ots with lone
contentment, filling them with shells, starfish, and crabs, dig wells in
the sandy margin of the harbor, and catch minnows to put in them. She
loved to watch the fishing boats sailing away, the coasters pass the
island, the current sweeping in and out beneath the old tide mill, and
as she grew up and gained in courage roamed over the entire island at
will. The Devil's Oven, out of sight and sound of everybody, became a
charming spot for her; and here she would sit for hours watching the
waves leap into the gorge and wondering why they never sounded twice
alike. And so on, as she developed, she absorbed the mood of the ocean,
its grandeur shaped her thoughts, its mystery tinged her emotion, and
its solemnity, like the voice of eternity, gave expression to her eyes.

Companions of her own age she had none, leaving them to play as they
chose while she sought solitude, and found contentment on the lonely
shores. Uncle Jess only was akin to her, and if she could lead him away
as playmate, then was she happy.

And so she grew up.

With only a limited education, such as the island schools afforded, a
scant knowledge of books, since but few ever reached Rockhaven, a love
of music that amounted to a passion, no knowledge of the world except
that gleaned from Uncle Jess, a deep religious feeling, partially shaped
by the "Hardshell" Baptist teachings of the Rev. Jason Bush, and more by
the ocean billows that forever thundered against the island shores, she
was at twenty a girl to be pitied by those capable of understanding her
nature or realizing how incompatible to it was her environment. Of music
she knew but little, and that taught her by the genial old soul who,
since her babyhood, had been father, uncle, and companion. His constant
assistance had been hers through her pinafore days at school; his genial
philosophy and keen insight into human impulse had done more to develop
her mind afterward than the three R's she mastered there. His gentle
hand had taught her the scales on his old brown fiddle, and now that she
had reached that mystic line where girlhood ends and womanhood begins,
her future was of more concern to him than all else in his life. That
she must and would, in the course of human nature, love and marry, he
fully expected; that it was like to be a mateship with some of the
simple and hard-working fishermen's sons, he expected; and yet, with
dread for her far more than any one else, even her mother