n of romance,
and saw and felt the poetic side of all things. The whispers of winds in
the pine trees, flowers that grew wild in out of the way nooks, birds
singing, bees gathering honey, squirrels hiding their winter store of
nuts, the sea in all its moods, clouds sailing across a summer sky and
all that was beautiful in nature appealed to him. This island whose
frowning cliffs faced the ocean billows so defiantly, the placid harbor
with its rippled sandy shore, the old tide mill an ancient ruin, the
dark thickets of spruce between the rolling ledges of granite, and the
weird gorge where this girl had hid herself, each and all seemed to him
as so many bits of poetry. Then the peculiar and romantic fact of her
going to such a picturesque spot, out of sight and sound of even the
island people, and beyond that the wonderful sweetness and pathos of her
simple music, all appealed to him as to but few. It was as if he felt in
her a kinship of soul, an echo of his own poetic nature, a response to
his own ideals in life, with a face like a flower, lips like two
rosebuds, and eyes like a Madonna.

For a long time he sat there in communion with his own needs and nature,
sobered by the silence of night and eternity so near him. When he arose,
turning back toward the village, he paused on the brow of the hill,
looking down upon it still and silent in the faint moonlight. Away to
the right and pointing skyward, he saw the little spire of the church
whose bell had recalled his early boyhood days and all the sweet and
pure influences they had contained, even the face of his own mother, he
knew he should never look upon again. And with that recollection came
the half-pitiful words he had heard in that church that seemed like a
plea for help from starvation.

Winn was not religious. He had never been drawn toward an open
profession of faith. He had at first felt church going and
Sabbath-school lessons an irksome task, and later a social custom,
useful because it bound together congenial people. He believed in God
but not in prayer. His heart was in sympathy with all the carnal needs
of humanity, but not the spiritual; those he considered figments of the
imagination, useful, maybe, when old age came, but needless during
healthy, active life. To the customary observance of them he always
yielded respectful attention, but felt not their influence. And musing
there it came to him that perhaps some divine power had directed his
footsteps