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“Mis’ Tolland looked up at me with a new look when I went in, an’ she even took hold o’ my hand and kept it. He had put some oil on her forehead, but nothing anybody could do would keep her alive very long; ’twas his medicine for the soul rather ‘n the body. I helped her to bed, and next morning she couldn’t get up to dress her, and that was Monday, and she began to fail, and ’twas Friday night she died.” (Mrs. Todd spoke with unusual haste and lack of detail. ) “Mrs. Begg and I watched with her, and made everything nice and proper, and after all the ill will there was a good number gathered to the funeral.’Twas in Reverend Mr. Bascom’s day, and he done very well in his prayer, considering he couldn’t fill in with mentioning all the near connections by name as was his habit. He spoke very feeling about her being a stranger and twice widowed, and all he said about her being reared among the heathen was to observe that there might be roads leadin’ up to the New Jerusalem from various points. I says to myself that I guessed quite a number must ha’ reached there that wa’n’t able to set out from Dunnet Landin’!”

Mrs. Todd gave an odd little laugh as she bent toward the firelight to pick up a dropped stitch in her knitting, and then I heard a heartfelt sigh.

” ‘Twas most forty years ago,” she said; “most everybody’s gone a’ready that was there that day.”

V

Suddenly Mrs. Todd gave an energetic shrug of her shoulders, and a quick look at me, and I saw that the sails of her narrative were filled with a fresh breeze.

“Uncle Lorenzo, Cap’n Bowden that I have referred to” —

“Certainly!” I agreed with eager expectation.

“He was the one that had been left in charge of Cap’n John Tolland’s affairs, and had now come to be of unforeseen importance.

“Mrs. Begg an’ I had stayed in the house both before an’ after Mis’ Tolland’s decease, and she was now in haste to be gone, having affairs to call her home; but uncle come to me as the exercises was beginning, and said he thought I’d better remain at the house while they went to the buryin’ ground. I couldn’t understand his reasons, an’ I felt disappointed, bein’ as near to her as most anybody; ’twas rough weather, so mother couldn’t get in, and didn’t even hear Mis’ Tolland was gone till next day. I just nodded to satisfy him, ‘twa’n’t no time to discuss anything. Uncle seemed flustered; he’d gone out deep-sea fishin’ the day she died, and the storm I told you of rose very sudden, so they got blown off way down the coast beyond Monhegan, and he’d just got back in time to dress himself and come.

“I set there in the house after I’d watched her away down the straight road far ‘s I could see from the door; ’twas a little short walkin’ funeral an’ a cloudy sky, so everything looked dull an’ gray, an’ it crawled along all in one piece, same ‘s walking funerals do, an’ I wondered how it ever come to the Lord’s mind to let her begin down among them gay islands all heat and sun, and end up here among the rocks with a north wind blowin’.’Twas a gale that begun the afternoon before she died, and had kept blowin’ off an’ on ever since. I’d thought more than once how glad I should be to get home an’ out o’ sound o’ them black spruces a-beatin’ an’ scratchin’ at the front windows.