in the east, where the sky was cold and gray. Soon
the lamps would be alight in the kitchens of our harbor, where the men
folk, cleansed of the sweat of the sea, would sit warm and dry with
their wives and rosy lads and maids, caring not a whit for the wind
and rain without, since they had what they had within.

"I'm knowin' no other maid at Tall Pine Harbor," said I, "that's fit
t' wed."

"'Tis a maid o' the name o' Pearl," he confided; "an' I'm told she's
fair on looks."

"Pearl what, Moses?"

"I disremember, Dannie," he answered, a bit put out. "The lads told
me, out there on the grounds the day, when I got wind of her bein'
here, but I've clean forgot. It won't matter, anyhow, will it, lad?
for, sure, I'm able t' _ask_."

"An' you've hopes?"

He trudged on, staring straight ahead, now silent and downcast. "Well,
no, Dannie," he answered, at last, "not what you might call _hopes_.
So many, Dannie, haves declined, that I'd be s'prised t' cotch one
that wouldn't slip the hook. But not havin' cast for this one, lad,
I've not give up. I'm told they's no wonderful demand for the maid on
accounts of temper and cross-eyes; an' so I was sort of allowin' she
_might_ have a mind t' try a fool, him bein' the on'y skipper t' hand.
Mother used t' say if I kep' on she 'lowed I'd haul one out in the
end: an' I 'low mother knowed. She never 'lowed I'd cotch a perfeck
specimen, in p'int o' looks, for them, says she, mates accordin' t'
folly; but she did say, Dannie, that the maid I wed would come t' know
me jus' the way mother knowed me, an t' love me jus' the way mother
loved me, for my goodness. 'Twas kind o' mother t' think it: nobody
else, Dannie, was ever so kind t' me. I wonder why _she_ was! Would
you say, Dannie," he asked, turning anxiously, "that a cross-eyed maid
_could_ be fair on looks? Not," he added, quickly, "that I'd care a
wonderful sight: for mother used t' say that looks wiped off in the
first washin', anyhow."

I did not answer.

"You wouldn't say, would you, lad," he went on, "that _I_ was fair on
looks?"

An ungainly little man, this Moses Shoos: stout enough about the
chest, where a man's strength needs lie, big-shouldered, long-armed,
but scrawny and crooked in the legs and of an inconfident, stumbling
gait, prone to halt, musing vacantly as he went. He was bravely clad
upon his courtship: a suit of homespun from the _Quick as Wink_, given
in fair dealing, as to quality, by Tumm, the clerk, but w