there's Lute!" exclaimed Harvey, bounding ecstatically from his chair.

"Come in, Lute, come in?" he shouted; "and show us what can be got out of a fiddle!"

"Let him alone," said George Olver, but the group had already vanished through the door, Lovell following mechanically.

"That's Lute Cradlebow fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me. "I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days. Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'—I suppose it's true—there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month—I Reckon that's true—to go along with some fiddlin' company thar' to Boston, and he'd got more if he'd stuck to it, but Lute, he come driftin' back in the course of a week or two. I don't blame him. He said he was sick on't.

"I tell you how 'tis, teacher. Folks that lives along this shore are allus talkin' more'n any other sort of folks about going off, and complainin' about the hard livin', and cussin' the stingy sile, but thar's suthin' about it sorter holts to 'em. They allus come a driftin' back in some shape or other, in the course of a year or two at the farderest."

The door was thrown wide open and my recreant guests reappeared half-dragging, half-pushing before them a matchless Adonis in glazed tarpaulin trousers and a coarse sailor's blouse.

I recognized at once in the perfect physical beauty of the eccentric fiddler only a reproduction, in a larger form, of that sadly depraved young cherub who had danced before me in ghostly habiliments on the way to school. It was the imp's older brother.

"Here's Lute, teacher!" cried Harvey; "he wouldn't come in 'cause he wasn't slicked up. But I tell him clo's don't make much difference with a humly dog, anyway. Come along, Lute, and put them blushes in your pocket to keep yer hands warm in cold weather. Teacher, this is our champion fiddler, inventor, whale-fisher, cranberry-picker, and potato-bugger—Luther Larkin Cradlebow!"

The youth of the tuneful and birdlike name dealt his tormentor a hearty though affectionate cuff on the ears, and being thus suddenly thrust forward, he doffed his broad souwester, took the hand I held out to him, and, stooping down, kissed me, quite in a simple and audible manner, on the cheek.

It was done with such gentle, serious embarrassment, and Luther Larkin Cradlebow was so boyish and quaint looking, withal, that I felt not the slightest inclination to blush, but I heard Harvey's saucy giggle.

"Gad!" said he; "hear the old women talk about Lute's being bashful and not knowin' how to act with the girls! Now I call them party easy manners, eh, Lovell? What do you think, Lovell?"

"Ahem, certainly—" responded Lovell, smiling in vague sympathy with the laughing group. "I call them so—certainly—I do."

Only George Olver turned a sober, reassuring face to the blushing Cradlebow.

"Give us a tune, Lutie," said he. "Lord, I'd laugh if I could get the music out o' them strings that you can."

The Cradlebow sat down, drew his bow across the strings with a full, quivering, premonitory touch, and, straightway, the fiddle began to talk to him as though they two were friends alone together in the room. How it played for him—the fiddle—as though it were morning. How it shouted, laughed, ran with him in a world of sunshine and tossing blossoms!

How it hoped for him, swelling out in grander strains, wild with exultation, tremulous with passion!

How it mourned for him, with dying, sweet despair, until one almost saw the night fall on the water, and the lone sea-birds flying, and heard the desolate shrieking of the wind along the shore.

I heard a real sob near me, and looking up saw the tears rolling down Harvey's rosy cheeks.

It was in the midst of a simple melody—I think it was the "Sweet By-and-By"—the player stopped and turned suddenly pale.

"That was a new string, too!" he said; "and only half tight." Then he blushed violently, seeking to hide the irritation of his tone under a careless laugh.

"Oh, I don't mind the string," he went on; "that's easy mended, but I happened to think it's a bad sign, that's all—to break down so in the middle of a tune."

"Darn the sign!" exclaimed Harvey, "I wanted to hear that played through."

"You remember Willie Reene?" Luther turned his eyes, still unnaturally bright with excitement, towards George Olver.

"Ay, I remember," said George Olver. "I was goin' mackerellin' with ye myself that time, only I wrinched my wrist so."

"GOOD NIGHT."

"We was out on deck together," Luther continued. "I was lying down—it was a strange, warmish sort of a night—and Willie played. He played a long time. It was just in the middle of a tune he was playin', that—snap! the string went in just that way. I never thought anything about it. I tried to laugh him out of it, and he laughed, but says he, 'It's a bad sign, Lute.' Likely it had nothin' to do with it, but I think of it sometimes, and then it seems as though I must go to that same place and look for him again. I never done anything harder than when I left him there."

"You done the best you could," George Olver answered stoutly, "They said you dove for him long and long after it wasn't no use."

"No use," Luther repeated, shaking his head sadly and abstractedly; "no use."

"There's naught in a sign, anyway," George Olver affirmed.

"They don't worry me much, you can depend"—the player looked up at length with a singularly bright and gentle smile. "But Grannie, she believes in 'em, truly. She's got a sign in a dream for everything, Grannie has so I hear lots of it."

Harvey Dole had quite recovered by this time from his tearfully sentimental mood.

"Now it's strange," he began, with an air of mysterious solemnity; "there was three nights runnin' that I dreamed I found a thousand-dollar bill to the right hand corner of my bury drawer, and every mornin' when I woke up and went to git it—it wa'n't there, so I know the rats must 'a' carried it off in the night, and a pretty shabby trick to play on a feller, too—but then you can't blame the poor devils for wantin' a little pin money.

"Did I ever tell ye how Uncle Randal tried to clear 'em out 'o his barn? Wall, he traded with Sim Peck up to West Wallen, a peck o' clams for an old cat o' hisn, that was about the size, Uncle Randal said, of a yearlin' calf, and he turned her into the barn along o' the rats, and shut the door, and the next mornin', he went out and there was a few little pieces of fur flyin' around and devil a—devil a cat! Uncle Randal said."

"You're the D—d—d—you're it, yourself, Harvey!" stammered Ned Vickery.

"You'd better look out, Ned," Harvey giggled, "we're all a little nearer'n second cousins down here to Wallencamp. Ned's mother didn't use to let him go to school much, teacher," Harvey added, turning to me; "it used to wear him out luggin' home his 'Reward o' merit' cards."

"I n-n-never got any," Ned retorted, blushing desperately through his dark skin; "n-n-nor you either!"

"I guess that's so, Harvey," said Lovell Barlow, quite gravely; "I rather think that's so, Harvey—ahem, I guess it is."

When my visitors rose to depart they formed in line, with George Olver and Luther at the head. George Olver was the spokesman of the group. He offered me his strong brown hand in hearty corroboration of his words: "We're a roughish sort of a set down here, teacher, but whenever you want friends you'll know right whar' to find us; we mean that straight through and fair an' kindly."

I thanked him, and then Luther gave me his hand, but did not kiss me, in departing.

Each member of the phalanx gave me his hand in turn, with a hearty "Good night," and so they passed out. The door closed behind them. I meditated a space, and when I looked up, there was Lovell Barlow's pale face peering into the room.

"Ahem—Miss Hungerford!" he murmured, in awful accents: "Miss Hungerford!"

Could it be some telegram from my home thus mysteriously arrived? The thought flashed through my mind before reason could act.

"What is it?" I gasped, hastening to meet the informer.

Lovell Barlow handed me a picture; it was a small daguerreotype, in which the mild and beneficent features of that worthy being himself shone above his own unmistakable spade-shaped whiskers.

"Would you like it, Miss Hungerford?" said he, still with the same deeply impressive air; "would you, now, really, Miss Hungerford? would you like it, now?"

"Why, certainly," I exclaimed, with intense relief; and before I could fully appreciate the situation, Lovell Barlow cast a cautious glance about him, leaned his head forward, and whispered hoarsely, "I've got some more, at home—ahem! I've got six, Miss Hungerford. Mother wants to keep two and she's promised Aunt Marcia one; but you can have one any time, Miss Hungerford. Ahem! ahem! You can, you know."

"Thank you," I murmured, while it seemed as though my faculties were desperately searching for light on a hitherto unsounded sea. "I think this will do for the present."

Lovell nodded his head with a grave good-night and disappeared.

Meanwhile, Grandma and Grandpa Keeler and Madeline were absorbing this last impressive scene as they slowly emerged from that unknown quarter of the Ark whither they had retreated.

Grandpa looked at me with a peculiar twinkle in his eye.

"So Lovell came back to give ye his picter, eh, teacher?" said he.

I returned Grandpa's look with cheerful and unoffended alacrity; but Grandma interrupted, "Thar', now, pa! Thar', now! We mustn't inquire into everything we happen to get a little wind on. Ye see, teacher," she continued, in tones of the broadest gentleness, "we knew they'd be sorter bashful gettin' acquainted the first night, and so we thought it 'ud be easier for 'em if we should leave 'em to themselves, and we knew you was so—we knew you wouldn't care."

As Grandpa resumed his accustomed seat by the fire, an expansive grin still lingered on his features.

"Ah, he's a queer fellow, that Lovell," said he; "but he's quick to larn, they say, larns like a book. I'll tell ye what's the trouble with him, teacher. He's been tied too long to his mother's apron-strings. He don't know no more about the world than a chicken. He's thirty odd now, I guess, and I reckon he ain't never been further away from the beach than Sandwich te-own."

"I don't know as we'd ought to blame him," said Grandma Keeler; "though to be sure, Lovell's more quiet-natured than some that likes to be wanderin' off as young folks will, generally; but he was the only one they had, and Lovell's allus been a good boy. Pa and me, when we go to meetin', we most allus come across him a carryin' his Sunday School book under his arm, and may be," concluded Grandma Keeler, "there'll be a time when we shall more on us wish that thar' wan't nothin' wuss could be brought against us than being innocent."

We pondered these suggestive words a few moments in silence; then Grandpa Keeler boldly interposed:—

"That Lute Cradlebow—he's a handsome boy, teacher. Ah, he's a handsome one. They're a handsome family, them Cradlebows.

"There's the old grannie, Aunt Sibby they call her. Lord, she's got a head on her like a picter! They're high-bred, too, I reckon. To begin with, why, Godfrey—Godfrey Cradlebow—that's Lute's father, teacher; he's college bred, I suppose! He had a rich uncle thar', that took a shine to him, and kind o' 'dopted him and eddicated him, but Godfrey, he took a shine to a poor girl thar', dreadfully handsome, she was, but yet they was both of 'em young, and it didn't suit the old uncle, so he left him to shift for himself. And Godfrey, he tried one thing and another, and never held long to nothin', I guess, and finally he drifted down this way, and here he stuck.

"He's got a good head, Godfrey has, but he wasn't never extry fond o' work, I reckon, and he's growed dreadful rheumatiky lame, and he has his sprees, occasionally.

"Liddy, that's his wife, teacher, she was full good enough for him when ye come to the p'int. Oh, she's a smart wife, and she's had a hard row, so many children and nothin' to do with, as ye might say. Why, they've had thirteen children, ain't they, ma?

"Le' me see—four on 'em dead, and three on 'em—no! four on 'em married, and three on 'em—How is't, ma?"

Grandma then took up the tangled thread of the old Captain's discourse, with calm disdain, and proceeded to disclose an appalling array of statistics, not only in regard to the Cradlebow family, but including generations of men hitherto unknown and remote.

When I signified a desire to retire for the night, Madeline informed me, with a brisk and hopeful air, that my room was "all ready now."

She led the way up a short and narrow little staircase into a low garret, where, amid a dark confusion of objects, I was forcibly reminded of the rows of hard substances suspended from the rafters. Turning to the left, the rays of the candle revealed a small red door framed in among the unpainted boards of the wall.

There, Madeline bade me a flippant and musical good night, and I entered my room, alone.

Within, the contrast between the door and the brown walls was still more effectively drawn.

The bed, neatly made, stood in a niche where the roof slanted perceptibly downward, so that the sweetly unconscious sleeper (as I found afterwards) perchance tossing his head upward, in a dream, was doomed to bring that member into resounding contact with the ceiling, I judged something of the restless proclivities of the last occupants of the room by the amount of plastering of which this particular section had been deprived. In this, and in other places where it had fallen, it had been collected and tacked up again to the ceiling in cloth bags which presented a graceful and drooping, though at first sight, rather enigmatical appearance.

The chimney ran through the room forming a sort of unique centre-piece.

This and more I accepted, wearily, and then sank down by the bed and cried. Outside, before the one small window, stood a peach tree. Afterward, when this had grown to be a very dear little room to me, I looked out cheerfully through its branches, warm with sunshine, and fragrant with bloom; but now it was bare and ghostly, and, as the wind blew, one forlorn twig trailed back and forth across the window.

For an hour or more after my head touched the pillow, I lay awake listening to the unaccustomed sound of the surf and those skeleton fingers tapping at the pane.