them. My offering was to cover with moss
the picnic papers, tins, and broken bottles, with which man who is vile
defiles every prospect. Discovering such a queer islander as the blue
man was almost equal to seeing the Mishi-ne-macki-naw-go.

Voices approached; and I watched his eyes come into his face as he
leaned forward! From a blurr' of lids they turned to beautiful clear
balls shot through with yearning. Around the jut of rook appeared a
bicycle girl, a golf girl, and a youth in knickers having his stockings
laid in correct folds below the knee. They passed without noticing us.
To see his looks dim and his eagerness relax was too painful. I watched
the water ridging against the horizon like goldstone and changing
swiftly to the blackest of greens. Distance folded into distance so
that the remote drew near. He was certainly waiting for somebody, but it
could not be that he had waited thirty-five years: thirty-five winters,
whitening the ice-bound island; thirty-five summers, bringing all
paradise except what he waited for.

Just as I glanced at the blue man again his lips began to move, and the
peculiar tingle ran down my back, though I felt ashamed of it in his
sweet presence.

"Madame, it will--it will comfort me if you permit me to talk to you."

"I shall be very glad, sir, to hear whatever you have to tell."

"I have--have waited here thirty-five years, and in all that time I have
not spoken to any one!"

He said this quite candidly, closing his lips before his voice ceased to
sound. The cedar sapling against which his head rested was not more real
than the sincerity of that blue man's face. Some hermit soul, who had
proved me by watching me seven years, was opening himself, and I felt
the tears come in my eyes.

"Have you never heard of me, madame?"

"You forget, sir, that I do not even know your name."

"My name is probably forgotten on the island now. I stopped here between
steamers during your American Civil War. A passing boat put in to
leave a young girl who had cholera. I saw her hair floating out of the
litter."

"Oh!" I exclaimed; "that is an island story." The blue man was actually
presenting credentials when he spoke of the cholera story. "She was
taken care of on the island until she recovered; and she was the
beautiful daughter of a wealthy Southern family trying to get home
from her convent in France, but unable to run the blockade. The nun who
brought her died on shipboard before she l