is jasper, and whose every
gate is a separate pearl.

CHAPTER IV

AUNT ROXY AND AUNT RUEY

The sea lay like an unbroken mirror all around the pine-girt, lonely
shores of Orr's Island. Tall, kingly spruces wore their regal crowns of
cones high in air, sparkling with diamonds of clear exuded gum; vast old
hemlocks of primeval growth stood darkling in their forest shadows,
their branches hung with long hoary moss; while feathery larches, turned
to brilliant gold by autumn frosts, lighted up the darker shadows of the
evergreens. It was one of those hazy, calm, dissolving days of Indian
summer, when everything is so quiet that the faintest kiss of the wave
on the beach can be heard, and white clouds seem to faint into the blue
of the sky, and soft swathing bands of violet vapor make all earth look
dreamy, and give to the sharp, clear-cut outlines of the northern
landscape all those mysteries of light and shade which impart such
tenderness to Italian scenery.

The funeral was over; the tread of many feet, bearing the heavy burden
of two broken lives, had been to the lonely graveyard, and had come back
again,--each footstep lighter and more unconstrained as each one went
his way from the great old tragedy of Death to the common cheerful walks
of Life.

The solemn black clock stood swaying with its eternal "tick-tock,
tick-tock," in the kitchen of the brown house on Orr's Island. There was
there that sense of a stillness that can be felt,--such as settles down
on a dwelling when any of its inmates have passed through its doors for
the last time, to go whence they shall not return. The best room was
shut up and darkened, with only so much light as could fall through a
little heart-shaped hole in the window-shutter,--for except on solemn
visits, or prayer meetings, or weddings, or funerals, that room formed
no part of the daily family scenery.

The kitchen was clean and ample, with a great open fireplace and wide
stone hearth, and oven on one side, and rows of old-fashioned
splint-bottomed chairs against the wall. A table scoured to snowy
whiteness, and a little work-stand whereon lay the Bible, the
"Missionary Herald" and the "Weekly Christian Mirror," before named,
formed the principal furniture. One feature, however, must not be
forgotten,--a great sea-chest, which had been the companion of Zephaniah
through all the countries of the earth. Old, and battered, and unsightly
it looked, yet report said that there