rning. Well, when
we'd gotten about enough, and they were dying in the boat there, as they
cast their scales, like the iris, we put in-shore; and building a fire,
we cooked our own dinner and boiled our own coffee. Many's the icy
winter-night I've wrapped up Dan's bottle of hot coffee in rolls on
rolls of flannel, that he might drink it hot and strong far out at sea
in a wherry at daybreak!

But as I was saying,--all this time, Mr. Gabriel, he scarcely looked at
Faith. At first she didn't comprehend, and then something swam all over
her face as if the very blood in her veins had grown darker, and there
was such danger in her eye that before we stepped into the boat again
I wished to goodness I had a life-preserver. But in the beginning the
religious impression lasted and gave him great resolutions; and then
strolling off and along the beach, he fell in with some men there and
did as he always did, scraped acquaintance. I verily believe that these
men were total strangers, that he'd never laid eyes on them before, and
after a few words he wheeled about. As he did so, his glance fell on
Faith standing there alone against the pale sky, for the weather 'd
thickened, and watching the surf break at her feet. He was motionless,
gazing at her long, and then, when he had turned once or twice
irresolutely, he ground his heel into the sand and went back. The men
rose and wandered on with him, and they talked together for a while, and
I saw money pass; and pretty soon Mr. Gabriel returned, his face vividly
pallid, but smiling, and he had in his hand some little bright shells
that you don't often find on these Northern beaches, and he said he had
bought them of those men. And all this time he'd not spoken with Faith,
and there was the danger yet in her eye. But nothing came of it, and I
had accused myself of nearly every crime in the Decalogue, and on the
way back we had put up the lines, and Mr. Gabriel had hauled in the
lobster-net for the last time. He liked that branch of the business;
he said it had all the excitement of gambling,--the slow settling
downwards, the fading of the last ripple, the impenetrable depth and
shade and the mystery of the work below, five minutes of expectation,
and it might bring up a scale of the sea-serpent, or the king of the
crabs might have crept in for a nap in the folds, or it might come up
as if you'd dredged for pearls, or it might hold the great
backward-crawling lobsters, or a tangle of seawe