remembered, as she unwrapped her bundle, that
she and her father had sailed across the harbor from Ipswich, where her
mother had died.

"We will live here, at the very end of the world, where a man may think as
he pleases," her father had said, and had moved their few household
possessions into a three-roomed house near the shore. Then he had given
his time to fishing, leaving Anne alone in the little house to do as she
pleased.

She was a quiet child, and found entertainment in building sand houses on
the beach, in wandering along the shore searching for bright shells and
smooth pebbles, and in doing such simple household tasks as her youth
admitted. A week before her appearance at Mrs. Stoddard's door, John
Nelson had gone out in his fishing-boat, and now he had been given up as
lost. No sign of him had been seen by the other fishermen, and it was
generally believed by his neighbors that his sloop had foundered and that
John Nelson had perished.

Some there were, however, who declared John Nelson to be a British spy,
and hesitated not to say that he had sailed away to join some vessel of
the British fleet with information as to the convenience of the harbor of
Province Town, and with such other news as he had brought from Ipswich and
the settlements nearer Boston. For it was just before the war of the
American Revolution, when men were watched sharply and taken to task
speedily for any lack of loyalty to the American colonies. And John Nelson
had many a time declared that he believed England meant well by her
American possessions,--a statement which set many of his neighbors against
him.

"'Mean well,' indeed!" Joseph Starkweather had replied to his neighbor's
remark. "When they have closed the port of Boston, so that no ship but the
king's war-ships dare go in and out? Even our fishing-boats are closely
watched. Already the Boston people are beginning to need many things.
Americans are not going to submit to feeding British soldiers while their
own men go hungry."

But now Joseph Starkweather was the only man who interested himself in the
lonely child. Day after day of that first week of her father's absence
Anne had stayed close to the little house, looking hopefully out across
the harbor for a sight of his boat; and day after day Joseph Starkweather
had come lounging down the beach to speak with the child, to ask her what
she had for breakfast, and if she slept safe and unafraid.

"The meal is gone," she tol