Mary did not answer.  She could not grow any paler than she was before; a dreadful curiosity came over her, but her lips could frame no question.  Amaziah went on:—­

“Ye see, the cap’en he got killed with a spar when the blow fust come on, and Jim Marvyn he commanded; and Jeduthun says that he seemed to have the spirit of ten men in him; he worked and he watched, and he was everywhere at once, and he kep’ ’em all up for three days, till finally they lost their rudder, and went drivin’ right onto the rocks.  When, they come in sight, he come up on deck, and says he, ’Well, my boys, we’re headin’ right into eternity,’ says he, ’and our chances for this world a’n’t worth mentionin’, any on us; but we’ll all have one try for our lives.  Boys, I’ve tried to do my duty by you and the ship,—­but God’s will be done!  All I have to ask now is, that, if any of you git to shore, you’ll find my mother and tell her I died thinkin’ of her and father and my dear friends.’  That was the last Jeduthun saw of him; for in a few minutes more the ship struck, and then it was every man for himself.  Laws!  Jeduthun says there couldn’t nobody have stood beatin’ agin them rocks, unless they was all leather and inger-rubber like him.  Why, he says the waves would take strong men and jest crush ’em against the rocks like smashin’ a pie-plate!”

Here Mary’s paleness became livid; she made a hasty motion to rise from the table, and Solomon trod on the foot of the narrator.

“You seem to forget that friends and relations has feelin’s,” he said, as Mary hastily went into her own room.

Amaziah, suddenly awakened to the fact that he had been trespassing, sat with mouth half open and a stupefied look of perplexity on his face for a moment, and then, rising hastily, said, “Well, Sol, I guess I’ll go an’ yoke up the steers.”

At eight o’clock all the morning toils were over, the wide kitchen cool and still, and the one-horse wagon standing at the door, into which climbed Mary, her mother, and the Doctor; for, though invested with no spiritual authority, and charged with no ritual or form for hours of affliction, the religion of New England always expects her minister as a first visitor in every house of mourning.

The ride was a sorrowful and silent one.  The Doctor, propped upon his cane, seemed to reflect deeply.

“Have you been at all conversant with the exercises of our young friend’s mind on the subject of religion?” he asked.

Mrs. Scudder did not at first reply.  The remembrance of James’s last letter flashed over her mind, and she felt the vibration of the frail child beside her, in whom every nerve was quivering.  After a moment, she said,—­“It does not become us to judge the spiritual state of any one.  James’s mind was in an unsettled way when he left; but who can say what wonders may have been effected by divine grace since then?”