ride too; Minister Malden was human. It was a mercy of
justice, folks said, when Widow Gibbs got a man like Minister Malden.
Heaven knows she had had bad enough luck with Gibbs, a sallow devil of a
whaler who never did a fine act in his life till he went down with his
vessel and all hands in the Arctic one year and left Sympathy Gibbs
sitting alone in the Pillar House on Lovett's Court, pretty, plump, and
rather well-to-do as Urkey goes.

Everybody in the island was glad enough when those two undertook to mend
each other's blasted life--everybody but Mate Snow. He had been thinking
of Sympathy Gibbs himself, they said; and they said he stood behind the
prescription screen in his drug-store far into the night, after the
betrothal was given out in Center Church, his eyes half-closed, his thin
lips bluish white, and hell-fire smouldering out of sight in him. And
they said Mate was the kind that never forget. That was what made it so
queer.

It seems to me that I must remember the time when the minister lived in
the Pillar House with Sympathy Gibbs.

Back there in the mists of youth I seem to see them walking home
together after the Sunday morning preaching, arm in arm and full of a
sedate joy; turning in between the tubbed box-trees at Lovett's Court,
loitering for a moment to gaze out over the smooth harbor and nod to the
stragglers of the congregation before they entered the big green door
flanked by the lilac panes.

Perhaps it was told me. There can be no question, though, that I
remember the night when Minister Malden came home from the Infield
Conference, a father of two days' standing. Urkey village made a
festival of that homecoming to the tiny daughter he had never seen, and
to Sympathy Gibbs, weak and waiting and radiant. Yes, I remember.

We were all at the landing, making a racket. The minister looked ill
when he came over the packet's side, followed by Mate Snow, who had gone
to Conference with him as lay delegate from Center Church. Our welcome
touched him in a strange and shocking way; he staggered and would have
fallen had it not been for Mate's quick hand. He had not a word to say
to us; he walked up the shore street between the wondering lines till he
came to the Pillar House, and there he stood for a moment, silhouetted
against the open door, a drooping, hunted figure, afraid to go in.

We saw his shadow later, moving uncertainly across the shades in the
upper chamber where Sympathy Gibbs lay with