e sand,--and the bowsprit was bare!----

When father came home, the rack had driven down the harbor and left
clear sky; it was near nightfall; they'd been searching the shore all
day,--to no purpose. But that rainbow,--I always took it for a sign.
Father was worn out, yet he sat in the chimney-side, cutting off great
quids and chewing and thinking and sighing. At last he went and wound up
the clock,--it was the stroke of twelve,--and then he turned to me and
said,--

"Dan sent you this, Georgie. He hailed a pilot-boat, and's gone to the
Cape to join the fall fleet to the fish'ries; and he sent you this."

It was just a great hand-grip to make your nails purple, but there was
heart's-blood in it. See, there's the mark to-day.

So there was Dan off in the Bay of Chaleur. It was the best place for
him. And I went about my work once more. There was a great gap in my
life, but I tried not to look at it. I durstn't think of Dan, and I
wouldn't think of them,--the two. Always in such times it's as if a
breath had come and blown across the pool and you could see down its
dark depths and into the very bottom, but time scums it all over again.
And I tell you it's best to look trouble in the face: if you don't,
you'll have more of it. So I got a lot of shoes to bind, and what part
of my spare time I wa'n't at my books the needle flew. But I turned no
more to the past than I could help, and the future trembled too much to
be seen.

Well, the two months dragged away, it got to be Thanksgiving-week, and
at length the fleet was due. I mind me I made a great baking that
week; and I put brandy into the mince for once, instead of vinegar and
dried-apple juice,--and there were the fowls stuffed and trussed on
the shelf,--and the pumpkin-pies like slices of split gold,--and the
cranberry-tarts, plats of crimson and puffs of snow,--and I was brewing
in my mind a right-royal red Indian-pudding to come out of the oven
smoking hot and be soused with thick clots of yellow cream,--when one of
the boys ran in and told us the fleet'd got back, but no Dan with it,
--he'd changed over to a fore-and-after, and wouldn't be home at all,
but was to stay down in the Georges all winter, and he'd sent us word.
Well, the baking went to the dogs, or the Thanksgiving beggars, which is
the same thing.

Then days went by, as days will, and it was well into the New Year.
I used to sit there at the window, reading,--but the lines would run
together, and I'