dn't be afraid."

The Captain took up the cold hand that was nervously thrumming on the
window-sill, and held it quiet, averting his eyes from her face,
distorted with dry, silent weeping.

"It's different with me," she cried, "Sometimes I think, Uncle George,
it would be better if I'd never see my boy again. I'm sharper and
coarser than other women. I've had to rub with the world."

Lufflin was a queer old fellow. He did not tell her these were but the
morbid fancies of an hysterical woman, or blame himself for rousing
them. He muttered something about low tide and George Cathcart, and
bustled off down the stairs. She had a stronger mind than he, he
suspected; silence and her own will would bring her to herself quicker
than any comfort of his could do.

He proved to be right. She did not notice his going; stood at first
looking into the dark bank of sea-horizon, as if she would have forced
out of that vague Beyond where her child had gone the truth of all that
had hurt her in her life. The dull thud of the retreating tide kept time
to her thoughts,--finally came into them: it was so natural for her mind
to swing back into whatever was real and at hand.

Not that she forgot the little fellow whose restless feet and hands were
quiet at last in the graveyard at Salem: she never forgot him; since
they laid him there, the thought of him had sounded in every day of her
busy life like a faint hymn sung by lips far away, holy and calm,--a
story of God in it.

But she held it down; watched the tide go out, measuring each sullen
sweep with calculating eyes: the old swimming and fishing education in
the inlet had not worn out its effect on her.

"The wreckers talk folly," she said; "no tide could touch the
house,"--leaning farther out to see the two approaching figures go into
the doorway beneath.

One man looked up, waving his hat as he passed, and she drew in her
head with a sudden blush and a dewy light in her eyes, catching her
breath.

"I have made no mistake," she thought, vehemently. "Look in his face! It
is the right home for Jerome."

As she listened to the footsteps coming up the stairway, she moved
uneasily about the room, touching almost every article in it with the
eager fondness of a child: she knew what it had cost her; for the house
had been paid for by money she had earned; it seemed as if she could
remember now every seam she had stitched, every page she had
copied,--the days of heat and sickness an