n the door slammed, and Dan
had darted out of the house and to the shore. I after him. There was a
knot sitting and standing round there in the gray, shivering, with their
hands in their pockets and their pipes set in their teeth; but the gloom
was on them as well, and the pipes went out between the puffs.

"Where's Dennis's boat?" Dan demanded, as he strode.

"The six-oar's all the one not"----

"The six-oar I want. Who goes with me?"

There wasn't a soul in the ward but would have followed Dan's lead to
the end of the world and jumped off; and before I could tell their names
there were three men on the thwarts, six oars in the air, Dan stood in
the bows, a word from him, and they shot away.

I watched while I could see, and then in and up to the attic, forgetting
to put mother in her bed, forgetting all things but the one. And there
lay the glass broken. I sat awhile with the pieces in my hand, as if I'd
lost a kingdom; then down, and mechanically put things to rights, and
made mother comfortable,--and she's never stood on her feet from that
day to this. At last I seated myself before the fire, and stared into it
to blinding.

"Won't some one lend you a glass, Georgie?" said mother.

"Of course they will!" I cried,--for, you see, I hadn't a wit of my
own,--and I ran out.

There's a glass behind every door in the street, you should know, and
there's no day in the year that you'll go by and not see one stretching
from some roof where the heart of the house is out on the sea. Oh,
sometimes I think all the romance of the town is clustered down here on
the Flats and written in pale cheeks and starting eyes. But what's the
use? After one winter, one, I gave mine away, and never got another.
It's just an emblem of despair. Look, and look again, and look till your
soul sinks, and the thing you want never crosses it; but you're down in
the kitchen stirring a porridge, or you're off at a neighbor's asking
the news, and somebody shouts at you round the corner, and there, black
and dirty and dearer than gold, she lies between the piers.

All the world was up on their house-tops spying, that morning, but there
was nobody would keep their glass while I had none; so I went back
armed, and part of it all I saw, and part of it father told me.

I waited till I thought they were 'most across, and then I rubbed the
lens. At first I saw nothing, and I began to quake with a greater fear
than any that had yet taken root in me. Bu