er put into our harbour on the southward
trip--a purpose from which, a week before, Skipper Tommy Lovejoy could
not dissuade him, though he tried for hours together. Ay, with his bare
hands, my father was to have killed that man--to have wrung his neck and
flung him overboard--but now there was no word of the deed: my father
but puttered about, mildly muttering that the great ship had been
wrecked five days too late.

I have said that my father loved my mother; it may be that he loved her
overmuch--and, perhaps, that accounts for what came upon him when he
lost her. I have since thought it sad that our hearts may contain a love
so great that all the world seems empty when chance plucks it out; but
the thought, no doubt, is not a wise one.

* * * * *

The doctor whom I had found with my father in my mother's room was not
among the folk who babbled on the roads and came prying into the stages
with tiresome exclamations of "Really!" and "How in-tres-ting!" He kept
aloof from them and from us all. All day long he wandered on the heads
and hills of our harbour--a melancholy figure, conspicuous against the
blue sky of those days: far off, solitary, bowed. Sometimes he sat for
hours on the Watchman, staring out to sea, so still that it would have
been small blame to the gulls had they mistaken him for a new boulder,
mysteriously come to the hill; sometimes he lay sprawling on the high
point of Skull Island, staring at the sky, lost to knowledge of the
world around; sometimes he clambered down the cliffs of Good Promise to
the water's edge, and stood staring, forever staring, at the breakers
(which no man should do). Often I was not content with watching him from
afar, but softly followed close, and peered at him from the shelter of a
boulder or peeped over the shoulder of a hill; and so sad did he
seem--so full of sighs and melancholy attitudes--that invariably I went
home pitying: for at that time my heart was tender, and the sight of
sorrow hurt it.

Once I crept closer and closer, and, at last, taking courage (though his
clean-shaven face and soft gray hat abashed me), ran to him and slipped
my hand in his.

He started; then, perceiving who it was, he withdrew his hand with a
wrench, and turned away: which hurt me.

"You are the son," said he, "of the woman who died, are you not?"

I was more abashed than ever--and wished I had not been so bold.

"I'm Davy Roth, zur," I whispered, for