e ice
took them away."

Crack! Crack! Crack!

"No fear of she, Doctor. She's held on this forty years, and I reckon
she won't bring her anchors home till I does myself."

"Never to go again till the old man died," I hummed.

Something, however, seemed to have roused up Uncle Rube. For,
carefully laying his pipe in its place on the shelf, he went to the
door, opening it enough to allow him to peer out through the crack.
Unfortunately another eddying gust struck the house at that very
moment, tore the door from his grasp, and by sweeping in and taking
the fortress from within, very nearly gave it its _coup de grace_. In
the momentary lull that followed we managed to shut the door, and to
barricade it from inside.

The child was astir before we got back to the genial warmth of the
stove. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the little dwelling again, as a more
than usually fierce blast of the hurricane, strengthened by the
furiously driving snow, hit it like another hammer of Thor. Crack!
Crack! The house seemed to swing like a pendulum before it came to
rest again. I could see that the old man was uneasy.

"What is it, Uncle Rube? What is it?" the little girl cried out
petulantly.

"Why, nothing, little one, nothing. Only 'tis as well to take a peek
out on times. There's no knowing when there might be some one astray
through this kind of weather. 'Tis no hurt to make sure, is it?"

She was a pale-faced little thing, with the lustrous eyes and delicate
skin that often so pathetically array the prospective victims of the
White Man's Curse. She had been a tiny, unwanted item in a large
family of twelve with which "Providence had blessed" a struggling
friend and neighbor. The arrival of the last had robbed him of his
only help. "Daddy gived me to Uncle Rube," was her only explanation of
her being there.

"'T is cold, though," she answered. "It made me dream that you were on
the old island again, and I was with you, and then the house shook so
that it woke me up."

For answer he went to an old and well-worn seaman's chest which served
ordinarily for an additional seat. The reverent care with which he
turned over the contents would have honored a priest before the
sanctuary. But eventually he returned with a really beautiful shawl
which he tenderly wrapped around the child, and sitting down laid her
head upon his shoulder. In this position she was almost immediately
asleep again, and, fearing to wake her, I had forborne to b