e, on tiny antlers of
gray caribou moss, with straggling little messages and admonishings of
love. Her apron pocket was never without its quota of these tiny shells
of brightest peacock blue. They trailed everywhere. He ground them under
heel at the threshold of his house. From long association they came to
stand for so many inquisitive little voices in themselves, beseeching,
questioning, defying.

But for his part, he grew to have a curious belief, even when her head
was well above his shoulder, that the strong arch of her bosom must ring
out with wild sweet song one day, like that which he had heard on the
November hillside, when Caddie Sills had run past him at the Preaching
Tree. This voice of Day's was like the voice sleeping in the great
bronze horn hanging in a rack, which his father had used to call the
hands to dinner. A little wind meant no sound, but a great effort,
summoning all the breath in the body, made the brazen throat ring out
like a viking's horn, wild and sweet.

So with Day, if an occasion might be great enough to call it forth.

"He always was a notional little man," the women said, on hearing this.
The old bachelor was losing his wits. Such doctrine as he held made him
out not one whit better off than Zinie Shadd, who averred that the heart
of man was but a pendulum swaying in his bosom--though how it still
moved when he stood on his head was more than even Zinie Shadd could
fathom, to be sure.

"It's the voice of conscience he's thinking of, to my judgment," said
one. "That girl is deafer than a haddock and dumb as the stone."

Untouched by gossip, the harbor master felt with pride that his jewel
among women was safe, and that here, within four humble walls, he
treasured up a being literally without guile, one who grew straight and
white as a birch sapling. "Pavilioned in splendor" were the words
descriptive of her which he had heard thunderously hymned in church. The
hair heavy on her brow was of the red gold of October.

If they might be said to be shipmates sailing the same waters, they yet
differed in the direction of their gaze. The harbor master fixed his
eyes upon the harbor; but little Day turned hers oftenest upon the blue
sea itself, whose mysterious inquietude he had turned from in dismay.

True, the harbor was not without its fascination for her. Leaning over
the side of his dory, the sea girl would shiver with delight to descry
those dismal forests over which they sailed, da