Poor Sarah could not answer, but the brave old mother, a veteran in sorrows, replied with trembling lips, “We don’t know anythin’ o’ thy brother, Mary; an’ Jim hain’t b’en hum sence las’ night.  His boat’s gone, an’ we thought he might ha’ went out to help the ship that was a-firin’ all night.  But she’s sailed off this mornin’ all right; an’ father, he says she was a Britisher an’ undly a-firin’ ter fool us folks.  So I don’t know nothin’ about it,” uttering the last words in a drearily hopeless tone that gave them exceeding pathos.

For a moment Mary stood in dismay; then she cried wildly, “Oh, they’re drowned, they’re drowned!  Jim come deown ter eour heouse las’ night a-sayin’ he’d heard the firin’ o’ a ship in ‘stress, an’ askin’ Eb ter go with him an’ help him git his boat eout, an’ telled me ter run along deown to Zack Tumnaydoo’s An’ ax Zack an’ Ellery ter go with ‘em.  An’ I did, an’ that’s the las’ anybody’s seen o’ any one on ’em.  Oh dear! oh dear!” And wringing her hands, the sobbing girl ran back as quickly as she had come to impart to her mother and sisters the full extent of her evil tidings.

The cold, sad, desolate weeks and months that now rolled slowly on are to this day remembered on Nantucket as those of the “hard winter.”  Provisions were scarce, fuel was difficult to obtain, the harbor was frozen over, so that few fish could be taken there, and all communication with “the main” was cut off by British cruisers.  In January the cherished old horse was killed because there was no longer hay to feed him, and even oats were “too precious to be fed to dumb beasts.”  In February the stalwart old Stephen lay grimly down to die, saying pityingly, “It’s time, gals:  I can’t dew ye no more good by stayin’; an’ I’m so tired.”

The day succeeding the silent funeral, where two women had dropped the few tears that were left them to shed, good old Thomas Macy came and took his daughter and her mother to his own home.  And in windy, still frozen March the wail of a tiny baby was heard in the house.

Under all the trouble the two brave women made no moan.  Silently clinging together, never losing sight of each other for more than a few moments at a time, they yet said nothing of their greatest grief, that Jim should have disappeared with such unworthy words on his lips and thoughts in his heart, until, a few days after the baby’s birth, Sarah said to her mother, “I know he’s not dead.  If he’d ha’ died, he’d ha’ come back and told me he was sorry.  Fur I dew think he’d be sorry.  Don’t thee, mother?” And the mother nodded assent and smiled through her tears.