“You may run on with Max and Grace,” he said; “some of us will follow presently.”

He turned and offered his arm to Violet.  “It is heavy walking in this deep sand; let me help you.”

“Thank you; it is wearisome, and I am glad to have my husband’s strong arm to lean upon,” she answered, smiling sweetly up into his eyes as she accepted the offered aid.

The young girls and the children came running back to meet them.  “He’s catching blue-fish,” they announced; “he has a good many in his cart.”

“Now, watch him, Mamma Vi; you haven’t had a chance to see just such fishing before,” said Max.  “See, he’s whirling his drail; there! now he has sent it far out into the water.  Now he’s hauling it in, and—­oh yes, a good big fish with it.”

“What is a drail?” Violet asked.

“It is a hook with a long piece of lead above it covered with eel-skin,” answered her husband.

“There it goes again!” she exclaimed.  “It is a really interesting sight, but rather hard work, I should think.”

When tired of watching the fisherman, they wandered back and forth along the beach in search of curiosities, picking up bits of sponge, rockweed, seaweed, and a greater variety of shells than they had been able to find on other parts of the shore which they had visited.

It was only when they had barely time enough left to reach home for a late dinner that they were all willing to enter the carriages and be driven away from the spot.

As they passed through the streets of the town, the crier was out with his hand-bell.

“Oh yes! oh yes! all the windows to be taken out of the Athenaeum to-day, and the Athenaeum to be elevated to-night.”

After listening intently to several repetitions of the cry, they succeeded in making it out.

“But what on earth does he mean?” exclaimed Betty.

“Ventilated, I presume,” replied the captain.  “There was an exhibition there last night, and complaints were made that the room was close.”

Toward evening of the next day our friends in the cliff cottages began to look for the return of the Edna with the four young men of their party.  But night fell, and yet they had not arrived.

Elsie began to feel anxious, but tried not to allow her disturbance to be perceived, especially by Zoe, who seemed restless and ill at ease, going often out to the edge of the cliff and gazing long and intently toward that quarter of the horizon where she had seen the Edna disappear on the morning she sailed out of Nantucket harbor.

She sought her post of observation for the twentieth time just before sunset, and remained there till it grew too dark to see much beyond the line of breakers along the shore below.

Turning to re-enter the house, she found Captain Raymond standing by her side.

“O captain,” she cried, “isn’t it time the Edna was in?”

“I rather supposed they would be in a little earlier than this, but am not at all surprised that they are not,” he answered, in a cheery tone.  “Indeed, it is quite possible that they may not get in till to-morrow.  When they left it was uncertain that they would come back to-day.  So, my good sister, I think we have no cause for anxiety.”