ilent men, and now they grew more taciturn.
Even when at first letters came from Mary full of her husband and her
happiness, they spelt them out to themselves and did not take the
neighbours into their confidence. And more and more they came to be
regarded as 'oddities' by the Island people.

About a year after Mary's marriage there came a letter from Jacopo
announcing that she was the mother of a son. That child formed a
tremendous interest to his five uncles. They did not talk much about
it, but a speech from one or another told what was in all their minds.

'The lad'll be fine and tall by this,' one would say. 'Ay,' the other
would respond, 'he'll be maybe walking by now.' 'He'll have the looks
of his mother,' suggested James. 'Ay: he was a fair child from the
beginning,' Thomas would agree.

Seeing the child was so much in their minds it was strange none of
them had ever seen it. At first after she was married Mary had been
fond of pressing them to come to the Clyde, if it was only for a look
at her. But little by little the invitations had dropped off and
ceased. They had been shy of going in the early days. It was not that
they feared the journey, for some of the brothers had fared much
further afield than Scotland; but in their hearts, though they never
complained, they remembered how she had not looked back on them as the
ferry swung from the pier, and feared that they might be but
half-welcome guests in the house of her husband.

At first Jacopo often wrote for his wife, but after a time this too
ceased. Then the praises of him by degrees grew spasmodic. There were
often two or three letters in which his name found no place. The
brothers with the keenness of love noted this fact, though each of
them pondered it long in his mind before one evening Patrick spoke of
his fear, and then the others brought theirs out of its hiding-place.

Mary had been going on for four years married, when in a wild winter
David and Tom were drowned. They were laid with many another drowned
fisherman in the Abbey graveyard. Mary wrote the other brothers
ill-spelt, tear-stained letters, which proved her heart had not grown
cold to them; and the three brothers went on living as the five had
done.

It was a bitter, bitter spring when Mary's letters ceased altogether.
They had had a short letter from her early in January, and then no
word afterwards. February went by gray and with showers of sleet: no
word came. In the first week