f this was due to
the occult influence of Mona's eyes, and how much to sympathy and
interest in the spiritual life of the island, is hard to say. Most of
the men considered Sunday as a day of rest, and to some extent,
recreation. A few accompanied their families to the little church, but
more spent the day lounging about the wharves, smoking and swapping
yarns, and if a boat needed caulking, a net mending, or a new sail
bending, they did not hesitate to do it. While all had sufficient
reverence for the Lord's Day not to actually start out fishing, most
were willing to get ready. And perhaps for good reason, for a livelihood
on Rockhaven was not easy to obtain and with them, as with most
hard-working people, the necessities of life displaced spiritual
influences.

"It is a hard field to labor in," asserted the Rev. Jason Bush to Winn
one day, "and I've grown old and gray in the work. We have a little
church that has not been painted but twice since I came here forty-odd
years ago, or shingled but once. We have no carpet, and the cushions in
the pews are in rags. I have taught this generation almost all they know
of books, and laid most of their parents away in the graveyard back of
the meeting-house, and my turn will come before many years. We are poor
here, and we always have been and most likely always shall be, and at
times it has seemed to me the Lord was indifferent to our needs. Your
coming here and this new industry has seemed to me a special
providence."

And Winn, thinking of the fifty shares of stock he had given this poor
old minister, and the ten dollars dividend that must have seemed a
godsend, felt his heart sink, for he had by this time come to realize
why he had been told to donate this stock. And perhaps that fact gave
added force to the parson's words.

And when, after Jess had advised him to lay off some of the men and he
had done so, a sort of gloom seemed to spread over the island. A few of
the men took to their boats and fishing once more, and though Winn gave
out the plausible excuse that lack of demand for granite was the cause,
the rest who were out of work now seemed a constant reproach.

Then, too, since his own ambition and hope received a setback he was not
content. The growing distrust was a thorn in his side, in fact it was
more than that; it was almost a certainty that his mission there was
nearing its end. To leave, he could not; to go ahead, he dared not, for
any day he might be lef