d just as soon, for it was a hard thing to see a man go
down to his death, maybe through my foolishness. And to have the people
that love him to face in the telling of it--that's hard, too."

He drew a great breath. "And"--again a deep breath and a deepened note
of pain--"that's what I've come to tell you, John Snow, and you, Mrs.
Snow--how your boy Arthur was lost."

John Snow, at the kitchen table, I remember, one finger still in the
pages of the black-lettered Bible he had been reading when Hugh Glynn
stepped in, dropped his head on his chest and there let it rest. Mrs.
Snow was crying out loud. Mary Snow said nothing, nor made a move,
except to sit in her chair by the window and look to where, in the light
of the kitchen lamp, Hugh Glynn stood.

There was a long quiet. Hugh Glynn spoke again. "Twenty years, John
Snow, and you, Mrs. Snow--twenty good years I've been fishing out o'
Gloucester, and in that time not much this side the western ocean I
haven't laid a vessel's keel over. From Greenland to Hatteras I've
fished, and many smart seamen I've been shipmates with--dory, bunk, and
watch mates with in days gone by--and many a grand one of 'em I've known
to find his grave under the green-white ocean, but never a smarter,
never an abler fisherman than your boy Arthur. Boy and man I knew him,
and, boy and man, he did his work. I thought you might like to hear that
from me, John Snow. And not much more than that can I say now, except to
add, maybe, that when the Lord calls, John Snow, we must go, all of us.
The Lord called and Arthur went. He had a good life before him--if he'd
lived. He'd 've had his own vessel soon--could've had one before
this--if he'd wanted. But 'No,' he says, 'I'll stay with you yet a
while, Captain Hugh.' He loved me and I loved him. 'I'll stay with you
yet a while, Captain Hugh,' he says, but, staying with me, he was lost,
and if I was old enough to have a grown son o' my own, if 'twas that
little lad who lived only long enough to teach me what it is to have
hope of a fine son and then to lose him, if 'twas that little lad o'
mine grown up, I doubt could I feel it more, John Snow."

John Snow let slip his book and stood up, and for the first time looked
fair at Hugh Glynn. "We know, Captain Glynn," John Snow said, "and I'm
thanking you now. It's hard on me, hard on us all--our only son,
captain--our only child. But, doubtless, it had to come. Some goes young
and some goes old. It came to him