to
serve his punch, or pass to the fat, smooth-faced, cheerful Minuit the
pieces of mechanism: brass gimbals, chronometer-boxes, wheels and
springs, ship-glasses, compasses, the manifold parts of little things
by which men grope their way out of sight of land, hung between a
human watch and the crystal shell of the embossed heaven. Chronometers
were with Minuit attractive and yet awe-giving subjects. The legend of
his childhood, well forgotten by all else, said that he had swallowed
a chronometer, so small that a sea-captain could swim with it in his
mouth. And now the sailors of all the navies cruised by the aid of
clumsy watches, big as house-clocks, which to look at made Minuit
smile with pity.

"'Captain Lum,' he said aloud, on the eve of a voyage in the winter
season, 'I have often yearned to go to sea. The sight of it makes me a
little wild. I think I could guess my way over it and about it, by
inherent reckoning.'

"He saw the pair of white hands holding something before him tremble a
little, and he looked up. The spiritual face of Lois was looking at
his with wistful apprehension and interest. If ever his pulse beat out
of time it was now--for in that exchange of glances he felt what she
did not understand--that he was beloved.

"Pain and joy, not swiftly, but softly, filled Minuit--pain, because
he had loved this girl and wished never to have her know it, but would
keep it an unbreathed, a holy mystery; and joy, like any lover's
recognizing himself in the dear heart he had never importuned.

"Next day the good ship Chirpland came off Port Penn. The jolly
captain saying adieu to Minuit, clasped his hand.

"'I saw thy look and my daughter's yesterday,' he said. 'It is weak of
me to deny her a man like thee, thou sailor's friend. My ship is old.
These coasts are dangerous. Nights and days come when we get no sight
of lights ashore or in heaven. If thy chronometer fail, fail not thou,
but be to her repairer and possessor!'

"The discovery and the trust embarrassed Minuit, but he had never
denied the request of any man. His time, as his sign affirmed, was
everybody's. Yet a thrill, a twang, a twinge of delicious fear passed
through him now. He loved this girl dearly, but he feared to love at
all. He had now both the parental and the womanly recognition, and his
days were lonely even with his garrulous timepieces, but he felt a
lonelier sense of the possibility of turning her affection to awe.
Those queer le