l of chance,
at a fixed monthly wage "and all found," to be paid after the proceeds
of the voyage were realized.

There was not a cent of Grande Mignon credit left in the world, and
there was no child too small to realize that on the outcome of this
venture hung the fate and future of the island.

It was a brilliant day, with a glorious blue sky overhead and a
bracing breeze out of the east. Just beyond Long Island a low stratum
of miasmic gray was the only shred of the usual fog to be seen on the
whole horizon. In the little roadstead the vessels, black-hulled or
white, rode eagerly and gracefully at their moorings, the bright sun
bringing out the red, yellow, green, blue, and brown of the dories
nested amidships.

At seven o'clock the steamer _Grande Mignon_ blew a great blast of her
whistle, cast off her lines, and cleared for St. Andrew's and St.
Stephens. Tooting a long, last salute, she rolled out into Fundy and
out of sight around the point.

For these men breakfast was long past, but there were the myriad last
details that could not be left undone; and it was fully eight o'clock
before the last dory was swung aboard and the last barrel stowed.

Then there came the clicking of many windlasses and the strain of many
ropes, and to the women and girls who lined the shore these noises
were as the beatings of the executioner's hand upon the cell-door of a
condemned man.

For the first time they seemed to realize what was about to happen.
The young girls and the brides wept, but those with children at their
skirts looked stonily to the vessel that bore their loved ones; for
they were hardened in the fear of death and bereavement, and had
become fatalists.

The old women shook their heads, and if tears rolled down their faces
they were the tears of dotage, and were shed perhaps for the swift and
fleeting beauty of brides under the strain of their first long
separation.

Of these last one stood apart, a shawl over her gray hair and her
hands folded as though obedient to a will greater than her own. In all
the color and pageant of departure May Schofield wondered where her
son might be, the son whom she felt had run away from his just
responsibilities. Two nights ago he had gone, and since that time the
little cottage had seemed worse than deserted.

Somehow the story of the solicitor and his visit went swiftly around
the village, and since that time Code's mother had been the shrinking
object of a host of po