eir perverse and
insatiable curiosity, though we did not let them know it. They were
sorry for my father and sister and me, I know, for, one and all, when
they came to see my mother lying dead, they _said_ they were. And they
stood soberly by her shallow grave, when we laid her dear body away, and
they wept when old Tom Tot spoke of the dust and ashes, which we are,
and the stony earth rattled hopelessly on the coffin. Doubtless they
were well-intentioned towards us all, and towards me, a motherless lad,
more than any other, and doubtless they should be forgiven much, for
they were but ignorant folk, from strange parts of the world; but I took
it hard that they should laugh on the roads, as though no great thing
had happened, and when, at last, the women folk took to praising my hair
and eyes, as my mother used to do, and, moreover, to kissing me in
public places, which had been my mother's privilege, I was speedily
scandalized and fled their proximity with great cunning and agility.

My father, however, sought them out, at all times and places, that he
might tell them the tragic circumstances of my mother's death, and
seemed not to remember that he had told them all before.

"But five days!" he would whisper, excitedly, when he had buttonholed a
stranger in the shop. "Eh, man? Have you heared tell o' my poor wife?"

"Five days?"

"Ay; had you folk been wrecked five days afore--just five, mark
you--she would have been alive, the day."

"How sad!"

"Five days!" my father would suddenly cry, wringing his hands. "My God!
_Only five days_!"

A new expression of sympathy--and a glance of the sharpest
suspicion--would escape the stranger.

"Five days!" my father would repeat, as though communicating some fact
which made him peculiarly important to all the world. "That, now," with
a knowing glance, "is what I calls wonderful queer."

My father was not the same as he had been. He was like a man become a
child again--interested in little things, dreaming much, wondering more:
conceiving himself, like a child, an object of deepest interest to us
all. No longer, now, did he command us, but, rather, sought to know from
my sister (to whom he constantly turned) what he should do from hour to
hour; and I thought it strange that he should do our bidding as though
he had never been used to bidding us. But so it was; and, moreover
(which I thought a great pity), he forgot that he was to kill the
mail-boat doctor when the steam