yet with
the utmost good-humor, always ready to acknowledge a point against
himself,--the more readily if entirely fallacious,--with a burst of
hearty laughter.

At last there was a pause. Something had called out of doors the two
or three men who were within. There was nothing to disturb the peaceful
beauty of the afternoon. It was blowing hard outside, but this was a
sheltered spot, and the wind was little felt.

As James sat there silent, with no one at hand but the owner of the
shop, who was busy upon the keel of a new boat, a fisherman came in and
took a seat, with an affectation of ease and nonchalance; in a moment
another followed; two or three more came in, then others.

The carpenter stopped his work, and shading his eyes with his hand,
seemed to be looking down the bay.

There was a dead silence for a few moments. Then James spoke. But it was
not the voice of James. It was not that cheery and hearty voice which
had just been filling the shop with mirth. It was a voice harsh, forced,
mechanical,--the voice of a man paralyzed with terror.

"Why don't you tell me?" he said; "is it Henry, or--is it the boy?"

But no one spoke.

"You don't need to tell me nothing," he said, in the same strange tone
of paralysis and fear, "I knowed it when Bassett first come in. I
knowed it when the rest come in and closed in round me and did n't say
nothing."

He sat still a moment. Then he rose abruptly and turned to the landward
door. He stumbled over a stool which was in his way, and would have
fallen but that one of the men sprang forward and held him. He plunged
hastily out of the door. Just outside, in the shade of a small wild
cherry-tree, was a bucket of clams which he had dug; across the bucket
was an old hoe worn down to nothing. He stopped and mechanically took up
the pail and hoe. Bassett stood by the door and looked after him as he
went along the foot-path toward his home. There was a scantling fence
close by. He went over it in his old habitual fashion: first he set over
the bucket of clams and the hoe; then one leg went over and then the
other; he sat for an instant on the top slat and then slid down. He took
up his burden and went his way over the fields. In a moment he was lost
to sight behind a bit of rising ground. Then he reappeared, making his
way over the fields at his own heavy gait, until he was lost to sight
behind a clump of trees close to his own door.

They did not find Henry and the boy that