Noll laughed merrily. "Do you think I'm too small to take care of
myself, Hagar?" he asked; "I'm only going for a walk, and to see the
waves. I'll be back for supper with Uncle Richard."

The sky was wild and gray with clouds. A keen, chilly wind swept
fiercely over the rocks and along the shore, and the dark,
foam-fringed waves rode grandly in upon the beach with a thunderous
shock as they flew into spray. Some of the spray mist wet Noll's face,
even as he stood upon the piazza steps. But, warmly clad, and loving
the sight of the wild tumult, he started with a light heart for his
walk up the shore. As far as he could see, the sea was dark and
gloomy, with long curves of foam whitening its surface and gleaming on
the crests of its racing waves. At his feet, on the sand, lay great
tangles of kelp and flecks of yeasty froth. The air was keen, and
frosty enough to film the still pools in the hollows with brittle ice,
and where the spray fell upon the rocks, it congealed and cased the
old boulders with glittering mail. Not a sail was there in sight, and
Noll thought the sea had never looked so vast and lonely as now. Along
the horizon the clouds were white-edged, and seemed to open and lead
away into illimitable distances of vapor. He stopped under the shelter
of a rock to look behind him, over the path which he had trodden. The
stone house looked dark and forbidding, like everything else under
this wild gray sky; but Noll had long ago ceased to consider it as
resembling a prison. It was home, now, and so took a fairer, brighter
shape in his eyes. Beyond, the pines stood up against the sky, full of
sombreness and inky shadow.

"How cold and desolate everything is!" thought Noll; "but it's not
half so gloomy as it seems, after all. I wish, though, that Ned--dear
fellow!--was here, just to make it lively once in a while." He walked
on, listening to the heavy thunder of waves, and looking upon the
troubled waste of sea, till he came to the curve of the shore. Here
lay the narrow path of pebbles against which his uncle had warned him.
But there seemed no immediate danger, for the path looked as wide as
ever, and as there was yet an hour before the tide would be in, Noll
hurried across, the salt spray flying wildly about him.

"I'll go on a little further," he thought, "and I shall get home long
enough before tea-time, then."

Having gone a little way, however, he chanced to remember that he had
not been at Culm vi