his fist and went
to work ag'in, harder than ever, for you can allays depend on Jim,
somehow--George Olver--but he's a dreadful close-mouthed fellow!"

During the recital of this narrative, recalling so much to my mind, I
experienced more than anything else a feeling of annoyance, almost of
resentment, that the fisherman should appear, however remotely, to
disturb the serenity of these last few days in which I had to live out
my Wallencamp idyl.

For the others the story seemed to have created a momentary excitement,
but they regarded it, on the whole, as of little consequence.

Aunt Patty had passed on to the doorway of another neighbor, and George
Olver's relations with Rebecca soon constituted the theme of a more
general and lively discourse, in which the remarks concerning Rebecca
were mostly kind and considerate, and the praise of George Olver's
conduct enthusiastic; and, at the close of which, I remember, Grandma
said that "the higher minded folks gits to be, the pitifuller they be
a'most always!"

The fact of the fisherman's transient appearance on the Bay was not again
alluded to, nor do I think the mind of any one present reverted to it,
when Grandpa Keeler, looking up with that utterly dazed and bewildered
air which betokened a decisive awakening on his part, cast his eye along
the horizon, and observed gravely,--

"Storm a brewin', ma."

"You've been asleep, pa," said Grandma, in sweetly mollifying tones; and
Emily Gaskell, almost involuntarily, glanced up at me with a mischievous,
anticipative wink.

[Illustration]

"Asleep, ma," said Grandpa Keeler; "no, I hain't been asleep, neither!
And what if I had, ma? That don't hender a storm's brewin', does it?"

"We've be'n seein' them little wind clouds passin' afore the sun for half
an hour past," explained Grandma Keeler, composedly.

But Grandpa scanned the sky with a dark, keen glance--the air of an old
voyager on stormy and literal seas, and he shook his head, sagely.

"Wall, wall, ma," he said, "it don't make no difference whether it's a
wind-storm or a rain-storm that I know on, but a tempest it's brewin',
sartin sure. I remember once, we'd had a spell o' weather jest like this,
and it begun to gether up in the same way. It was in the same latitude,
teacher, same latitude. I was off cruisin' with Bob Henchy--whew! That
ar' was a singin' gale! I remember it as well as yesterday. I was off
with Bob----"

"Are you sure it was Bob ye was off wit