about, as always, doing good.... And my sister waits for me to come in
from the sea, in pretty fear that I may not come back; and I am glad
that she waits, sitting in my mother's place, as my mother used to do.

And Skipper Tommy Lovejoy this day lies dying....

* * * * *

I sit, a man grown, in my mother's room, which now is mine. It is
springtime. To-day I found a flower on the Watchman. Beyond the broad
window of her room, the hills of Skull Island and God's Warning stand
yellow in the sunshine, rivulets dripping from the ragged patches of
snow which yet linger in the hollows; and the harbour water ripples
under balmy, fragrant winds from the wilderness; and workaday voices,
strangely unchanged by the years that are passed, come drifting up the
hill from my father's wharves; and, ay, indeed, all the world of sea
and land is warm and wakeful and light of heart, just as it used to be,
when I was a lad, and my mother lay here dying. But there is no shadow
in the house--no mystery. The separate sorrows have long since fled. My
mother's gentle spirit here abides--just as it used to do: touching my
poor life with holy feeling, with fine dreams, with tender joy. There is
no shadow--no mystery. There is a glory--but neither shadow nor mystery.
And my hand is still in her dear hand--and she leads me: just as she
used to do. And all my days are glorified--by her who said good-bye to
me, but has not left me desolate.

* * * * *

Skipper Tommy died to-day. 'Twas at the break of dawn. The sea lay
quiet; the sky was flushed with young, rosy colour--all the hues of
hope. We lifted him on the pillows: that from the window he might
watch--far off at sea--the light chase the shadows from the world.

"A new day!" he whispered.

'Twas ever a mystery to him. That there should come new days--that the
deeds of yesterday should be forgot in the shadows of yesterday--that as
the dawn new hope should come unfailing, clean, benignant.

"A new day!" he repeated, turning his mild old face from the placid
sea, a wondering, untroubled question in his eyes.

"Ay, zur--a new day."

He watched the light grow--the hopeful tints spread rejoicing towards
the higher heavens.

"The Lard," he said, "give me work. Blessed be the name o' the Lard!"

All the world was waking.

"The Lard give me pain. Blessed be the name o' the Lard!"

And a breeze came with the dawn--a rising breeze