him.
Do you mind?"

"Every one is so courteous here," she exclaimed as they crossed the
narrow road. "I never pass one of the natives without receiving a
greeting of some kind, and the children are forever shyly forcing
flowers or fruit upon me. It makes one love the place."

The old man was overjoyed to have attracted attention. He hobbled
forward with difficulty as they approached, and bowed as low as his
infirmities would permit.

"You are welcome to Bermuda," he said with a cracked, high-pitched
voice. "We are pleased to have strangers visit us."

"Your visitors remain strangers but a little while," Huntington answered
him, "because of your hospitality."

"Won't you come in and sit down?" the old man urged.

"Not to-day, thank you; but if we should not be intruding it would be a
pleasure to return some other time."

"You could not intrude, sir," he insisted; "for I am only waiting."

"Waiting?" Huntington questioned.

"Yes; waiting for that," and he pointed to a tall cedar growing inside
the yard, beside which was the stump of another tree.

"He wants to tell us something," Merry whispered.

"They were planted there sixty years ago," the old man continued, "the
two of them. They were little slips, stuck in our wedding-cake as is our
custom here, when my wife and I were married. We put them in the ground,
for everything takes root in this soil, and they grew side by side for
fifty years. Then that one fell"--pointing to the stump,--"and the next
day my wife was taken sick and died. We made her coffin from the cedar
wood of that tree, sir. Now I'm waiting for the other one to fall. That
was ten years ago now, so it won't be long."

"Isn't that a beautiful idea?" Merry exclaimed, touched by the
unconscious pathos of the old man's words. "We would like to come back
and have you tell us about your wife."

"She was a sweet, young girl like yourself when I married her," he
replied. "We were both born here and never left the island. But the maps
aren't fair to us; we're not so small"--he straightened and waved his
arm--"we're not so small, as you can see."

They left him happy over the unusual break in his monotony, and
continued their walk to the hotel.

"Here is the other side to the picture," Huntington remarked. "This old
man and his wife, and hundreds of others no doubt, live their lives out
here happy and contented with their nineteen square miles of world, yet
you and I are pitying Hamlen because