print." He held the book open. It was a nautical almanack,
and night by night the girl had pencilled out the hour of sunset.
Night by night the first flash of the Off Island lamp carried her
lover's message to her, and, as Seth explained (but it needed no
explanation), at that signal she blotted out yet one more of the days
between her and the marriage day.

Off Island rose from the sea a sheer mass of granite, about a hundred
and fifty feet in height, and all but inaccessible had it not been for a
rock stair-way hewn out by the Brethren of the Trinity House.
The keepers had spied our boat, and a tall young man stood on one of the
lower steps to welcome us: not Reuben, but Reuben's younger brother Sam.
Reuben met us at the top of the staircase, where the puffins built so
thickly that a false step would almost certainly send the foot crashing
through the roof of one of their oddly shaped houses. He too was a tall
youth; an inch or two taller, maybe, than his brother, whom we had left
in charge of the boat. It would have puzzled you to guess their ages.
Young they surely were, but much gazing in the face of the salt wind had
creased the corners of their eyes, and their faces wore a beautiful
gravity, as though they had been captured young and dedicated to some
priestly service.

Reuben touched his cap, and, taking the book from Seth without a word,
led us to the cottage, where his mother stood scouring a deal table: a
little woman with dark eyes like beads, and thin grey hair tucked within
a grey muslin cap. She had kilted her gown high and tucked up her
sleeves, and looked to me, for all the world, like a doll on a penwiper.
But her hands were busy continually; the small room shone and gleamed
with her tireless cleansing and polishing; and in the midst of it her
eyes sparkled with expectation of news from the outer world.

Seth understood her, and rattled at once into a recital of all the
happenings on the islands: births, marriages, and deaths, sickness,
courtship, and boat-building, the price of market-stuff, and the names
of vessels newly arrived in the roads. But after a minute she turned
from him to my father.

"'Tis all so narrow, sir--Seth's news. I want to know what's happenin'
in the world."

Now, much was happening in those May weeks--much all over Europe, but
much indeed in France, where Paris was passing through the sharp agonies
of the Commune. The latest my father had to tell was almost a week