cold
and hunger and squalid death in the places from which we had returned.

"Davy!" said my sister.

I started.

"What in the world," she asked, "is you thinkin' so dolefully of?"

"I been thinkin'," I answered, sighing, "o' the folk down narth."

"Of the man at Runner's Woe?" the doctor asked.

"No, zur. He on'y done murder. 'Twas not o' he. 'Twas o' something
sadder than that."

"Then 'tis too sad to tell," he said.

"No," I insisted. "'Twould do well-fed folk good t' hear it."

"What was it?" my sister asked.

"I was thinkin'----"

Ah, but '_twas_ too sad!

"O' what?"

"O' the child at Comfort Harbour, Bessie, that starved in his mother's
arms."

Timmie Lovejoy threw more billets on the fire. They flamed and
spluttered and filled the room with cheerful light.

"Davy," said the doctor, "we can never cure the wretchedness of this
coast."

"No, zur?"

"But we can try to mitigate it."

"We'll try," said I. "You an' me."

"You and I."

"And I," my sister said.

Lying between the sturdy little twins, that night--where by right of
caste I lay, for it was the warmest place in the bed--I abandoned, once
and for all, my old hope of sailing a schooner, with the decks awash.

"Timmie!" I whispered.

He was sound asleep. I gave him an impatient nudge in the ribs.

"Ay, Davy?" he asked.

"You may have my hundred-tonner," said I.

"What hundred-tonner?"

"The big fore-an'-after, Timmie, I'm t' have when I'm growed. You may
skipper she. You'll not wreck her, Timmie, will you?"

He was asleep.

"Hut!" I thought, angrily. "I'll have Jacky skipper that craft, if
Timmie don't look out."

At any rate, she was not to be for me.

XXII

The WAY From HEART'S DELIGHT

It chanced in the spring of that year that my sister and the doctor and
I came unfortuitously into a situation of grave peril: wherein (as you
shall know) the doctor was precipitate in declaring a sentiment, which,
it may be, he should still have kept close within his heart, withholding
it until a happier day. But for this there is some excuse: for not one
of us hoped ever again to behold the rocks and placid water of our
harbour, to continue the day's work to the timely close of the day, to
sit in quiet places, to dream a fruitful future, to aspire untroubled in
security and ease: and surely a man, whatever his disposition and
strength of mind, being all at once thus confronted, may without blame
do that which, as a rewa