narrow path, and let William
take the basket alone and precede me at some little distance the rest of
the way, I could plainly hear her greet him.

"Got round to comin' in, didn't you?" she inquired, with amusement.
"Well, now, that's clever. Didn't know's I should see you to-day,
William, an' I wanted to settle an account."

I felt somewhat disturbed and responsible, but when I joined them they
were on most simple and friendly terms. It became evident that, with
William, it was the first step that cost, and that, having once joined
in social interests, he was able to pursue them with more or less
pleasure. He was about sixty, and not young-looking for his years, yet
so undying is the spirit of youth, and bashfulness has such a power
of survival, that I felt all the time as if one must try to make the
occasion easy for some one who was young and new to the affairs of
social life. He asked politely if I would like to go up to the great
ledge while dinner was getting ready; so, not without a deep sense of
pleasure, and a delighted look of surprise from the two hostesses,
we started, William and I, as if both of us felt much younger than we
looked. Such was the innocence and simplicity of the moment that when
I heard Mrs. Todd laughing behind us in the kitchen I laughed too, but
William did not even blush. I think he was a little deaf, and he stepped
along before me most businesslike and intent upon his errand.

We went from the upper edge of the field above the house into a smooth,
brown path among the dark spruces. The hot sun brought out the fragrance
of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as we climbed the hill.
William stopped once or twice to show me a great wasps'-nest close by,
or some fishhawks'-nests below in a bit of swamp. He picked a few sprigs
of late-blooming linnaea as we came out upon an open bit of pasture at
the top of the island, and gave them to me without speaking, but he
knew as well as I that one could not say half he wished about linnaea.
Through this piece of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the
great backbone of an enormous creature. At the end, near the woods, we
could climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above
the circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and
could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of island
ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It gave a sudden
sense of space, for nothing sto