rk and dizzying masses
full of wavering black holes, through which sometimes a blunt-nosed
bronze fish sank like a bolt, and again where sting ray darted, and
jellyfish palpitated with that wavering of fringe which produced the
faintest of turmoil at the surface of the water.

This would be at the twilight hour when warm airs alternated with cold,
like hopes with despairs. Sparbuoys of silver gray were duplicated in
the water, wrinkled like a snout at the least ripple from the oars.
Boats at anchor seemed twice their real size by reason of their dark
shadows made one with them. One by one the yellow riding lights were
hung, far in. They shone like new-minted coins; the harbor was itself a
purse of black velvet, to which the harbor master held the strings. The
quiet--the immortal quiet--operated to restore his soul. But at such
times Day would put the tips of her fingers mysteriously to her
incarnadined dumb lips and appear to hearken on the seaward side. If a
willful light came sometimes in her eyes he did not see it.

But even on the seaward side there would not be heard, on such nights,
the slightest sound to break the quiet, unless that of little fish
jumping playfully in the violet light, and sending out great circles to
shimmer toward the horizon.

So it drew on toward Day Rackby's eighteenth birthday.

One morning in October they set out from Meteor for the village. A cool
wind surged through the sparkling brown oak leaves of the oaks at
Hannan's Landing.

"They die as the old die," reflected Jethro Rackby, "gnarled, withered,
still hanging on when they are all but sapless."

Despite the melancholy thought, his vision was gladdened by a magic
clarity extending over all the heavens, and even to the source of the
reviving winds. The sea was blown clear of ships. In the harbor a few
still sat like seabirds drying plumage. Against the explosive whiteness
of wind clouds, their sails looked like wrinkled parchment, or yellowing
Egyptian cloth; the patches were mysterious hieroglyphs.

Day sat sleepily in the stern of the dory, her shoulders pinched back,
her heavy braid overside and just failing the water, her eyes on the
sway of cockles in the bottom of the boat.

Rackby puckered his face, when the square bell tower of the church,
white as chalk, came into view, dazzling against the somber green
upland. The red crown of a maple showed as if a great spoke of the
rising sun had passed across that field and touch