Then days went by, as days will, and it was well into the New Year.  I used to sit there at the window, reading,—­but the lines would run together, and I’d forget what ’twas all about, and gather no sense, and the image of the little fore-and-after, the “Feather,” raked in between the leaves, and at last I had to put all that aside; and then I sat stitching, stitching, but got into a sad habit of looking up and looking out each time I drew the thread.  I felt it was a shame of me to be so glum, and mother missed my voice; but I could no more talk than I could have given conundrums to King Solomon, and as for singing—­Oh, I used to long so for just a word from Dan!

We’d had dry fine weeks all along, and father said he’d known we should have just such a season, because the goose’s breast-bone was so white; but St. Valentine’s day the weather broke, broke in a chain of storms that the September gale was a whisper to.  Ah, it was a dreadful winter, that!  You’ve surely heard of it.  It made forty widows in our town.  Of the dead that were found on Prince Edward’s Island’s shores there were four corpses in the next house yonder, and two in the one behind.  And what waiting and watching and cruel pangs of suspense for them that couldn’t have even the peace of certainty!  And I was one of those.

The days crept on, I say, and got bright again; no June days ever stretched themselves to half such length; there was perfect stillness in the house,—­it seemed to me that I counted every tick of the clock.  In the evenings the neighbors used to drop in and sit mumbling over their fearful memories till the flesh crawled on my bones.  Father, then, he wanted cheer, and he’d get me to singing “Caller Herrin’.”  Once, I’d sung the first part, but as I reached the lines,—­

  “When ye were sleepin’ on your pillows,
  Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows
  Darklin’ as they face the billows,
  A’ to fill our woven willows,”—­

as I reached those lines, my voice trembled so’s to shake the tears out of my eyes, and Jim Jerdan took it up himself and sung it through for me to words of his own invention.  He was always a kindly fellow, and he knew a little how the land lay between me and Dan.

“When I was down in the Georges,” said Jim Jerdan——­

“You?  When was you down there?” asked father.

“Well,—­once I was.  There’s worse places.”

“Can’t tell me nothing about the Georges,” said father. “’Ta’n’t the rivers of Damascus exactly, but ’ta’n’t the Marlstrom neither.”

“Ever ben there, Cap’n?”

“A few.  Spent more nights under cover roundabouts than Georgie’ll have white hairs in her head,—­for all she’s washing the color out of her eyes now.”

You see, father knew I set by my hair,—­for in those days I rolled it thick as a cable, almost as long, black as that cat’s back,—­and he thought he’d touch me up a little.

“Wash the red from her cheek and the light from her look, and she’ll still have the queen’s own tread,” said Jim.