he men are not about their fishing? We'd best hurry."

Captain Enos met them at the door. He gave Anne no word of greeting, but
said to his wife, "The British tell us to keep ashore. They'll have no
fishing. They know full well how easy 'tis for a good sloop to carry news
up the harbor. They are well posted as to how such things are done."

"But what can we do if we cannot fish?" exclaimed Mrs. Stoddard. "'Tis
well known that this sandy point is no place for gardens. We can scarce
raise vegetables enough to know what they mean. And as for corn and wheat,
every grain of them worth counting has to be bought from the other
settlements and paid for in fish. If we do not fish how shall we eat?"

The captain shook his head. "Go about your play, child," he said, turning
toward Anne, and the little girl walked slowly away toward a bunch of
scrubby pine trees near which she had established a playhouse. She had
built a cupboard of smooth chips, and here were gathered the shells she
had brought from the beach, a wooden doll which her father had made her,
and the pieces of a broken earthenware plate.

She took the doll from its narrow shelf and regarded it closely. Her
father had made it with no small skill. Its round head was covered with
curls carved in the soft wood; its eyes were colored with paint, and its
mouth was red. The body was more clumsily made, but the arms and legs had
joints, and the doll could sit up as erect as its small mistress. It wore
one garment made of blue and white checked cotton. It was the only toy
Anne Nelson had ever possessed, and it had seemed more her own because she
had kept it in the little playhouse under the pines.

"Now, you can go up to the house and live with me," she said happily, "and
now you shall have a truly name. You shall be Martha Nelson now. I know my
father would want you to be called Martha, if he knew that Mrs. Stoddard
put her arm around me and called me a 'dear child,'" and Anne smiled at
the remembrance.

She did not speak of her father before the Stoddards, but she could not
have explained the reason for her silence. She had wondered much about
him, and often watched the harbor yearningly, thinking that after all the
old sloop might come sailing back, bringing the slender, silent man who
had always smiled upon her, and praised her, and had told her that some
day she should have a Maltese kitten, and a garden with blossoming trees
and smooth paths. Anne did not forget him,