ad; 'tis a maid. I'm told they's a new baggage come t' Skipper
Eli's for a bit of a cruise."

I caught a bashful flush mounting to his ears and the rumble of a
chuckle in his throat.

"She've come from Tall Pine Harbor," said he, "with a cask o' liver;
an' I'm told she've her heart dead sot on matrimony."

"Larry Hull's maid?"

"No, lad; 'tis not she. She've declined. Las' fall, Dannie, bein'
wind-bound in a easterly gale, I cotched she at Skipper Jonathan
Stark's. No; she've declined."

"'Tis Maria Long, then," said I.

"No, lad; she've declined, too."

"Elizabeth Wutt?"

"She've declined."

"'Tis not the Widow Tootle!"

"No; _she've_ declined," he answered, dismally. "But," he added, with
a sudden access of cheerfulness, "she come wonderful _near_ it. 'Twas
a close call for she! She 'lowed, Dannie, that an my beard had been
red she might ha' went an' done it, takin' chances with my wits. She
might, says she, put up with a lack o' wit; but a beard o' proper
color she must have for peace o' mind. You sees, Dannie, Sam Tootle
had a red beard, an' the widow 'lowed she'd feel strange with a yellow
one, bein' accustomed t' the other for twenty year. She've declined,
'tis true; but she come wonderful _near_ t' sayin the word. 'Twas
quite encouragin'," he added, then sighed.

"You keep on, Moses," said I, to hearten him, "an' you'll manage it
yet."

"Mother," he sighed, "used t' 'low so."

We were now come to a rise in the road, whence, looking back, I found
the sky fast clouding up. 'Twas a wide view, falling between the
black, jagged masses of Pretty Willie and the Lost Soul, cast in
shadow--a reach of blood-red sea, with mounting clouds at the edge of
the world, into which the swollen sun had dropped, to set the
wind-blown tatters in a flare of red and gold. 'Twas all a sullen
black below, tinged with purple and inky blue; but high above the
flame and glow of the rags of cloud there hung a mottled sky, each
fleecy puff a touch of warmer color upon the pale green beyond. The
last of our folk were bound in from the grounds, with the brown sails
spread to a rising breeze, the fleet of tiny craft converging upon the
lower-harbor tickle; presently the men would be out of the roughening
sea, pulling up the harbor to the stage-heads, there to land and split
the catch. Ay, a change of wind, a switch to the sou'east, with the
threat of a gale with rain; 'twould blow before dark, no doubt, and
'twas now all dusky