two sat unfolding and looking over old letters and papers; and
when all this was done, he pushed them from him, and sat for a long time
buried in thoughts which went down very, very deep into that dark and
mossy well of which we have spoken.

Then he took a pen and wrote a letter, and addressed it to a direction
for which he had searched through many piles of paper, and having done
so, seemed to ponder, uncertainly, whether to send it or not. The
Harpswell post-office was kept in Mr. Silas Perrit's store, and the
letters were every one of them carefully and curiously investigated by
all the gossips of the village, and as this was addressed to St.
Augustine in Florida, he foresaw that before Sunday the news would be in
every mouth in the parish that the minister had written to so and so in
Florida, "and what do you s'pose it's about?"

"No, no," he said to himself, "that will never do; but at all events
there is no hurry," and he put back the papers in order, put the letter
with them, and locking his desk, looked at his watch and found it to be
two o'clock, and so he went to bed to think the matter over.

Now, there may be some reader so simple as to feel a portion of Miss
Emily's curiosity. But, my friend, restrain it, for Mr. Sewell will
certainly, as we foresee, become less rather than more communicative on
this subject, as he thinks upon it. Nevertheless, whatever it be that he
knows or suspects, it is something which leads him to contemplate with
more than usual interest this little mortal waif that has so strangely
come ashore in his parish. He mentally resolves to study the child as
minutely as possible, without betraying that he has any particular
reason for being interested in him.

Therefore, in the latter part of this mild November afternoon, which he
has devoted to pastoral visiting, about two months after the funeral, he
steps into his little sail-boat, and stretches away for the shores of
Orr's Island. He knows the sun will be down before he reaches there; but
he sees, in the opposite horizon, the spectral, shadowy moon, only
waiting for daylight to be gone to come out, calm and radiant, like a
saintly friend neglected in the flush of prosperity, who waits patiently
to enliven our hours of darkness.

As his boat-keel grazed the sands on the other side, a shout of laughter
came upon his oar from behind a cedar-covered rock, and soon emerged
Captain Kittridge, as long and lean and brown as the Ancient Ma