ches. There is old Jonas, my
"fish father," a sturdy, independent fisherman farmer, who in his youth
sailed all over the world and made up his mind about everything. In his
old age he attends prayer-meetings and reads the _Missionary Herald_. He
also has plenty of money in an old brown sea-chest. He is a great heart
with an inflexible will and iron muscles. I must go to Orr's Island and
see him again." The story seems to have remained in her mind, for we are
told by her son that she worked upon it by turns with _The Minister's
Wooing_.

It was not, however, until eight years later, after _The Minister's
Wooing_ had been published and _Agnes of Sorrento_ was well begun, that
she took up her old story in earnest and set about making it into a
short serial. It would seem that her first intention was to confine
herself to a sketch of the childhood of her chief characters, with a
view to delineating the influences at work upon them; but, as she
herself expressed it, "Out of the simple history of the little Pearl of
Orr's Island as it had shaped itself in her mind, rose up a Captain
Kittridge with his garrulous yarns, and Misses Roxy and Ruey, given to
talk, and a whole pigeon roost of yet undreamed of fancies and dreams
which would insist on being written." So it came about that the story as
originally planned came to a stopping place at the end of Chapter XVII.,
as the reader may see when he reaches that place. The childish life of
her characters ended there, and a lapse of ten years was assumed before
their story was taken up again in the next chapter. The book when
published had no chapter headings. These have been supplied in the
present edition.

THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND

CHAPTER I

NAOMI

On the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath, in the State of
Maine, might have been seen, on a certain autumnal afternoon, a
one-horse wagon, in which two persons were sitting. One was an old man,
with the peculiarly hard but expressive physiognomy which characterizes
the seafaring population of the New England shores. A clear blue eye,
evidently practiced in habits of keen observation, white hair, bronzed,
weather-beaten cheeks, and a face deeply lined with the furrows of
shrewd thought and anxious care, were points of the portrait that made
themselves felt at a glance.

By his side sat a young woman of two-and-twenty, of a marked and
peculiar personal appearance. Her hair was black, and smoothly parted