d forget what 'twas all about, and gather no sense, and
the image of the little fore-and-after, the "Feather," raked in between
the leaves, and at last I had to put all that aside; and then I sat
stitching, stitching, but got into a sad habit of looking up and looking
out each time I drew the thread. I felt it was a shame of me to be so
glum, and mother missed my voice; but I could no more talk than I could
have given conundrums to King Solomon, and as for singing--Oh, I used to
long so for just a word from Dan!

We'd had dry fine weeks all along, and father said he'd known we should
have just such a season, because the goose's breast-bone was so white;
but St. Valentine's day the weather broke, broke in a chain of storms
that the September gale was a whisper to. Ah, it was a dreadful winter,
that! You've surely heard of it. It made forty widows in our town. Of
the dead that were found on Prince Edward's Island's shores there were
four corpses in the next house yonder, and two in the one behind. And
what waiting and watching and cruel pangs of suspense for them that
couldn't have even the peace of certainty! And I was one of those.

The days crept on, I say, and got bright again; no June days ever
stretched themselves to half such length; there was perfect stillness in
the house,--it seemed to me that I counted every tick of the clock. In
the evenings the neighbors used to drop in and sit mumbling over their
fearful memories till the flesh crawled on my bones. Father, then, he
wanted cheer, and he'd get me to singing "Caller Herrin'." Once, I'd
sung the first part, but as I reached the lines,--

"When ye were sleepin' on your pillows,
Dreamt ye aught o' our puir fellows
Darklin' as they face the billows,
A' to fill our woven willows,"--

as I reached those lines, my voice trembled so's to shake the tears out
of my eyes, and Jim Jerdan took it up himself and sung it through for
me to words of his own invention. He was always a kindly fellow, and he
knew a little how the land lay between me and Dan.

"When I was down in the Georges," said Jim Jerdan----

"You? When was you down there?" asked father.

"Well,--once I was. There's worse places."

"Can't tell me nothing about the Georges," said father. "'Ta'n't the
rivers of Damascus exactly, but 'ta'n't the Marlstrom neither."

"Ever ben there, Cap'n?"

"A few. Spent more nights under cover roundabouts than Georgie'll have
white hairs in her head,--for al