. 'Tis thick, but 'tis not so very dark. 'Tis
not lamp-lightin' time yet."

"How strange!" she muttered. "It seems so very dark. Ah, well! Do you go
out for a run in the air, dear, while your mother sleeps. I'm thinking
I'll be better--when I've had a little sleep."

My sister busied herself with the pillows and coverlet; and she made all
soft and neat, that my mother might rest the better for it.

"You're so tender with me, dear," said my mother "Every day I bless God
for my dear daughter."

My sister kissed my mother. "Hush!" she said. "Do you go t' sleep, now,
little mother. Twill do you good."

"Yes," my mother sighed, "for I'm--so very--tired."

* * * * *

When she had fallen asleep, I slung my lantern over my arm and scampered
off to the Rat Hole to yarn with the twins, making what speed I could in
the fog and untimely dusk, and happy, for the moment, to be free of the
brooding shadow in our house. The day was not yet fled; but the light
abroad--a sullen greyness, splashed with angry red in the west, where
the mist was thinning--was fading fast and fearfully. And there was an
ominous stirring of wind in the east: at intervals, storm puffs came
swirling over the hills from the sea; and they ran off inland like mad,
leaving the air of a sudden once more stagnant. Fresh and cool they
were--grateful enough, indeed, blowing through the thick, dead dusk--but
sure warning, too, of great gusts to come. We were to have weather--a
gale from the northeast, by all the lore of the coast--and it would be a
wild night, with the breakers of Raven Rock and the Thirty Black Devils
leaping high and merrily in the morning. As I ran down the last hill,
with an eye on the light glowing in the kitchen window of Skipper Tommy
Lovejoy's cottage, I made shift to hope that the old man had made
harbour from Wolf Cove, but thought it most unlikely.

He had.

"You got home, Skipper Tommy," I cried, shouldering the door shut
against a gust of wind, "an' I'm glad o' that! 'Tis goin' t' blow most
awful, I'm thinkin'."

My welcome was of the gloomiest description. I observed that the twins,
who lay feet to feet on the corner-seat, did not spring to meet me, but
were cast down; and that Skipper Tommy, himself, sitting over the fire
with a cup of tea on the table at his elbow, was glum as a deacon.

"Oh," said he, looking up with the ghost of a laugh, "I got in. You
wasn't frettin' about _me_, was you, Dav