ago, to be
rocked by the sea, both by day and by night; and the aspect of the land
was equally strange. The forests which showed in the distance all
round, and which, in truth, were not very far from the wooden houses
forming the town of Boston, were of different shades of green, and
different, too, in shape of outline to those which Lois Barclay knew
well in her old home in Warwickshire. Her heart sank a little as she
stood alone, waiting for the captain of the good ship Redemption, the
kind rough old sailor, who was her only known friend in this unknown
continent. Captain Holdernesse was busy, however, as she saw, and it
would probably be some time before he would be ready to attend, to her;
so Lois sat down on one of the casks that lay about, and wrapped her
grey duffle cloak tight around her, and sheltered herself under her
hood, as well as might be, from the piercing wind, which seemed to
follow those whom it had tyrannized over at sea with a dogged wish of
still tormenting them on land. Very patiently did Lois sit there,
although she was weary, and shivering with cold; for the day was severe
for May, and the Redemption, with store of necessaries and comforts for
the Puritan colonists of New England, was the earliest ship that had
ventured across the seas.

How could Lois help thinking of the past, and speculating on the
future, as she sat on Boston pier, at this breathing-time of her life?
In the dim sea-mist which she gazed upon with aching eyes (filled,
against her will, with tears, from time to time), there rose the little
village church of Barford (not three miles from Warwick--you may see it
yet), where her father had preached ever since 1661, long before she
was born. He and her mother both lay dead in Barford churchyard; and
the old low grey church could hardly come before her vision without her
seeing the old parsonage too, the cottage covered with Austrian roses,
and yellow jessamine, where she had been born, sole child of parents
already long past the prime of youth. She saw the path, not a hundred
yards long, from the parsonage to the vestry door: that path which her
father trod daily; for the vestry was his study, and the sanctum, where
he pored over the ponderous tomes of the Father, and compared their
precepts with those of the authorities of the Anglican Church of that
day--the day of the later Stuarts; for Barford Parsonage at that time
scarcely exceeded in size and dignity the cottages by which it