of beams broken and bruised to a powder; it seemed to be as firmly planted there as the breaker itself.  Great feathers of foam flew across it, great waves shook themselves thin around it and veiled it in shrouds, and with their every breath the smothering sheets dashed over them,—­the two.  And constantly the boat drew nearer, as I said; they were almost within hail; Dan saw her hair streaming on the wind; he waited only for the long wave.  On it came, that long wave,—­oh!  I can see it now!—­plunging and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooning and rocking in.  Its hollows gaped with slippery darkness, it towered and sent the scuds before its trembling crest, breaking with a mighty rainbow as the sun burst forth, it fell in a white blindness everywhere, rushed seething up the sand,—­and the bowsprit was bare!——­

When father came home, the rack had driven down the harbor and left clear sky; it was near nightfall; they’d been searching the shore all day,—­to no purpose.  But that rainbow,—­I always took it for a sign.  Father was worn out, yet he sat in the chimney-side, cutting off great quids and chewing and thinking and sighing.  At last he went and wound up the clock,—­it was the stroke of twelve,—­and then he turned to me and said,—­

“Dan sent you this, Georgie.  He hailed a pilot-boat, and’s gone to the Cape to join the fall fleet to the fish’ries; and he sent you this.”

It was just a great hand-grip to make your nails purple, but there was heart’s-blood in it.  See, there’s the mark to-day.

So there was Dan off in the Bay of Chaleur.  It was the best place for him.  And I went about my work once more.  There was a great gap in my life, but I tried not to look at it.  I durstn’t think of Dan, and I wouldn’t think of them,—­the two.  Always in such times it’s as if a breath had come and blown across the pool and you could see down its dark depths and into the very bottom, but time scums it all over again.  And I tell you it’s best to look trouble in the face:  if you don’t, you’ll have more of it.  So I got a lot of shoes to bind, and what part of my spare time I wa’n’t at my books the needle flew.  But I turned no more to the past than I could help, and the future trembled too much to be seen.

Well, the two months dragged away, it got to be Thanksgiving-week, and at length the fleet was due.  I mind me I made a great baking that week; and I put brandy into the mince for once, instead of vinegar and dried-apple juice,—­and there were the fowls stuffed and trussed on the shelf,—­and the pumpkin-pies like slices of split gold,—­and the cranberry-tarts, plats of crimson and puffs of snow,—­and I was brewing in my mind a right-royal red Indian-pudding to come out of the oven smoking hot and be soused with thick clots of yellow cream,—­when one of the boys ran in and told us the fleet’d got back, but no Dan with it, —­he’d changed over to a fore-and-after, and wouldn’t be home at all, but was to stay down in the Georges all winter, and he’d sent us word.  Well, the baking went to the dogs, or the Thanksgiving beggars, which is the same thing.