that
region that night, a little after supper; but there was no doubt of the
state of mind in at least three family circles.

Good Mrs. Foster could not endure to stay at home and talk about the
matter; and her husband and Annie were very willing to go over to the
Kinzers' with her, and listen to the encouraging views of Dabney's
stout-hearted and sensible mother.

They were welcomed heartily; and the conversation began, so to speak,
right in the middle.

"Oh, Mrs. Kinzer! do you think they are in any danger?"

"I hope not. I don't see why there need be, unless they try to return
across the bay against this wind."

"But don't you think they'll try? Do you mean they won't be home
to-night?" exclaimed Mr. Foster himself.

"I sincerely hope not," said the widow calmly. "I should hardly feel
like trusting Dabney out in the boat again, if he should do so foolish a
thing."

"But where can he stay?"

"At anchor somewhere, or on the island; almost anywhere but tacking all
night on the bay. He'd be really safer out at sea than trying to get
home."

"Out at sea!"

There was something really dreadful in the very idea of it; and Annie
Foster turned pale enough when she thought of the gay little yacht, and
her brother out on the broad Atlantic in it, with no better crew than
Dab Kinzer and Dick Lee. Samantha and her sisters were hardly as steady
about it as their mother; but they were careful to conceal their
misgivings from their neighbors, which was very kindly indeed in the
circumstances.

There was little use in trying to think or talk of any thing else beside
the boys, however, with the sound of the "high wind" in the trees out by
the roadside; and a very anxious circle was that, up to the late hour at
which the members of it separated for the night.

But there were other troubled hearts in that vicinity. Old Bill Lee
himself had been out fishing all day, with very poor luck; but he forgot
all about that, when he learned, on reaching the shore, that Dick and
his white friends had not returned. He even pulled back to the mouth of
the inlet, to see if the gathering darkness would give him any signs of
his boy. He did not know it; but while he was gone Dick's mother, after
discussing her anxieties with some of her dark-skinned neighbors, half
weepingly unlocked her one "clothes-press," and took out the suit which
had been the pride of her absent son. She had never admired them half so
much before, but they seemed