seen such dull, apathetic faces as these Culm people had. Such
utter shiftlessness as everything about the cluster of tumble-downs
betokened he had never imagined. Perhaps all this dreariness and
desolation made itself more keenly felt because the boy was just from
the city, which teemed with life and bustle and energy. In its poorest
quarter he had never seen such a lack of tidiness as the interior of
Dirk Sharp's house presented. He followed the slowly-plodding
trunk-bearers up the yellow sand, wondering if there was such another
wretched, desolate, and forlorn place as Culm Rock in the whole wide
earth.

CHAPTER VII.

HOW THE MONTH WAS SPENT.

They were a long time in getting to the stone house. Before they
passed the curve of the shore, the sun was well up in the sky and beat
down with fervid rays upon the sweating, toiling fishermen. Noll
rejoiced when the trunks were safely landed in his room at the top of
the stairs, and the men had taken their departure, each with a piece
of silver in addition to the skipper's fee. It seemed to him that
there was no bright side to the life over in those wretched Culm huts.
If there was, he could not see it. It puzzled and perplexed him to
imagine how human beings could live in such ignorance and apathy of
all that was transpiring about them; and the sights which he had seen
in the miserable, tumbledown village left a very disagreeable feeling
in his heart. Somehow, his hitherto blithe spirits were dampened by
this morning's walk, and he thought the great bare Rock would be a
great deal more endurable if the fish-huts and their inmates were only
off it. True, it would be much lonelier, but that was far more
endurable than the sight of such shiftlessness and ignorance. He
wondered if Uncle Richard ever went among them, and whether he really
knew what a degraded people they had got to be. If he did know, Noll
thought, it was very strange that he did not try to lift them up,
teach them something, or, at least, have a school opened for the
children. Papa, he thought, would have done something for them long
ago. There would have been a little schoolhouse and a teacher. A new
wharf, he was sure, would have taken the place of the rickety old
thing; and by degrees the women would have learned thrift and
neatness, and the men energy and industry. To be sure, it seemed a
great deal to do for such dull, apathetic people, who seemed not to
have a particle of energy and ambitio