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to the field where there was a great square patch of rough, weedy

potato-tops and tall ragweed. One corner was already dug, and I
chose a fat-looking hill where the tops were well withered. There

is all the pleasure that one can have in gold-digging in finding
one's hopes satisfied in the riches of a good hill of potatoes. I

longed to go on; but it did not seem frugal to dig any longer after
my basket was full, and at last I took my hoe by the middle and

lifted the basket to go back up the hill. I was sure that Mrs.
Blackett must be waitingimpatiently to slice the potatoes into the

chowder, layer after layer, with the fish.
"You let me take holt o' that basket, ma'am," said the

pleasant, anxious voice behind me.
I turned, startled in the silence of the wide field, and saw

an elderly man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-
headed and clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. He

looked just like his mother, and I had been imagining that he was
large and stout like his sister, Almira Todd; and, strange to say,

my fancy had led me to picture him not far from thirty and a little
loutish. It was necessary instead to pay William the respect due

to age.
I accustomed myself to plain facts on the instant, and we said

good-morning like old friends. The basket was really heavy, and I
put the hoe through its handle and offered him one end; then we

moved easily toward the house together, speaking of the fine
weather and of mackerel which were reported to be striking in all

about the bay. William had been out since three o'clock, and had
taken an extra fare of fish. I could feel that Mrs. Todd's eyes

were upon us as we approached the house, and although I fell behind
in the narrow path, and let William take the basket alone and

precede me at some little distance the rest of the way, I could
plainly hear her greet him.

"Got round to comin' in, didn't you?" she inquired, with
amusement. "Well, now, that's clever. Didn't know's I should see

you to-day, William, an' I wanted to settle an account."
I felt somewhat disturbed and responsible, but when I joined

them they were on most simple and friendly terms. It became
evident that, with William, it was the first step that cost, and

that, having once joined in social interests, he was able to pursue
them with more or less pleasure. He was about sixty, and not

young-looking for his years, yet so undying is the spirit of youth,
and bashfulness has such a power of survival, that I felt all the

time as if one must try to make the occasion easy for some one who
was young and new to the affairs of social life. He asked politely

if I would like to go up to the great ledge while dinner was
getting ready; so, not without a deep sense of pleasure, and a

delighted look of surprise from the two hostesses, we started,
William and I, as if both of us felt much younger than we looked.

Such was the innocence and simplicity of the moment that when I
heard Mrs. Todd laughing behind us in the kitchen I laughed too,

but William did not even blush. I think he was a little deaf, and
he stepped along before me most businesslike and intent upon his

errand.
We went from the upper edge of the field above the house into

a smooth, brown path among the dark spruces. The hot sun brought
out the fragrance of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as

we climbed the hill. William stopped once or twice to show
me a great wasps'-nest close by, or some fishhawks'-nests below in

a bit of swamp. He picked a few sprigs of late-blooming linnaea as
we came out upon an open bit of pasture at the top of the island,

and gave them to me without speaking, but he knew as well as I that
one could not say half he wished about linnaea. Through this piece

of rough pasture ran a huge shape of stone like the great backbone
of an enormous creature. At the end, near the woods, we could

climb up on it and walk along to the highest point; there above the
circle of pointed firs we could look down over all the island, and

could see the ocean that circled this and a hundred other bits of
island ground, the mainland shore and all the far horizons. It

gave a sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged
one in,--that sense of liberty in space and time which great

prospects always give.
"There ain't no such view in the world, I expect," said

William proudly, and I hastened to speak my heartfelt tribute of
praise; it was impossible not to feel as if an untraveled boy had

spoken, and yet one loved to have him value his native heath.
X

Where Pennyroyal Grew
WE WERE a little late to dinner, but Mrs. Blackett and Mrs. Todd

were lenient, and we all took our places after William had paused
to wash his hands, like a pious Brahmin, at the well, and put on a

neat blue coat which he took from a peg behind the kitchen door.
Then he resolutely asked a blessing in words that I could not hear,

and we ate the chowder and were thankful. The kitten went round
and round the table, quite erect, and, holding on by her fierce

young claws, she stopped to mew with pathos at each elbow, or
darted off to the open door when a song sparrow forgot himself and

lit in the grass too near. William did not talk much, but his
sister Todd occupied the time and told all the news there was to

tell of Dunnet Landing and its coasts, while the old mother
listened with delight. Her hospitality was something exquisite;

she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make
themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest's

pleasure,--that charmingsurrender for the moment of themselves and
whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one's

own life that can never be forgotten. Tact is after all a kind of
mindreading, and my hostess held the golden gift. Sympathy is of

the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett's world and mine
were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that final, that

highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness. Sometimes,
as I watched her eager, sweet old face, I wondered why she had been

set to shine on this lonely island of the northern coast. It must
have been to keep the balance true, and make up to all her

scattered and depending neighbors for other things which they may
have lacked.

When we had finished clearing away the old blue plates, and
the kitten had taken care of her share of the fresh haddock, just

as we were putting back the kitchen chairs in their places, Mrs.
Todd said briskly that she must go up into the pasture now to

gather the desired herbs.
"You can stop here an' rest, or you can accompany me," she

announced. "Mother ought to have her nap, and when we come back
she an' William'll sing for you. She admires music," said Mrs.

Todd, turning to speak to her mother.
But Mrs. Blackett tried to say that she couldn't sing as she

used, and perhaps William wouldn't feel like it. She looked tired,
the good old soul, or I should have liked to sit in the peaceful

little house while she slept; I had had much pleasant experience of
pastures already in her daughter's company. But it seemed best to

go with Mrs. Todd, and off we went.
Mrs. Todd carried the gingham bag which she had brought from

home, and a small heavy burden in the bottom made it hang straight
and slender from her hand. The way was steep, and she soon grew

breathless, so that we sat down to rest awhile on a convenient
large stone among the bayberry.

"There, I wanted you to see this,--'tis mother's picture,"
said Mrs. Todd; "'twas taken once when she was up to Portland soon

after she was married. That's me," she added, opening another worn
case, and displaying the full face of the cheerful child she looked

like still in spite of being past sixty. "And here's William an'
father together. I take after father, large and heavy, an' William

is like mother's folks, short an' thin. He ought to have made
something o' himself, bein' a man an' so like mother; but though

he's been very steady to work, an' kept up the farm, an' done his
fishin' too right along, he never had mother's snap an' power o'

seein' things just as they be. He's got excellent judgment, too,"
meditated William's sister, but she could not arrive at any

satisfactory decision upon what she evidently thought his failure
in life. "I think it is well to see any one so happy an' makin'

the most of life just as it falls to hand," she said as she began
to put the daguerreotypes away again; but I reached out my

hand to see her mother's once more, a most flowerlike face of a
lovely young woman in quaint dress. There was in the eyes a look

of anticipation and joy, a far-off look that sought the horizon;
one often sees it in seafaring families, inherited by girls and

boys alike from men who spend their lives at sea, and are always
watching for distant sails or the first loom of the land. At sea

there is nothing to be seen close by, and this has its counterpart
in a sailor's character, in the large and brave and patient traits

that are developed, the hopeful pleasantness that one loves so in
a seafarer.

When the family pictures were wrapped again in a big
handkerchief, we set forward in a narrow footpath and made our way

to a lonely place that faced northward, where there was more
pasturage and fewer bushes, and we went down to the edge of short

grass above some rocky cliffs where the deep sea broke with a great
noise, though the wind was down and the water looked quiet a little

way from shore. Among the grass grew such pennyroyal as the rest
of the world could not provide. There was a fine fragrance in the

air as we gathered it sprig by sprig and stepped along carefully,
and Mrs. Todd pressed her aromatic nosegay between her hands and

offered it to me again and again.
"There's nothin' like it," she said; "oh no, there's no such

pennyr'yal as this in the state of Maine. It's the right pattern
of the plant, and all the rest I ever see is but an imitation.

Don't it do you good?" And I answered with enthusiasm.
"There, dear, I never showed nobody else but mother where to

find this place; 'tis kind of sainted to me. Nathan, my husband,
an' I used to love this place when we was courtin', and"--she

hesitated, and then spoke softly--"when he was lost, 'twas just off
shore tryin' to get in by the short channel out there between Squaw

Islands, right in sight o' this headland where we'd set an' made
our plans all summer long."

I had never heard her speak of her husband before, but I felt
that we were friends now since she had brought me to this place.

"'Twas but a dream with us," Mrs. Todd said. "I knew it when
he was gone. I knew it"--and she whispered as if she were at

confession--"I knew it afore he started to go to sea. My heart was
gone out o' my keepin' before I ever saw Nathan; but he loved me

well, and he made me real happy, and he died before he ever knew
what he'd had to know if we'd lived long together. 'Tis very

strange about love. No, Nathan never found out, but my heart was
troubled when I knew him first. There's more women likes to be

loved than there is of those that loves. I spent some happy hours
right here. I always liked Nathan, and he never knew. But this

pennyr'yal always reminded me, as I'd sit and gather it and hear
him talkin'--it always would remind me of--the other one."

She looked away from me, and presently rose and went on by
herself. There was something lonely and solitary about her great

determined shape. She might have been Antigone alone on the Theban
plain. It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the

places of great grief and silence. An absolute, archaic grief
possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some

historic soul, with her sorrows and the remoteness of a daily life
busied with rustic simplicities and the scents of primeval herbs.

I was not incompetent at herb-gathering, and after a while,
when I had sat long enough waking myself to new thoughts, and

reading a page of remembrance with new pleasure, I gathered some
bunches, as I was bound to do, and at last we met again higher up

the shore, in the plain every-day world we had left behind when we
went down to the penny-royal plot. As we walked together along the

high edge of the field we saw a hundred sails about the bay and
farther seaward; it was mid-afternoon or after, and the day was



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