curled, and
upstanding, like the hair on the head of a lovely child, or in the
painting of a Titian or a Tintoretto.

In a way he seemed out of place. Young men of his type so rarely came to
church alone. Indeed, they rarely came to church at all. He seemed to
belong to the out-of-doors--to wide spaces. I was puzzled, too, by a
faint sense of having seen him before.

It was in the middle of the sermon that it all connected up. Years ago a
ship had sailed into the harbor, and I had been taken down to see it. I
had been enchanted by the freshly painted figurehead--a strong young god
of some old Norse tale, with red-gold hair and a bright blue tunic. And
now in the harbor was _The Viking_, and here, in the shadow of a
perfectly orthodox pulpit, sat that strong young god, more glorious even
than my memory of his wooden prototype.

He seemed to be absolutely at home--sat and stood at the right places,
sang the hymns in a delightful barytone which was not loud, but which
sounded a clear note above the feebler efforts of the rest of us.

It has always been my custom to welcome the strangers within our gates,
and I must confess to a preference for those who seem to promise
something more than a perfunctory interchange.

So as my young viking came down the aisle, I held out my hand. "We are
so glad to have you with us."

He stopped at once, gave me his hand, and bent on me his clear gaze.
"Thank you." And then, immediately: "You live here? In Nantucket?"

"Yes."

"All the year round?"

"Practically."

"That is very interesting." Again his clear gaze appraised me. "May I
walk a little way with you? I have no friends here, and I want to ask a
lot of questions about the island."

The thing which struck me most as we talked was his utter lack of
self-consciousness. He gave himself to the subject in hand as if it were
a vital matter, and as if he swept all else aside. It is a quality
possessed by few New Englanders; it is, indeed, a quality possessed by
few Americans. So when he offered to walk with me, it seemed perfectly
natural that I should let him. Not one man in a thousand could have made
such a proposition without an immediate erection on my part of the
barriers of conventionality. To have erected any barrier in this
instance would have been an insult, to my perception of the kind of man
with whom I had to deal.

He was a gentleman, individual, and very much in earnest; and more than
all, he was immensely attr