shifting play of color. All that she had never seen before; and it was wondrously beautiful. It is said that the happiest moments in our lives appear the shortest. It is not always so. To Charity it seemed as if she had lived a life in the five or ten minutes before he put her down on the stones of the jetty. But what could she say to him now? It seemed unendurable to have to speak and thank him, and tune her exaltation down to commonplaces. She had no language in which fittingly to address him; and when her feet touched the granite Charming face, too," he added musing, "and a good figure, though a trifle too slight." It occurred to him, at that moment, that his escapade had taken place in full view of Mrs. Morgan's piazza, and that he probably had disported himself in the blocks, an ir- "She sat enthroned upon his arm, with the wide horizon about her, proud he was. "She is original, to say the least," he muttered; "she has delicacy of feeling. focus of the three or four field-glasses which, from that social observatory, were always sweeping the horizon. That reflection drove the blood to his cheeks, and robbed him of all joy in his adventure. IV. THE REV. ALBION NICH OLS felt called upon to make himself the spokesman of the universal indignation. He was a man in whom ladies naturally confided, and he could not but agree with the m that Brooks's conduct was scandalous. For, of course, that Quixotic rescue from a boat, lying calmly at the end of the jetty, was, on his part at least, a mere piece of bravado, prompted by his delight in outraging the proprieties. Mr. Nichols felt justified in taking him to task for such conduct, first, because he was a clergyman, and, secondly, because he had been a classmate of Brooks at college. He was prepared, of course, to have the delinquent resent the reprimand (for he was terribly touchy, where censure was implied); but he was far to from expecting such cool irony and supercilious condescension. Brooks had such an irritatingly lofty style of behavior when he chose to assume it, that scarcely a conclave of bishops would have sufficed put him down. I fear there was a little straining of the facts in the account Mr. Nichols gave of the interview to the ladies' indignation committee, although he candidly admitted that his rebuke had been fruitless, and had perhaps even confirmed his erring friend in his obnoxious course. Miss Herkomer, who still persisted in being unsympathetic, adamantine armor against the mythological arrows. That distance lends enchantment, he held to be particularly true in the case of women; and he was "He was far from expecting such cool irony and supercilious condescension." flaunting her admiration of Brooks in the face of the shocked committee, had the hardihood to approve of the rescue of book-keepers on general principles, because it furnished a good illustration of the Horatian precept, to combine the useful with the amusing. It was quite true that the reprimand of Mr. Nichols, which went no further than the most cautious suggestion that somebody might take offence, was one of several half-confessed motives which prompted Brooks's actions during the week that followed. He would scarcely have admitted that he cared enough for the gossiping congregation on the piazza to find it worth while to defy it; but, for all that, it gave an added zest to his enjoyment of the fresh adventures he had planned, to think that he should "send those cackling old hens into hysterics." The girl, however, had by this time become the principal object of interest to him; and he found her invading his mind at all times with the suddenness of a meteor, leaving a shining trail of thoughts behind her. He was anything but a sentimentalist; at least he was confident that he possessed that knowledge of the world which is like an more than half expecting, in his own case, to produce disenchantment by annihilating the distance. He discovered, by patient exploration of lanes and alleys, that Charity had found a refuge with an ancient retired mariner, named Captain Jewell. This worthy man, he ascertained, supported existence by making baskets, and had no objection to the visits of customers. Brooks found him a guileless old tar, crooked and gnarled, with lumps and knots in all sorts of wrong places. "I came to look at your baskets," said the young man, as he entered. "Ye don't say," replied the Captain, looking up from his work with a blank, senile stare. "Then you live on Charity?" remarked his visitor with wilful obtuseness. The old man moved his jaws and looked up again with his vague, senile stare. The pun, bad as it was, was a little too much for him. 'She is out now in the dory," he observed in explanation, "gone scuppin', I reckon, or plaice-fishin'. "Then Charity is your daughter." "My darter! No she ain't my darter. No kin of mine-as I knows on; though my wife and her they was sorter second cousins or aunts or somethin'. She's sorter anchored here, and a mighty good and seasonable gal she be." "A seasonable girl!" The Captain's mind, like a craft with a broken rudder, refused to change its tack in obedience to the wind. He could talk but he could not converse. "She's sorter shy and skittish-like," he went on meditatively. "Ef she spies a man through the glass anywhar on the horizon, up flies her jib and mainsail, and away she skips and takes no 'count o' the weather." That was an interesting piece of information to Brooks; the old man's guilelessness emboldened him to be more explicit. "Then she is not married," he said; "or engaged to be married. But I suppose she has beaus ? " "Beaus! Bless ye, no. She ain't that kind of gal. Ye know Charlie Thurston, the drug clerk? Wal, he sorter cruised about her fur a year or more; signalled to her and sech like; but she didn't give him no show. Never answered his signals, nur hove him a line, nur nuthin'." It was obvious that this was a favorite topic with the old man, for he went on without any urging, relating with much gusto anecdotes illustrative of the young girl's shyness and indifference to the charms of masculine society. Brooks felt tempted to put out a little feeler, just then, and remarked quite casually: "By the way, I think I have seen her. Wasn't she out fishing last Monday?" "Right ye be. That was Charity. She had been a-scuppin', but she didn't ketch nuthin'." "I hope she got home safely-without VOL. IV.-53 any mishap. I saw her in her dory, lying a short distance beyond the jetty." 'It would have ter be a mighty smart mishap ter ketch up with her," chuckled the Captain, in amused retrospect. "I tell yer, she sails a boat as stiddy as any man in Poltucket. Ef she wa'n't a gal, she could take out her papers fur pilot, and beat 'em all at it. She's got a weather-eye as would make her fortune on the sea, ef the government hadn't killed our shippin' deader nor a doornail and laid us all up in dry-docks fur ter die of dry rot and rheumatics." Brooks could scarcely tell why the knowledge that she had not confided her adventure to the Captain filled him with satisfaction. Having gained this vantage ground, he determined to await her arrival, and in order to while away the time lighted a cigar and offered one to the Captain. They talked for an hour about the good whaling times before the war, about shark-fishing, and about the three great families which, springing from Poltucket, had played so prominent a part in commercial and political affairs. It was about five o'clock when they heard the outside gate click, and rapid steps approaching. "Thar she blows!" said the captain, with a confidential wink to his visitor; "keep yer look-out and lay low." These phrases, borrowed from his old whaling experience, conveyed but the faintest sort of meaning to Brooks. "Does she blow?" he asked naïvely. "You bet a chaw of terbacker that she do," said the old man and chuckled down into his very boots. At this moment the door was flung open, and the girl, flushed with excitement, burst into the room. "Captain," she cried breathlessly, opening her basket and showing him its contents; "what do you give me for that?" She held a ten-pound bluefish close up to his nose, while her face beamed with pride. "I'll be blowed ef it ain't bluefish," said the captain. "But who hauled it in fur ye? Ye tuk Charlie Thurston along with yer in the boat, didn't ye?" He was about to appeal with a furtive glance to Brooks for appreciation of his delightful slyness, but a vigorous CHSTEPHENS "Thar she blows!" said the captain, with a confidential wink to his visitor. pretty face, usually so demure, took him no less by surprise. She gave the captain a vivid account of the day's adventures, and was scudding along at a brisk rate, when all of a sudden she broke off in the middle of a sentence, dropped her eyes and stared at the floor. The animation died out of her face, and the blood mounted to her cheeks and spread over her neck and forehead. It was the sudden discovery of Brooks, sitting half hidden behind the opened door, which caused the transformation. It was pitiful to see her embarrassment. She seemed to look in vain for some crack or corner where she might creep and hide herself. If she had twisted her apron or bit her finger tips, in the conventional way, the Captain would have been relieved of his oppressive sense of guilt. But she stood utterly helpless, looking at him with the blank reproach of a creature which suffers but cannot retaliate. "Wal now, I'll be blowed ef I hain't V. THE island of Poltucket is about as flat as a pancake. There is a saying there that, if your children go astray, you only have to stand up on a chair and look through an opera-glass; then you are sure to find them. To make assurance doubly sure, however, most of the houses in Poltucket are provided with a square platform or balcony on the roof, right around the chimney; and there you may see the aged sea-captains sit by the hour, sweeping the horizon with their telescopes. It may not be their children they are looking after; as these are apt to be beyond the age of parental tutelage, but anything, living or inanimate, on land or sea, affords a welcome break in the heavy monotony of life. A ship, if it be sound, calls half the population to their roofs; a wreck the whole. Charity Howland was therefore perfectly in order when, the day after Brooks's visit, she was seen seated on the roof with her glass leveled toward some distant object. It was only Miss Herkomer, at Mrs. Morgan's, who found her action reprehensible; and that was probably because Miss Herkomer was herself, at that moment, engaged in marine observation. She had gotten Brooks in her focus, as he lay "scupping" in a boat out at the bellbuoy; and she had a suspicion that Charity's glass was leveled in the same direction. She had been Charity's champion, as long as she believed the whole affair to be a mere idle excitement, bred in the fancy of hysterical spinsters. But now a sharp pang of jealousy nestled in her heart; and she began to suspect that she was not so disinterested as she had imagined. And Charity, when suddenly she found Miss Herkomer's gaunt image in her focus with quite a sinister expression, and the threatening glass pointed unmistakably at herself, was smitten by her conscience, and in guilty confusion tumbled down the stairs. pensable to Such an hour, wise she would have gone mad from sheer boredom. She had taken a lively interest in Charity, as long as she believed her to be a wronged member of her own sex. But she found it hard to forgive her the enjoyment of romantic misery and agitation. The telescope incident put a new face upon everything; it made her hate Charity, and yet vaguely desire to be near her. I "The poor little girl in Captain Jewell's garret stood with fear and trembling." am not sure that she resolved to outshine her intellectually, and by her superior charms to introduce an unpleasant complication into the romance which might otherwise run too smoothly. I think rather it was a dim craving for excitement which impelled her, and a dim but tantalizing curiosity as to what was really going on between those two mysterious and uncommunicative persons. She accordingly surprised Captain Jewell with a visit one afternoon, and quite dum founded him by her lively interest in his baskets. She bought half When the shriveled life-germs burst into flower, Compensates in a breath For the chill and the darkness of death. |