nce, and this made the game she was playing with him altogether more
stimulating than that she had carried on with any other of her admirers.
For Moses could sulk and storm for effect, and clear off as bright as
Harpswell Bay after a thunder-storm--for effect also. Moses could play
jealous, and make believe all those thousand-and-one shadowy nothings
that coquettes, male and female, get up to carry their points with; and
so their quarrels and their makings-up were as manifold as the
sea-breezes that ruffled the ocean before the Captain's door.

There is but one danger in play of this kind, and that is, that deep
down in the breast of every slippery, frothy, elfish Undine sleeps the
germ of an unawakened soul, which suddenly, in the course of some such
trafficking with the outward shows and seemings of affection, may wake
up and make of the teasing, tricksy elf a sad and earnest woman--a
creature of loves and self-denials and faithfulness unto death--in
short, something altogether too good, too sacred to be trifled with; and
when a man enters the game protected by a previous attachment which
absorbs all his nature, and the woman awakes in all her depth and
strength to feel the real meaning of love and life, she finds that she
has played with one stronger than she, at a terrible disadvantage.

Is this mine lying dark and evil under the saucy little feet of our
Sally? Well, we should not of course be surprised some day to find it
so.

CHAPTER XXIX

NIGHT TALKS

October is come, and among the black glooms of the pine forests flare
out the scarlet branches of the rock-maple, and the beech-groves are all
arrayed in gold, through which the sunlight streams in subdued richness.
October is come with long, bright, hazy days, swathing in purple mists
the rainbow brightness of the forests, and blending the otherwise gaudy
and flaunting colors into wondrous harmonies of splendor. And Moses
Pennel's ship is all built and ready, waiting only a favorable day for
her launching.

And just at this moment Moses is sauntering home from Captain
Kittridge's in company with Sally, for Mara has sent him to bring her to
tea with them. Moses is in high spirits; everything has succeeded to his
wishes; and as the two walk along the high, bold, rocky shore, his eye
glances out to the open ocean, where the sun is setting, and the fresh
wind blowing, and the white sails flying, and already fancies himself a
sea-king, commanding his own