der heart and timid nature, her appealing eyes
won the love of young and old. On Sunday evenings she was always one of
the small congregation that gathered to hold simple services in the
little church at the Cape--a square one-story building that never knew
paint or shutters.

[Illustration: UNCLE TERRY AND TELLY]

Of beaux she hardly knew the meaning, and it must be said the few young
men who remained on the island after reaching the age of courtship were
neither in garb nor manners such as would attract a girl like Telly.

One special talent she was gifted with and that the ability to draw and
paint well. Even as a child at school she would draw pictures on a slate
that were surprising, and when older, and she obtained materials, she
worked until she became, in a way, quite an artist. As Uncle Terry put
it, "Makin' picters comes nat'rl to the gal."

She had never received even the first lessons in that charming art, but
for all that every room in the house had dozens of her efforts, large
and small, hanging on the walls, and in the oddest frames. Some were of
strips of thin board covered with little shells or dried moss, and
others of rustic handiwork and mounted with fir cones.

There was but one shadow in her life and that the fact that no one of
the relatives she imagined she must have in far-off Sweden ever made any
effort to learn the fate of her parents, who she knew had gone down so
near her home. The story of her rescue with all its pitiful details was
familiar to her and in her room were treasured all the odd bits of
wreckage: the locket that contained her parents' pictures; the two
rings; the last message of her mother; and even the wooden shoe that had
floated ashore. How many times she had looked at those two pictured
faces, one a reflection of her own, how many tears she had shed in
secret over them, and how, year after year, she wondered if ever in her
life some relative would be known to her, no one, not even her
foster-parents, ever knew. Neither did they know how many times she had
tried to imagine the moment when her despairing mother, with death near,
and with prayers and tears, had cast her adrift, hoping that the one
little life most dear to that mother might be saved. The fatal reef
where those parents had gone down also held for her a weird fascination,
and at times the voice of the ocean seemed like the despairing cries of
mortals. One picture, and it was her best, was a view of the wreck,