you was a good man than the very greatest.  No reason why you can’t be both.  There was a preacher over in Galilee once, so you told us yesterday, who was just good.  ’Twa’n’t till years afterwards that the crowd came to realize that he was great, too.  And, if I recollect right, he chummed in with publicans and sinners.  I’m glad you tore up that fool paper of mine.  I hoped you might when I gave it to you.  Now you run along, and I’ll wash dishes.  If cleanliness is next to godliness, then a parson ought to eat out of clean plates.”

As a matter of fact, the minister’s calls were in the nature of a compromise, although an unintentional one.  He dropped in on Zebedee Mayo, owner of the big house on the slope of the hill.  Captain Zeb took him up into what he called his “cupoler,” the observatory on the top of the house, and showed him Trumet spread out like a map.  The main road was north and south, winding and twisting its rutted, sandy way.  Along it were clustered the principal houses and shops, shaded by silver-leaf poplars, a few elms, and some willows and spruces.  Each tree bent slightly away from the northeast, the direction from which blew the heavy winter gales.  Beyond the main road were green slopes and pastures, with swamps in the hollows, swamps which were to be cranberry bogs in the days to come.  Then the lower road, with more houses, and, farther on, the beach, the flats—­partially uncovered because it was high tide—­and the bay.

Behind the Mayo house was the crest of Cannon Hill, more hills, pastures and swamps, scattered houses and pine groves.  Then began the tumbled, humped waste of sand dunes, and, over their ragged fringes of beach plum and bayberry bushes, the deep blue of the wide Atlantic.  The lighthouse was a white dot and the fish shanties a blotch of brown.  Along the inner edge of the blue were scars of dancing white, the flashing teeth of hungry shoals which had torn to pieces and swallowed many a good ship.  And, far out, dotted and sprinkled along the horizon, were sails.

“See?” said Captain Zeb, puffing still from the exertion of climbing the ladder to the “cupoler,” for he was distinctly “fleshy.”  “See?  The beacon’s up.  Packet come in this mornin’.  There she is.  See her down there by the breakwater?”

Sure enough, the empty barrel, painted red, was hoisted to the top of its pole on the crest of Cannon Hill.  And, looking down at the bay and following the direction of the stubby pointing finger, Ellery saw a little schooner, with her sails lowered, lying, slightly on her side, in a shallow pool near a long ridge of piled stones—­the breakwater.  A small wharf made out from the shore and black figures moved briskly upon it.  Carts were alongside the schooner and there more dots were busy.

“Eben’s pennant’s flyin’,” said Captain Zeb.  “He always sets colors when the packet’s in.  Keeps packet tavern, Eben does.  That’s it, that old-fashioned, gambrel-roofed house on the rise by the wharf.  Call it ‘Saints’ Rest,’ they do now, ’cause Eben’s so mighty religious.”