ressing himself to
Lois. "He takes a thing in his head. Now that sounds intelligent; but
it isn't, or _he_ isn't; for when you try, you can't get it out of his
head again. So he took it into his head to come to the Isles of Shoals,
and hither he has dragged his mother and his sister, and hither by
consequence he has dragged me. Now I ask you, as one who can tell--what
have we all come here for?"

Half-quizzically, half-inquisitively, the young man put the question,
lounging on the rocks and looking up into Lois's face. Tom grew
impatient. But Lois was too humble and simple-minded to fall into the
snare laid for her. I think she had a half-discernment of a hidden
intent under Mr. Lenox's words; nevertheless in the simple dignity of
truth she disregarded it, and did not even blush, either with
consciousness or awkwardness. She was a little amused.

"I suppose experience will have to be your teacher, as it is other
people's."

"I have heard so; I never saw anybody who had learned much that way."

"Come, George, that's ridiculous. Learning by experience is
proverbial," said Tom.

"I know!--but it's a delusion nevertheless. You sprain your ankle among
these stones, for instance. Well--you won't put your foot in that
particular hole again; but you will in another. That's the way you do,
Tom. But to return--Miss Lothrop, what has experience done for you in
the Isles of Shoals?"

"I have not had much yet."

"Does it pay to come here?"

"I think it does."

"How came anybody to think of coming here at first? that is what I
should like to know. I never saw a more uncompromising bit of
barrenness. Is there no desolation anywhere else, that men should come
to the Isles of Shoals?"

"There was quite a large settlement here once," said Lois.

"Indeed! When?"

"Before the war of the revolution. There were hundreds of people; six
hundred, somebody told me."

"What became of them?"

"Well," said Lois, smiling, "as that is more than a hundred years ago,
I suppose they all died."

"And their descendants?--"

"Living on the mainland, most of them. When the war came, they could
not protect themselves against the English."

"Fancy, Tom," said Lenox. "People liked it so well on these rocks, that
it took ships of war to drive them away!"

"The people that live here now are just as fond of them, I am told."

"What earthly or heavenly inducement?--"

"Yes, I might have said so too, the first hour of my being here, or t