reak the
silence. Indeed, I was far enough away from ice and snow and blizzards
for the moment--the Indian shawl having carried me home to England,
and the old camphor trunk which my own mother, herself born in India,
had taught us boys to reverence as the old man did his, filled as
ours was with specimens of weird patterns and exquisite workmanship.

Uncle Rube had been watching my eyes fixed on the rich mantle that
contrasted so strangely with every other surrounding.

"I brought it from India when I used to go overseas. I keeps it
because my Mary loved it so, though she 'lowed it was too rich for t'
likes o' her to wear it much. But I guess it'll last now. 'T is t'
last bit o' finery left," he smiled, "and 't is most time to be
hauling that down. For I reckons Nellie won't last out to need it
long. Eh, Doctor?" And for a moment a tear sparkled in his merry old
eyes, as he peered from under his heavy white eyebrows.

"You can always trust me to find a good home for Nellie, Uncle Rube,"
I answered. "I've forty like her now, and one more won't sink the
ship. But you know that better than I can tell you." And suddenly it
flashed over me that Uncle Rube's unexpected visit to our Children's
Home must had have some relation to the curly head on his shoulder.
The tear fell on his tanned cheek, and he looked away and coughed. But
he said nothing.

"What was the old island that Nellie was talking about?" I broke in to
relieve the situation. "It sounded as if you had been playing Robinson
Crusoe some time," I added, "and have spun her yarns that you won't
tell me." For the hope that here might be something which would fill
in the time during which it was plain that Jack Frost intended to keep
me prisoner in this bookless cabin, suddenly dawned upon me.

"Island?" he smiled, after a brief pause. "Island? Oh! that was forty
years ago, when us lost t' old Manxman on t' Red Island Shoals." And
the _wanderlust_ of Uncle Rube's British blood, stirred by this leap
back over the passing years, made him once more a bouncing,
devil-may-care sailor lad. The sign of tears had vanished from his
cheeks as he rose, and, gently laying the little figure in her old
corner on the settle, leisurely lit his pipe. Like that of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's Feather-top it seemed to send renewed youth through his
veins with every puff he drew. Knowing that he was trying to think,
and fearing to distract his mind, I again kept a discreet silence. At
last