sembarkation, and stranded here after centuries of buffetings. On other
days it had a sullen air, settling back in its bed of mud as if tired out
with all these miseries, glaring at you with its one eye of a window
aflame with the setting sun.

As the autumn lost itself in the winter, I continued my excursions to the
Hulk, sketching in the neighborhood, gathering nuts with little Emily, or
helping the old man with his nets.

On one of these days a woman, plainly but neatly dressed, met me at the
edge of the wood, inquired if I had seen a child pass my way, and quickly
disappeared in the bushes. I noticed her anxious face and the pathos of
her eyes when I answered. Then the incident passed out of my mind. A few
days later I saw her again, sitting on a pile of stones as if waiting for
some one. Little Emily had seen her too, and stopped to talk to her. I
could follow their movements over my easel. As soon as the child caught my
eye she started up and ran towards the Hulk, the woman darting again into
the bushes. When I questioned Emily about it she hesitated, and said it
was a poor woman who had lost her little girl and who was very sad.

Brockway himself became more and more a mystery. I sought every
opportunity to coax from him something of his earlier life, but he never
referred to it but once, and then in a way that left the subject more
impenetrable than ever.

I was speaking of a recent trip abroad, when he turned abruptly and
said:--

"Is the Milo still in that little room in the Louvre?"

"Yes," I answered, surprised.

"I am glad of that. Against that red curtain she is the most beautiful
thing I know."

"When did you see the Venus?" I asked, as quietly as my astonishment would
allow.

"Oh, some years ago, when I was abroad."

He was bending over and putting some new teeth in his oyster tongs at the
time, riveting them on a flat-iron with a small hammer.

I agreed with him and asked carelessly what year that was and what he was
doing in Paris, but he affected not to hear me and went on with his
hammering, remarking that the oysters were running so small that some
slipped through his tongs and he was getting too old to rake for them
twice. It was only a glimpse of some part of his past, but it was all I
could get. He never referred to it again.

December of that year was unusually severe. The snow fell early and the
river was closed before Christmas. This shut off all communication with
the Brockways