* * * * *

Nothing ever seemed to put Uncle Jesse out or depress him in any way.

"I've kind of contracted a habit of enjoying things," he remarked
once, when Mother had commented on his invariable cheerfulness. "It's
got so chronic that I believe I even enjoy the disagreeable things.
It's great fun thinking they can't last. 'Old rheumatiz,' I says, when
it grips me hard, 'you've _got_ to stop aching sometime. The worse you
are the sooner you'll stop, perhaps. I'm bound to get the better of
you in the long run, whether in the body or out of the body.'"

Uncle Jesse seldom came to our house without bringing us something,
even if it were only a bunch of sweet grass.

"I favour the smell of sweet grass," he said. "It always makes me
think of my mother."

"She was fond of it?"

"Not that I knows on. Dunno's she ever saw any sweet grass. No, it's
because it has a kind of motherly perfume--not too young, you
understand--something kind of seasoned and wholesome and
dependable--just like a mother."

Uncle Jesse was a very early riser. He seldom missed a sunrise.

"I've seen all kinds of sunrises come in through that there Gate," he
said dreamily one morning when I myself had made a heroic effort at
early rising and joined him on the rocks halfway between his house and
ours. "I've been all over the world and, take it all in all, I've
never seen a finer sight than a summer sunrise out there beyant the
Gate. A man can't pick his time for dying, Mary--jest got to go when
the Captain gives his sailing orders. But if I could I'd go out when
the morning comes in there at the Gate. I've watched it a many times
and thought what a thing it would be to pass out through that great
white glory to whatever was waiting beyant, on a sea that ain't mapped
out on any airthly chart. I think, Mary, I'd find lost Margaret
there."

He had already told me the story of "lost Margaret," as he always
called her. He rarely spoke of her, but when he did his love for her
trembled in every tone--a love that had never grown faint or
forgetful. Uncle Jesse was seventy; it was fifty years since lost
Margaret had fallen asleep one day in her father's dory and
drifted--as was supposed, for nothing was ever known certainly of her
fate--across the harbour and out of the Gate, to perish in the black
thunder squall that had come up suddenly that long-ago afternoon. But
to Uncle Jesse those fifty years were but as yesterday wh