Summary

Chapters 5 & 6

When no explanation of who the mysterious old man is given, the Rass residents begin inventing their own story. Since the old man walked to the old, abandoned Wallace place, most people believe him to be Hiram Wallace. Hiram had been the only child of Captain Charles Wallace. Hiram had left the island in disgrace because he panicked and cut down the mast on his father’s boat during a lightning storm. When the other seamen saw that he had chopped the mast off willingly – that it hadn’t been felled by lightning – he became the butt of everyone’s jokes. So, he left the island for good. After Captain Wallace and his wife died, the Wallace house sat abandoned for twenty years. Although Louise has her doubts about the old man’s identity, her senile grandma swears it is him. Growing up...