hen it come t' the discussion," says
he, pausing to permit a proper appreciation of the learned word,
which he had appropriated from my tutor's vocabulary, "o' my
accomplishments."

It had never occurred before.

"For mother," he explained, "was somehow wonderful fond o' me."

The church-bell called him.

"Hear her voice, Dannie?" said he. "Hear her voice in that there bell?
'Come--dear!' says she. 'Come--dear! Come--dear!' Hear it ring out?
'Come--dear! Come--dear! Come--dear!'"

I bade him God-speed with a heart that misgave me.

"I'll answer," said he, his face lifted to the sky, "to that voice!"

* * * * *

The clouds in the west broke, and through the rift a shaft of sunlight
shot, glad to be free, and touched our world of sea and rock with
loving finger-tips, but failed, as I turned homeward, hearing no voice
of my unknown mother in the wandering call of the bell; and all the
world went gray and sullenly mute, as it had been....

XIX

A WORD OF WARNING

Presently my uncle and I made ready to set out for St. John's upon the
sinister business which twice a year engaged his evil talents at the
wee waterside place wherein he was the sauciest dog in the pack. There
was now no wandering upon the emotionless old hills of Twin Islands to
prepare him, no departure from the fishing, no unseemly turning to the
bottle, to factitious rage; but he brooded more despairingly in his
chair by the window when the flare of western glory left the world. At
evening, when he thought me gone upon my pleasure, I watched him from
the shadows of the hall, grave with youth, wishing, all the while,
that he might greet the night with gratitude for the mercy of it; and
I listened to his muttering--and I saw that he was grown old and weak
with age: unequal, it might be, to the wickedness he would command in
my service. "_For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his
chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his
rebuke with the flames of fire._" For me 'twas still sweet to watch
the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray
rocks dissolve, to hear the sea's melodious whispering; but to him the
sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. I wished that he
would forsake the evil he followed for my sake. I would be a
club-footed, paddle-punt fisherman, as the gray little man from St.
John's had said, and be content with that f