Anne's House of Dreams
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

"To Laura, in memory of the olden time."

CHAPTER 1

IN THE GARRET OF GREEN GABLES

"Thanks be, I'm done with geometry, learning or teaching it,"
said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped
a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books,
banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at
Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with gray eyes
that were like a morning sky.

The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place,
as all garrets should be. Through the open window, by
which Anne sat, blew the sweet, scented, sun-warm air
of the August afternoon; outside, poplar boughs rustled
and tossed in the wind; beyond them were the woods,
where Lover's Lane wound its enchanted path, and the
old apple orchard which still bore its rosy harvests
munificently. And, over all, was a great mountain
range of snowy clouds in the blue southern sky.
Through the other window was glimpsed a distant,
white-capped, blue sea--the beautiful St. Lawrence
Gulf, on which floats, like a jewel, Abegweit, whose
softer, sweeter Indian name has long been forsaken for
the more prosaic one of Prince Edward Island.

Diana Wright, three years older than when we last saw
her, had grown somewhat matronly in the intervening
time. But her eyes were as black and brilliant, her
cheeks as rosy, and her dimples as enchanting, as in
the long-ago days when she and Anne Shirley had vowed
eternal friendship in the garden at Orchard Slope. In
her arms she held a small, sleeping, black-curled
creature, who for two happy years had been known to the
world of Avonlea as "Small Anne Cordelia."  Avonlea
folks knew why Diana had called her Anne, of course,
but Avonlea folks were puzzled by the Cordelia. There
had never been a Cordelia in the Wright or Barry
connections. Mrs. Harmon Andrews said she supposed
Diana had found the name in some trashy novel, and
wondered that Fred hadn't more sense than to allow it.
But Diana and Anne smiled at each other. They knew how
Small Anne Cordelia had come by her name.

"You always hated geometry," said Diana with a
retrospective smile. "I should think you'd be real
glad to be through with teaching, anyhow."

"Oh, I've always liked teaching, apart from geometry.
These past three years in Summerside have been very
pleasant ones. Mrs. Harmon Andrews told me when I came
home that I wouldn't likely find married life as much
better than teaching as I expected. Evidently Mrs.
Harmon is of Hamlet's opinion that it may be better to
bear the ills that we have than fly to others that we
know not of."

Anne's laugh, as blithe and irresistible as of yore,
with an added note of sweetness and maturity, rang
through the garret. Marilla in the kitchen below,
compounding blue plum preserve, heard it and smiled;
then sighed to think how seldom that dear laugh would
echo through Green Gables in the years to come.
Nothing in her life had ever given Marilla so much
happiness as the knowledge that Anne was going to marry
Gilbert Blythe; but every joy must bring with it its
little shadow of sorrow. During the three Summerside
years Anne had been home often for vacations and
weekends; but, after this, a bi-annual visit would be
as much as could be hoped for.

"You needn't let what Mrs. Harmon says worry you,"
said Diana, with the calm assurance of the four-years
matron. "Married life has its ups and downs, of
course. You mustn't expect that everything will always
go smoothly. But I can assure you, Anne, that it's a
happy life, when you're married to the right man."

Anne smothered a smile. Diana's airs of vast
experience always amused her a little.

"I daresay I'll be putting them on too, when I've been
married four years," she thought. "Surely my sense of
humor will preserve me from it, though."

"Is it settled yet where you are going to live?" asked
Diana, cuddling Small Anne Cordelia with the
inimitable gesture of motherhood which always sent
through Anne's heart, filled with sweet, unuttered
dreams and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure
and half a strange, ethereal pain.

"Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I
'phoned to you to come down today. By the way, I can't
realize that we really have telephones in Avonlea now.
It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish
for this darling, leisurely old place."

"We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them," said Diana.
"We should never have got the line if they hadn't
taken the matter up and carried it through. There was
enough cold water thrown to discourage any society.
But they stuck to it, nevertheless. You did a splendid
thing for Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne.
What fun we did have at our meetings! Will you ever
forget the blue hall and Judson Parker's scheme for
painting medicine advertisements on his fence?"

"I don't know that I'm wholly grateful to the A. V. I.
S. in the matter of the telephone," said Anne. "Oh, I
know it's most convenient-- even more so than our old
device of signalling to each other by flashes of
candlelight! And, as Mrs. Rachel says, `Avonlea must
keep up with the procession, that's what.'  But somehow
I feel as if I didn't want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr.
Harrison, when he wants to be witty, calls `modern
inconveniences.'  I should like to have it kept always
just as it was in the dear old years. That's
foolish--and sentimental--and impossible. So I shall
immediately become wise and practical and possible.
The telephone, as Mr. Harrison concedes, is `a buster
of a good thing'--even if you do know that probably
half a dozen interested people are listening along the
line."

"That's the worst of it," sighed Diana. "It's so
annoying to hear the receivers going down whenever you
ring anyone up. They say Mrs. Harmon Andrews insisted
that their `phone should be put in their kitchen just
so that she could listen whenever it rang and keep an
eye on the dinner at the same time. Today, when you
called me, I distinctly heard that queer clock of the
Pyes' striking. So no doubt Josie or Gertie was
listening."

"Oh, so that is why you said, `You've got a new clock
at Green Gables, haven't you?'  I couldn't imagine what
you meant. I heard a vicious click as soon as you had
spoken. I suppose it was the Pye receiver being hung
up with profane energy. Well, never mind the Pyes. As
Mrs. Rachel says, `Pyes they always were and Pyes they
always will be, world without end, amen.'  I want to
talk of pleasanter things. It's all settled as to
where my new home shall be."

"Oh, Anne, where? I do hope it's near here."

"No-o-o, that's the drawback. Gilbert is going to
settle at Four Winds Harbor--sixty miles from here."

"Sixty! It might as well be six hundred," sighed
Diana. "I never can get further from home now than
Charlottetown."

"You'll have to come to Four Winds. It's the most
beautiful harbor on the Island. There's a little
village called Glen St. Mary at its head, and Dr. David
Blythe has been practicing there for fifty years. He
is Gilbert's great-uncle, you know. He is going to
retire, and Gilbert is to take over his practice. Dr.
Blythe is going to keep his house, though, so we shall
have to find a habitation for ourselves. I don't know
yet what it is, or where it will be in reality, but I
have a little house o'dreams all furnished in my
imagination--a tiny, delightful castle in Spain."

"Where are you going for your wedding tour?" asked
Diana.

"Nowhere. Don't look horrified, Diana dearest. You
suggest Mrs. Harmon Andrews. She, no doubt, will
remark condescendingly that people who can't afford
wedding `towers' are real sensible not to take them;
and then she'll remind me that Jane went to Europe for
hers. I want to spend MY honeymoon at Four Winds in my
own dear house of dreams."

"And you've decided not to have any bridesmaid?"

"There isn't any one to have. You and Phil and
Priscilla and Jane all stole a march on me in the
matter of marriage; and Stella is teaching in
Vancouver. I have no other `kindred soul' and I won't
have a bridesmaid who isn't."

"But you are going to wear a veil, aren't you?" asked
Diana, anxiously.

"Yes, indeedy. I shouldn't feel like a bride without
one. I remember telling Matthew, that evening when he
brought me to Green Gables, that I never expected to be
a bride because I was so homely no one would ever want
to marry me--unless some foreign missionary did. I had
an idea then that foreign missionaries couldn't afford
to be finicky in the matter of looks if they wanted a
girl to risk her life among cannibals. You should have
seen the foreign missionary Priscilla married. He was
as handsome and inscrutable as those daydreams we once
planned to marry ourselves, Diana; he was the best
dressed man I ever met, and he raved over Priscilla's
`ethereal, golden beauty.'  But of course there are no
cannibals in Japan."

"Your wedding dress is a dream, anyhow," sighed Diana
rapturously. "You'll look like a perfect queen in
it--you're so tall and slender. How DO you keep so
slim, Anne? I'm fatter than ever--I'll soon have no
waist at all."

"Stoutness and slimness seem to be matters of
predestination," said Anne. "At all events, Mrs.
Harmon Andrews can't say to you what she said to me
when I came home from Summerside, `Well, Anne, you're
just about as skinny as ever.'  It sounds quite
romantic to be `slender,' but `skinny' has a very
different tang."

"Mrs. Harmon has been talking about your trousseau.
She admits it's as nice as Jane's, although she says
Jane married a millionaire and you are only marrying a
`poor young doctor without a cent to his name.'"

Anne laughed.

"My dresses ARE nice. I love pretty things. I
remember the first pretty dress I ever had--the brown
gloria Matthew gave me for our school concert. Before
that everything I had was so ugly. It seemed to me
that I stepped into a new world that night."

"That was the night Gilbert recited `Bingen on the
Rhine,' and looked at you when he said, `There's
another, NOT a sister.'  And you were so furious
because he put your pink tissue rose in his breast
pocket! You didn't much imagine then that you would
ever marry him."

"Oh, well, that's another instance of predestination,"
laughed Anne, as they went down the garret stairs.

CHAPTER 2

THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

There was more excitement in the air of Green Gables
than there had ever been before in all its history.
Even Marilla was so excited that she couldn't help
showing it--which was little short of being phenomenal.

"There's never been a wedding in this house," she
said, half apologetically, to Mrs. Rachel Lynde.
"When I was a child I heard an old minister say that a
house was not a real home until it had been consecrated
by a birth, a wedding and a death. We've had deaths
here--my father and mother died here as well as
Matthew; and we've even had a birth here. Long ago,
just after we moved into this house, we had a married
hired man for a little while, and his wife had a baby
here. But there's never been a wedding before. It
does seem so strange to think of Anne being married.
In a way she just seems to me the little girl Matthew
brought home here fourteen years ago. I can't realize
that she's grown up. I shall never forget what I felt
when I saw Matthew bringing in a GIRL. I wonder what
became of the boy we would have got if there hadn't
been a mistake. I wonder what HIS fate was."

"Well, it was a fortunate mistake," said Mrs. Rachel
Lynde, "though, mind you, there was a time I didn't
think so--that evening I came up to see Anne and she
treated us to such a scene. Many things have changed
since then, that's what."

Mrs. Rachel sighed, and then brisked up again. When
weddings were in order Mrs. Rachel was ready to let the
dead past bury its dead.

"I'm going to give Anne two of my cotton warp
spreads," she resumed. "A tobacco-stripe one and an
apple-leaf one. She tells me they're getting to be
real fashionable again. Well, fashion or no fashion, I
don't believe there's anything prettier for a
spare-room bed than a nice apple-leaf spread, that's
what. I must see about getting them bleached. I've
had them sewed up in cotton bags ever since Thomas
died, and no doubt they're an awful color. But
there's a month yet, and dew-bleaching will work
wonders."

Only a month! Marilla sighed and then said proudly:

"I'm giving Anne that half dozen braided rugs I have
in the garret. I never supposed she'd want
them--they're so old-fashioned, and nobody seems to
want anything but hooked mats now. But she asked me
for them--said she'd rather have them than anything
else for her floors. They ARE pretty. I made them of
the nicest rags, and braided them in stripes. It was
such company these last few winters. And I'll make
her enough blue plum preserve to stock her jam closet
for a year. It seems real strange. Those blue plum
trees hadn't even a blossom for three years, and I
thought they might as well be cut down. And this last
spring they were white, and such a crop of plums I
never remember at Green Gables."

"Well, thank goodness that Anne and Gilbert really are
going to be married after all. It's what I've always
prayed for," said Mrs. Rachel, in the tone of one who
is comfortably sure that her prayers have availed much.
"It was a great relief to find out that she really
didn't mean to take the Kingsport man. He was rich, to
be sure, and Gilbert is poor--at least, to begin with;
but then he's an Island boy."

"He's Gilbert Blythe," said Marilla contentedly.
Marilla would have died the death before she would have
put into words the thought that was always in the
background of her mind whenever she had looked at
Gilbert from his childhood up--the thought that, had it
not been for her own wilful pride long, long ago, he
might have been HER son. Marilla felt that, in some
strange way, his marriage with Anne would put right
that old mistake. Good had come out of the evil of the
ancient bitterness.

As for Anne herself, she was so happy that she almost
felt frightened. The gods, so says the old
superstition, do not like to behold too happy mortals.
It is certain, at least, that some human beings do not.
Two of that ilk descended upon Anne one violet dusk and
proceeded to do what in them lay to prick the rainbow
bubble of her satisfaction. If she thought she was
getting any particular prize in young Dr. Blythe, or if
she imagined that he was still as infatuated with her
as he might have been in his salad days, it was surely
their duty to put the matter before her in another
light. Yet these two worthy ladies were not enemies
of Anne; on the contrary, they were really quite fond
of her, and would have defended her as their own young
had anyone else attacked her. Human nature is not
obliged to be consistent.

Mrs. Inglis--nee Jane Andrews, to quote from the Daily
Enterprise--came with her mother and Mrs. Jasper Bell.
But in Jane the milk of human kindness had not been
curdled by years of matrimonial bickerings. Her lines
had fallen in pleasant places. In spite of the
fact--as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would say--that she had
married a millionaire, her marriage had been happy.
Wealth had not spoiled her. She was still the placid,
amiable, pink-cheeked Jane of the old quartette,
sympathising with her old chum's happiness and as
keenly interested in all the dainty details of Anne's
trousseau as if it could rival her own silken and
bejewelled splendors. Jane was not brilliant, and had
probably never made a remark worth listening to in her
life; but she never said anything that would hurt
anyone's feelings-- which may be a negative talent but
is likewise a rare and enviable one.

"So Gilbert didn't go back on you after all," said
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, contriving to convey an expression
of surprise in her tone. "Well, the Blythes generally
keep their word when they've once passed it, no matter
what happens. Let me see--you're twenty-five, aren't
you, Anne? When I was a girl twenty-five was the first
corner. But you look quite young. Red-headed people
always do."

"Red hair is very fashionable now," said Anne, trying
to smile, but speaking rather coldly. Life had
developed in her a sense of humor which helped her over
many difficulties; but as yet nothing had availed to
steel her against a reference to her hair.

"So it is--so it is," conceded Mrs. Harmon. "There's
no telling what queer freaks fashion will take. Well,
Anne, your things are very pretty, and very suitable to
your position in life, aren't they, Jane? I hope
you'll be very happy. You have my best wishes, I'm
sure. A long engagement doesn't often turn out well.
But, of course, in your case it couldn't be helped."

"Gilbert looks very young for a doctor. I'm afraid
people won't have much confidence in him," said Mrs.
Jasper Bell gloomily. Then she shut her mouth tightly,
as if she had said what she considered it her duty to
say and held her conscience clear. She belonged to the
type which always has a stringy black feather in its
hat and straggling locks of hair on its neck.

Anne's surface pleasure in her pretty bridal things was
temporarily shadowed; but the deeps of happiness below
could not thus be disturbed; and the little stings of
Mesdames Bell and Andrews were forgotten when Gilbert
came later, and they wandered down to the birches of
the brook, which had been saplings when Anne had come
to Green Gables, but were now tall, ivory columns in a
fairy palace of twilight and stars. In their shadows
Anne and Gilbert talked in lover-fashion of their new
home and their new life together.

"I've found a nest for us, Anne."

"Oh, where? Not right in the village, I hope. I
wouldn't like that altogether."

"No. There was no house to be had in the village.
This is a little white house on the harbor shore, half
way between Glen St. Mary and Four Winds Point. It's a
little out of the way, but when we get a 'phone in that
won't matter so much. The situation is beautiful. It
looks to the sunset and has the great blue harbor
before it. The sand-dunes aren't very far away--the
sea winds blow over them and the sea spray drenches
them."

"But the house itself, Gilbert,--OUR first home? What
is it like?"

"Not very large, but large enough for us. There's a
splendid living room with a fireplace in it downstairs,
and a dining room that looks out on the harbor, and a
little room that will do for my office. It is about
sixty years old--the oldest house in Four Winds. But
it has been kept in pretty good repair, and was all
done over about fifteen years ago--shingled, plastered
and re-floored. It was well built to begin with. I
understand that there was some romantic story connected
with its building, but the man I rented it from didn't
know it.

He said Captain Jim was the only one who could spin
that old yarn now."

"Who is Captain Jim?"

"The keeper of the lighthouse on Four Winds Point.
You'll love that Four Winds light, Anne. It's a
revolving one, and it flashes like a magnificent star
through the twilights. We can see it from our living
room windows and our front door."

"Who owns the house?"

"Well, it's the property of the Glen St. Mary
Presbyterian Church now, and I rented it from the
trustees. But it belonged until lately to a very old
lady, Miss Elizabeth Russell. She died last spring,
and as she had no near relatives she left her property
to the Glen St. Mary Church. Her furniture is still in
the house, and I bought most of it--for a mere song you
might say, because it was all so old- fashioned that
the trustees despaired of selling it. Glen St. Mary
folks prefer plush brocade and sideboards with mirrors
and ornamentations, I fancy. But Miss Russell's
furniture is very good and I feel sure you'll like it,
Anne."

"So far, good," said Anne, nodding cautious approval.
"But, Gilbert, people cannot live by furniture alone.
You haven't yet mentioned one very important thing.
Are there TREES about this house?"

"Heaps of them, oh, dryad! There is a big grove of
fir trees behind it, two rows of Lombardy poplars down
the lane, and a ring of white birches around a very
delightful garden. Our front door opens right into the
garden, but there is another entrance--a little gate
hung between two firs. The hinges are on one trunk and
the catch on the other. Their boughs form an arch
overhead."

"Oh, I'm so glad! I couldn't live where there were no
trees-- something vital in me would starve. Well,
after that, there's no use asking you if there's a
brook anywhere near. THAT would be expecting too
much."

"But there IS a brook--and it actually cuts across one
corner of the garden."

"Then," said Anne, with a long sigh of supreme
satisfaction, "this house you have found IS my house
of dreams and none other."

CHAPTER 3

THE LAND OF DREAMS AMONG

"Have you made up your mind who you're going to have
to the wedding, Anne?" asked Mrs. Rachel Lynde, as she
hemstitched table napkins industriously. "It's time
your invitations were sent, even if they are to be only
informal ones."

"I don't mean to have very many," said Anne. "We just
want those we love best to see us married. Gilbert's
people, and Mr. and Mrs. Allan, and Mr. and Mrs.
Harrison."

"There was a time when you'd hardly have numbered Mr.
Harrison among your dearest friends," said Marilla
drily.

"Well, I wasn't VERY strongly attracted to him at our
first meeting," acknowledged Anne, with a laugh over
the recollection. "But Mr. Harrison has improved on
acquaintance, and Mrs. Harrison is really a dear.
Then, of course, there are Miss Lavendar and Paul."

"Have they decided to come to the Island this summer?
I thought they were going to Europe."

"They changed their minds when I wrote them I was
going to be married. I had a letter from Paul today.
He says he MUST come to my wedding, no matter what
happens to Europe."

"That child always idolised you," remarked Mrs.
Rachel.

"That `child' is a young man of nineteen now, Mrs.
Lynde."

"How time does fly!" was Mrs. Lynde's brilliant and
original response.

"Charlotta the Fourth may come with them. She sent
word by Paul that she would come if her husband would
let her. I wonder if she still wears those enormous
blue bows, and whether her husband calls her Charlotta
or Leonora. I should love to have Charlotta at my
wedding. Charlotta and I were at a wedding long syne.
They expect to be at Echo Lodge next week. Then there
are Phil and the Reverend Jo----"

"It sounds awful to hear you speaking of a minister
like that, Anne," said Mrs. Rachel severely.

"His wife calls him that."

"She should have more respect for his holy office,
then," retorted Mrs. Rachel.

"I've heard you criticise ministers pretty sharply
yourself," teased Anne.

"Yes, but I do it reverently," protested Mrs. Lynde.
"You never heard me NICKNAME a minister."

Anne smothered a smile.

"Well, there are Diana and Fred and little Fred and
Small Anne Cordelia--and Jane Andrews. I wish I could
have Miss Stacey and Aunt Jamesina and Priscilla and
Stella. But Stella is in Vancouver, and Pris is in
Japan, and Miss Stacey is married in California, and
Aunt Jamesina has gone to India to explore her
daughter's mission field, in spite of her horror of
snakes. It's really dreadful--the way people get
scattered over the globe."

"The Lord never intended it, that's what," said Mrs.
Rachel authoritatively. "In my young days people grew
up and married and settled down where they were born,
or pretty near it. Thank goodness you've stuck to the
Island, Anne. I was afraid Gilbert would insist on
rushing off to the ends of the earth when he got
through college, and dragging you with him."

"If everybody stayed where he was born places would
soon be filled up, Mrs. Lynde."

"Oh, I'm not going to argue with you, Anne. _I_ am
not a B.A. What time of the day is the ceremony to
be?"

"We have decided on noon--high noon, as the society
reporters say. That will give us time to catch the
evening train to Glen St. Mary."

"And you'll be married in the parlor?"

"No--not unless it rains. We mean to be married in
the orchard-- with the blue sky over us and the
sunshine around us. Do you know when and where I'd
like to be married, if I could? It would be at dawn--a
June dawn, with a glorious sunrise, and roses blooming
in the gardens; and I would slip down and meet Gilbert
and we would go together to the heart of the beech
woods,--and there, under the green arches that would be
like a splendid cathedral, we would be married."

Marilla sniffed scornfully and Mrs. Lynde looked
shocked.

"But that would be terrible queer, Anne. Why, it
wouldn't really seem legal. And what would Mrs. Harmon
Andrews say?"

"Ah, there's the rub," sighed Anne. "There are so
many things in life we cannot do because of the fear of
what Mrs. Harmon Andrews would say. ` 'Tis true, 'tis
pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true.'  What delightful
things we might do were it not for Mrs. Harmon
Andrews!"

"By times, Anne, I don't feel quite sure that I
understand you altogether," complained Mrs. Lynde.

"Anne was always romantic, you know," said Marilla
apologetically.

"Well, married life will most likely cure her of
that," Mrs. Rachel responded comfortingly.

Anne laughed and slipped away to Lover's Lane, where
Gilbert found her; and neither of them seemed to
entertain much fear, or hope, that their married life
would cure them of romance.

The Echo Lodge people came over the next week, and
Green Gables buzzed with the delight of them. Miss
Lavendar had changed so little that the three years
since her last Island visit might have been a watch in
the night; but Anne gasped with amazement over Paul.
Could this splendid six feet of manhood be the little
Paul of Avonlea schooldays?

"You really make me feel old, Paul," said Anne. "Why,
I have to look up to you!"

"You'll never grow old, Teacher," said Paul. "You are
one of the fortunate mortals who have found and drunk
from the Fountain of Youth,--you and Mother Lavendar.
See here! When you're married I WON'T call you Mrs.
Blythe. To me you'll always be `Teacher'--the teacher
of the best lessons I ever learned. I want to show you
something."

The "something" was a pocketbook full of poems. Paul
had put some of his beautiful fancies into verse, and
magazine editors had not been as unappreciative as they
are sometimes supposed to be. Anne read Paul's poems
with real delight. They were full of charm and
promise.

"You'll be famous yet, Paul. I always dreamed of
having one famous pupil. He was to be a college
president--but a great poet would be even better. Some
day I'll be able to boast that I whipped the
distinguished Paul Irving. But then I never did whip
you, did I, Paul? What an opportunity lost! I think I
kept you in at recess, however."

"You may be famous yourself, Teacher. I've seen a
good deal of your work these last three years."

"No. I know what I can do. I can write pretty,
fanciful little sketches that children love and editors
send welcome cheques for. But I can do nothing big.
My only chance for earthly immortality is a corner in
your Memoirs."

Charlotta the Fourth had discarded the blue bows but
her freckles were not noticeably less.

"I never did think I'd come down to marrying a Yankee,
Miss Shirley, ma'am," she said. "But you never know
what's before you, and it isn't his fault. He was born
that way."

"You're a Yankee yourself, Charlotta, since you've
married one."

"Miss Shirley, ma'am, I'm NOT! And I wouldn't be if I
was to marry a dozen Yankees! Tom's kind of nice. And
besides, I thought I'd better not be too hard to
please, for I mightn't get another chance. Tom don't
drink and he don't growl because he has to work between
meals, and when all's said and done I'm satisfied, Miss
Shirley, ma'am."

"Does he call you Leonora?" asked Anne.

"Goodness, no, Miss Shirley, ma'am. I wouldn't know
who he meant if he did. Of course, when we got married
he had to say, `I take thee, Leonora,' and I declare to
you, Miss Shirley, ma'am, I've had the most dreadful
feeling ever since that it wasn't me he was talking to
and I haven't been rightly married at all. And so
you're going to be married yourself, Miss Shirley,
ma'am? I always thought I'd like to marry a doctor.
It would be so handy when the children had measles and
croup. Tom is only a bricklayer, but he's real good-
tempered. When I said to him, says I, `Tom, can I go
to Miss Shirley's wedding? I mean to go anyhow, but
I'd like to have your consent,' he just says, `Suit
yourself, Charlotta, and you'll suit me.'  That's a
real pleasant kind of husband to have, Miss Shirley,
ma'am."

Philippa and her Reverend Jo arrived at Green Gables
the day before the wedding. Anne and Phil had a
rapturous meeting which presently simmered down to a
cosy, confidential chat over all that had been and was
about to be.

"Queen Anne, you're as queenly as ever. I've got
fearfully thin since the babies came. I'm not half so
good-looking; but I think Jo likes it. There's not
such a contrast between us, you see. And oh, it's
perfectly magnificent that you're going to marry
Gilbert. Roy Gardner wouldn't have done at all, at
all. I can see that now, though I was horribly
disappointed at the time. You know, Anne, you did
treat Roy very badly."

"He has recovered, I understand," smiled Anne.

"Oh, yes. He is married and his wife is a sweet
little thing and they're perfectly happy. Everything
works together for good. Jo and the Bible say that,
and they are pretty good authorities."

"Are Alec and Alonzo married yet?"

"Alec is, but Alonzo isn't. How those dear old days
at Patty's Place come back when I'm talking to you,
Anne! What fun we had!"

"Have you been to Patty's Place lately?"

"Oh, yes, I go often. Miss Patty and Miss Maria still
sit by the fireplace and knit. And that reminds
me--we've brought you a wedding gift from them, Anne.
Guess what it is."

"I never could. How did they know I was going to be
married?"

"Oh, I told them. I was there last week. And they
were so interested. Two days ago Miss Patty wrote me a
note asking me to call; and then she asked if I would
take her gift to you. What would you wish most from
Patty's Place, Anne?"

"You can't mean that Miss Patty has sent me her china
dogs?"

"Go up head. They're in my trunk this very moment.
And I've a letter for you. Wait a moment and I'll get
it."

"Dear Miss Shirley," Miss Patty had written, "Maria
and I were very much interested in hearing of your
approaching nuptials. We send you our best wishes.
Maria and I have never married, but we have no
objection to other people doing so. We are sending you
the china dogs. I intended to leave them to you in my
will, because you seemed to have sincere affection for
them. But Maria and I expect to live a good while yet
(D.V.), so I have decided to give you the dogs while
you are young. You will not have forgotten that Gog
looks to the right and Magog to the left."

"Just fancy those lovely old dogs sitting by the
fireplace in my house of dreams," said Anne
rapturously. "I never expected anything so
delightful."

That evening Green Gables hummed with preparations for
the following day; but in the twilight Anne slipped
away. She had a little pilgrimage to make on this last
day of her girlhood and she must make it alone. She
went to Matthew's grave, in the little poplar-shaded
Avonlea graveyard, and there kept a silent tryst with
old memories and immortal loves.

"How glad Matthew would be tomorrow if he were here,"
she whispered. "But I believe he does know and is
glad of it-- somewhere else. I've read somewhere that
`our dead are never dead until we have forgotten them.'
Matthew will never be dead to me, for I can never
forget him."

She left on his grave the flowers she had brought and
walked slowly down the long hill. It was a gracious
evening, full of delectable lights and shadows. In the
west was a sky of mackerel clouds-- crimson and
amber-tinted, with long strips of apple-green sky
between. Beyond was the glimmering radiance of a
sunset sea, and the ceaseless voice of many waters came
up from the tawny shore. All around her, lying in the
fine, beautiful country silence, were the hills and
fields and woods she had known and loved so long.

"History repeats itself," said Gilbert, joining her as
she passed the Blythe gate. "Do you remember our
first walk down this hill, Anne--our first walk
together anywhere, for that matter?"

"I was coming home in the twilight from Matthew's
grave--and you came out of the gate; and I swallowed
the pride of years and spoke to you."

"And all heaven opened before me," supplemented
Gilbert. "From that moment I looked forward to
tomorrow. When I left you at your gate that night and
walked home I was the happiest boy in the world. Anne
had forgiven me."

"I think you had the most to forgive. I was an
ungrateful little wretch--and after you had really
saved my life that day on the pond, too. How I loathed
that load of obligation at first! I don't deserve the
happiness that has come to me."

Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand
that wore his ring. Anne's engagement ring was a
circlet of pearls. She had refused to wear a diamond.

"I've never really liked diamonds since I found out
they weren't the lovely purple I had dreamed. They
will always suggest my old disappointment ."

"But pearls are for tears, the old legend says,"
Gilbert had objected.

"I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as
well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I
had tears in my eyes-- when Marilla told me I might
stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the first
pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were
going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for
our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the
sorrow of life with its joy."

But tonight our lovers thought only of joy and never of
sorrow. For the morrow was their wedding day, and
their house of dreams awaited them on the misty, purple
shore of Four Winds Harbor.

CHAPTER 4

THE FIRST BRIDE OF GREEN GABLES

Anne wakened on the morning of her wedding day to find
the sunshine winking in at the window of the little
porch gable and a September breeze frolicking with her
curtains.

"I'm so glad the sun will shine on me," she thought happily.

She recalled the first morning she had wakened in that
little porch room, when the sunshine had crept in on
her through the blossom- drift of the old Snow Queen.
That had not been a happy wakening, for it brought with
it the bitter disappointment of the preceding night.
But since then the little room had been endeared and
consecrated by years of happy childhood dreams and
maiden visions. To it she had come back joyfully after
all her absences; at its window she had knelt through
that night of bitter agony when she believed Gilbert
dying, and by it she had sat in speechless happiness
the night of her betrothal. Many vigils of joy and
some of sorrow had been kept there; and today she must
leave it forever. Henceforth it would be hers no more;
fifteen-year-old Dora was to inherit it when she had
gone. Nor did Anne wish it otherwise; the little room
was sacred to youth and girlhood--to the past that was
to close today before the chapter of wifehood opened.

Green Gables was a busy and joyous house that forenoon.
Diana arrived early, with little Fred and Small Anne
Cordelia, to lend a hand. Davy and Dora, the Green
Gables twins, whisked the babies off to the garden.

"Don't let Small Anne Cordelia spoil her clothes,"
warned Diana anxiously.

"You needn't be afraid to trust her with Dora," said
Marilla. "That child is more sensible and careful
than most of the mothers I've known. She's really a
wonder in some ways. Not much like that other
harum-scarum I brought up."

Marilla smiled across her chicken salad at Anne. It
might even be suspected that she liked the harum-scarum
best after all.

"Those twins are real nice children," said Mrs.
Rachel, when she was sure they were out of earshot.
"Dora is so womanly and helpful, and Davy is
developing into a very smart boy. He isn't the holy
terror for mischief he used to be."

"I never was so distracted in my life as I was the
first six months he was here," acknowledged Marilla.
"After that I suppose I got used to him. He's taken a
great notion to farming lately, and wants me to let him
try running the farm next year. I may, for Mr. Barry
doesn't think he'll want to rent it much longer, and
some new arrangement will have to be made."

"Well, you certainly have a lovely day for your
wedding, Anne," said Diana, as she slipped a
voluminous apron over her silken array. "You couldn't
have had a finer one if you'd ordered it from
Eaton's."

"Indeed, there's too much money going out of this
Island to that same Eaton's," said Mrs. Lynde
indignantly. She had strong views on the subject of
octopus-like department stores, and never lost an
opportunity of airing them. "And as for those
catalogues of theirs, they're the Avonlea girls' Bible
now, that's what. They pore over them on Sundays
instead of studying the Holy Scriptures."

"Well, they're splendid to amuse children with," said
Diana. "Fred and Small Anne look at the pictures by
the hour."

"_I_ amused ten children without the aid of Eaton's
catalogue," said Mrs. Rachel severely.

"Come, you two, don't quarrel over Eaton's catalogue,"
said Anne gaily. "This is my day of days, you know.
I'm so happy I want every one else to be happy, too."

"I'm sure I hope your happiness will last, child,"
sighed Mrs. Rachel. She did hope it truly, and
believed it, but she was afraid it was in the nature of
a challenge to Providence to flaunt your happiness too
openly. Anne, for her own good, must be toned down a
trifle.

But it was a happy and beautiful bride who came down
the old, homespun-carpeted stairs that September
noon--the first bride of Green Gables, slender and
shining-eyed, in the mist of her maiden veil, with her
arms full of roses. Gilbert, waiting for her in the
hall below, looked up at her with adoring eyes. She
was his at last, this evasive, long-sought Anne, won
after years of patient waiting. It was to him she was
coming in the sweet surrender of the bride. Was he
worthy of her? Could he make her as happy as he hoped?
If he failed her--if he could not measure up to her
standard of manhood--then, as she held out her hand,
their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad
certainty. They belonged to each other; and, no matter
what life might hold for them, it could never alter
that. Their happiness was in each other's keeping and
both were unafraid.

They were married in the sunshine of the old orchard,
circled by the loving and kindly faces of long-familiar
friends. Mr. Allan married them, and the Reverend Jo
made what Mrs. Rachel Lynde afterwards pronounced to be
the "most beautiful wedding prayer" she had ever
heard. Birds do not often sing in September, but one
sang sweetly from some hidden bough while Gilbert and
Anne repeated their deathless vows. Anne heard it and
thrilled to it; Gilbert heard it, and wondered only
that all the birds in the world had not burst into
jubilant song; Paul heard it and later wrote a lyric
about it which was one of the most admired in his first
volume of verse; Charlotta the Fourth heard it and was
blissfully sure it meant good luck for her adored Miss
Shirley. The bird sang until the ceremony was ended
and then it wound up with one mad little, glad little
trill. Never had the old gray-green house among its
enfolding orchards known a blither, merrier afternoon.
All the old jests and quips that must have done duty at
weddings since Eden were served up, and seemed as new
and brilliant and mirth-provoking as if they had never
been uttered before. Laughter and joy had their way;
and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody
train, with Paul as driver, the twins were ready with
rice and old shoes, in the throwing of which Charlotta
the Fourth and Mr. Harrison bore a valiant part.
Marilla stood at the gate and watched the carriage out
of sight down the long lane with its banks of
goldenrod. Anne turned at its end to wave her last
good-bye. She was gone--Green Gables was her home no
more; Marilla's face looked very gray and old as she
turned to the house which Anne had filled for fourteen
years, and even in her absence, with light and life.

But Diana and her small fry, the Echo Lodge people and
the Allans, had stayed to help the two old ladies over
the loneliness of the first evening; and they contrived
to have a quietly pleasant little supper time, sitting
long around the table and chatting over all the details
of the day. While they were sitting there Anne and
Gilbert were alighting from the train at Glen St. Mary.

CHAPTER 5

THE HOME COMING

Dr. David Blythe had sent his horse and buggy to meet
them, and the urchin who had brought it slipped away
with a sympathetic grin, leaving them to the delight of
driving alone to their new home through the radiant evening.

Anne never forgot the loveliness of the view that broke
upon them when they had driven over the hill behind the
village. Her new home could not yet be seen; but
before her lay Four Winds Harbor like a great, shining
mirror of rose and silver. Far down, she saw its
entrance between the bar of sand dunes on one side and
a steep, high, grim, red sandstone cliff on the other.
Beyond the bar the sea, calm and austere, dreamed in
the afterlight. The little fishing village, nestled in
the cove where the sand-dunes met the harbor shore,
looked like a great opal in the haze. The sky over
them was like a jewelled cup from which the dusk was
pouring; the air was crisp with the compelling tang of
the sea, and the whole landscape was infused with the
subtleties of a sea evening. A few dim sails drifted
along the darkening, fir-clad harbor shores. A bell
was ringing from the tower of a little white church on
the far side; mellowly and dreamily sweet, the chime
floated across the water blent with the moan of the
sea. The great revolving light on the cliff at the
channel flashed warm and golden against the clear
northern sky, a trembling, quivering star of good hope.
Far out along the horizon was the crinkled gray ribbon
of a passing steamer's smoke.

"Oh, beautiful, beautiful," murmured Anne. "I shall
love Four Winds, Gilbert. Where is our house?"

"We can't see it yet--the belt of birch running up
from that little cove hides it. It's about two miles
from Glen St. Mary, and there's another mile between it
and the light-house. We won't have many neighbors,
Anne. There's only one house near us and I don't know
who lives in it. Shall you be lonely when I'm away?"

"Not with that light and that loveliness for company.
Who lives in that house, Gilbert?"

"I don't know. It doesn't look--exactly--as if the
occupants would be kindred spirits, Anne, does it?"

The house was a large, substantial affair, painted such
a vivid green that the landscape seemed quite faded by
contrast. There was an orchard behind it, and a nicely
kept lawn before it, but, somehow, there was a certain
bareness about it. Perhaps its neatness was
responsible for this; the whole establishment, house,
barns, orchard, garden, lawn and lane, was so starkly
neat.

"It doesn't seem probable that anyone with that taste
in paint could be VERY kindred," acknowledged Anne,
"unless it were an accident--like our blue hall. I
feel certain there are no children there, at least.
It's even neater than the old Copp place on the Tory
road, and I never expected to see anything neater than
that."

They had not met anybody on the moist, red road that
wound along the harbor shore. But just before they
came to the belt of birch which hid their home, Anne
saw a girl who was driving a flock of snow- white
geese along the crest of a velvety green hill on the
right. Great, scattered firs grew along it. Between
their trunks one saw glimpses of yellow harvest fields,
gleams of golden sand-hills, and bits of blue sea. The
girl was tall and wore a dress of pale blue print. She
walked with a certain springiness of step and erectness
of bearing. She and her geese came out of the gate at
the foot of the hill as Anne and Gilbert passed. She
stood with her hand on the fastening of the gate, and
looked steadily at them, with an expression that hardly
attained to interest, but did not descend to curiosity.
It seemed to Anne, for a fleeting moment, that there
was even a veiled hint of hostility in it. But it was
the girl's beauty which made Anne give a little gasp--a
beauty so marked that it must have attracted attention
anywhere. She was hatless, but heavy braids of
burnished hair, the hue of ripe wheat, were twisted
about her head like a coronet; her eyes were blue and
star-like; her figure, in its plain print gown, was
magnificent; and her lips were as crimson as the bunch
of blood-red poppies she wore at her belt.

"Gilbert, who is the girl we have just passed?" asked
Anne, in a low voice.

"I didn't notice any girl," said Gilbert, who had eyes
only for his bride.

"She was standing by that gate--no, don't look back.
She is still watching us. I never saw such a beautiful
face."

"I don't remember seeing any very handsome girls while
I was here. There are some pretty girls up at the
Glen, but I hardly think they could be called
beautiful."

"This girl is. You can't have seen her, or you would
remember her. Nobody could forget her. I never saw
such a face except in pictures. And her hair! It made
me think of Browning's `cord of gold' and `gorgeous
snake'!"

"Probably she's some visitor in Four Winds--likely
some one from that big summer hotel over the harbor."

"She wore a white apron and she was driving geese."

"She might do that for amusement. Look, Anne--there's
our house."

Anne looked and forgot for a time the girl with the
splendid, resentful eyes. The first glimpse of her new
home was a delight to eye and spirit--it looked so like
a big, creamy seashell stranded on the harbor shore.
The rows of tall Lombardy poplars down its lane stood
out in stately, purple silhouette against the sky.
Behind it, sheltering its garden from the too keen
breath of sea winds, was a cloudy fir wood, in which
the winds might make all kinds of weird and haunting
music. Like all woods, it seemed to be holding and
enfolding secrets in its recesses,--secrets whose charm
is only to be won by entering in and patiently seeking.
Outwardly, dark green arms keep them inviolate from
curious or indifferent eyes.

The night winds were beginning their wild dances beyond
the bar and the fishing hamlet across the harbor was
gemmed with lights as Anne and Gilbert drove up the
poplar lane. The door of the little house opened, and
a warm glow of firelight flickered out into the dusk.
Gilbert lifted Anne from the buggy and led her into the
garden, through the little gate between the
ruddy-tipped firs, up the trim, red path to the
sandstone step.

"Welcome home," he whispered, and hand in hand they
stepped over the threshold of their house of dreams.

CHAPTER 6

CAPTAIN JIM

"Old Doctor Dave" and "Mrs. Doctor Dave" had come down
to the little house to greet the bride and groom.
Doctor Dave was a big, jolly, white-whiskered old
fellow, and Mrs. Doctor was a trim rosy-cheeked,
silver-haired little lady who took Anne at once
to her heart, literally and figuratively.

"I'm so glad to see you, dear. You must be real
tired. We've got a bite of supper ready, and Captain
Jim brought up some trout for you. Captain Jim--where
are you? Oh, he's slipped out to see to the horse, I
suppose. Come upstairs and take your things off."

Anne looked about her with bright, appreciative eyes as
she followed Mrs. Doctor Dave upstairs. She liked the
appearance of her new home very much. It seemed to
have the atmosphere of Green Gables and the flavor of
her old traditions.

"I think I would have found Miss Elizabeth Russell a
`kindred spirit,'" she murmured when she was alone in
her room. There were two windows in it; the dormer one
looked out on the lower harbor and the sand-bar and the
Four Winds light.

    "A magic casement opening on the foam     Of
perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn,"

quoted Anne softly. The gable window gave a view of a
little harvest-hued valley through which a brook ran.
Half a mile up the brook was the only house in
sight--an old, rambling, gray one surrounded by huge
willows through which its windows peered, like shy,
seeking eyes, into the dusk. Anne wondered who lived
there; they would be her nearest neighbors and she
hoped they would be nice. She suddenly found herself
thinking of the beautiful girl with the white geese.

"Gilbert thought she didn't belong here," mused Anne,
"but I feel sure she does. There was something about
her that made her part of the sea and the sky and the
harbor. Four Winds is in her blood."

When Anne went downstairs Gilbert was standing before
the fireplace talking to a stranger. Both turned as
Anne entered.

"Anne, this is Captain Boyd. Captain Boyd, my wife."

It was the first time Gilbert had said "my wife" to
anybody but Anne, and he narrowly escaped bursting with
the pride of it. The old captain held out a sinewy
hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were
friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed
recognition to kindred spirit.

"I'm right down pleased to meet you, Mistress Blythe;
and I hope you'll be as happy as the first bride was
who came here. I can't wish you no better than THAT.
But your husband doesn't introduce me jest exactly
right. `Captain Jim' is my week-a-day name and you
might as well begin as you're sartain to end
up--calling me that. You sartainly are a nice little
bride, Mistress Blythe. Looking at you sorter makes
me feel that I've jest been married myself."

Amid the laughter that followed Mrs. Doctor Dave urged
Captain Jim to stay and have supper with them.

"Thank you kindly. 'Twill be a real treat, Mistress
Doctor. I mostly has to eat my meals alone, with the
reflection of my ugly old phiz in a looking-glass
opposite for company. 'Tisn't often I have a chance to
sit down with two such sweet, purty ladies."

Captain Jim's compliments may look very bald on paper,
but he paid them with such a gracious, gentle deference
of tone and look that the woman upon whom they were
bestowed felt that she was being offered a queen's
tribute in a kingly fashion.

Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man,
with eternal youth in his eyes and heart. He had a
tall, rather ungainly figure, somewhat stooped, yet
suggestive of great strength and endurance; a
clean-shaven face deeply lined and bronzed; a thick
mane of iron-gray hair falling quite to his shoulders,
and a pair of remarkably blue, deep-set eyes, which
sometimes twinkled and sometimes dreamed, and
sometimes looked out seaward with a wistful quest in
them, as of one seeking something precious and lost.
Anne was to learn one day what it was for which Captain
Jim looked.

It could not be denied that Captain Jim was a homely
man. His spare jaws, rugged mouth, and square brow
were not fashioned on the lines of beauty; and he had
passed through many hardships and sorrows which had
marked his body as well as his soul; but though at
first sight Anne thought him plain she never thought
anything more about it--the spirit shining through that
rugged tenement beautified it so wholly.

They gathered gaily around the supper table. The
hearth fire banished the chill of the September
evening, but the window of the dining room was open and
sea breezes entered at their own sweet will. The view
was magnificent, taking in the harbor and the sweep of
low, purple hills beyond. The table was heaped with
Mrs. Doctor's delicacies but the piece de resistance
was undoubtedly the big platter of sea trout.

"Thought they'd be sorter tasty after travelling,"
said Captain Jim. "They're fresh as trout can be,
Mistress Blythe. Two hours ago they were swimming in
the Glen Pond."

"Who is attending to the light tonight, Captain Jim?"
asked Doctor Dave.

"Nephew Alec. He understands it as well as I do.
Well, now, I'm real glad you asked me to stay to
supper. I'm proper hungry--didn't have much of a
dinner today."

"I believe you half starve yourself most of the time
down at that light," said Mrs. Doctor Dave severely.
"You won't take the trouble to get up a decent meal."

"Oh, I do, Mistress Doctor, I do," protested Captain
Jim. "Why, I live like a king gen'rally. Last night
I was up to the Glen and took home two pounds of steak.
I meant to have a spanking good dinner today."

"And what happened to the steak?" asked Mrs. Doctor
Dave. "Did you lose it on the way home?"

"No."  Captain Jim looked sheepish. "Just at bedtime
a poor, ornery sort of dog came along and asked for a
night's lodging. Guess he belonged to some of the
fishermen 'long shore. I couldn't turn the poor cur
out--he had a sore foot. So I shut him in the porch,
with an old bag to lie on, and went to bed. But
somehow I couldn't sleep. Come to think it over, I
sorter remembered that the dog looked hungry."

"And you got up and gave him that steak--ALL that
steak," said Mrs. Doctor Dave, with a kind of
triumphant reproof.

"Well, there wasn't anything else TO give him," said
Captain Jim deprecatingly. "Nothing a dog'd care for,
that is. I reckon he WAS hungry, for he made about two
bites of it. I had a fine sleep the rest of the night
but my dinner had to be sorter scanty--potatoes and
point, as you might say. The dog, he lit out for home
this morning. I reckon HE weren't a vegetarian."

"The idea of starving yourself for a worthless dog!"
sniffed Mrs. Doctor.

"You don't know but he may be worth a lot to
somebody," protested Captain Jim. "He didn't LOOK of
much account, but you can't go by looks in jedging a
dog. Like meself, he might be a real beauty inside.
The First Mate didn't approve of him, I'll allow. His
language was right down forcible. But the First Mate is
prejudiced. No use in taking a cat's opinion of a dog.
'Tennyrate, I lost my dinner, so this nice spread in
this dee-lightful company is real pleasant. It' s a
great thing to have good neighbors."

"Who lives in the house among the willows up the
brook?" asked Anne.

"Mrs. Dick Moore," said Captain Jim--"and her
husband," he added, as if by way of an afterthought.

Anne smiled, and deduced a mental picture of Mrs. Dick
Moore from Captain Jim's way of putting it; evidently a
second Mrs. Rachel Lynde.

"You haven't many neighbors, Mistress Blythe," Captain
Jim went on. "This side of the harbor is mighty thinly
settled. Most of the land belongs to Mr. Howard up
yander past the Glen, and he rents it out for pasture.
The other side of the harbor, now, is thick with
folks--'specially MacAllisters. There's a whole
colony of MacAllisters you can't throw a stone but you
hit one. I was talking to old Leon Blacquiere the
other day. He's been working on the harbor all summer.
`Dey're nearly all MacAllisters over thar,' he told me.
`Dare's Neil MacAllister and Sandy MacAllister and
William MacAllister and Alec MacAllister and Angus
MacAllister--and I believe dare's de Devil
MacAllister.'"

"There are nearly as many Elliotts and Crawfords,"
said Doctor Dave, after the laughter had subsided.
"You know, Gilbert, we folk on this side of Four Winds
have an old saying--`From the conceit of the Elliotts,
the pride of the MacAllisters, and the vainglory of the
Crawfords, good Lord deliver us.'"

"There's a plenty of fine people among them, though,"
said Captain Jim. "I sailed with William Crawford for
many a year, and for courage and endurance and truth
that man hadn't an equal. They've got brains over on
that side of Four Winds. Mebbe that's why this side is
sorter inclined to pick on 'em. Strange, ain't it, how
folks seem to resent anyone being born a mite cleverer
than they be."

Doctor Dave, who had a forty years' feud with the
over-harbor people, laughed and subsided.

"Who lives in that brilliant emerald house about half
a mile up the road?" asked Gilbert.

Captain Jim smiled delightedly.

"Miss Cornelia Bryant. She'll likely be over to see
you soon, seeing you're Presbyterians. If you were
Methodists she wouldn't come at all. Cornelia has a
holy horror of Methodists."

"She's quite a character," chuckled Doctor Dave. "A
most inveterate man-hater!"

"Sour grapes?" queried Gilbert, laughing.

"No, 'tisn't sour grapes," answered Captain Jim
seriously. "Cornelia could have had her pick when she
was young. Even yet she's only to say the word to see
the old widowers jump. She jest seems to have been
born with a sort of chronic spite agin men and
Methodists. She's got the bitterest tongue and the
kindest heart in Four Winds. Wherever there's any
trouble, that woman is there, doing everything to help
in the tenderest way. She never says a harsh word
about another woman, and if she likes to card us poor
scalawags of men down I reckon our tough old hides can
stand it."

"She always speaks well of you, Captain Jim," said
Mrs. Doctor.

"Yes, I'm afraid so. I don't half like it. It makes
me feel as if there must be something sorter unnateral
about me."

CHAPTER 7

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S BRIDE

"Who was the first bride who came to this house,
Captain Jim?" Anne asked, as they sat around the
fireplace after supper.

"Was she a part of the story I've heard was connected
with this house?" asked Gilbert. "Somebody told me
you could tell it, Captain Jim."

"Well, yes, I know it. I reckon I'm the only person
living in Four Winds now that can remember the
schoolmaster's bride as she was when she come to the
Island. She's been dead this thirty year, but she was
one of them women you never forget."

"Tell us the story," pleaded Anne. "I want to find
out all about the women who have lived in this house
before me."

"Well, there's jest been three--Elizabeth Russell, and
Mrs. Ned Russell, and the schoolmaster's bride.
Elizabeth Russell was a nice, clever little critter,
and Mrs. Ned was a nice woman, too. But they weren't
ever like the schoolmaster's bride.

"The schoolmaster's name was John Selwyn. He came out
from the Old Country to teach school at the Glen when I
was a boy of sixteen. He wasn't much like the usual
run of derelicts who used to come out to P.E.I. to
teach school in them days. Most of them were clever,
drunken critters who taught the children the three R's
when they were sober, and lambasted them when they
wasn't. But John Selwyn was a fine, handsome young
fellow. He boarded at my father's, and he and me were
cronies, though he was ten years older'n me. We read
and walked and talked a heap together. He knew about
all the poetry that was ever written, I reckon, and he
used to quote it to me along shore in the evenings.
Dad thought it an awful waste of time, but he sorter
endured it, hoping it'd put me off the notion of going
to sea. Well, nothing could do THAT--mother come of a
race of sea-going folk and it was born in me. But I
loved to hear John read and recite. It's almost sixty
years ago, but I could repeat yards of poetry I learned
from him. Nearly sixty years!"

Captain Jim was silent for a space, gazing into the
glowing fire in a quest of the bygones. Then, with a
sigh, he resumed his story.

"I remember one spring evening I met him on the
sand-hills. He looked sorter uplifted--jest like you
did, Dr. Blythe, when you brought Mistress Blythe in
tonight. I thought of him the minute I seen you. And
he told me that he had a sweetheart back home and that
she was coming out to him. I wasn't more'n half
pleased, ornery young lump of selfishness that I was; I
thought he wouldn't be as much my friend after she
came. But I'd enough decency not to let him see it.
He told me all about her. Her name was Persis Leigh,
and she would have come out with him if it hadn't been
for her old uncle. He was sick, and he'd looked after
her when her parents died and she wouldn't leave him.
And now he was dead and she was coming out to marry
John Selwyn. 'Twasn't no easy journey for a woman in
them days. There weren't no steamers, you must
ricollect.

"`When do you expect her?' says I.

"`She sails on the Royal William, the 20th of June,'
says he, `and so she should be here by mid-July. I
must set Carpenter Johnson to building me a home for
her. Her letter come today. I know before I opened it
that it had good news for me. I saw her a few nights
ago.'

"I didn't understand him, and then he
explained--though I didn't understand THAT much better.
He said he had a gift--or a curse. Them was his words,
Mistress Blythe--a gift or a curse. He didn't know
which it was. He said a great-great-grandmother of his
had had it, and they burned her for a witch on account
of it. He said queer spells--trances, I think was the
name he give 'em--come over him now and again. Are
there such things, Doctor?"

"There are people who are certainly subject to
trances," answered Gilbert. "The matter is more in
the line of psychical research than medical. What were
the trances of this John Selwyn like?"

"Like dreams," said the old Doctor skeptically.

"He said he could see things in them," said Captain
Jim slowly.

"Mind you, I'm telling you jest what HE said--things
that were happening--things that were GOING to happen.
He said they were sometimes a comfort to him and
sometimes a horror. Four nights before this he'd been
in one--went into it while he was sitting looking at
the fire. And he saw an old room he knew well in
England, and Persis Leigh in it, holding out her hands
to him and looking glad and happy. So he knew he was
going to hear good news of her."

"A dream--a dream," scoffed the old Doctor.

"Likely--likely," conceded Captain Jim. "That's what
_I_ said to him at the time. It was a vast more
comfortable to think so. I didn't like the idea of him
seeing things like that--it was real uncanny.

"`No,' says he, `I didn't dream it. But we won't talk
of this again. You won't be so much my friend if you
think much about it.'

"I told him nothing could make me any less his friend.
But he jest shook his head and says, says he:

"`Lad, I know. I've lost friends before because of
this. I don't blame them. There are times when I feel
hardly friendly to myself because of it. Such a power
has a bit of divinity in it--whether of a good or an
evil divinity who shall say? And we mortals all shrink
from too close contact with God or devil.'

"Them was his words. I remember them as if 'twas
yesterday, though I didn't know jest what he meant.
What do you s'pose he DID mean, doctor?"

"I doubt if he knew what he meant himself," said
Doctor Dave testily.

"I think I understand," whispered Anne. She was
listening in her old attitude of clasped lips and
shining eyes. Captain Jim treated himself to an
admiring smile before he went on with his story.

"Well, purty soon all the Glen and Four Winds people
knew the schoolmaster's bride was coming, and they were
all glad because they thought so much of him. And
everybody took an interest in his new house--THIS
house. He picked this site for it, because you could
see the harbor and hear the sea from it. He made the
garden out there for his bride, but he didn't plant the
Lombardies. Mrs. Ned Russell planted THEM. But
there's a double row of rose-bushes in the garden that
the little girls who went to the Glen school set out
there for the schoolmaster's bride. He said they were
pink for her cheeks and white for her brow and red for
her lips. He'd quoted poetry so much that he sorter
got into the habit of talking it, too, I reckon.

"Almost everybody sent him some little present to help
out the furnishing of the house. When the Russells
came into it they were well-to-do and furnished it real
handsome, as you can see; but the first furniture that
went into it was plain enough. This little house was
rich in love, though. The women sent in quilts and
tablecloths and towels, and one man made a chest for
her, and another a table and so on. Even blind old
Aunt Margaret Boyd wove a little basket for her out of
the sweet-scented sand-hill grass. The schoolmaster's
wife used it for years to keep her handkerchiefs in.

"Well, at last everything was ready--even to the logs
in the big fireplace ready for lighting. 'Twasn't
exactly THIS fireplace, though 'twas in the same place.
Miss Elizabeth had this put in when she made the house
over fifteen years ago. It was a big, old-fashioned
fireplace where you could have roasted an ox. Many's
the time I've sat here and spun yarns, same's I'm doing
tonight."

Again there was a silence, while Captain Jim kept a
passing tryst with visitants Anne and Gilbert could not
see--the folks who had sat with him around that
fireplace in the vanished years, with mirth and bridal
joy shining in eyes long since closed forever under
churchyard sod or heaving leagues of sea. Here on
olden nights children had tossed laughter lightly to
and fro. Here on winter evenings friends had
gathered. Dance and music and jest had been here.
Here youths and maidens had dreamed. For Captain Jim
the little house was tenanted with shapes entreating
remembrance.

"It was the first of July when the house was finished.
The schoolmaster began to count the days then. We used
to see him walking along the shore, and we'd say to
each other, `She'll soon be with him now.'

"She was expected the middle of July, but she didn't
come then. Nobody felt anxious. Vessels were often
delayed for days and mebbe weeks. The Royal William
was a week overdue--and then two--and then three. And
at last we began to be frightened, and it got worse and
worse. Fin'lly I couldn't bear to look into John
Selwyn's eyes. D'ye know, Mistress Blythe"--Captain
Jim lowered his voice--"I used to think that they
looked just like what his old great-great-grandmother's
must have been when they were burning her to death. He
never said much but he taught school like a man in a
dream and then hurried to the shore. Many a night he
walked there from dark to dawn. People said he was
losing his mind. Everybody had given up hope--the
Royal William was eight weeks overdue. It was the
middle of September and the schoolmaster's bride hadn't
come-- never would come, we thought.

"There was a big storm then that lasted three days, and
on the evening after it died away I went to the shore.
I found the schoolmaster there, leaning with his arms
folded against a big rock, gazing out to sea.

"I spoke to him but he didn't answer. His eyes seemed
to be looking at something I couldn't see. His face
was set, like a dead man's.

"`John--John,' I called out--jest like that--jest like
a frightened child, `wake up--wake up.'

"That strange, awful look seemed to sorter fade out of
his eyes.

He turned his head and looked at me. I've never forgot
his face-- never will forget it till I ships for my
last voyage.

"`All is well, lad,' he says. `I've seen the Royal
William coming around East Point. She will be here by
dawn. Tomorrow night I shall sit with my bride by my
own hearth-fire.'

"Do you think he did see it?" demanded Captain Jim
abruptly.

"God knows," said Gilbert softly. "Great love and
great pain might compass we know not what marvels."

"I am sure he did see it," said Anne earnestly.

"Fol-de-rol," said Doctor Dave, but he spoke with less
conviction than usual.

"Because, you know," said Captain Jim solemnly, "the
Royal William came into Four Winds Harbor at daylight
the next morning.

Every soul in the Glen and along the shore was at the
old wharf to meet her. The schoolmaster had been
watching there all night. How we cheered as she sailed
up the channel."

Captain Jim's eyes were shining. They were looking at
the Four Winds Harbor of sixty years agone, with a
battered old ship sailing through the sunrise splendor.

"And Persis Leigh was on board?" asked Anne.

"Yes--her and the captain's wife. They'd had an awful
passage-- storm after storm--and their provisions give
out, too. But there they were at last. When Persis
Leigh stepped onto the old wharf John Selwyn took her
in his arms--and folks stopped cheering and begun to
cry. I cried myself, though 'twas years, mind you,
afore I'd admit it. Ain't it funny how ashamed boys
are of tears?"

"Was Persis Leigh beautiful?" asked Anne.

"Well, I don't know that you'd call her beautiful
exactly--I-- don't--know," said Captain Jim slowly.
"Somehow, you never got so far along as to wonder if
she was handsome or not. It jest didn't matter. There
was something so sweet and winsome about her that you
had to love her, that was all. But she was pleasant to
look at--big, clear, hazel eyes and heaps of glossy
brown hair, and an English skin. John and her were
married at our house that night at early
candle-lighting; everybody from far and near was there
to see it and we all brought them down here afterwards.
Mistress Selwyn lighted the fire, and we went away and
left them sitting here, jest as John had seen in that
vision of his. A strange thing--a strange thing! But
I've seen a turrible lot of strange things in my
time."

Captain Jim shook his head sagely.

"It's a dear story," said Anne, feeling that for once
she had got enough romance to satisfy her. "How long
did they live here?"

"Fifteen years. I ran off to sea soon after they were
married, like the young scalawag I was. But every time
I come back from a voyage I'd head for here, even
before I went home, and tell Mistress Selwyn all about
it. Fifteen happy years! They had a sort of talent
for happiness, them two. Some folks are like that, if
you've noticed. They COULDN'T be unhappy for long, no
matter what happened. They quarrelled once or twice,
for they was both high-sperrited. But Mistress Selwyn
says to me once, says she, laughing in that pretty way
of hers, `I felt dreadful when John and I quarrelled,
but underneath it all I was very happy because I had
such a nice husband to quarrel with and make it up
with.'  Then they moved to Charlottetown, and Ned
Russell bought this house and brought his bride here.
They were a gay young pair, as I remember them. Miss
Elizabeth Russell was Alec's sister. She came to live
with them a year or so later, and she was a creature of
mirth, too. The walls of this house must be sorter
SOAKED with laughing and good times. You're the third
bride I've seen come here, Mistress Blythe--and the
handsomest."

Captain Jim contrived to give his sunflower compliment
the delicacy of a violet, and Anne wore it proudly.
She was looking her best that night, with the bridal
rose on her cheeks and the love-light in her eyes; even
gruff old Doctor Dave gave her an approving glance, and
told his wife, as they drove home together, that that
red-headed wife of the boy's was something of a beauty.

"I must be getting back to the light," announced
Captain Jim. "I've enj'yed this evening something
tremenjus."

" You must come often to see us," said Anne.

"I wonder if you'd give that invitation if you knew how
likely I'll be to accept it," Captain Jim remarked
whimsically.

"Which is another way of saying you wonder if I mean
it," smiled Anne. "I do, `cross my heart,' as we used
to say at school."

"Then I'll come. You're likely to be pestered with me
at any hour. And I'll be proud to have you drop down
and visit me now and then, too. Gin'rally I haven't
anyone to talk to but the First Mate, bless his
sociable heart. He's a mighty good listener, and has
forgot more'n any MacAllister of them all ever knew,
but he isn't much of a conversationalist. You're young
and I'm old, but our souls are about the same age, I
reckon. We both belong to the race that knows Joseph,
as Cornelia Bryant would say."

"The race that knows Joseph?" puzzled Anne.

"Yes. Cornelia divides all the folks in the world into
two kinds-- the race that knows Joseph and the race
that don't. If a person sorter sees eye to eye with
you, and has pretty much the same ideas about things,
and the same taste in jokes--why, then he belongs to
the race that knows Joseph."

"Oh, I understand," exclaimed Anne, light breaking in
upon her.

"It's what I used to call--and still call in quotation
marks `kindred spirits.'"

"Jest so--jest so," agreed Captain Jim. "We're it,
whatever IT is. When you come in tonight, Mistress
Blythe, I says to myself, says I, `Yes, she's of the
race that knows Joseph.'  And mighty glad I was, for
if it wasn't so we couldn't have had any real
satisfaction in each other's company. The race that
knows Joseph is the salt of the airth, I reckon."

The moon had just risen when Anne and Gilbert went to
the door with their guests. Four Winds Harbor was
beginning to be a thing of dream and glamour and
enchantment--a spellbound haven where no tempest might
ever ravin. The Lombardies down the lane, tall and
sombre as the priestly forms of some mystic band, were
tipped with silver.

"Always liked Lombardies," said Captain Jim, waving a
long arm at them. "They're the trees of princesses.
They're out of fashion now. Folks complain that they
die at the top and get ragged-looking. So they do--so
they do, if you don't risk your neck every spring
climbing up a light ladder to trim them out. I always
did it for Miss Elizabeth, so her Lombardies never got
out-at-elbows. She was especially fond of them. She
liked their dignity and stand-offishness. THEY don't
hobnob with every Tom, Dick and Harry. If it's maples
for company, Mistress Blythe, it's Lombardies for
society."

"What a beautiful night," said Mrs. Doctor Dave, as
she climbed into the Doctor's buggy.

"Most nights are beautiful," said Captain Jim. "But I
'low that moonlight over Four Winds makes me sorter
wonder what's left for heaven. The moon's a great
friend of mine, Mistress Blythe. I've loved her ever
since I can remember. When I was a little chap of
eight I fell asleep in the garden one evening and
wasn't missed. I woke up along in the night and I was
most scared to death. What shadows and queer noises
there was! I dursn't move. Jest crouched there
quaking, poor small mite. Seemed 'sif there weren't
anyone in the world but meself and it was mighty big.
Then all at once I saw the moon looking down at me
through the apple boughs, jest like an old friend. I
was comforted right off. Got up and walked to the
house as brave as a lion, looking at her. Many's the
night I've watched her from the deck of my vessel, on
seas far away from here. Why don't you folks tell me
to take in the slack of my jaw and go home?"

The laughter of the goodnights died away. Anne and
Gilbert walked hand in hand around their garden. The
brook that ran across the corner dimpled pellucidly in
the shadows of the birches. The poppies along its
banks were like shallow cups of moonlight. Flowers
that had been planted by the hands of the
schoolmaster's bride flung their sweetness on the
shadowy air, like the beauty and blessing of sacred
yesterdays. Anne paused in the gloom to gather a
spray.

"I love to smell flowers in the dark," she said. "You
get hold of their soul then. Oh, Gilbert, this little
house is all I've dreamed it. And I'm so glad that we
are not the first who have kept bridal tryst here!"

CHAPTER 8

MISS CORNELIA BRYANT COMES TO CALL

That September was a month of golden mists and purple
hazes at Four Winds Harbor--a month of sun-steeped days
and of nights that were swimming in moonlight, or
pulsating with stars. No storm marred it, no rough
wind blew. Anne and Gilbert put their nest in order,
rambled on the shores, sailed on the harbor, drove
about Four Winds and the Glen, or through the ferny,
sequestered roads of the woods around the harbor head;
in short, had such a honeymoon as any lovers in the
world might have envied them.

"If life were to stop short just now it would still
have been richly worth while, just for the sake of
these past four weeks, wouldn't it?" said Anne. "I
don't suppose we will ever have four such perfect weeks
again--but we've HAD them. Everything--wind, weather,
folks, house of dreams--has conspired to make our
honeymoon delightful. There hasn't even been a rainy
day since we came here."

"And we haven't quarrelled once," teased Gilbert.

"Well, `that's a pleasure all the greater for being
deferred,'" quoted Anne. "I'm so glad we decided to
spend our honeymoon here. Our memories of it will
always belong here, in our house of dreams, instead of
being scattered about in strange places."

There was a certain tang of romance and adventure in
the atmosphere of their new home which Anne had never
found in Avonlea. There, although she had lived in
sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into
her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called
to her constantly. From every window of her new home
she saw some varying aspect of it. Its haunting murmur
was ever in her ears. Vessels sailed up the harbor
every day to the wharf at the Glen, or sailed out
again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be
half way round the globe. Fishing boats went
white-winged down the channel in the mornings, and
returned laden in the evenings. Sailors and
fisher-folk travelled the red, winding harbor roads,
light-hearted and content. There was always a certain
sense of things going to happen--of adventures and
farings-forth. The ways of Four Winds were less staid
and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of
change blew over them; the sea called ever to the
dwellers on shore, and even those who might not answer
its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery and
possibilities of it.

"I understand now why some men must go to sea," said
Anne. "That desire which comes to us all at times--`to
sail beyond the bourne of sunset'--must be very
imperious when it is born in you. I don't wonder
Captain Jim ran away because of it. I never see a ship
sailing out of the channel, or a gull soaring over the
sand-bar, without wishing I were on board the ship or
had wings, not like a dove `to fly away and be at
rest,' but like a gull, to sweep out into the very
heart of a storm."

"You'll stay right here with me, Anne-girl," said
Gilbert lazily. "I won't have you flying away from me
into the hearts of storms."

They were sitting on their red sand-stone doorstep in
the late afternoon. Great tranquillities were all
about them in land and sea and sky. Silvery gulls were
soaring over them. The horizons were laced with long
trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was
threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and
waves. Pale asters were blowing in the sere and misty
meadows between them and the harbor.

"Doctors who have to be up all night waiting on sick
folk don't feel very adventurous, I suppose," Anne
said indulgently. "If you had had a good sleep last
night, Gilbert, you'd be as ready as I am for a flight
of imagination."

"I did good work last night, Anne," said Gilbert
quietly. "Under God, I saved a life. This is the
first time I could ever really claim that. In other
cases I may have helped; but, Anne, if I had not stayed
at Allonby's last night and fought death hand to hand,
that woman would have died before morning. I tried an
experiment that was certainly never tried in Four Winds
before. I doubt if it was ever tried anywhere before
outside of a hospital. It was a new thing in Kingsport
hospital last winter. I could never have dared try it
here if I had not been absolutely certain that there
was no other chance. I risked it--and it succeeded.
As a result, a good wife and mother is saved for long
years of happiness and usefulness. As I drove home
this morning, while the sun was rising over the harbor,
I thanked God that I had chosen the profession I did.
I had fought a good fight and won--think of it, Anne,
WON, against the Great Destroyer. It's what I dreamed
of doing long ago when we talked together of what we
wanted to do in life. That dream of mine came true
this morning."

"Was that the only one of your dreams that has come
true?" asked Anne, who knew perfectly well what the
substance of his answer would be, but wanted to hear it
again.

"YOU know, Anne-girl," said Gilbert, smiling into her
eyes. At that moment there were certainly two
perfectly happy people sitting on the doorstep of a
little white house on the Four Winds Harbor shore.

Presently Gilbert said, with a change of tone, "Do I or
do I not see a full-rigged ship sailing up our lane?"

Anne looked and sprang up.

"That must be either Miss Cornelia Bryant or Mrs. Moore
coming to call," she said.

"I'm going into the office, and if it is Miss Cornelia
I warn you that I'll eavesdrop," said Gilbert. "From
all I've heard regarding Miss Cornelia I conclude that
her conversation will not be dull, to say the least."

"It may be Mrs. Moore."

"I don't think Mrs. Moore is built on those lines. I
saw her working in her garden the other day, and,
though I was too far away to see clearly, I thought she
was rather slender. She doesn't seem very socially
inclined when she has never called on you yet, although
she's your nearest neighbor."

"She can't be like Mrs. Lynde, after all, or curiosity
would have brought her," said Anne. "This caller is,
I think, Miss Cornelia."

Miss Cornelia it was; moreover, Miss Cornelia had not
come to make any brief and fashionable wedding call.
She had her work under her arm in a substantial parcel,
and when Anne asked her to stay she promptly took off
her capacious sun-hat, which had been held on her head,
despite irreverent September breezes, by a tight
elastic band under her hard little knob of fair hair.
No hat pins for Miss Cornelia, an it please ye!
Elastic bands had been good enough for her mother and
they were good enough for HER. She had a fresh, round,
pink-and-white face, and jolly brown eyes. She did not
look in the least like the traditional old maid, and
there was something in her expression which won Anne
instantly. With her old instinctive quickness to
discern kindred spirits she knew she was going to like
Miss Cornelia, in spite of uncertain oddities of
opinion, and certain oddities of attire.

Nobody but Miss Cornelia would have come to make a call
arrayed in a striped blue-and-white apron and a wrapper
of chocolate print, with a design of huge, pink roses
scattered over it. And nobody but Miss Cornelia could
have looked dignified and suitably garbed in it. Had
Miss Cornelia been entering a palace to call on a
prince's bride, she would have been just as dignified
and just as wholly mistress of the situation. She
would have trailed her rose-spattered flounce over the
marble floors just as unconcernedly, and she would have
proceeded just as calmly to disabuse the mind of the
princess of any idea that the possession of a mere man,
be he prince or peasant, was anything to brag of.

"I've brought my work, Mrs. Blythe, dearie," she
remarked, unrolling some dainty material. "I'm in a
hurry to get this done, and there isn't any time to
lose."

Anne looked in some surprise at the white garment
spread over Miss Cornelia's ample lap. It was
certainly a baby's dress, and it was most beautifully
made, with tiny frills and tucks. Miss Cornelia
adjusted her glasses and fell to embroidering with
exquisite stitches.

"This is for Mrs. Fred Proctor up at the Glen," she
announced. "She's expecting her eighth baby any day
now, and not a stitch has she ready for it. The other
seven have wore out all she made for the first, and
she's never had time or strength or spirit to make any
more. That woman is a martyr, Mrs. Blythe, believe ME.
When she married Fred Proctor _I_ knew how it would
turn out. He was one of your wicked, fascinating men.
After he got married he left off being fascinating and
just kept on being wicked. He drinks and he neglects
his family. Isn't that like a man? I don't know how
Mrs. Proctor would ever keep her children decently
clothed if her neighbors didn't help her out."

As Anne was afterwards to learn, Miss Cornelia was the
only neighbor who troubled herself much about the
decency of the young Proctors.

"When I heard this eighth baby was coming I decided to
make some things for it," Miss Cornelia went on.
"This is the last and I want to finish it today."

"It's certainly very pretty," said Anne. "I'll get my
sewing and we'll have a little thimble party of two.
You are a beautiful sewer, Miss Bryant."

"Yes, I'm the best sewer in these parts," said Miss
Cornelia in a matter-of-fact tone. "I ought to be!
Lord, I've done more of it than if I'd had a hundred
children of my own, believe ME! I s'pose I'm a fool,
to be putting hand embroidery on this dress for an
eighth baby. But, Lord, Mrs. Blythe, dearie, it isn't
to blame for being the eighth, and I kind of wished it
to have one real pretty dress, just as if it WAS
wanted. Nobody's wanting the poor mite--so I put some
extra fuss on its little things just on that account."

"Any baby might be proud of that dress," said Anne,
feeling still more strongly that she was going to like
Miss Cornelia.

"I s'pose you've been thinking I was never coming to
call on you," resumed Miss Cornelia. "But this is
harvest month, you know, and I've been busy--and a lot
of extra hands hanging round, eating more'n they work,
just like the men. I'd have come yesterday, but I went
to Mrs. Roderick MacAllister's funeral. At first I
thought my head was aching so badly I couldn't enjoy
myself if I did go. But she was a hundred years old,
and I'd always promised myself that I'd go to her
funeral."

"Was it a successful function?" asked Anne, noticing
that the office door was ajar.

"What's that? Oh, yes, it was a tremendous funeral.
She had a very large connection. There was over one
hundred and twenty carriages in the procession. There
was one or two funny things happened. I thought that
die I would to see old Joe Bradshaw, who is an infidel
and never darkens the door of a church, singing `Safe
in the Arms of Jesus' with great gusto and fervor. He
glories in singing-- that's why he never misses a
funeral. Poor Mrs. Bradshaw didn't look much like
singing--all wore out slaving. Old Joe starts out once
in a while to buy her a present and brings home some
new kind of farm machinery. Isn't that like a man?
But what else would you expect of a man who never goes
to church, even a Methodist one? I was real thankful
to see you and the young Doctor in the Presbyterian
church your first Sunday. No doctor for me who isn't a
Presbyterian."

"We were in the Methodist church last Sunday evening,"
said Anne wickedly.

"Oh, I s'pose Dr. Blythe has to go to the Methodist
church once in a while or he wouldn't get the Methodist
practice."

"We liked the sermon very much," declared Anne boldly.
"And I thought the Methodist minster's prayer was one
of the most beautiful I ever heard."

"Oh, I've no doubt he can pray. I never heard anyone
make more beautiful prayers than old Simon Bentley, who
was always drunk, or hoping to be, and the drunker he
was the better he prayed."

"The Methodist minister is very fine looking," said
Anne, for the benefit of the office door.

"Yes, he's quite ornamental," agreed Miss Cornelia.
"Oh, and VERY ladylike. And he thinks that every girl
who looks at him falls in love with him--as if a
Methodist minister, wandering about like any Jew, was
such a prize! If you and the young doctor take MY
advice, you won't have much to do with the Methodists.
My motto is--if you ARE a Presbyterian, BE a
Presbyterian."

"Don't you think that Methodists go to heaven as well
as Presbyterians?" asked Anne smilelessly.

"That isn't for US to decide. It's in higher hands
than ours," said Miss Cornelia solemnly. "But I ain't
going to associate with them on earth whatever I may
have to do in heaven. THIS Methodist minister isn't
married. The last one they had was, and his wife was
the silliest, flightiest little thing I ever saw. I
told her husband once that he should have waited till
she was grown up before he married her. He said he
wanted to have the training of her. Wasn't that like a
man?"

"It's rather hard to decide just when people ARE grown
up," laughed Anne.

"That's a true word, dearie. Some are grown up when
they're born, and others ain't grown up when they're
eighty, believe ME. That same Mrs. Roderick I was
speaking of never grew up. She was as foolish when she
was a hundred as when she was ten."

"Perhaps that was why she lived so long," suggested
Anne.

"Maybe 'twas. _I_'d rather live fifty sensible years
than a hundred foolish ones."

"But just think what a dull world it would be if
everyone was sensible," pleaded Anne.

Miss Cornelia disdained any skirmish of flippant
epigram.

"Mrs. Roderick was a Milgrave, and the Milgraves never
had much sense. Her nephew, Ebenezer Milgrave, used to
be insane for years. He believed he was dead and used
to rage at his wife because she wouldn't bury him.
_I_'d a-done it."

Miss Cornelia looked so grimly determined that Anne
could almost see her with a spade in her hand.

"Don't you know ANY good husbands, Miss Bryant?"

"Oh, yes, lots of them--over yonder," said Miss
Cornelia, waving her hand through the open window
towards the little graveyard of the church across the
harbor.

"But living--going about in the flesh?" persisted
Anne.

"Oh, there's a few, just to show that with God all
things are possible," acknowledged Miss Cornelia
reluctantly. "I don't deny that an odd man here and
there, if he's caught young and trained up proper, and
if his mother has spanked him well beforehand, may turn
out a decent being. YOUR husband, now, isn't so bad,
as men go, from all I hear. I s'pose"--Miss Cornelia
looked sharply at Anne over her glasses--"you think
there's nobody like him in the world."

"There isn't," said Anne promptly.

"Ah, well, I heard another bride say that once,"
sighed Miss Cornelia. "Jennie Dean thought when she
married that there wasn't anybody like HER husband in
the world. And she was right--there wasn't! And a
good thing, too, believe ME! He led her an awful
life--and he was courting his second wife while Jennie
was dying.

Wasn't that like a man? However, I hope YOUR
confidence will be better justified, dearie. The young
doctor is taking real well. I was afraid at first he
mightn't, for folks hereabouts have always thought old
Doctor Dave the only doctor in the world. Doctor Dave
hadn't much tact, to be sure--he was always talking of
ropes in houses where someone had hanged himself. But
folks forgot their hurt feelings when they had a pain
in their stomachs. If he'd been a minister instead of
a doctor they'd never have forgiven him. Soul-ache
doesn't worry folks near as much as stomach-ache.
Seeing as we're both Presbyterians and no Methodists
around, will you tell me your candid opinion of OUR
minister?"

"Why--really--I--well," hesitated Anne.

Miss Cornelia nodded.

"Exactly. I agree with you, dearie. We made a mistake
when we called HIM. His face just looks like one of
those long, narrow stones in the graveyard, doesn't it?
`Sacred to the memory' ought to be written on his
forehead. I shall never forget the first sermon he
preached after he came. It was on the subject of
everyone doing what they were best fitted for--a very
good subject, of course; but such illustrations as he
used! He said, `If you had a cow and an apple tree,
and if you tied the apple tree in your stable and
planted the cow in your orchard, with her legs up, how
much milk would you get from the apple tree, or how
many apples from the cow?'  Did you ever hear the like
in your born days, dearie? I was so thankful there
were no Methodists there that day--they'd never have
been done hooting over it. But what I dislike most in
him is his habit of agreeing with everybody, no matter
what is said. If you said to him, `You're a
scoundrel,' he'd say, with that smooth smile of his,
`Yes, that's so.'  A minister should have more
backbone. The long and the short of it is, I consider
him a reverend jackass. But, of course, this is just
between you and me. When there are Methodists in
hearing I praise him to the skies. Some folks think
his wife dresses too gay, but _I_ say when she has to
live with a face like that she needs something to cheer
her up. You'll never hear ME condemning a woman for
her dress. I'm only too thankful when her husband
isn't too mean and miserly to allow it. Not that I
bother much with dress myself. Women just dress to
please the men, and I'd never stoop to THAT. I have
had a real placid, comfortable life, dearie, and it's
just because I never cared a cent what the men
thought."

"Why do you hate the men so, Miss Bryant?"

"Lord, dearie, I don't hate them. They aren't worth
it. I just sort of despise them. I think I'll like
YOUR husband if he keeps on as he has begun. But apart
from him about the only men in the world I've much use
for are the old doctor and Captain Jim."

"Captain Jim is certainly splendid," agreed Anne
cordially.

"Captain Jim is a good man, but he's kind of vexing in
one way. You CAN'T make him mad. I've tried for
twenty years and he just keeps on being placid. It
does sort of rile me. And I s'pose the woman he
should have married got a man who went into tantrums
twice a day."

"Who was she?"

"Oh, I don't know, dearie. I never remember of Captain
Jim making up to anybody. He was edging on old as far
as my memory goes. He's seventy-six, you know. I
never heard any reason for his staying a bachelor, but
there must be one, believe ME. He sailed all his life
till five years ago, and there's no corner of the earth
he hasn't poked his nose into. He and Elizabeth
Russell were great cronies, all their lives, but they
never had any notion of sweet-hearting. Elizabeth
never married, though she had plenty of chances. She
was a great beauty when she was young. The year the
Prince of Wales came to the Island she was visiting her
uncle in Charlottetown and he was a Government
official, and so she got invited to the great ball.
She was the prettiest girl there, and the Prince danced
with her, and all the other women he didn't dance with
were furious about it, because their social standing
was higher than hers and they said he shouldn't have
passed them over. Elizabeth was always very proud of
that dance. Mean folks said that was why she never
married--she couldn't put up with an ordinary man after
dancing with a prince. But that wasn't so. She told
me the reason once--it was because she had such a
temper that she was afraid she couldn't live peaceably
with any man. She HAD an awful temper--she used to
have to go upstairs and bite pieces out of her bureau
to keep it down by times. But I told her that wasn't
any reason for not marrying if she wanted to. There's
no reason why we should let the men have a monopoly of
temper, is there, Mrs. Blythe, dearie?"

"I've a bit of temper myself," sighed Anne.

"It's well you have, dearie. You won't be half so
likely to be trodden on, believe ME! My, how that
golden glow of yours is blooming! Your garden looks
fine. Poor Elizabeth always took such care of it."

"I love it," said Anne. "I'm glad it's so full of
old-fashioned flowers. Speaking of gardening, we want
to get a man to dig up that little lot beyond the fir
grove and set it out with strawberry plants for us.
Gilbert is so busy he will never get time for it this
fall. Do you know anyone we can get?"

"Well, Henry Hammond up at the Glen goes out doing jobs
like that. He'll do, maybe. He's always a heap more
interested in his wages than in his work, just like a
man, and he's so slow in the uptake that he stands
still for five minutes before it dawns on him that he's
stopped. His father threw a stump at him when he was
small.

Nice gentle missile, wasn't it? So like a man!
Course, the boy never got over it. But he's the only
one I can recommend at all. He painted my house for me
last spring. It looks real nice now, don't you
think?"

Anne was saved by the clock striking five.

"Lord, is it that late?" exclaimed Miss Cornelia.
"How time does slip by when you're enjoying yourself!
Well, I must betake myself home."

"No, indeed! You are going to stay and have tea with
us," said Anne eagerly.

"Are you asking me because you think you ought to, or
because you really want to?" demanded Miss Cornelia.

"Because I really want to."

"Then I'll stay. YOU belong to the race that knows
Joseph."

"I know we are going to be friends," said Anne, with
the smile that only they of the household of faith ever
saw.

"Yes, we are, dearie. Thank goodness, we can choose
our friends. We have to take our relatives as they
are, and be thankful if there are no penitentiary birds
among them. Not that I've many-- none nearer than
second cousins. I'm a kind of lonely soul, Mrs.
Blythe."

There was a wistful note in Miss Cornelia's voice.

"I wish you would call me Anne," exclaimed Anne
impulsively. "It would seem more HOMEY. Everyone in
Four Winds, except my husband, calls me Mrs. Blythe,
and it makes me feel like a stranger. Do you know that
your name is very near being the one I yearned after
when I was a child. I hated `Anne' and I called myself
`Cordelia' in imagination."

"I like Anne. It was my mother's name. Old-fashioned
names are the best and sweetest in my opinion. If
you're going to get tea you might send the young doctor
to talk to me. He's been lying on the sofa in that
office ever since I came, laughing fit to kill over
what I've been saying."

"How did you know?" cried Anne, too aghast at this
instance of Miss Cornelia's uncanny prescience to make
a polite denial.

"I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane,
and I know men's tricks," retorted Miss Cornelia.
"There, I've finished my little dress, dearie, and the
eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases."

CHAPTER 9

AN EVENING AT FOUR WINDS POINT

It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able
to pay Four Winds light their promised visit. They had
often planned to go, but something always occurred to
prevent them. Captain Jim had "dropped in" several
times at the little house.

"I don't stand on ceremony, Mistress Blythe," he told
Anne. "It's a real pleasure to me to come here, and
I'm not going to deny myself jest because you haven't
got down to see me. There oughtn't to be no
bargaining like that among the race that knows Joseph.
I'll come when I can, and you come when you can, and so
long's we have our pleasant little chat it don't matter
a mite what roof's over us."

Captain Jim took a great fancy to Gog and Magog, who
were presiding over the destinies of the hearth in the
little house with as much dignity and aplomb as they
had done at Patty's Place.

"Aren't they the cutest little cusses?" he would say
delightedly; and he bade them greeting and farewell as
gravely and invariably as he did his host and hostess.
Captain Jim was not going to offend household deities
by any lack of reverence and ceremony.

"You've made this little house just about perfect," he
told Anne. "It never was so nice before. Mistress
Selwyn had your taste and she did wonders; but folks in
those days didn't have the pretty little curtains and
pictures and nicknacks you have. As for Elizabeth, she
lived in the past. You've kinder brought the future
into it, so to speak. I'd be real happy even if we
couldn't talk at all, when I come here--jest to sit and
look at you and your pictures and your flowers would be
enough of a treat. It's beautiful--beautiful."

Captain Jim was a passionate worshipper of beauty.
Every lovely thing heard or seen gave him a deep,
subtle, inner joy that irradiated his life. He was
quite keenly aware of his own lack of outward
comeliness and lamented it.

"Folks say I'm good," he remarked whimsically upon one
occasion, "but I sometimes wish the Lord had made me
only half as good and put the rest of it into looks.
But there, I reckon He knew what He was about, as a
good Captain should. Some of us have to be homely, or
the purty ones--like Mistress Blythe here--wouldn't
show up so well."

One evening Anne and Gilbert finally walked down to the
Four Winds light. The day had begun sombrely in gray
cloud and mist, but it had ended in a pomp of scarlet
and gold. Over the western hills beyond the harbor
were amber deeps and crystalline shallows, with the
fire of sunset below. The north was a mackerel sky of
little, fiery golden clouds. The red light flamed on
the white sails of a vessel gliding down the channel,
bound to a southern port in a land of palms. Beyond
her, it smote upon and incarnadined the shining, white,
grassless faces of the sand dunes. To the right, it
fell on the old house among the willows up the brook,
and gave it for a fleeting space casements more
splendid than those of an old cathedral. They glowed
out of its quiet and grayness like the throbbing,
blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul imprisoned in a dull
husk of environment.

"That old house up the brook always seems so lonely,"
said Anne. "I never see visitors there. Of course,
its lane opens on the upper road--but I don't think
there's much coming and going. It seems odd we've
never met the Moores yet, when they live within fifteen
minutes' walk of us. I may have seen them in church,
of course, but if so I didn't know them. I'm sorry
they are so unsociable, when they are our only near
neighbors."

"Evidently they don't belong to the race that knows
Joseph," laughed Gilbert. "Have you ever found out
who that girl was whom you thought so beautiful?"

"No. Somehow I have never remembered to ask about her.
But I've never seen her anywhere, so I suppose she must
have been a stranger. Oh, the sun has just
vanished--and there's the light."

As the dusk deepened, the great beacon cut swathes of
light through it, sweeping in a circle over the fields
and the harbor, the sandbar and the gulf.

"I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues
out to sea," said Anne, as one drenched them with
radiance; and she felt rather relieved when they got so
near the Point that they were inside the range of those
dazzling, recurrent flashes.

As they turned into the little lane that led across the
fields to the Point they met a man coming out of it--a
man of such extraordinary appearance that for a moment
they both frankly stared. He was a decidedly
fine-looking person-tall, broad-shouldered, well-
featured, with a Roman nose and frank gray eyes; he was
dressed in a prosperous farmer's Sunday best; in so far
he might have been any inhabitant of Four Winds or the
Glen. But, flowing over his breast nearly to his
knees, was a river of crinkly brown beard; and adown
his back, beneath his commonplace felt hat, was a
corresponding cascade of thick, wavy, brown hair.

"Anne," murmured Gilbert, when they were out of
earshot, "you didn't put what Uncle Dave calls `a
little of the Scott Act' in that lemonade you gave me
just before we left home, did you?"

"No, I didn't," said Anne, stifling her laughter, lest
the retreating enigma should hear here. "Who in the
world can he be?"

"I don't know; but if Captain Jim keeps apparitions
like that down at this Point I'm going to carry cold
iron in my pocket when I come here. He wasn't a
sailor, or one might pardon his eccentricity of
appearance; he must belong to the over-harbor clans.
Uncle Dave says they have several freaks over there."

"Uncle Dave is a little prejudiced, I think. You know
all the over-harbor people who come to the Glen Church
seem very nice. Oh, Gilbert, isn't this beautiful?"

The Four Winds light was built on a spur of red
sand-stone cliff jutting out into the gulf. On one
side, across the channel, stretched the silvery sand
shore of the bar; on the other, extended a long,
curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the
pebbled coves. It was a shore that knew the magic and
mystery of storm and star. There is a great solitude
about such a shore. The woods are never solitary--
they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life.
But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some
great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into
itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its
infinite mystery--we may only wander, awed and
spellbound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call
to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one
only--a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its
majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of
the company of the archangels.

Anne and Gilbert found Uncle Jim sitting on a bench
outside the lighthouse, putting the finishing touches
to a wonderful, full-rigged, toy schooner. He rose and
welcomed them to his abode with the gentle,
unconscious courtesy that became him so well.

"This has been a purty nice day all through, Mistress
Blythe, and now, right at the last, it's brought its
best. Would you like to sit down here outside a bit,
while the light lasts? I've just finished this bit of
a plaything for my little grand nephew, Joe, up at the
Glen. After I promised to make it for him I was kinder
sorry, for his mother was vexed. She's afraid he'll be
wanting to go to sea later on and she doesn't want the
notion encouraged in him. But what could I do,
Mistress Blythe? I'd PROMISED him, and I think it's
sorter real dastardly to break a promise you make to a
child. Come, sit down. It won't take long to stay an
hour."

The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea's
surface into long, silvery ripples, and sent sheeny
shadows flying out across it, from every point and
headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was
hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand dunes
and the headlands where gulls were huddling. The sky
was faintly filmed over with scarfs of silken vapor.
Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An
evening star was watching over the bar.

"Isn't that a view worth looking at?" said Captain
Jim, with a loving, proprietary pride. "Nice and far
from the market-place, ain't it? No buying and selling
and getting gain. You don't have to pay anything--all
that sea and sky free--`without money and without
price.'  There's going to be a moonrise purty soon,
too--I'm never tired of finding out what a moonrise can
be over them rocks and sea and harbor. There's a
surprise in it every time."

They had their moonrise, and watched its marvel and
magic in a silence that asked nothing of the world or
each other. Then they went up into the tower, and
Captain Jim showed and explained the mechanism of the
great light. Finally they found themselves in the
dining room, where a fire of driftwood was weaving
flames of wavering, elusive, sea-born hues in the open
fireplace.

"I put this fireplace in myself," remarked Captain
Jim. "The Government don't give lighthouse keepers
such luxuries. Look at the colors that wood makes. If
you'd like some driftwood for your fire, Mistress
Blythe, I'll bring you up a load some day. Sit down.
I'm going to make you a cup of tea."

Captain Jim placed a chair for Anne, having first
removed therefrom a huge, orange-colored cat and a
newspaper.

"Get down, Matey. The sofa is your place. I must put
this paper away safe till I can find time to finish the
story in it. It's called A Mad Love. 'Tisn't my
favorite brand of fiction, but I'm reading it jest to
see how long she can spin it out. It's at the
sixty-second chapter now, and the wedding ain't any
nearer than when it begun, far's I can see. When
little Joe comes I have to read him pirate yarns.
Ain't it strange how innocent little creatures like
children like the blood-thirstiest stories?"

"Like my lad Davy at home," said Anne. "He wants
tales that reek with gore."

Captain Jim's tea proved to be nectar. He was pleased
as a child with Anne's compliments, but he affected a
fine indifference.

"The secret is I don't skimp the cream," he remarked
airily. Captain Jim had never heard of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, but he evidently agreed with that writer's
dictum that "big heart never liked little cream pot."

"We met an odd-looking personage coming out of your
lane," said Gilbert as they sipped. "Who was he?"

Captain Jim grinned.

"That's Marshall Elliott--a mighty fine man with jest
one streak of foolishness in him. I s'pose you
wondered what his object was in turning himself into a
sort of dime museum freak."

"Is he a modern Nazarite or a Hebrew prophet left over
from olden times?" asked Anne.

"Neither of them. It's politics that's at the bottom
of his freak. All those Elliotts and Crawfords and
MacAllisters are dyed-in-the-wool politicians. They're
born Grit or Tory, as the case may be, and they live
Grit or Tory, and they die Grit or Tory; and what
they're going to do in heaven, where there's probably
no politics, is more than I can fathom. This Marshall
Elliott was born a Grit. I'm a Grit myself in
moderation, but there's no moderation about Marshall.
Fifteen years ago there was a specially bitter general
election. Marshall fought for his party tooth and
nail. He was dead sure the Liberals would win--so
sure that he got up at a public meeting and vowed that
he wouldn't shave his face or cut his hair until the
Grits were in power. Well, they didn't go in--and
they've never got in yet--and you saw the result today
for yourselves. Marshall stuck to his word."

"What does his wife think of it?" asked Anne.

"He's a bachelor. But if he had a wife I reckon she
couldn't make him break that vow. That family of
Elliotts has always been more stubborn than natteral.
Marshall's brother Alexander had a dog he set great
store by, and when it died the man actilly wanted to
have it buried in the graveyard, `along with the other
Christians,' he said. Course, he wasn't allowed to; so
he buried it just outside the graveyard fence, and
never darkened the church door again. But Sundays he'd
drive his family to church and sit by that dog's grave
and read his Bible all the time service was going on.
They say when he was dying he asked his wife to bury
him beside the dog; she was a meek little soul but she
fired up at THAT. She said SHE wasn't going to be
buried beside no dog, and if he'd rather have his last
resting place beside the dog than beside her, jest to
say so. Alexander Elliott was a stubborn mule, but he
was fond of his wife, so he give in and said, `Well,
durn it, bury me where you please. But when Gabriel's
trump blows I expect my dog to rise with the rest of
us, for he had as much soul as any durned Elliott or
Crawford or MacAllister that ever strutted.'  Them was
HIS parting words. As for Marshall, we're all used to
him, but he must strike strangers as right down
peculiar- looking. I've known him ever since he was
ten--he's about fifty now--and I like him. Him and me
was out cod-fishing today. That's about all I'm good
for now--catching trout and cod occasional. But
'tweren't always so--not by no manner of means. I used
to do other things, as you'd admit if you saw my
life-book."

Anne was just going to ask what his life-book was when
the First Mate created a diversion by springing upon
Captain Jim's knee. He was a gorgeous beastie, with a
face as round as a full moon, vivid green eyes, and
immense, white, double paws. Captain Jim stroked his
velvet back gently.

"I never fancied cats much till I found the First
Mate," he remarked, to the accompaniment of the Mate's
tremendous purrs. "I saved his life, and when you've
saved a creature's life you're bound to love it. It's
next thing to giving life. There's some turrible
thoughtless people in the world, Mistress Blythe. Some
of them city folks who have summer homes over the
harbor are so thoughtless that they're cruel. It's the
worst kind of cruelty--the thoughtless kind. You can't
cope with it. They keep cats there in the summer, and
feed and pet 'em, and doll 'em up with ribbons and
collars. And then in the fall they go off and leave
'em to starve or freeze. It makes my blood boil,
Mistress Blythe. One day last winter I found a poor
old mother cat dead on the shore, lying against the
skin-and-bone bodies of her three little kittens.
She'd died trying to shelter 'em. She had her poor
stiff paws around 'em. Master, I cried. Then I swore.
Then I carried them poor little kittens home and fed
'em up and found good homes for 'em. I knew the woman
who left the cat and when she come back this summer I
jest went over the harbor and told her my opinion of
her. It was rank meddling, but I do love meddling in a
good cause."

"How did she take it?" asked Gilbert.

"Cried and said she `didn't think.'  I says to her,
says I, `Do you s'pose that'll be held for a good
excuse in the day of Jedgment, when you'll have to
account for that poor old mother's life? The Lord'll
ask you what He give you your brains for if it wasn't
to think, I reckon.'  I don't fancy she'll leave cats
to starve another time."

"Was the First Mate one of the forsaken?" asked Anne,
making advances to him which were responded to
graciously, if condescendingly.

"Yes. I found HIM one bitter cold day in winter,
caught in the branches of a tree by his durn-fool
ribbon collar. He was almost starving. If you could
have seen his eyes, Mistress Blythe! He was nothing
but a kitten, and he'd got his living somehow since
he'd been left until he got hung up. When I loosed him
he gave my hand a pitiful swipe with his little red
tongue. He wasn't the able seaman you see now. He was
meek as Moses. That was nine years ago. His life has
been long in the land for a cat. He's a good old pal,
the First Mate is."

"I should have expected you to have a dog," said
Gilbert.

Captain Jim shook his head.

"I had a dog once. I thought so much of him that when
he died I couldn't bear the thought of getting another
in his place. He was a FRIEND--you understand,
Mistress Blythe? Matey's only a pal. I'm fond of
Matey--all the fonder on account of the spice of
devilment that's in him--like there is in all cats.
But I LOVED my dog. I always had a sneaking sympathy
for Alexander Elliott about HIS dog. There isn't any
devil in a good dog. That's why they're more lovable
than cats, I reckon. But I'm darned if they're as
interesting. Here I am, talking too much. Why don't
you check me? When I do get a chance to talk to
anyone I run on turrible. If you've done your tea I've
a few little things you might like to look at--picked
'em up in the queer corners I used to be poking my nose
into."

Captain Jim's "few little things" turned out to be a
most interesting collection of curios, hideous, quaint
and beautiful. And almost every one had some striking
story attached to it.

Anne never forgot the delight with which she listened
to those old tales that moonlit evening by that
enchanted driftwood fire, while the silver sea called
to them through the open window and sobbed against the
rocks below them.

Captain Jim never said a boastful word, but it was
impossible to help seeing what a hero the man had
been--brave, true, resourceful, unselfish. He sat
there in his little room and made those things live
again for his hearers. By a lift of the eyebrow, a
twist of the lip, a gesture, a word, he painted a whole
scene or character so that they saw it as it was.

Some of Captain Jim's adventures had such a marvellous
edge that Anne and Gilbert secretly wondered if he were
not drawing a rather long bow at their credulous
expense. But in this, as they found later, they did
him injustice. His tales were all literally true.
Captain Jim had the gift of the born storyteller,
whereby "unhappy, far-off things" can be brought
vividly before the hearer in all their pristine
poignancy.

Anne and Gilbert laughed and shivered over his tales,
and once Anne found herself crying. Captain Jim
surveyed her tears with pleasure shining from his face.

"I like to see folks cry that way," he remarked.
"It's a compliment. But I can't do justice to the
things I've seen or helped to do. I've 'em all jotted
down in my life-book, but I haven't got the knack of
writing them out properly. If I could hit on jest the
right words and string 'em together proper on paper I
could make a great book. It would beat A Mad Love
holler, and I believe Joe'd like it as well as the
pirate yarns. Yes, I've had some adventures in my
time; and, do you know, Mistress Blythe, I still lust
after 'em. Yes, old and useless as I be, there's an
awful longing sweeps over me at times to sail
out--out--out there--forever and ever."

"Like Ulysses, you would

    `Sail beyond the sunset and the baths     Of all
the western stars until you die,'"

said Anne dreamily.

"Ulysses? I've read of him. Yes, that's just how I
feel--jest how all us old sailors feel, I reckon. I'll
die on land after all, I s'pose. Well, what is to be
will be. There was old William Ford at the Glen who
never went on the water in his life, 'cause he was
afraid of being drowned. A fortune-teller had
predicted he would be. And one day he fainted and fell
with his face in the barn trough and was drowned. Must
you go? Well, come soon and come often. The doctor is
to do the talking next time. He knows a heap of things
I want to find out. I'm sorter lonesome here by times.
It's been worse since Elizabeth Russell died. Her and
me was such cronies."

Captain Jim spoke with the pathos of the aged, who see
their old friends slipping from them one by
one--friends whose place can never be quite filled by
those of a younger generation, even of the race that
knows Joseph. Anne and Gilbert promised to come soon
and often.

"He's a rare old fellow, isn't he?" said Gilbert, as
they walked home.

"Somehow, I can't reconcile his simple, kindly
personality with the wild, adventurous life he has
lived," mused Anne.

"You wouldn't find it so hard if you had seen him the
other day down at the fishing village. One of the men
of Peter Gautier's boat made a nasty remark about some
girl along the shore. Captain Jim fairly scorched the
wretched fellow with the lightning of his eyes. He
seemed a man transformed. He didn't say much--but the
way he said it! You'd have thought it would strip the
flesh from the fellow's bones. I understand that
Captain Jim will never allow a word against any woman
to be said in his presence."

"I wonder why he never married," said Anne. "He
should have sons with their ships at sea now, and
grandchildren climbing over him to hear his
stories--he's that kind of a man. Instead, he has
nothing but a magnificent cat."

But Anne was mistaken. Captain Jim had more than that.
He had a memory.

CHAPTER 10

LESLIE MOORE

"I'm going for a walk to the outside shore tonight,"
Anne told Gog and Magog one October evening. There was
no one else to tell, for Gilbert had gone over the
harbor. Anne had her little domain in the speckless
order one would expect of anyone brought up by Marilla
Cuthbert, and felt that she could gad shoreward with a
clear conscience. Many and delightful had been her
shore rambles, sometimes with Gilbert, sometimes with
Captain Jim, sometimes alone with her own thoughts and
new, poignantly-sweet dreams that were beginning to
span life with their rainbows. She loved the gentle,
misty harbor shore and the silvery, wind-haunted sand
shore, but best of all she loved the rock shore, with
its cliffs and caves and piles of surf-worn boulders,
and its coves where the pebbles glittered under the
pools; and it was to this shore she hied herself
tonight.

There had been an autumn storm of wind and rain,
lasting for three days. Thunderous had been the crash
of billows on the rocks, wild the white spray and spume
that blew over the bar, troubled and misty and
tempest-torn the erstwhile blue peace of Four Winds
Harbor. Now it was over, and the shore lay
clean-washed after the storm; not a wind stirred, but
there was still a fine surf on, dashing on sand and
rock in a splendid white turmoil--the only restless
thing in the great, pervading stillness and peace.

"Oh, this is a moment worth living through weeks of
storm and stress for," Anne exclaimed, delightedly
sending her far gaze across the tossing waters from the
top of the cliff where she stood. Presently she
scrambled down the steep path to the little cove below,
where she seemed shut in with rocks and sea and sky.

"I'm going to dance and sing," she said. "There's no
one here to see me--the seagulls won't carry tales of
the matter. I may be as crazy as I like."

She caught up her skirt and pirouetted along the hard
strip of sand just out of reach of the waves that
almost lapped her feet with their spent foam. Whirling
round and round, laughing like a child, she reached the
little headland that ran out to the east of the cove;
then she stopped suddenly, blushing crimson; she was
not alone; there had been a witness to her dance and
laughter.

The girl of the golden hair and sea-blue eyes was
sitting on a boulder of the headland, half-hidden by a
jutting rock. She was looking straight at Anne with a
strange expression--part wonder, part sympathy,
part--could it be?--envy. She was bare-headed, and her
splendid hair, more than ever like Browning's "gorgeous
snake," was bound about her head with a crimson
ribbon. She wore a dress of some dark material, very
plainly made; but swathed about her waist, outlining
its fine curves, was a vivid girdle of red silk. Her
hands, clasped over her knee, were brown and somewhat
work- hardened; but the skin of her throat and cheeks
was as white as cream. A flying gleam of sunset broke
through a low-lying western cloud and fell across her
hair. For a moment she seemed the spirit of the sea
personified--all its mystery, all its passion, all its
elusive charm.

"You--you must think me crazy," stammered Anne, trying
to recover her self-possession. To be seen by this
stately girl in such an abandon of childishness--she,
Mrs. Dr. Blythe, with all the dignity of the matron to
keep up--it was too bad!

"No," said the girl, "I don't."

She said nothing more; her voice was expressionless;
her manner slightly repellent; but there was something
in her eyes--eager yet shy, defiant yet pleading--which
turned Anne from her purpose of walking away. Instead,
she sat down on the boulder beside the girl.

"Let's introduce ourselves," she said, with the smile
that had never yet failed to win confidence and
friendliness. "I am Mrs. Blythe--and I live in that
little white house up the harbor shore."

"Yes, I know," said the girl. "I am Leslie
Moore--Mrs. Dick Moore," she added stiffly.

Anne was silent for a moment from sheer amazement. It
had not occurred to her that this girl was
married--there seemed nothing of the wife about her.
And that she should be the neighbor whom Anne had
pictured as a commonplace Four Winds housewife! Anne
could not quickly adjust her mental focus to this
astonishing change.

"Then--then you live in that gray house up the brook,"
she stammered.

"Yes. I should have gone over to call on you long
ago," said the other. She did not offer any
explanation or excuse for not having gone.

"I wish you WOULD come," said Anne, recovering herself
somewhat. "We're such near neighbors we ought to be
friends. That is the sole fault of Four Winds--there
aren't quite enough neighbors. Otherwise it is
perfection."

"You like it?"

"LIKE it! I love it. It is the most beautiful place I
ever saw."

"I've never seen many places," said Leslie Moore,
slowly, "but I've always thought it was very lovely
here. I--I love it, too."

She spoke, as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly. Anne had
an odd impression that this strange girl--the word
"girl" would persist-- could say a good deal if she
chose.

"I often come to the shore," she added.

"So do I," said Anne. "It's a wonder we haven't met
here before."

"Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do.
It is generally late--almost dark--when I come. And I
love to come just after a storm--like this. I don't
like the sea so well when it's calm and quiet. I like
the struggle--and the crash--and the noise."

"I love it in all its moods," declared Anne. "The sea
at Four Winds is to me what Lover's Lane was at home.
Tonight it seemed so free--so untamed--something broke
loose in me, too, out of sympathy. That was why I
danced along the shore in that wild way. I didn't
suppose anybody was looking, of course. If Miss
Cornelia Bryant had seen me she would have forboded a
gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe."

"You know Miss Cornelia?" said Leslie, laughing. She
had an exquisite laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and
unexpectedly with something of the delicious quality of
a baby's. Anne laughed, too.

"Oh, yes. She has been down to my house of dreams
several times."

"Your house of dreams?"

"Oh, that's a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I
have for our home. We just call it that between
ourselves. It slipped out before I thought."

"So Miss Russell's little white house is YOUR house of
dreams," said Leslie wonderingly. "_I_ had a house of
dreams once--but it was a palace," she added, with a
laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by a little
note of derision.

"Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too," said Anne. "I
suppose all girls do. And then we settle down
contentedly in eight-room houses that seem to fulfill
all the desires of our hearts--because our prince is
there. YOU should have had your palace really,
though--you are so beautiful. You MUST let me say
it--it has to be said--I'm nearly bursting with
admiration. You are the loveliest thing I ever saw,
Mrs. Moore."

"If we are to be friends you must call me Leslie,"
said the other with an odd passion.

"Of course I will. And MY friends call me Anne."

"I suppose I am beautiful," Leslie went on, looking
stormily out to sea. "I hate my beauty. I wish I had
always been as brown and plain as the brownest and
plainest girl at the fishing village over there.
Well, what do you think of Miss Cornelia?"

The abrupt change of subject shut the door on any
further confidences.

"Miss Cornelia is a darling, isn't she?" said Anne.
"Gilbert and I were invited to her house to a state tea
last week. You've heard of groaning tables."

"I seem to recall seeing the expression in the
newspaper reports of weddings," said Leslie, smiling.

"Well, Miss Cornelia's groaned--at least, it
creaked--positively. You couldn't have believed she
would have cooked so much for two ordinary people. She
had every kind of pie you could name, I think--except
lemon pie. She said she had taken the prize for lemon
pies at the Charlottetown Exhibition ten years ago and
had never made any since for fear of losing her
reputation for them."

"Were you able to eat enough pie to please her?"

"_I_ wasn't. Gilbert won her heart by eating--I won't
tell you how much. She said she never knew a man who
didn't like pie better than his Bible. Do you know, I
love Miss Cornelia."

"So do I," said Leslie. "She is the best friend I
have in the world."

Anne wondered secretly why, if this were so, Miss
Cornelia had never mentioned Mrs. Dick Moore to her.
Miss Cornelia had certainly talked freely about every
other individual in or near Four Winds.

"Isn't that beautiful?" said Leslie, after a brief
silence, pointing to the exquisite effect of a shaft of
light falling through a cleft in the rock behind them,
across a dark green pool at its base. "If I had come
here--and seen nothing but just that--I would go home
satisfied."

"The effects of light and shadow all along these shores
are wonderful," agreed Anne. "My little sewing room
looks out on the harbor, and I sit at its window and
feast my eyes. The colors and shadows are never the
same two minutes together."

"And you are never lonely?" asked Leslie abruptly.
"Never-- when you are alone?"

"No. I don't think I've ever been really lonely in my
life," answered Anne. "Even when I'm alone I have
real good company-- dreams and imaginations and
pretendings. I LIKE to be alone now and then, just to
think over things and TASTE them. But I love
friendship-- and nice, jolly little times with people.
Oh, WON'T you come to see me--often? Please do. I
believe," Anne added, laughing, "that you'd like me if
you knew me."

"I wonder if YOU would like ME," said Leslie
seriously. She was not fishing for a compliment. She
looked out across the waves that were beginning to be
garlanded with blossoms of moonlit foam, and her eyes
filled with shadows.

"I'm sure I would," said Anne. "And please don't
think I'm utterly irresponsible because you saw me
dancing on the shore at sunset. No doubt I shall be
dignified after a time. You see, I haven't been
married very long. I feel like a girl, and sometimes
like a child, yet."

"I have been married twelve years," said Leslie.

Here was another unbelievable thing.

"Why, you can't be as old as I am!" exclaimed Anne.
"You must have been a child when you were married."

"I was sixteen," said Leslie, rising, and picking up
the cap and jacket lying beside her. "I am
twenty-eight now. Well, I must go back."

"So must I. Gilbert will probably be home. But I'm so
glad we both came to the shore tonight and met each
other."

Leslie said nothing, and Anne was a little chilled.
She had offered friendship frankly but it had not been
accepted very graciously, if it had not been absolutely
repelled. In silence they climbed the cliffs and
walked across a pasture-field of which the feathery,
bleached, wild grasses were like a carpet of creamy
velvet in the moonlight. When they reached the shore
lane Leslie turned.

"I go this way, Mrs. Blythe. You will come over and
see me some time, won't you?"

Anne felt as if the invitation had been thrown at her.
She got the impression that Leslie Moore gave it
reluctantly.

"I will come if you really want me to," she said a
little coldly.

"Oh, I do--I do," exclaimed Leslie, with an eagerness
which seemed to burst forth and beat down some
restraint that had been imposed on it.

"Then I'll come. Good-night--Leslie."

"Good-night, Mrs. Blythe."

Anne walked home in a brown study and poured out her
tale to Gilbert.

"So Mrs. Dick Moore isn't one of the race that knows
Joseph?" said Gilbert teasingly.

"No--o--o, not exactly. And yet--I think she WAS one
of them once, but has gone or got into exile," said
Anne musingly. "She is certainly very different from
the other women about here. You can't talk about eggs
and butter to HER. To think I've been imagining her a
second Mrs. Rachel Lynde! Have you ever seen Dick
Moore, Gilbert?"

"No. I've seen several men working about the fields of
the farm, but I don't know which was Moore."

"She never mentioned him. I KNOW she isn't happy."

"From what you tell me I suppose she was married before
she was old enough to know her own mind or heart, and
found out too late that she had made a mistake. It's a
common tragedy enough, Anne.

A fine woman would have made the best of it. Mrs.
Moore has evidently let it make her bitter and
resentful."

"Don't let us judge her till we know," pleaded Anne.
"I don't believe her case is so ordinary. You will
understand her fascination when you meet her, Gilbert.
It is a thing quite apart from her beauty. I feel that
she possesses a rich nature, into which a friend might
enter as into a kingdom; but for some reason she bars
every one out and shuts all her possibilities up in
herself, so that they cannot develop and blossom.
There, I've been struggling to define her to myself
ever since I left her, and that is the nearest I can
get to it. I'm going to ask Miss Cornelia about her."

CHAPTER 11

THE STORY OF LESLIE MOORE

"Yes, the eighth baby arrived a fortnight ago," said
Miss Cornelia, from a rocker before the fire of the
little house one chilly October afternoon. "It's a
girl. Fred was ranting mad--said he wanted a
boy--when the truth is he didn't want it at all. If it
had been a boy he'd have ranted because it wasn't a
girl. They had four girls and three boys before, so I
can't see that it made much difference what this one
was, but of course he'd have to be cantankerous, just
like a man. The baby is real pretty, dressed up in its
nice little clothes. It has black eyes and the
dearest, tiny hands."

"I must go and see it. I just love babies," said
Anne, smiling to herself over a thought too dear and
sacred to be put into words.

"I don't say but what they're nice," admitted Miss
Cornelia. "But some folks seem to have more than they
really need, believe ME. My poor cousin Flora up at
the Glen had eleven, and such a slave as she is! Her
husband suicided three years ago. Just like a man!"

"What made him do that?" asked Anne, rather shocked.

"Couldn't get his way over something, so he jumped into
the well . A good riddance! He was a born tyrant.
But of course it spoiled the well. Flora could never
abide the thought of using it again, poor thing! So
she had another dug and a frightful expense it was, and
the water as hard as nails. If he HAD to drown himself
there was plenty of water in the harbor, wasn't there?
I've no patience with a man like that. We've only had
two suicides in Four Winds in my recollection. The
other was Frank West--Leslie Moore's father. By the
way, has Leslie ever been over to call on you yet?"

"No, but I met her on the shore a few nights ago and we
scraped an acquaintance," said Anne, pricking up her
ears.

Miss Cornelia nodded.

"I'm glad, dearie. I was hoping you'd foregather with
her. What do you think of her?"

"I thought her very beautiful."

"Oh, of course. There was never anybody about Four
Winds could touch her for looks. Did you ever see her
hair? It reaches to her feet when she lets it down.
But I meant how did you like her?"

"I think I could like her very much if she'd let me,"
said Anne slowly.

"But she wouldn't let you--she pushed you off and kept
you at arm's length. Poor Leslie! You wouldn't be
much surprised if you knew what her life has been.
It's been a tragedy--a tragedy!" repeated Miss
Cornelia emphatically.

"I wish you would tell me all about her--that is, if
you can do so without betraying any confidence."

"Lord, dearie, everybody in Four Winds knows poor
Leslie's story. It's no secret--the OUTSIDE, that is.
Nobody knows the INSIDE but Leslie herself, and she
doesn't take folks into her confidence. I'm about the
best friend she has on earth, I reckon, and she's never
uttered a word of complaint to me. Have you ever seen
Dick Moore?"

"No."

"Well, I may as well begin at the beginning and tell
you everything straight through, so you'll understand
it. As I said, Leslie's father was Frank West. He was
clever and shiftless--just like a man. Oh, he had
heaps of brains--and much good they did him! He
started to go to college, and he went for two years,
and then his health broke down. The Wests were all
inclined to be consumptive. So Frank came home and
started farming. He married Rose Elliott from over
harbor. Rose was reckoned the beauty of Four
Winds--Leslie takes her looks from her mother, but she
has ten times the spirit and go that Rose had, and a
far better figure. Now you know, Anne, I always take
the ground that us women ought to stand by each other.
We've got enough to endure at the hands of the men, the
Lord knows, so I hold we hadn't ought to clapper-claw
one another, and it isn't often you'll find me running
down another woman. But I never had much use for Rose
Elliott. She was spoiled to begin with, believe ME,
and she was nothing but a lazy, selfish, whining
creature. Frank was no hand to work, so they were
poor as Job's turkey. Poor! They lived on potatoes
and point, believe ME. They had two children--Leslie
and Kenneth. Leslie had her mother's looks and her
father's brains, and something she didn't get from
either of them. She took after her Grandmother West--a
splendid old lady. She was the brightest, friendliest,
merriest thing when she was a child, Anne. Everybody
liked her. She was her father's favorite and she was
awful fond of him. They were `chums,' as she used to
say. She couldn't see any of his faults--and he WAS a
taking sort of man in some ways.

"Well, when Leslie was twelve years old, the first
dreadful thing happened. She worshipped little
Kenneth--he was four years younger than her, and he WAS
a dear little chap. And he was killed one day--fell
off a big load of hay just as it was going into the
barn, and the wheel went right over his little body and
crushed the life out of it. And mind you, Anne, Leslie
saw it. She was looking down from the loft. She gave
one screech--the hired man said he never heard such a
sound in all his life--he said it would ring in his
ears till Gabriel's trump drove it out. But she never
screeched or cried again about it. She jumped from the
loft onto the load and from the load to the floor, and
caught up the little bleeding, warm, dead body,
Anne--they had to tear it from her before she would let
it go. They sent for me--I can't talk of it."

Miss Cornelia wiped the tears from her kindly brown
eyes and sewed in bitter silence for a few minutes.

"Well," she resumed, "it was all over--they buried
little Kenneth in that graveyard over the harbor, and
after a while Leslie went back to her school and her
studies. She never mentioned Kenneth's name--I've
never heard it cross her lips from that day to this. I
reckon that old hurt still aches and burns at times;
but she was only a child and time is real kind to
children, Anne, dearie. After a while she began to
laugh again--she had the prettiest laugh. You don't
often hear it now."

"I heard it once the other night," said Anne. "It IS
a beautiful laugh."

"Frank West began to go down after Kenneth's death. He
wasn't strong and it was a shock to him, because he was
real fond of the child, though, as I've said, Leslie
was his favorite. He got mopy and melancholy, and
couldn't or wouldn't work. And one day, when Leslie
was fourteen years of age, he hanged himself--and in
the parlor, too, mind you, Anne, right in the middle of
the parlor from the lamp hook in the ceiling. Wasn't
that like a man? It was the anniversary of his
wedding day, too. Nice, tasty time to pick for it,
wasn't it? And, of course, that poor Leslie had to be
the one to find him. She went into the parlor that
morning, singing, with some fresh flowers for the
vases, and there she saw her father hanging from the
ceiling, his face as black as a coal. It was something
awful, believe ME!"

"Oh, how horrible!" said Anne, shuddering. "The poor,
poor child!"

"Leslie didn't cry at her father's funeral any more
then she had cried at Kenneth's. Rose whooped and
howled for two, however, and Leslie had all she could
do trying to calm and comfort her mother. I was
disgusted with Rose and so was everyone else, but
Leslie never got out of patience. She loved her
mother. Leslie is clannish--her own could never do
wrong in her eyes. Well, they buried Frank West beside
Kenneth, and Rose put up a great big monument to him.
It was bigger than his character, believe ME! Anyhow,
it was bigger than Rose could afford, for the farm was
mortgaged for more than its value. But not long after
Leslie's old grandmother West died and she left Leslie
a little money--enough to give her a year at Queen's
Academy. Leslie had made up her mind to pass for a
teacher if she could, and then earn enough to put
herself through Redmond College. That had been her
father's pet scheme--he wanted her to have what he had
lost. Leslie was full of ambition and her head was
chock full of brains. She went to Queen's, and she
took two years' work in one year and got her First;
and when she came home she got the Glen school. She
was so happy and hopeful and full of life and
eagerness. When I think of what she was then and what
she is now, I say--drat the men!"

Miss Cornelia snipped her thread off as viciously as
if, Nero-like, she was severing the neck of mankind by
the stroke.

"Dick Moore came into her life that summer. His
father, Abner Moore, kept store at the Glen, but Dick
had a sea-going streak in him from his mother; he used
to sail in summer and clerk in his father's store in
winter. He was a big, handsome fellow, with a little
ugly soul. He was always wanting something till he got
it, and then he stopped wanting it--just like a man.
Oh, he didn't growl at the weather when it was fine,
and he was mostly real pleasant and agreeable when
everything went right. But he drank a good deal, and
there were some nasty stories told of him and a girl
down at the fishing village. He wasn't fit for Leslie
to wipe her feet on, that's the long and short of it.
And he was a Methodist! But he was clean mad about
her--because of her good looks in the first place, and
because she wouldn't have anything to say to him in the
second. He vowed he'd have her--and he got her!"

"How did he bring it about?"

"Oh, it was an iniquitous thing! I'll never forgive
Rose West. You see, dearie, Abner Moore held the
mortgage on the West farm, and the interest was overdue
some years, and Dick just went and told Mrs. West that
if Leslie wouldn't marry him he'd get his father to
foreclose the mortgage. Rose carried on
terrible--fainted and wept, and pleaded with Leslie not
to let her be turned out of her home. She said it
would break her heart to leave the home she'd come to
as a bride. I wouldn't have blamed her for feeling
dreadful bad over it--but you wouldn't have thought
she'd be so selfish as to sacrifice her own flesh and
blood because of it, would you? Well, she was.

And Leslie gave in--she loved her mother so much she
would have done anything to save her pain. She married
Dick Moore. None of us knew why at the time. It
wasn't till long afterward that I found out how her
mother had worried her into it. I was sure there was
something wrong, though, because I knew how she had
snubbed him time and again, and it wasn't like Leslie
to turn face--about like that. Besides, I knew that
Dick Moore wasn't the kind of man Leslie could ever
fancy, in spite of his good looks and dashing ways. Of
course, there was no wedding, but Rose asked me to go
and see them married. I went, but I was sorry I did.
I'd seen Leslie's face at her brother's funeral and at
her father's funeral--and now it seemed to me I was
seeing it at her own funeral. But Rose was smiling as
a basket of chips, believe ME!

"Leslie and Dick settled down on the West place--Rose
couldn't bear to part with her dear daughter!--and
lived there for the winter. In the spring Rose took
pneumonia and died--a year too late! Leslie was
heart-broken enough over it. Isn't it terrible the way
some unworthy folks are loved, while others that
deserve it far more, you'd think, never get much
affection? As for Dick, he'd had enough of quiet
married life--just like a man. He was for up and off.
He went over to Nova Scotia to visit his relations--his
father had come from Nova Scotia--and he wrote back to
Leslie that his cousin, George Moore, was going on a
voyage to Havana and he was going too. The name of the
vessel was the Four Sisters and they were to be gone
about nine weeks.

"It must have been a relief to Leslie. But she never
said anything. From the day of her marriage she was
just what she is now--cold and proud, and keeping
everyone but me at a distance. I won't BE kept at a
distance, believe ME! I've just stuck to Leslie as
close as I knew how in spite of everything."

"She told me you were the best friend she had," said
Anne.

"Did she?" exclaimed Miss Cornelia delightedly.
"Well, I'm real thankful to hear it. Sometimes I've
wondered if she really did want me around at all--she
never let me think so. You must have thawed her out
more than you think, or she wouldn't have said that
much itself to you. Oh, that poor, heart-broken girl!
I never see Dick Moore but I want to run a knife clean
through him."

Miss Cornelia wiped her eyes again and having relieved
her feelings by her blood-thirsty wish, took up her
tale.

"Well, Leslie was left over there alone. Dick had put
in the crop before he went, and old Abner looked after
it. The summer went by and the Four Sisters didn't
come back. The Nova Scotia Moores investigated, and
found she had got to Havana and discharged her cargo
and took on another and left for home; and that was all
they ever found out about her. By degrees people began
to talk of Dick Moore as one that was dead. Almost
everyone believed that he was, though no one felt
certain, for men have turned up here at the harbor
after they'd been gone for years. Leslie never thought
he was dead--and she was right. A thousand pities too!
The next summer Captain Jim was in Havana--that was
before he gave up the sea, of course. He thought he'd
poke round a bit--Captain Jim was always meddlesome,
just like a man--and he went to inquiring round among
the sailors' boarding houses and places like that, to
see if he could find out anything about the crew of the
Four Sisters. He'd better have let sleeping dogs lie,
in my opinion! Well, he went to one out-of-the-way
place, and there he found a man he knew at first sight
it was Dick Moore, though he had a big beard. Captain
Jim got it shaved off and then there was no
doubt--Dick Moore it was--his body at least. His mind
wasn't there--as for his soul, in my opinion he never
had one!"

"What had happened to him?"

"Nobody knows the rights of it. All the folks who kept
the boarding house could tell was that about a year
before they had found him lying on their doorstep one
morning in an awful condition--his head battered to a
jelly almost. They supposed he'd got hurt in some
drunken row, and likely that's the truth of it. They
took him in, never thinking he could live. But he
did--and he was just like a child when he got well.
He hadn't memory or intellect or reason. They tried to
find out who he was but they never could. He couldn't
even tell them his name--he could only say a few simple
words. He had a letter on him beginning `Dear Dick'
and signed `Leslie,' but there was no address on it and
the envelope was gone. They let him stay on--he
learned to do a few odd jobs about the place--and there
Captain Jim found him. He brought him home-- I've
always said it was a bad day's work, though I s'pose
there was nothing else he could do. He thought maybe
when Dick got home and saw his old surroundings and
familiar faces his memory would wake up. But it hadn't
any effect. There he's been at the house up the brook
ever since. He's just like a child, no more nor less.
Takes fractious spells occasionally, but mostly he's
just vacant and good humored and harmless. He's apt to
run away if he isn't watched. That's the burden
Leslie has had to carry for eleven years--and all
alone. Old Abner Moore died soon after Dick was
brought home and it was found he was almost bankrupt.
When things were settled up there was nothing for
Leslie and Dick but the old West farm. Leslie rented
it to John Ward, and the rent is all she has to live
on. Sometimes in summer she takes a boarder to help
out. But most visitors prefer the other side of the
harbor where the hotels and summer cottages are.
Leslie's house is too far from the bathing shore.
She's taken care of Dick and she's never been away from
him for eleven years--she's tied to that imbecile for
life. And after all the dreams and hopes she once had!
You can imagine what it has been like for her, Anne,
dearie--with her beauty and spirit and pride and
cleverness. It's just been a living death."

"Poor, poor girl!" said Anne again. Her own happiness
seemed to reproach her. What right had she to be so
happy when another human soul must be so miserable?

"Will you tell me just what Leslie said and how she
acted the night you met her on the shore?" asked Miss
Cornelia.

She listened intently and nodded her satisfaction.

"YOU thought she was stiff and cold, Anne, dearie, but
I can tell you she thawed out wonderful for her. She
must have taken to you real strong. I'm so glad. You
may be able to help her a good deal. I was thankful
when I heard that a young couple was coming to this
house, for I hoped it would mean some friends for
Leslie; especially if you belonged to the race that
knows Joseph. You WILL be her friend, won't you, Anne,
dearie?"

"Indeed I will, if she'll let me," said Anne, with all
her own sweet, impulsive earnestness.

"No, you must be her friend, whether she'll let you or
not," said Miss Cornelia resolutely. "Don't you mind
if she's stiff by times-- don't notice it. Remember
what her life has been--and is--and must always be, I
suppose, for creatures like Dick Moore live forever, I
understand. You should see how fat he's got since he
came home. He used to be lean enough. Just MAKE her
be friends--you can do it--you're one of those who have
the knack. Only you mustn't be sensitive. And don't
mind if she doesn't seem to want you to go over there
much. She knows that some women don't like to be where
Dick is--they complain he gives them the creeps. Just
get her to come over here as often as she can. She
can't get away so very much--she can't leave Dick long,
for the Lord knows what he'd do--burn the house down
most likely. At nights, after he's in bed and asleep,
is about the only time she's free. He always goes to
bed early and sleeps like the dead till next morning.
That is how you came to meet her at the shore likely.
She wanders there considerable."

"I will do everything I can for her," said Anne. Her
interest in Leslie Moore, which had been vivid ever
since she had seen her driving her geese down the hill,
was intensified a thousand fold by Miss Cornelia's
narration. The girl's beauty and sorrow and loneliness
drew her with an irresistible fascination. She had
never known anyone like her; her friends had hitherto
been wholesome, normal, merry girls like herself, with
only the average trials of human care and bereavement
to shadow their girlish dreams. Leslie Moore stood
apart, a tragic, appealing figure of thwarted
womanhood. Anne resolved that she would win entrance
into the kingdom of that lonely soul and find there the
comradeship it could so richly give, were it not for
the cruel fetters that held it in a prison not of its
own making.

"And mind you this, Anne, dearie," said Miss Cornelia,
who had not yet wholly relieved her mind, "You mustn't
think Leslie is an infidel because she hardly ever goes
to church--or even that she's a Methodist. She can't
take Dick to church, of course--not that he ever
troubled church much in his best days. But you just
remember that she's a real strong Presbyterian at
heart, Anne, dearie."

CHAPTER 12

LESLIE COMES OVER

Leslie came over to the house of dreams one frosty
October night, when moonlit mists were hanging over the
harbor and curling like silver ribbons along the
seaward glens. She looked as if she repented coming
when Gilbert answered her knock; but Anne flew past
him, pounced on her, and drew her in.

"I'm so glad you picked tonight for a call," she said
gaily. "I made up a lot of extra good fudge this
afternoon and we want someone to help us eat it--before
the fire--while we tell stories. Perhaps Captain Jim
will drop in, too. This is his night."

"No. Captain Jim is over home," said Leslie. "He--he
made me come here," she added, half defiantly.

"I'll say a thank-you to him for that when I see him,"
said Anne, pulling easy chairs before the fire.

"Oh, I don't mean that I didn't want to come,"
protested Leslie, flushing a little. "I--I've been
thinking of coming--but it isn't always easy for me to
get away."

"Of course it must be hard for you to leave Mr.
Moore," said Anne, in a matter-of-fact tone. She had
decided that it would be best to mention Dick Moore
occasionally as an accepted fact, and not give undue
morbidness to the subject by avoiding it. She was
right, for Leslie's air of constraint suddenly
vanished. Evidently she had been wondering how much
Anne knew of the conditions of her life and was
relieved that no explanations were needed. She allowed
her cap and jacket to be taken, and sat down with a
girlish snuggle in the big armchair by Magog. She was
dressed prettily and carefully, with the customary
touch of color in the scarlet geranium at her white
throat. Her beautiful hair gleamed like molten gold in
the warm firelight. Her sea-blue eyes were full of
soft laughter and allurement. For the moment, under the
influence of the little house of dreams, she was a
girl again--a girl forgetful of the past and its
bitterness. The atmosphere of the many loves that had
sanctified the little house was all about her; the
companionship of two healthy, happy, young folks of
her own generation encircled her; she felt and yielded
to the magic of her surroundings--Miss Cornelia and
Captain Jim would scarcely have recognized her; Anne
found it hard to believe that this was the cold,
unresponsive woman she had met on the shore--this
animated girl who talked and listened with the
eagerness of a starved soul. And how hungrily Leslie's
eyes looked at the bookcases between the windows!

"Our library isn't very extensive," said Anne, "but
every book in it is a FRIEND. We've picked our books
up through the years, here and there, never buying one
until we had first read it and knew that it belonged to
the race of Joseph."

Leslie laughed--beautiful laughter that seemed akin to
all the mirth that had echoed through the little house
in the vanished years.

"I have a few books of father's--not many," she said.
"I've read them until I know them almost by heart. I
don't get many books. There's a circulating library at
the Glen store--but I don't think the committee who
pick the books for Mr. Parker know what books are of
Joseph's race--or perhaps they don't care. It was so
seldom I got one I really liked that I gave up getting
any."

"I hope you'll look on our bookshelves as your own,"
said Anne.

"You are entirely and wholeheartedly welcome to the
loan of any book on them."

"You are setting a feast of fat things before me,"
said Leslie, joyously. Then, as the clock struck ten,
she rose, half unwillingly.

"I must go. I didn't realise it was so late. Captain
Jim is always saying it doesn't take long to stay an
hour. But I've stayed two--and oh, but I've enjoyed
them," she added frankly.

"Come often," said Anne and Gilbert. They had risen
and stood together in the firelight's glow. Leslie
looked at them--youthful, hopeful, happy, typifying all
she had missed and must forever miss. The light went
out of her face and eyes; the girl vanished; it was the
sorrowful, cheated woman who answered the invitation
almost coldly and got herself away with a pitiful
haste.

Anne watched her until she was lost in the shadows of
the chill and misty night. Then she turned slowly back
to the glow of her own radiant hearthstone.

"Isn't she lovely, Gilbert? Her hair fascinates me.
Miss Cornelia says it reaches to her feet. Ruby Gillis
had beautiful hair--but Leslie's is ALIVE--every thread
of it is living gold."

"She is very beautiful," agreed Gilbert, so heartily
that Anne almost wished he were a LITTLE less
enthusiastic.

"Gilbert, would you like my hair better if it were like
Leslie's?" she asked wistfully.

"I wouldn't have your hair any color but just what it
is for the world," said Gilbert, with one or two
convincing accompaniments.

You wouldn't be ANNE if you had golden hair--or hair of
any color but"--

"Red," said Anne, with gloomy satisfaction.

"Yes, red--to give warmth to that milk-white skin and
those shining gray-green eyes of yours. Golden hair
wouldn't suit you at all Queen Anne--MY Queen
Anne--queen of my heart and life and home."

"Then you may admire Leslie's all you like," said Anne
magnanimously.

CHAPTER 13

A GHOSTLY EVENING

One evening, a week later, Anne decided to run over the
fields to the house up the brook for an informal call.
It was an evening of gray fog that had crept in from
the gulf, swathed the harbor, filled the glens and
valleys, and clung heavily to the autumnal meadows.
Through it the sea sobbed and shuddered. Anne saw Four
Winds in a new aspect, and found it weird and
mysterious and fascinating; but it also gave her a
little feeling of loneliness. Gilbert was away and
would be away until the morrow, attending a medical
pow-wow in Charlottetown. Anne longed for an hour of
fellowship with some girl friend. Captain Jim and Miss
Cornelia were "good fellows" each, in their own way;
but youth yearned to youth.

"If only Diana or Phil or Pris or Stella could drop in
for a chat," she said to herself, "how delightful it
would be! This is such a GHOSTLY night. I'm sure all
the ships that ever sailed out of Four Winds to their
doom could be seen tonight sailing up the harbor with
their drowned crews on their decks, if that shrouding
fog could suddenly be drawn aside. I feel as if it
concealed innumerable mysteries--as if I were
surrounded by the wraiths of old generations of Four
Winds people peering at me through that gray veil. If
ever the dear dead ladies of this little house came
back to revisit it they would come on just such a night
as this. If I sit here any longer I'll see one of them
there opposite me in Gilbert's chair. This place isn't
exactly canny tonight. Even Gog and Magog have an air
of pricking up their ears to hear the footsteps of
unseen guests. I'll run over to see Leslie before I
frighten myself with my own fancies, as I did long ago
in the matter of the Haunted Wood. I'll leave my house
of dreams to welcome back its old inhabitants. My fire
will give them my good-will and greeting--they will be
gone before I come back, and my house will be mine once
more. Tonight I am sure it is keeping a tryst with the
past."

Laughing a little over her fancy, yet with something of
a creepy sensation in the region of her spine, Anne
kissed her hand to Gog and Magog and slipped out into
the fog, with some of the new magazines under her arm
for Leslie.

"Leslie's wild for books and magazines," Miss Cornelia
had told her, "and she hardly ever sees one. She can't
afford to buy them or subscribe for them. She's really
pitifully poor, Anne. I don't see how she makes out to
live at all on the little rent the farm brings in.
She never even hints a complaint on the score of
poverty, but I know what it must be. She's been
handicapped by it all her life. She didn't mind it
when she was free and ambitious, but it must gall now,
believe ME. I'm glad she seemed so bright and merry
the evening she spent with you. Captain Jim told me he
had fairly to put her cap and coat on and push her out
of the door. Don't be too long going to see her
either. If you are she'll think it's because you don't
like the sight of Dick, and she'll crawl into her shell
again. Dick's a great, big, harmless baby, but that
silly grin and chuckle of his do get on some people's
nerves. Thank goodness, I've no nerves myself. I like
Dick Moore better now than I ever did when he was in
his right senses--though the Lord knows that isn't
saying much. I was down there one day in housecleaning
time helping Leslie a bit, and I was frying doughnuts.
Dick was hanging round to get one, as usual, and all at
once he picked up a scalding hot one I'd just fished
out and dropped it on the back of my neck when I was
bending over. Then he laughed and laughed. Believe
ME, Anne, it took all the grace of God in my heart to
keep me from just whisking up that stew-pan of boiling
fat and pouring it over his head."

Anne laughed over Miss Cornelia's wrath as she sped
through the darkness. But laughter accorded ill with
that night. She was sober enough when she reached the
house among the willows. Everything was very silent.
The front part of the house seemed dark and deserted,
so Anne slipped round to the side door, which opened
from the veranda into a little sitting room. There she
halted noiselessly.

The door was open. Beyond, in the dimly lighted room,
sat Leslie Moore, with her arms flung out on the table
and her head bent upon them. She was weeping
horribly--with low, fierce, choking sobs, as if some
agony in her soul were trying to tear itself out. An
old black dog was sitting by her, his nose resting on
his lap, his big doggish eyes full of mute, imploring
sympathy and devotion. Anne drew back in dismay. She
felt that she could not intermeddle with this
bitterness. Her heart ached with a sympathy she might
not utter. To go in now would be to shut the door
forever on any possible help or friendship. Some
instinct warned Anne that the proud, bitter girl would
never forgive the one who thus surprised her in her
abandonment of despair.

Anne slipped noiselessly from the veranda and found her
way across the yard. Beyond, she heard voices in the
gloom and saw the dim glow of a light. At the gate she
met two men--Captain Jim with a lantern, and another
who she knew must be Dick Moore--a big man, badly gone
to fat, with a broad, round, red face, and vacant eyes.
Even in the dull light Anne got the impression that
there was something unusual about his eyes.

"Is this you, Mistress Blythe?" said Captain Jim.
"Now, now, you hadn't oughter be roaming about alone on
a night like this. You could get lost in this fog
easier than not. Jest you wait till I see Dick safe
inside the door and I'll come back and light you over
the fields. I ain't going to have Dr. Blythe coming
home and finding that you walked clean over Cape
Leforce in the fog. A woman did that once, forty years
ago.

"So you've been over to see Leslie," he said, when he
rejoined her.

"I didn't go in," said Anne, and told what she had
seen. Captain Jim sighed.

"Poor, poor, little girl! She don't cry often,
Mistress Blythe-- she's too brave for that. She must
feel terrible when she does cry. A night like this is
hard on poor women who have sorrows. There's
something about it that kinder brings up all we've
suffered--or feared."

"It's full of ghosts," said Anne, with a shiver.
"That was why I came over--I wanted to clasp a human
hand and hear a human voice.

There seem to be so many INHUMAN presences about
tonight. Even my own dear house was full of them.
They fairly elbowed me out. So I fled over here for
companionship of my kind."

"You were right not to go in, though, Mistress Blythe.
Leslie wouldn't have liked it. She wouldn't have liked
me going in with Dick, as I'd have done if I hadn't met
you. I had Dick down with me all day. I keep him with
me as much as I can to help Leslie a bit."

"Isn't there something odd about his eyes?" asked
Anne.

"You noticed that? Yes, one is blue and t'other is
hazel--his father had the same. It's a Moore
peculiarity. That was what told me he was Dick Moore
when I saw him first down in Cuby. If it hadn't a-bin
for his eyes I mightn't a-known him, with his beard and
fat. You know, I reckon, that it was me found him and
brought him home. Miss Cornelia always says I
shouldn't have done it, but I can't agree with her. It
was the RIGHT thing to do--and so 'twas the only thing.
There ain't no question in my mind about THAT. But my
old heart aches for Leslie. She's only twenty-eight
and she's eaten more bread with sorrow than most women
do in eighty years."

They walked on in silence for a little while.
Presently Anne said, "Do you know, Captain Jim, I never
like walking with a lantern. I have always the
strangest feeling that just outside the circle of
light, just over its edge in the darkness, I am
surrounded by a ring of furtive, sinister things,
watching me from the shadows with hostile eyes. I've
had that feeling from childhood. What is the reason?
I never feel like that when I'm really in the
darkness--when it is close all around me--I'm not the
least frightened."

"I've something of that feeling myself," admitted
Captain Jim. "I reckon when the darkness is close to
us it is a friend. But when we sorter push it away
from us--divorce ourselves from it, so to speak, with
lantern light--it becomes an enemy. But the fog is
lifting.

There's a smart west wind rising, if you notice. The
stars will be out when you get home."

They were out; and when Anne re-entered her house of
dreams the red embers were still glowing on the hearth,
and all the haunting presences were gone.

CHAPTER 14

NOVEMBER DAYS

The splendor of color which had glowed for weeks along
the shores of Four Winds Harbor had faded out into the
soft gray-blue of late autumnal hills. There came many
days when fields and shores were dim with misty rain,
or shivering before the breath of a melancholy
sea-wind--nights, too, of storm and tempest, when Anne
sometimes wakened to pray that no ship might be beating
up the grim north shore, for if it were so not even the
great, faithful light whirling through the darkness
unafraid, could avail to guide it into safe haven.

"In November I sometimes feel as if spring could never
come again," she sighed, grieving over the hopeless
unsightliness of her frosted and bedraggled
flower-plots. The gay little garden of the
schoolmaster's bride was rather a forlorn place now,
and the Lombardies and birches were under bare poles,
as Captain Jim said. But the fir-wood behind the
little house was forever green and staunch; and even in
November and December there came gracious days of
sunshine and purple hazes, when the harbor danced and
sparkled as blithely as in midsummer, and the gulf was
so softly blue and tender that the storm and the wild
wind seemed only things of a long-past dream.

Anne and Gilbert spent many an autumn evening at the
lighthouse. It was always a cheery place. Even when
the east wind sang in minor and the sea was dead and
gray, hints of sunshine seemed to be lurking all about
it. Perhaps this was because the First Mate always
paraded it in panoply of gold. He was so large and
effulgent that one hardly missed the sun, and his
resounding purrs formed a pleasant accompaniment to
the laughter and conversation which went on around
Captain Jim's fireplace. Captain Jim and Gilbert had
many long discussions and high converse on matters
beyond the ken of cat or king.

"I like to ponder on all kinds of problems, though I
can't solve 'em," said Captain Jim. "My father held
that we should never talk of things we couldn't
understand, but if we didn't, doctor, the subjects for
conversation would be mighty few. I reckon the gods
laugh many a time to hear us, but what matters so long
as we remember that we're only men and don't take to
fancying that we're gods ourselves, really, knowing
good and evil. I reckon our pow- wows won't do us or
anyone much harm, so let's have another whack at the
whence, why and whither this evening, doctor."

While they "whacked," Anne listened or dreamed.
Sometimes Leslie went to the lighthouse with them, and
she and Anne wandered along the shore in the eerie
twilight, or sat on the rocks below the lighthouse
until the darkness drove them back to the cheer of the
driftwood fire. Then Captain Jim would brew them tea
and tell them

      "tales of land and sea     And whatsoever might
betide   The great forgotten world outside."

Leslie seemed always to enjoy those lighthouse
carousals very much, and bloomed out for the time being
into ready wit and beautiful laughter, or glowing-eyed
silence. There was a certain tang and savor in the
conversation when Leslie was present which they missed
when she was absent. Even when she did not talk she
seemed to inspire others to brilliancy. Captain Jim
told his stories better, Gilbert was quicker in
argument and repartee, Anne felt little gushes and
trickles of fancy and imagination bubbling to her lips
under the influence of Leslie's personality.

"That girl was born to be a leader in social and
intellectual circles, far away from Four Winds," she
said to Gilbert as they walked home one night. "She's
just wasted here--wasted."

"Weren't you listening to Captain Jim and yours truly
the other night when we discussed that subject
generally? We came to the comforting conclusion that
the Creator probably knew how to run His universe quite
as well as we do, and that, after all, there are no
such things as `wasted' lives, saving and except when
an individual wilfully squanders and wastes his own
life--which Leslie Moore certainly hasn't done. And
some people might think that a Redmond B.A., whom
editors were beginning to honor, was `wasted' as the
wife of a struggling country doctor in the rural
community of Four Winds."

"Gilbert!"

"If you had married Roy Gardner, now," continued
Gilbert mercilessly, "YOU could have been `a leader in
social and intellectual circles far away from Four
Winds.'"

"Gilbert BLYTHE!"

"You KNOW you were in love with him at one time,
Anne."

"Gilbert, that's mean--`pisen mean, just like all the
men,' as Miss Cornelia says. I NEVER was in love with
him. I only imagined I was. YOU know that. You KNOW
I'd rather be your wife in our house of dreams and
fulfillment than a queen in a palace."

Gilbert's answer was not in words; but I am afraid that
both of them forgot poor Leslie speeding her lonely way
across the fields to a house that was neither a palace
nor the fulfillment of a dream.

The moon was rising over the sad, dark sea behind them
and transfiguring it. Her light had not yet reached
the harbor, the further side of which was shadowy and
suggestive, with dim coves and rich glooms and
jewelling lights.

"How the home lights shine out tonight through the
dark!" said Anne. "That string of them over the
harbor looks like a necklace. And what a coruscation
there is up at the Glen! Oh, look, Gilbert; there is
ours. I'm so glad we left it burning. I hate to come
home to a dark house. OUR homelight, Gilbert! Isn't
it lovely to see?"

"Just one of earth's many millions of homes,
Anne--girl--but ours-- OURS--our beacon in `a naughty
world.'  When a fellow has a home and a dear, little,
red-haired wife in it what more need he ask of life?"

"Well, he might ask ONE thing more," whispered Anne
happily. "Oh, Gilbert, it seems as if I just COULDN'T
wait for the spring."

CHAPTER 15

CHRISTMAS AT FOUR WINDS

At first Anne and Gilbert talked of going home to
Avonlea for Christmas; but eventually they decided to
stay in Four Winds. "I want to spend the first
Christmas of our life together in our own home,"
decreed Anne.

So it fell out that Marilla and Mrs. Rachel Lynde and
the twins came to Four Winds for Christmas. Marilla
had the face of a woman who had circumnavigated the
globe. She had never been sixty miles away from home
before; and she had never eaten a Christmas dinner
anywhere save at Green Gables.

Mrs. Rachel had made and brought with her an enormous
plum pudding. Nothing could have convinced Mrs. Rachel
that a college graduate of the younger generation could
make a Christmas plum pudding properly; but she
bestowed approval on Anne's house.

"Anne's a good housekeeper," she said to Marilla in
the spare room the night of their arrival. "I've
looked into her bread box and her scrap pail. I always
judge a housekeeper by those, that's what. There's
nothing in the pail that shouldn't have been thrown
away, and no stale pieces in the bread box. Of course,
she was trained up with you--but, then, she went to
college afterwards. I notice she's got my tobacco
stripe quilt on the bed here, and that big round
braided mat of yours before her living-room fire. It
makes me feel right at home."

Anne's first Christmas in her own house was as
delightful as she could have wished. The day was fine
and bright; the first skim of snow had fallen on
Christmas Eve and made the world beautiful; the harbor
was still open and glittering.

Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia came to dinner. Leslie
and Dick had been invited, but Leslie made excuse; they
always went to her Uncle Isaac West's for Christmas,
she said.

"She'd rather have it so," Miss Cornelia told Anne.
"She can't bear taking Dick where there are strangers.
Christmas is always a hard time for Leslie. She and
her father used to make a lot of it."

Miss Cornelia and Mrs. Rachel did not take a very
violent fancy to each other. "Two suns hold not their
courses in one sphere."  But they did not clash at
all, for Mrs. Rachel was in the kitchen helping Anne
and Marilla with the dinner, and it fell to Gilbert to
entertain Captain Jim and Miss Cornelia,--or rather to
be entertained by them, for a dialogue between those
two old friends and antagonists was assuredly never
dull.

"It's many a year since there was a Christmas dinner
here, Mistress Blythe," said Captain Jim. "Miss
Russell always went to her friends in town for
Christmas. But I was here to the first Christmas
dinner that was ever eaten in this house--and the
schoolmaster's bride cooked it. That was sixty years
ago today, Mistress Blythe--and a day very like
this--just enough snow to make the hills white, and the
harbor as blue as June. I was only a lad, and I'd
never been invited out to dinner before, and I was too
shy to eat enough. I've got all over THAT."

"Most men do," said Miss Cornelia, sewing furiously.
Miss Cornelia was not going to sit with idle hands,
even on Christmas.

Babies come without any consideration for holidays, and
there was one expected in a poverty-stricken household
at Glen St. Mary. Miss Cornelia had sent that
household a substantial dinner for its little swarm,
and so meant to eat her own with a comfortable
conscience.

"Well, you know, the way to a man's heart is through
his stomach, Cornelia," explained Captain Jim.

"I believe you--when he HAS a heart," retorted Miss
Cornelia. "I suppose that's why so many women kill
themselves cooking--just as poor Amelia Baxter did.
She died last Christmas morning, and she said it was
the first Christmas since she was married that she
didn't have to cook a big, twenty-plate dinner. It
must have been a real pleasant change for her. Well,
she's been dead a year, so you'll soon hear of Horace
Baxter taking notice."

"I heard he was taking notice already," said Captain
Jim, winking at Gilbert. "Wasn't he up to your place
one Sunday lately, with his funeral blacks on, and a
boiled collar?"

"No, he wasn't. And he needn't come neither. I could
have had him long ago when he was fresh. I don't want
any second-hand goods, believe ME. As for Horace
Baxter, he was in financial difficulties a year ago
last summer, and he prayed to the Lord for help; and
when his wife died and he got her life insurance he
said he believed it was the answer to his prayer.
Wasn't that like a man?"

"Have you really proof that he said that, Cornelia?"

"I have the Methodist minister's word for it--if you
call THAT proof. Robert Baxter told me the same thing
too, but I admit THAT isn't evidence. Robert Baxter
isn't often known to tell the truth."

"Come, come, Cornelia, I think he generally tells the
truth, but he changes his opinion so often it sometimes
sounds as if he didn't."

"It sounds like it mighty often, believe ME. But trust
one man to excuse another. I have no use for Robert
Baxter. He turned Methodist just because the
Presbyterian choir happened to be singing `Behold the
bridegroom cometh' for a collection piece when him and
Margaret walked up the aisle the Sunday after they were
married. Served him right for being late! He always
insisted the choir did it on purpose to insult him, as
if he was of that much importance. But that family
always thought they were much bigger potatoes than they
really were. His brother Eliphalet imagined the devil
was always at his elbow--but _I_ never believed the
devil wasted that much time on him."

"I--don't--know," said Captain Jim thoughtfully.
"Eliphalet Baxter lived too much alone--hadn't even a
cat or dog to keep him human. When a man is alone he's
mighty apt to be with the devil--if he ain't with God.
He has to choose which company he'll keep, I reckon.
If the devil always was at Life Baxter's elbow it must
have been because Life liked to have him there."

"Man-like," said Miss Cornelia, and subsided into
silence over a complicated arrangement of tucks until
Captain Jim deliberately stirred her up again by
remarking in a casual way:

"I was up to the Methodist church last Sunday
morning."

"You'd better have been home reading your Bible," was
Miss Cornelia's retort.

"Come, now, Cornelia, _I_ can't see any harm in going
to the Methodist church when there's no preaching in
your own. I've been a Presbyterian for seventy-six
years, and it isn't likely my theology will hoist
anchor at this late day."

"It's setting a bad example," said Miss Cornelia
grimly.

"Besides," continued wicked Captain Jim, "I wanted to
hear some good singing. The Methodists have a good
choir; and you can't deny, Cornelia, that the singing
in our church is awful since the split in the choir."

"What if the singing isn't good? They're doing their
best, and God sees no difference between the voice of a
crow and the voice of a nightingale."

"Come, come, Cornelia," said Captain Jim mildly, "I've
a better opinion of the Almighty's ear for music than
THAT."

"What caused the trouble in our choir?" asked Gilbert,
who was suffering from suppressed laughter.

"It dates back to the new church, three years ago,"
answered Captain Jim. "We had a fearful time over the
building of that church--fell out over the question of
a new site. The two sites wasn't more'n two hundred
yards apart, but you'd have thought they was a thousand
by the bitterness of that fight. We was split up into
three factions--one wanted the east site and one the
south, and one held to the old. It was fought out in
bed and at board, and in church and at market. All
the old scandals of three generations were dragged out
of their graves and aired. Three matches was broken up
by it. And the meetings we had to try to settle the
question! Cornelia, will you ever forget the one when
old Luther Burns got up and made a speech? HE stated
his opinions forcibly."

"Call a spade a spade, Captain. You mean he got
red-mad and raked them all, fore and aft. They
deserved it too--a pack of incapables. But what would
you expect of a committee of men? That building
committee held twenty-seven meetings, and at the end of
the twenty-seventh weren't no nearer having a church
than when they begun--not so near, for a fact, for in
one fit of hurrying things along they'd gone to work
and tore the old church down, so there we were,
without a church, and no place but the hall to worship
in."

"The Methodists offered us their church, Cornelia."

"The Glen St. Mary church wouldn't have been built to
this day," went on Miss Cornelia, ignoring Captain
Jim, "if we women hadn't just started in and took
charge. We said WE meant to have a church, if the men
meant to quarrel till doomsday, and we were tired of
being a laughing-stock for the Methodists. We held ONE
meeting and elected a committee and canvassed for
subscriptions. We got them, too. When any of the men
tried to sass us we told them they'd tried for two
years to build a church and it was our turn now. We
shut them up close, believe ME, and in six months we
had our church. Of course, when the men saw we were
determined they stopped fighting and went to work,
man-like, as soon as they saw they had to, or quit
bossing. Oh, women can't preach or be elders; but they
can build churches and scare up the money for them."

"The Methodists allow women to preach," said Captain
Jim.

Miss Cornelia glared at him.

"I never said the Methodists hadn't common sense,
Captain. What I say is, I doubt if they have much
religion."

"I suppose you are in favor of votes for women, Miss
Cornelia," said Gilbert.

"I'm not hankering after the vote, believe ME," said
Miss Cornelia scornfully. "_I_ know what it is to
clean up after the men. But some of these days, when
the men realize they've got the world into a mess they
can't get it out of, they'll be glad to give us the
vote, and shoulder their troubles over on us. That's
THEIR scheme. Oh, it's well that women are patient,
believe ME!"

"What about Job?" suggested Captain Jim.

"Job! It was such a rare thing to find a patient man
that when one was really discovered they were
determined he shouldn't be forgotten," retorted Miss
Cornelia triumphantly. "Anyhow, the virtue doesn't go
with the name. There never was such an impatient man
born as old Job Taylor over harbor."

"Well, you know, he had a good deal to try him,
Cornelia. Even you can't defend his wife. I always
remember what old William MacAllister said of her at
her funeral, `There's nae doot she was a Chreestian
wumman, but she had the de'il's own temper.'"

"I suppose she WAS trying," admitted Miss Cornelia
reluctantly, "but that didn't justify what Job said
when she died. He rode home from the graveyard the day
of the funeral with my father. He never said a word
till they got near home. Then he heaved a big sigh and
said, `You may not believe it, Stephen, but this is the
happiest day of my life!'  Wasn't that like a man?"

"I s'pose poor old Mrs. Job did make life kinder uneasy
for him," reflected Captain Jim.

"Well, there's such a thing as decency, isn't there?
Even if a man is rejoicing in his heart over his wife
being dead, he needn't proclaim it to the four winds of
heaven. And happy day or not, Job Taylor wasn't long
in marrying again, you might notice. His second wife
could manage him. She made him walk Spanish, believe
me! The first thing she did was to make him hustle
round and put up a tombstone to the first Mrs.
Job--and she had a place left on it for her own name.
She said there'd be nobody to make Job put up a
monument to HER."

"Speaking of Taylors, how is Mrs. Lewis Taylor up at
the Glen, doctor?" asked Captain Jim.

"She's getting better slowly--but she has to work too
hard," replied Gilbert.

"Her husband works hard too--raising prize pigs," said
Miss Cornelia. "He's noted for his beautiful pigs.
He's a heap prouder of his pigs than of his children.
But then, to be sure, his pigs are the best pigs
possible, while his children don't amount to much. He
picked a poor mother for them, and starved her while
she was bearing and rearing them. His pigs got the
cream and his children got the skim milk.

"There are times, Cornelia, when I have to agree with
you, though it hurts me," said Captain Jim. "That's
just exactly the truth about Lewis Taylor. When I see
those poor, miserable children of his, robbed of all
children ought to have, it p'isens my own bite and sup
for days afterwards."

Gilbert went out to the kitchen in response to Anne's
beckoning. Anne shut the door and gave him a connubial
lecture.

"Gilbert, you and Captain Jim must stop baiting Miss
Cornelia. Oh, I've been listening to you--and I just
won't allow it."

`Anne, Miss Cornelia is enjoying herself hugely. You
know she is.'

"Well, never mind. You two needn't egg her on like
that. Dinner is ready now, and, Gilbert, DON'T let
Mrs. Rachel carve the geese. I know she means to offer
to do it because she doesn't think you can do it
properly. Show her you can."

"I ought to be able to. I've been studying A-B-C-D
diagrams of carving for the past month," said Gilbert.
"Only don't talk to me while I'm doing it, Anne, for if
you drive the letters out of my head I'll be in a worse
predicament than you were in old geometry days when
the teacher changed them."

Gilbert carved the geese beautifully. Even Mrs. Rachel
had to admit that. And everybody ate of them and
enjoyed them. Anne's first Christmas dinner was a
great success and she beamed with housewifely pride.
Merry was the feast and long; and when it was over they
gathered around the cheer of the red hearth flame and
Captain Jim told them stories until the red sun swung
low over Four Winds Harbor, and the long blue shadows
of the Lombardies fell across the snow in the lane.

"I must be getting back to the light," he said
finally. "I'll jest have time to walk home before
sundown. Thank you for a beautiful Christmas, Mistress
Blythe. Bring Master Davy down to the light some
night before he goes home.

"I want to see those stone gods," said Davy with a
relish.

CHAPTER 16

NEW YEAR'S EVE AT THE LIGHT

The Green Gables folk went home after Christmas,
Marilla under solemn covenant to return for a month in
the spring. More snow came before New Year's, and the
harbor froze over, but the gulf still was free, beyond
the white, imprisoned fields. The last day of the old
year was one of those bright, cold, dazzling winter
days, which bombard us with their brilliancy, and
command our admiration but never our love. The sky was
sharp and blue; the snow diamonds sparkled insistently;
the stark trees were bare and shameless, with a kind of
brazen beauty; the hills shot assaulting lances of
crystal. Even the shadows were sharp and stiff and
clear-cut, as no proper shadows should be. Everything
that was handsome seemed ten times handsomer and less
attractive in the glaring splendor; and everything that
was ugly seemed ten times uglier, and everything was
either handsome or ugly. There was no soft blending,
or kind obscurity, or elusive mistiness in that
searching glitter. The only things that held their own
individuality were the firs--for the fir is the tree of
mystery and shadow, and yields never to the
encroachments of crude radiance.

But finally the day began to realise that she was
growing old. Then a certain pensiveness fell over her
beauty which dimmed yet intensified it; sharp angles,
glittering points, melted away into curves and
enticing gleams. The white harbor put on soft grays
and pinks; the far-away hills turned amethyst.

"The old year is going away beautifully," said Anne.

She and Leslie and Gilbert were on their way to the
Four Winds Point, having plotted with Captain Jim to
watch the New Year in at the light. The sun had set
and in the southwestern sky hung Venus, glorious and
golden, having drawn as near to her earth-sister as is
possible for her. For the first time Anne and Gilbert
saw the shadow cast by that brilliant star of evening,
that faint, mysterious shadow, never seen save when
there is white snow to reveal it, and then only with
averted vision, vanishing when you gaze at it directly.

"It's like the spirit of a shadow, isn't it?"
whispered Anne. "You can see it so plainly haunting
your side when you look ahead; but when you turn and
look at it--it's gone."

"I have heard that you can see the shadow of Venus only
once in a lifetime, and that within a year of seeing it
your life's most wonderful gift will come to you,"
said Leslie. But she spoke rather hardly; perhaps she
thought that even the shadow of Venus could bring her
no gift of life. Anne smiled in the soft twilight; she
felt quite sure what the mystic shadow promised her.

They found Marshall Elliott at the lighthouse. At
first Anne felt inclined to resent the intrusion of
this long-haired, long-bearded eccentric into the
familiar little circle. But Marshall Elliott soon
proved his legitimate claim to membership in the
household of Joseph. He was a witty, intelligent,
well-read man, rivalling Captain Jim himself in the
knack of telling a good story. They were all glad when
he agreed to watch the old year out with them.

Captain Jim's small nephew Joe had come down to spend
New Year's with his great-uncle, and had fallen asleep
on the sofa with the First Mate curled up in a huge
golden ball at his feet.

"Ain't he a dear little man?" said Captain Jim
gloatingly. "I do love to watch a little child asleep,
Mistress Blythe. It's the most beautiful sight in the
world, I reckon. Joe does love to get down here for a
night, because I have him sleep with me. At home he
has to sleep with the other two boys, and he doesn't
like it. "Why can't I sleep with father, Uncle Jim?"
says he. `Everybody in the Bible slept with their
fathers.'  As for the questions he asks, the minister
himself couldn't answer them. They fair swamp me.
`Uncle Jim, if I wasn't ME who'd I be?' and, `Uncle
Jim, what would happen if God died?'  He fired them two
off at me tonight, afore he went to sleep. As for his
imagination, it sails away from everything. He makes
up the most remarkable yarns--and then his mother shuts
him up in the closet for telling stories . And he sits
down and makes up another one, and has it ready to
relate to her when she lets him out. He had one for me
when he come down tonight. `Uncle Jim,' says he,
solemn as a tombstone, `I had a 'venture in the Glen
today.'  `Yes, what was it?' says I, expecting
something quite startling, but nowise prepared for
what I really got. `I met a wolf in the street,' says
he, `a 'normous wolf with a big, red mouf and AWFUL
long teeth, Uncle Jim.'  `I didn't know there was any
wolves up at the Glen,' says I. `Oh, he comed there
from far, far away,' says Joe, `and I fought he was
going to eat me up, Uncle Jim.'  `Were you scared?'
says I. `No, 'cause I had a big gun,' says Joe, `and I
shot the wolf dead, Uncle Jim,--solid dead--and then
he went up to heaven and bit God,' says he. Well, I
was fair staggered, Mistress Blythe."

The hours bloomed into mirth around the driftwood fire.
Captain Jim told tales, and Marshall Elliott sang old
Scotch ballads in a fine tenor voice; finally Captain
Jim took down his old brown fiddle from the wall and
began to play. He had a tolerable knack of fiddling,
which all appreciated save the First Mate, who sprang
from the sofa as if he had been shot, emitted a shriek
of protest, and fled wildly up the stairs.

"Can't cultivate an ear for music in that cat nohow,"
said Captain Jim. "He won't stay long enough to learn
to like it. When we got the organ up at the Glen
church old Elder Richards bounced up from his seat the
minute the organist began to play and scuttled down the
aisle and out of the church at the rate of
no-man's-business. It reminded me so strong of the
First Mate tearing loose as soon as I begin to fiddle
that I come nearer to laughing out loud in church than
I ever did before or since."

There was something so infectious in the rollicking
tunes which Captain Jim played that very soon Marshall
Elliott's feet began to twitch. He had been a noted
dancer in his youth. Presently he started up and held
out his hands to Leslie. Instantly she responded.
Round and round the firelit room they circled with a
rhythmic grace that was wonderful. Leslie danced like
one inspired; the wild, sweet abandon of the music
seemed to have entered into and possessed her. Anne
watched her in fascinated admiration. She had never
seen her like this. All the innate richness and color
and charm of her nature seemed to have broken loose and
overflowed in crimson cheek and glowing eye and grace
of motion. Even the aspect of Marshall Elliott, with
his long beard and hair, could not spoil the picture.
On the contrary, it seemed to enhance it. Marshall
Elliott looked like a Viking of elder days, dancing
with one of the blue-eyed, golden-haired daughters of
the Northland.

"The purtiest dancing I ever saw, and I've seen some in
my time," declared Captain Jim, when at last the bow
fell from his tired hand. Leslie dropped into her
chair, laughing, breathless.

"I love dancing," she said apart to Anne. "I haven't
danced since I was sixteen--but I love it. The music
seems to run through my veins like quicksilver and I
forget everything--everything--except the delight of
keeping time to it. There isn't any floor beneath me,
or walls about me, or roof over me--I'm floating amid
the stars."

Captain Jim hung his fiddle up in its place, beside a
large frame enclosing several banknotes.

"Is there anybody else of your acquaintance who can
afford to hang his walls with banknotes for pictures?"
he asked. "There's twenty ten-dollar notes there, not
worth the glass over them. They're old Bank of P. E.
Island notes. Had them by me when the bank failed, and
I had 'em framed and hung up, partly as a reminder not
to put your trust in banks, and partly to give me a
real luxurious, millionairy feeling. Hullo, Matey,
don't be scared. You can come back now. The music and
revelry is over for tonight. The old year has just
another hour to stay with us. I've seen seventy-six
New Years come in over that gulf yonder, Mistress
Blythe."

"You'll see a hundred," said Marshall Elliott.

Captain Jim shook his head.

"No; and I don't want to--at least, I think I don't.
Death grows friendlier as we grow older. Not that one
of us really wants to die though, Marshall. Tennyson
spoke truth when he said that. There's old Mrs.
Wallace up at the Glen. She's had heaps of trouble all
her life, poor soul, and she's lost almost everyone she
cared about. She's always saying that she'll be glad
when her time comes, and she doesn't want to sojourn
any longer in this vale of tears. But when she takes a
sick spell there's a fuss! Doctors from town, and a
trained nurse, and enough medicine to kill a dog. Life
may be a vale of tears, all right, but there are some
folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon."

They spent the old year's last hour quietly around the
fire. A few minutes before twelve Captain Jim rose and
opened the door.

"We must let the New Year in," he said.

Outside was a fine blue night. A sparkling ribbon of
moonlight garlanded the gulf. Inside the bar the
harbor shone like a pavement of pearl. They stood
before the door and waited--Captain Jim with his ripe,
full experience, Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but
empty middle life, Gilbert and Anne with their precious
memories and exquisite hopes, Leslie with her record of
starved years and her hopeless future. The clock on
the little shelf above the fireplace struck twelve.

"Welcome, New Year," said Captain Jim, bowing low as
the last stroke died away. "I wish you all the best
year of your lives, mates. I reckon that whatever the
New Year brings us will be the best the Great Captain
has for us--and somehow or other we'll all make port in
a good harbor."

CHAPTER 17

A FOUR WINDS WINTER

Winter set in vigorously after New Year's. Big, white
drifts heaped themselves about the little house, and
palms of frost covered its windows. The harbor ice
grew harder and thicker, until the Four Winds people
began their usual winter travelling over it. The safe
ways were "bushed" by a benevolent Government, and
night and day the gay tinkle of the sleigh-bells
sounded on it. On moonlit nights Anne heard them in
her house of dreams like fairy chimes. The gulf froze
over, and the Four Winds light flashed no more. During
the months when navigation was closed Captain Jim's
office was a sinecure.

"The First Mate and I will have nothing to do till
spring except keep warm and amuse ourselves. The last
lighthouse keeper used always to move up to the Glen in
winter; but I'd rather stay at the Point. The First
Mate might get poisoned or chewed up by dogs at the
Glen. It's a mite lonely, to be sure, with neither the
light nor the water for company, but if our friends
come to see us often we'll weather it through."

Captain Jim had an ice boat, and many a wild, glorious
spin Gilbert and Anne and Leslie had over the glib
harbor ice with him. Anne and Leslie took long
snowshoe tramps together, too, over the fields, or
across the harbor after storms, or through the woods
beyond the Glen. They were very good comrades in their
rambles and their fireside communings. Each had
something to give the other--each felt life the richer
for friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence;
each looked across the white fields between their homes
with a pleasant consciousness of a friend beyond. But,
in spite of all this, Anne felt that there was always a
barrier between Leslie and herself--a constraint that
never wholly vanished.

"I don't know why I can't get closer to her," Anne
said one evening to Captain Jim. "I like her so
much--I admire her so much--I WANT to take her right
into my heart and creep right into hers. But I can
never cross the barrier."

"You've been too happy all your life, Mistress
Blythe," said Captain Jim thoughtfully. "I reckon
that's why you and Leslie can't get real close together
in your souls. The barrier between you is her
experience of sorrow and trouble. She ain't
responsible for it and you ain't; but it's there and
neither of you can cross it."

"My childhood wasn't very happy before I came to Green
Gables," said Anne, gazing soberly out of the window
at the still, sad, dead beauty of the leafless
tree-shadows on the moonlit snow.

"Mebbe not--but it was just the usual unhappiness of a
child who hasn't anyone to look after it properly.
There hasn't been any TRAGEDY in your life, Mistress
Blythe. And poor Leslie's has been almost ALL
tragedy. She feels, I reckon, though mebbe she hardly
knows she feels it, that there's a vast deal in her
life you can't enter nor understand--and so she has to
keep you back from it--hold you off, so to speak, from
hurting her. You know if we've got anything about us
that hurts we shrink from anyone's touch on or near it.
It holds good with our souls as well as our bodies, I
reckon. Leslie's soul must be near raw--it's no wonder
she hides it away."

"If that were really all, I wouldn't mind, Captain Jim.
I would understand. But there are times--not always,
but now and again-- when I almost have to believe that
Leslie doesn't--doesn't like me. Sometimes I surprise
a look in her eyes that seems to show resentment and
dislike--it goes so quickly--but I've seen it, I'm sure
of that. And it hurts me, Captain Jim. I'm not used
to being disliked-- and I've tried so hard to win
Leslie's friendship."

"You have won it, Mistress Blythe. Don't you go
cherishing any foolish notion that Leslie don't like
you. If she didn't she wouldn't have anything to do
with you, much less chumming with you as she does. I
know Leslie Moore too well not to be sure of that."

"The first time I ever saw her, driving her geese down
the hill on the day I came to Four Winds, she looked at
me with the same expression," persisted Anne. "I felt
it, even in the midst of my admiration of her beauty.
She looked at me resentfully--she did, indeed, Captain
Jim."

"The resentment must have been about something else,
Mistress Blythe, and you jest come in for a share of it
because you happened past. Leslie DOES take sullen
spells now and again, poor girl. I can't blame her,
when I know what she has to put up with. I don't know
why it's permitted. The doctor and I have talked a lot
abut the origin of evil, but we haven't quite found out
all about it yet. There's a vast of onunderstandable
things in life, ain't there, Mistress Blythe?
Sometimes things seem to work out real proper-like,
same as with you and the doctor. And then again they
all seem to go catawampus. There's Leslie, so clever
and beautiful you'd think she was meant for a queen,
and instead she's cooped up over there, robbed of
almost everything a woman'd value, with no prospect
except waiting on Dick Moore all her life. Though,
mind you, Mistress Blythe, I daresay she'd choose her
life now, such as it is, rather than the life she
lived with Dick before he went away. THAT'S something
a clumsy old sailor's tongue mustn't meddle with. But
you've helped Leslie a lot--she's a different creature
since you come to Four Winds. Us old friends see the
difference in her, as you can't. Miss Cornelia and me
was talking it over the other day, and it's one of the
mighty few p'ints that we see eye to eye on. So jest
you throw overboard any idea of her not liking you."

Anne could hardly discard it completely, for there were
undoubtedly times when she felt, with an instinct that
was not to be combated by reason, that Leslie harbored
a queer, indefinable resentment towards her. At times,
this secret consciousness marred the delight of their
comradeship; at others it was almost forgotten; but
Anne always felt the hidden thorn was there, and might
prick her at any moment. She felt a cruel sting from
it on the day when she told Leslie of what she hoped
the spring would bring to the little house of dreams.
Leslie looked at her with hard, bitter, unfriendly
eyes.

"So you are to have THAT, too," she said in a choked
voice. And without another word she had turned and
gone across the fields homeward. Anne was deeply hurt;
for the moment she felt as if she could never like
Leslie again. But when Leslie came over a few
evenings later she was so pleasant, so friendly, so
frank, and witty, and winsome, that Anne was charmed
into forgiveness and forgetfulness. Only, she never
mentioned her darling hope to Leslie again; nor did
Leslie ever refer to it. But one evening, when late
winter was listening for the word of spring, she came
over to the little house for a twilight chat; and when
she went away she left a small, white box on the table.
Anne found it after she was gone and opened it
wonderingly. In it was a tiny white dress of exquisite
workmanship-- delicate embroidery, wonderful tucking,
sheer loveliness. Every stitch in it was handwork; and
the little frills of lace at neck and sleeves were of
real Valenciennes. Lying on it was a card--"with
Leslie's love."

"What hours of work she must have put on it," said
Anne. "And the material must have cost more than she
could really afford. It is very sweet of her."

But Leslie was brusque and curt when Anne thanked her,
and again the latter felt thrown back upon herself.

Leslie's gift was not alone in the little house. Miss
Cornelia had, for the time being, given up sewing for
unwanted, unwelcome eighth babies, and fallen to sewing
for a very much wanted first one, whose welcome would
leave nothing to be desired. Philippa Blake and Diana
Wright each sent a marvellous garment; and Mrs. Rachel
Lynde sent several, in which good material and honest
stitches took the place of embroidery and frills. Anne
herself made many, desecrated by no touch of machinery,
spending over them the happiest hours of the happy
winter.

Captain Jim was the most frequent guest of the little
house, and none was more welcome. Every day Anne loved
the simple-souled, true-hearted old sailor more and
more. He was as refreshing as a sea breeze, as
interesting as some ancient chronicle. She was never
tired of listening to his stories, and his quaint
remarks and comments were a continual delight to her.
Captain Jim was one of those rare and interesting
people who "never speak but they say something."  The
milk of human kindness and the wisdom of the serpent
were mingled in his composition in delightful
proportions.

Nothing ever seemed to put Captain Jim out or depress
him in any way.

"I've kind of contracted a habit of enj'ying things,"
he remarked once, when Anne had commented on his
invariable cheerfulness. "It's got so chronic that I
believe I even enj'y the disagreeable things. It's
great fun thinking they can't last. `Old rheumatiz,'
says I, when it grips me hard, `you've GOT to stop
aching sometime. The worse you are the sooner you'll
stop, mebbe. I'm bound to get the better of you in the
long run, whether in the body or out of the body.'"

One night, by the fireside at the light Anne saw
Captain Jim's "life-book."  He needed no coaxing to
show it and proudly gave it to her to read.

"I writ it to leave to little Joe," he said. "I don't
like the idea of everything I've done and seen being
clean forgot after I've shipped for my last v'yage.
Joe, he'll remember it, and tell the yarns to his
children."

It was an old leather-bound book filled with the record
of his voyages and adventures. Anne thought what a
treasure trove it would be to a writer. Every sentence
was a nugget. In itself the book had no literary
merit; Captain Jim's charm of storytelling failed him
when he came to pen and ink; he could only jot roughly
down the outline of his famous tales, and both spelling
and grammar were sadly askew. But Anne felt that if
anyone possessed of the gift could take that simple
record of a brave, adventurous life, reading between
the bald lines the tales of dangers staunchly faced and
duty manfully done, a wonderful story might be made
from it. Rich comedy and thrilling tragedy were both
lying hidden in Captain Jim's "life-book," waiting for
the touch of the master hand to waken the laughter and
grief and horror of thousands.

Anne said something of this to Gilbert as they walked
home.

"Why don't you try your hand at it yourself, Anne?"

Anne shook her head.

" No. I only wish I could. But it's not in the power
of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert--the
fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain
Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a
master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen
psychologist, a born humorist and a born tragedian. A
rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it
if he were older. Anyhow, I'm going to ask him to come
down next summer and meet Captain Jim."

"Come to this shore," wrote Anne to Paul. "I am
afraid you cannot find here Nora or the Golden Lady or
the Twin Sailors; but you will find one old sailor who
can tell you wonderful stories."

Paul, however wrote back, saying regretfully that he
could not come that year. He was going abroad for two
year's study.

"When I return I'll come to Four Winds, dear Teacher,"
he wrote.

"But meanwhile, Captain Jim is growing old," said
Anne, sorrowfully, "and there is nobody to write his
life-book."

CHAPTER 18

SPRING DAYS

The ice in the harbor grew black and rotten in the
March suns; in April there were blue waters and a
windy, white-capped gulf again; and again the Four
Winds light begemmed the twilights.

"I'm so glad to see it once more," said Anne, on the
first evening of its reappearance. "I've missed it so
all winter. The northwestern sky has seemed blank and
lonely without it."

The land was tender with brand-new, golden-green, baby
leaves. There was an emerald mist on the woods beyond
the Glen. The seaward valleys were full of fairy mists
at dawn.

Vibrant winds came and went with salt foam in their
breath. The sea laughed and flashed and preened and
allured, like a beautiful, coquettish woman. The
herring schooled and the fishing village woke to life.
The harbor was alive with white sails making for the
channel. The ships began to sail outward and inward
again.

"On a spring day like this," said Anne, "I know
exactly what my soul will feel like on the resurrection
morning."

"There are times in spring when I sorter feel that I
might have been a poet if I'd been caught young,"
remarked Captain Jim. "I catch myself conning over old
lines and verses I heard the schoolmaster reciting
sixty years ago. They don't trouble me at other times.
Now I feel as if I had to get out on the rocks or the
fields or the water and spout them."

Captain Jim had come up that afternoon to bring Anne a
load of shells for her garden, and a little bunch of
sweet-grass which he had found in a ramble over the
sand dunes.

"It's getting real scarce along this shore now," he
said. "When I was a boy there was a-plenty of it. But
now it's only once in a while you'll find a plot--and
never when you're looking for it. You jest have to
stumble on it--you're walking along on the sand hills,
never thinking of sweet-grass--and all at once the air
is full of sweetness-- and there's the grass under your
feet. I favor the smell of sweet-grass. It always
makes me think of my mother."

"She was fond of it?" asked Anne.

"Not that I knows on. Dunno's she ever saw any
sweet-grass. No, it's because it has a kind of
motherly perfume--not too young, you
understand--something kind of seasoned and wholesome
and dependable--jest like a mother. The schoolmaster's
bride always kept it among her handkerchiefs. You
might put that little bunch among yours, Mistress
Blythe. I don't like these boughten scents-- but a
whiff of sweet-grass belongs anywhere a lady does."

Anne had not been especially enthusiastic over the idea
of surrounding her flower beds with quahog shells; as a
decoration they did not appeal to her on first thought.
But she would not have hurt Captain Jim's feelings for
anything; so she assumed a virtue she did not at first
feel, and thanked him heartily. And when Captain Jim
had proudly encircled every bed with a rim of the big,
milk-white shells, Anne found to her surprise that she
liked the effect. On a town lawn, or even up at the
Glen, they would not have been in keeping, but here, in
the old-fashioned, sea-bound garden of the little house
of dreams, they BELONGED.

"They DO look nice," she said sincerely.

"The schoolmaster's bride always had cowhawks round her
beds," said Captain Jim. "She was a master hand with
flowers. She LOOKED at 'em--and touched 'em--SO--and
they grew like mad. Some folks have that knack--I
reckon you have it, too, Mistress Blythe."

"Oh, I don't know--but I love my garden, and I love
working in it. To potter with green, growing things,
watching each day to see the dear, new sprouts come up,
is like taking a hand in creation, I think. Just now
my garden is like faith--the substance of things hoped
for. But bide a wee."

"It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled
brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said
Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find
it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll
live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe
there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than
grains of dust, let alone color and scent, if you
hadn't seen the miracle, could you?"

Anne, who was counting her days like silver beads on a
rosary, could not now take the long walk to the
lighthouse or up the Glen road. But Miss Cornelia and
Captain Jim came very often to the little house. Miss
Cornelia was the joy of Anne's and Gilbert's existence.
They laughed side-splittingly over her speeches after
every visit. When Captain Jim and she happened to
visit the little house at the same time there was much
sport for the listening. They waged wordy warfare, she
attacking, he defending. Anne once reproached the
Captain for his baiting of Miss Cornelia.

"Oh, I do love to set her going, Mistress Blythe,"
chuckled the unrepentant sinner. "It's the greatest
amusement I have in life. That tongue of hers would
blister a stone. And you and that young dog of a
doctor enj'y listening to her as much as I do."

Captain Jim came along another evening to bring Anne
some mayflowers. The garden was full of the moist,
scented air of a maritime spring evening. There was a
milk-white mist on the edge of the sea, with a young
moon kissing it, and a silver gladness of stars over
the Glen. The bell of the church across the harbor was
ringing dreamily sweet. The mellow chime drifted
through the dusk to mingle with the soft spring-moan of
the sea. Captain Jim's mayflowers added the last
completing touch to the charm of the night.

"I haven't seen any this spring, and I've missed
them," said Anne, burying her face in them.

"They ain't to be found around Four Winds, only in the
barrens away behind the Glen up yander. I took a
little trip today to the Land-of-nothing-to-do, and
hunted these up for you. I reckon they're the last
you'll see this spring, for they're nearly done."

"How kind and thoughtful you are, Captain Jim. Nobody
else-- not even Gilbert"--with a shake of her head at
him--"remembered that I always long for mayflowers in
spring."

"Well, I had another errand, too--I wanted to take Mr.
Howard back yander a mess of trout. He likes one
occasional, and it's all I can do for a kindness he did
me once. I stayed all the afternoon and talked to him.
He likes to talk to me, though he's a highly eddicated
man and I'm only an ignorant old sailor, because he's
one of the folks that's GOT to talk or they're
miserable, and he finds listeners scarce around here.
The Glen folks fight shy of him because they think he's
an infidel. He ain't that far gone exactly--few men
is, I reckon--but he's what you might call a heretic.
Heretics are wicked, but they're mighty int'resting.
It's jest that they've got sorter lost looking for
God, being under the impression that He's hard to
find--which He ain't never. Most of 'em blunder to Him
after awhile, I guess. I don't think listening to Mr.
Howard's arguments is likely to do me much harm. Mind
you, I believe what I was brought up to believe. It
saves a vast of bother--and back of it all, God is
good. The trouble with Mr. Howard is that he's a
leetle TOO clever. He thinks that he's bound to live
up to his cleverness, and that it's smarter to thrash
out some new way of getting to heaven than to go by the
old track the common, ignorant folks is travelling.
But he'll get there sometime all right, and then he'll
laugh at himself."

"Mr. Howard was a Methodist to begin with," said Miss
Cornelia, as if she thought he had not far to go from
that to heresy.

"Do you know, Cornelia," said Captain Jim gravely,
"I've often thought that if I wasn't a Presbyterian I'd
be a Methodist."

"Oh, well," conceded Miss Cornelia, "if you weren't a
Presbyterian it wouldn't matter much what you were.
Speaking of heresy, reminds me, doctor--I've brought
back that book you lent me--that Natural Law in the
Spiritual World--I didn't read more'n a third of it. I
can read sense, and I can read nonsense, but that book
is neither the one nor the other."

"It IS considered rather heretical in some quarters,"
admitted Gilbert, "but I told you that before you took
it, Miss Cornelia."

"Oh, I wouldn't have minded its being heretical. I can
stand wickedness, but I can't stand foolishness," said
Miss Cornelia calmly, and with the air of having said
the last thing there was to say about Natural Law.

"Speaking of books, A Mad Love come to an end at last
two weeks ago," remarked Captain Jim musingly. "It
run to one hundred and three chapters. When they got
married the book stopped right off, so I reckon their
troubles were all over. It's real nice that that's the
way in books anyhow, isn't it, even if 'tistn't so
anywhere else?"

"I never read novels," said Miss Cornelia. "Did you
hear how Geordie Russell was today, Captain Jim?"

"Yes, I called in on my way home to see him. He's
getting round all right--but stewing in a broth of
trouble, as usual, poor man.

'Course he brews up most of it for himself, but I
reckon that don't make it any easier to bear."

"He's an awful pessimist," said Miss Cornelia.

"Well, no, he ain't a pessimist exactly, Cornelia. He
only jest never finds anything that suits him."

"And isn't that a pessimist?"

"No, no. A pessimist is one who never expects to find
anything to suit him. Geordie hain't got THAT far
yet."

"You'd find something good to say of the devil himself,
Jim Boyd."

"Well, you've heard the story of the old lady who said
he was persevering. But no, Cornelia, I've nothing
good to say of the devil."

"Do you believe in him at all?" asked Miss Cornelia
seriously.

"How can you ask that when you know what a good
Presbyterian I am, Cornelia? How could a Presbyterian
get along without a devil?"

"DO you?" persisted Miss Cornelia.

Captain Jim suddenly became grave.

"I believe in what I heard a minister once call `a
mighty and malignant and INTELLIGENT power of evil
working in the universe,'" he said solemnly. "I do
THAT, Cornelia. You can call it the devil, or the
`principle of evil,' or the Old Scratch, or any name
you like. It's THERE, and all the infidels and
heretics in the world can't argue it away, any more'n
they can argue God away. It's there, and it's
working. But, mind you, Cornelia, I believe it's going
to get the worst of it in the long run."

"I am sure I hope so," said Miss Cornelia, none too
hopefully. "But speaking of the devil, I am positive
that Billy Booth is possessed by him now. Have you
heard of Billy's latest performance?"

"No, what was that?"

"He's gone and burned up his wife's new, brown
broadcloth suit, that she paid twenty-five dollars for
in Charlottetown, because he declares the men looked
too admiring at her when she wore it to church the
first time. Wasn't that like a man?"

"Mistress Booth IS mighty pretty, and brown's her
color," said Captain Jim reflectively.

"Is that any good reason why he should poke her new
suit into the kitchen stove? Billy Booth is a jealous
fool, and he makes his wife's life miserable. She's
cried all the week about her suit. Oh, Anne, I wish I
could write like you, believe ME. Wouldn't I score
some of the men round here!"

"Those Booths are all a mite queer," said Captain Jim.
"Billy seemed the sanest of the lot till he got married
and then this queer jealous streak cropped out in him.
His brother Daniel, now, was always odd."

"Took tantrums every few days or so and wouldn't get
out of bed," said Miss Cornelia with a relish. "His
wife would have to do all the barn work till he got
over his spell. When he died people wrote her letters
of condolence; if I'd written anything it would have
been one of congratulation. Their father, old Abram
Booth, was a disgusting old sot. He was drunk at his
wife's funeral, and kept reeling round and hiccuping `I
didn't dri--i--i--nk much but I feel a--a-- awfully
que--e--e--r.'  I gave him a good jab in the back with
my umbrella when he came near me, and it sobered him up
until they got the casket out of the house. Young
Johnny Booth was to have been married yesterday, but
he couldn't be because he's gone and got the mumps.
Wasn't that like a man?"

"How could he help getting the mumps, poor fellow?"

"I'd poor fellow him, believe ME, if I was Kate Sterns.
I don't know how he could help getting the mumps, but I
DO know the wedding supper was all prepared and
everything will be spoiled before he's well again.
Such a waste! He should have had the mumps when he was
a boy."

"Come, come, Cornelia, don't you think you're a mite
unreasonable?"

Miss Cornelia disdained to reply and turned instead to
Susan Baker, a grim-faced, kind-hearted elderly
spinster of the Glen, who had been installed as
maid-of-all-work at the little house for some weeks.
Susan had been up to the Glen to make a sick call, and
had just returned.

"How is poor old Aunt Mandy tonight?" asked Miss
Cornelia.

Susan sighed.

"Very poorly--very poorly, Cornelia. I am afraid she
will soon be in heaven, poor thing!"

"Oh, surely, it's not so bad as that!" exclaimed Miss
Cornelia, sympathetically .

Captain Jim and Gilbert looked at each other. Then
they suddenly rose and went out.

"There are times," said Captain Jim, between spasms,
"when it would be a sin NOT to laugh. Them two
excellent women!"

CHAPTER 19

DAWN AND DUSK

In early June, when the sand hills were a great glory
of pink wild roses, and the Glen was smothered in apple
blossoms, Marilla arrived at the little house,
accompanied by a black horsehair trunk, patterned with
brass nails, which had reposed undisturbed in the Green
Gables garret for half a century. Susan Baker, who,
during her few weeks' sojourn in the little house, had
come to worship "young Mrs. Doctor," as she called
Anne, with blind fervor, looked rather jealously
askance at Marilla at first. But as Marilla did not
try to interfere in kitchen matters, and showed no
desire to interrupt Susan's ministrations to young Mrs.
Doctor, the good handmaiden became reconciled to her
presence, and told her cronies at the Glen that Miss
Cuthbert was a fine old lady and knew her place.

One evening, when the sky's limpid bowl was filled with
a red glory, and the robins were thrilling the golden
twilight with jubilant hymns to the stars of evening,
there was a sudden commotion in the little house of
dreams. Telephone messages were sent up to the Glen,
Doctor Dave and a white-capped nurse came hastily down,
Marilla paced the garden walks between the quahog
shells, murmuring prayers between her set lips, and
Susan sat in the kitchen with cotton wool in her ears
and her apron over her head.

Leslie, looking out from the house up the brook, saw
that every window of the little house was alight, and
did not sleep that night.

The June night was short; but it seemed an eternity to
those who waited and watched.

"Oh, will it NEVER end?" said Marilla; then she saw
how grave the nurse and Doctor Dave looked, and she
dared ask no more questions. Suppose Anne--but Marilla
could not suppose it.

"Do not tell me," said Susan fiercely, answering the
anguish in Marilla's eyes, "that God could be so cruel
as to take that darling lamb from us when we all love
her so much."

"He has taken others as well beloved," said Marilla
hoarsely.

But at dawn, when the rising sun rent apart the mists
hanging over the sandbar, and made rainbows of them,
joy came to the little house. Anne was safe, and a
wee, white lady, with her mother's big eyes, was lying
beside her. Gilbert, his face gray and haggard from
his night's agony, came down to tell Marilla and Susan.

"Thank God," shuddered Marilla.

Susan got up and took the cotton wool out of her ears.

"Now for breakfast," she said briskly. "I am of the
opinion that we will all be glad of a bite and sup.
You tell young Mrs. Doctor not to worry about a single
thing--Susan is at the helm. You tell her just to
think of her baby."

Gilbert smiled rather sadly as he went away. Anne, her
pale face blanched with its baptism of pain, her eyes
aglow with the holy passion of motherhood, did not need
to be told to think of her baby. She thought of
nothing else. For a few hours she tasted of happiness
so rare and exquisite that she wondered if the angels
in heaven did not envy her.

"Little Joyce," she murmured, when Marilla came in to
see the baby. "We planned to call her that if she were
a girlie. There were so many we would have liked to
name her for; we couldn't choose between them, so we
decided on Joyce--we can call her Joy for
short--Joy--it suits so well. Oh, Marilla, I thought I
was happy before. Now I know that I just dreamed a
pleasant dream of happiness. THIS is the reality."

"You mustn't talk, Anne--wait till you're stronger,"
said Marilla warningly.

"You know how hard it is for me NOT to talk," smiled
Anne.

At first she was too weak and too happy to notice that
Gilbert and the nurse looked grave and Marilla
sorrowful. Then, as subtly, and coldly, and
remorselessly as a sea-fog stealing landward, fear
crept into her heart. Why was not Gilbert gladder?
Why would he not talk about the baby? Why would they
not let her have it with her after that first
heavenly--happy hour? Was--was there anything wrong?

"Gilbert," whispered Anne imploringly, "the baby--is
all right--isn't she? Tell me--tell me."

Gilbert was a long while in turning round; then he bent
over Anne and looked in her eyes. Marilla, listening
fearfully outside the door, heard a pitiful,
heartbroken moan, and fled to the kitchen where Susan
was weeping.

"Oh, the poor lamb--the poor lamb! How can she bear
it, Miss Cuthbert? I am afraid it will kill her. She
has been that built up and happy, longing for that
baby, and planning for it. Cannot anything be done
nohow, Miss Cuthbert?"

"I'm afraid not, Susan. Gilbert says there is no hope.
He knew from the first the little thing couldn't
live."

"And it is such a sweet baby," sobbed Susan. "I never
saw one so white--they are mostly red or yallow. And
it opened its big eyes as if it was months old. The
little, little thing! Oh, the poor, young Mrs.
Doctor!"

At sunset the little soul that had come with the
dawning went away, leaving heartbreak behind it. Miss
Cornelia took the wee, white lady from the kindly but
stranger hands of the nurse, and dressed the tiny
waxen form in the beautiful dress Leslie had made for
it. Leslie had asked her to do that. Then she took it
back and laid it beside the poor, broken, tear-blinded
little mother.

"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away,
dearie," she said through her own tears. "Blessed be
the name of the Lord."

Then she went away, leaving Anne and Gilbert alone
together with their dead.

The next day, the small white Joy was laid in a velvet
casket which Leslie had lined with apple-blossoms, and
taken to the graveyard of the church across the harbor.
Miss Cornelia and Marilla put all the little love-made
garments away, together with the ruffled basket which
had been befrilled and belaced for dimpled limbs and
downy head. Little Joy was never to sleep there; she
had found a colder, narrower bed.

"This has been an awful disappointment to me," sighed
Miss Cornelia. "I've looked forward to this baby--and
I did want it to be a girl, too."

"I can only be thankful that Anne's life was spared,"
said Marilla, with a shiver, recalling those hours of
darkness when the girl she loved was passing through
the valley of the shadow.

"Poor, poor lamb! Her heart is broken," said Susan.

"I ENVY Anne," said Leslie suddenly and fiercely, "and
I'd envy her even if she had died! She was a mother
for one beautiful day. I'd gladly give my life for
THAT!"

"I wouldn't talk like that, Leslie, dearie," said Miss
Cornelia deprecatingly. She was afraid that the
dignified Miss Cuthbert would think Leslie quite
terrible.

Anne's convalescence was long, and made bitter for her
by many things. The bloom and sunshine of the Four
Winds world grated harshly on her; and yet, when the
rain fell heavily, she pictured it beating so
mercilessly down on that little grave across the
harbor; and when the wind blew around the eaves she
heard sad voices in it she had never heard before.

Kindly callers hurt her, too, with the well-meant
platitudes with which they strove to cover the
nakedness of bereavement. A letter from Phil Blake was
an added sting. Phil had heard of the baby's birth,
but not of its death, and she wrote Anne a
congratulatory letter of sweet mirth which hurt her
horribly.

"I would have laughed over it so happily if I had my
baby," she sobbed to Marilla. "But when I haven't it
just seems like wanton cruelty--though I know Phil
wouldn't hurt me for the world. Oh, Marilla, I don't
see how I can EVER be happy again--EVERYTHING will
hurt me all the rest of my life."

"Time will help you," said Marilla, who was racked
with sympathy but could never learn to express it in
other than age-worn formulas.

"It doesn't seem FAIR," said Anne rebelliously.
"Babies are born and live where they are not
wanted--where they will be neglected-- where they will
have no chance. I would have loved my baby so--and
cared for it so tenderly--and tried to give her every
chance for good. And yet I wasn't allowed to keep
her."

"It was God's will, Anne," said Marilla, helpless
before the riddle of the universe--the WHY of
undeserved pain. "And little Joy is better off."

"I can't believe THAT," cried Anne bitterly. Then,
seeing that Marilla looked shocked, she added
passionately, "Why should she be born at all--why
should any one be born at all--if she's better off
dead? I DON'T believe it is better for a child to die
at birth than to live its life out--and love and be
loved--and enjoy and suffer--and do its work--and
develop a character that would give it a personality in
eternity. And how do you know it was God's will?
Perhaps it was just a thwarting of His purpose by the
Power of Evil. We can't be expected to be resigned to
THAT."

"Oh, Anne, don't talk so," said Marilla, genuinely
alarmed lest Anne were drifting into deep and dangerous
waters. "We can't understand--but we must have
faith--we MUST believe that all is for the best. I
know you find it hard to think so, just now. But try
to be brave--for Gilbert's sake. He's so worried about
you. You aren't getting strong as fast as you
should."

"Oh, I know I've been very selfish," sighed Anne. "I
love Gilbert more than ever--and I want to live for his
sake. But it seems as if part of me was buried over
there in that little harbor graveyard-- and it hurts so
much that I'm afraid of life."

"It won't hurt so much always, Anne."

"The thought that it may stop hurting sometimes hurts
me worse than all else, Marilla."

"Yes, I know, I've felt that too, about other things.
But we all love you, Anne. Captain Jim has been up
every day to ask for you--and Mrs. Moore haunts the
place--and Miss Bryant spends most of her time, I
think, cooking up nice things for you. Susan doesn't
like it very well. She thinks she can cook as well as
Miss Bryant."

"Dear Susan! Oh, everybody has been so dear and good
and lovely to me, Marilla. I'm not ungrateful--and
perhaps--when this horrible ache grows a little
less--I'll find that I can go on living."

CHAPTER 20

LOST MARGARET

Anne found that she could go on living; the day came
when she even smiled again over one of Miss Cornelia's
speeches. But there was something in the smile that
had never been in Anne's smile before and would never
be absent from it again.

On the first day she was able to go for a drive Gilbert
took her down to Four Winds Point, and left her there
while he rowed over the channel to see a patient at the
fishing village. A rollicking wind was scudding across
the harbor and the dunes, whipping the water into
white-caps and washing the sandshore with long lines of
silvery breakers.

"I'm real proud to see you here again, Mistress
Blythe," said Captain Jim. "Sit down--sit down. I'm
afeared it's mighty dusty here today--but there's no
need of looking at dust when you can look at such
scenery, is there?"

"I don't mind the dust," said Anne, "but Gilbert says
I must keep in the open air. I think I'll go and sit
on the rocks down there."

"Would you like company or would you rather be alone?"

"If by company you mean yours I'd much rather have it
than be alone," said Anne, smiling. Then she sighed.
She had never before minded being alone. Now she
dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so
dreadfully alone.

"Here's a nice little spot where the wind can't get at
you," said Captain Jim, when they reached the rocks.
"I often sit here. It's a great place jest to sit and
dream."

"Oh--dreams," sighed Anne. "I can't dream now,
Captain Jim--I'm done with dreams."

"Oh, no, you're not, Mistress Blythe--oh, no, you're
not," said Captain Jim meditatively. "I know how you
feel jest now--but if you keep on living you'll get
glad again, and the first thing you know you'll be
dreaming again--thank the good Lord for it! If it
wasn't for our dreams they might as well bury us.
How'd we stand living if it wasn't for our dream of
immortality? And that's a dream that's BOUND to come
true, Mistress Blythe. You'll see your little Joyce
again some day."

"But she won't be my baby," said Anne, with trembling
lips. "Oh, she may be, as Longfellow says, `a fair
maiden clothed with celestial grace'--but she'll be a
stranger to me."

"God will manage better'n THAT, I believe," said
Captain Jim.

They were both silent for a little time. Then Captain
Jim said very softly:

"Mistress Blythe, may I tell you about lost Margaret?"

"Of course," said Anne gently. She did not know who
"lost Margaret" was, but she felt that she was going
to hear the romance of Captain Jim's life.

"I've often wanted to tell you about her," Captain Jim
went on.

"Do you know why, Mistress Blythe? It's because I want
somebody to remember and think of her sometime after
I'm gone. I can't bear that her name should be
forgotten by all living souls. And now nobody
remembers lost Margaret but me."

Then Captain Jim told the story--an old, old forgotten
story, for it was over fifty years since Margaret had
fallen asleep one day in her father's dory and
drifted--or so it was supposed, for nothing was ever
certainly known as to her fate--out of the channel,
beyond the bar, to perish in the black thundersquall
which had come up so suddenly that long-ago summer
afternoon. But to Captain Jim those fifty years were
but as yesterday when it is past.

"I walked the shore for months after that," he said
sadly, "looking to find her dear, sweet little body;
but the sea never give her back to me. But I'll find
her sometime, Mistress Blythe--I'll find her sometime .
She's waiting for me. I wish I could tell you jest how
she looked, but I can't. I've seen a fine, silvery
mist hanging over the bar at sunrise that seemed like
her--and then again I've seen a white birch in the
woods back yander that made me think of her. She had
pale, brown hair and a little white, sweet face, and
long slender fingers like yours, Mistress Blythe, only
browner, for she was a shore girl. Sometimes I wake up
in the night and hear the sea calling to me in the old
way, and it seems as if lost Margaret called in it.
And when there's a storm and the waves are sobbing and
moaning I hear her lamenting among them. And when they
laugh on a gay day it's HER laugh--lost Margaret's
sweet, roguish, little laugh. The sea took her from
me, but some day I'll find her. Mistress Blythe. It
can't keep us apart forever."

"I am glad you have told me about her," said Anne. "I
have often wondered why you had lived all your life
alone."

"I couldn't ever care for anyone else. Lost Margaret
took my heart with her--out there," said the old
lover, who had been faithful for fifty years to his
drowned sweetheart. "You won't mind if I talk a good
deal about her, will you, Mistress Blythe? It's a
pleasure to me--for all the pain went out of her memory
years ago and jest left its blessing. I know you'll
never forget her, Mistress Blythe. And if the years,
as I hope, bring other little folks to your home, I
want you to promise me that you'll tell THEM the story
of lost Margaret, so that her name won't be forgotten
among humankind."

CHAPTER 21

BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY

"Anne," said Leslie, breaking abruptly a short
silence, "you don't know how GOOD it is to be sitting
here with you again--working-- and talking--and being
silent together."

They were sitting among the blue-eyed grasses on the
bank of the brook in Anne's garden. The water sparkled
and crooned past them; the birches threw dappled
shadows over them; roses bloomed along the walks. The
sun was beginning to be low, and the air was full of
woven music. There was one music of the wind in the
firs behind the house, and another of the waves on the
bar, and still another from the distant bell of the
church near which the wee, white lady slept. Anne
loved that bell, though it brought sorrowful thoughts
now.

She looked curiously at Leslie, who had thrown down her
sewing and spoken with a lack of restraint that was
very unusual with her.

"On that horrible night when you were so ill," Leslie
went on, "I kept thinking that perhaps we'd have no
more talks and walks and WORKS together. And I
realised just what your friendship had come to mean to
me--just what YOU meant--and just what a hateful little
beast I had been."

"Leslie! Leslie! I never allow anyone to call my
friends names."

"It's true. That's exactly what I am--a hateful little
beast. There's something I've GOT to tell you, Anne. I
suppose it will make you despise me, but I MUST confess
it. Anne, there have been times this past winter and
spring when I have HATED you."

"I KNEW it," said Anne calmly.

"You KNEW it?"

"Yes, I saw it in your eyes."

" And yet you went on liking me and being my friend."

"Well, it was only now and then you hated me, Leslie.
Between times you loved me, I think."

"I certainly did. But that other horrid feeling was
always there, spoiling it, back in my heart. I kept it
down--sometimes I forgot it-- but sometimes it would
surge up and take possession of me. I hated you
because I ENVIED you--oh, I was sick with envy of you
at times. You had a dear little home--and love--and
happiness--and glad dreams--everything I wanted--and
never had--and never could have. Oh, never could have!
THAT was what stung. I wouldn't have envied you, if I
had had any HOPE that life would ever be different for
me. But I hadn't--I hadn't--and it didn't seem FAIR.
It made me rebellious--and it hurt me--and so I hated
you at times. Oh, I was so ashamed of it--I'm dying of
shame now--but I couldn't conquer it.

That night, when I was afraid you mightn't live--I
thought I was going to be punished for my
wickedness--and I loved you so then. Anne, Anne, I
never had anything to love since my mother died, except
Dick's old dog--and it's so dreadful to have nothing to
love--life is so EMPTY--and there's NOTHING worse than
emptiness-- and I might have loved you so much--and
that horrible thing had spoiled it--"

Leslie was trembling and growing almost incoherent with
the violence of her emotion.

"Don't, Leslie," implored Anne, "oh, don't. I
understand-- don't talk of it any more."

"I must--I must. When I knew you were going to live I
vowed that I would tell you as soon as you were
well--that I wouldn't go on accepting your friendship
and companionship without telling you how unworthy I
was of it. And I've been so afraid--it would turn you
against me."

"You needn't fear that, Leslie."

"Oh, I'm so glad--so glad, Anne."  Leslie clasped her
brown, work-hardened hands tightly together to still
their shaking. "But I want to tell you everything, now
I've begun. You don't remember the first time I saw
you, I suppose--it wasn't that night on the shore--"

"No, it was the night Gilbert and I came home. You
were driving your geese down the hill. I should think
I DO remember it! I thought you were so beautiful--I
longed for weeks after to find out who you were."

"I knew who YOU were, although I had never seen either
of you before. I had heard of the new doctor and his
bride who were coming to live in Miss Russell's little
house. I--I hated you that very moment, Anne."

"I felt the resentment in your eyes--then I doubted--I
thought I must be mistaken--because WHY should it be?"

"It was because you looked so happy. Oh, you'll agree
with me now that I AM a hateful beast--to hate another
woman just because she was happy,--and when her
happiness didn't take anything from me! That was why I
never went to see you. I knew quite well I ought to
go--even our simple Four Winds customs demanded that.
But I couldn't. I used to watch you from my window--I
could see you and your husband strolling about your
garden in the evening--or you running down the poplar
lane to meet him. And it hurt me. And yet in another
way I wanted to go over. I felt that, if I were not so
miserable, I could have liked you and found in you what
I've never had in my life--an intimate, REAL friend of
my own age. And then you remember that night at the
shore? You were afraid I would think you crazy. You
must have thought _I_ was."

"No, but I couldn't understand you, Leslie. One moment
you drew me to you--the next you pushed me back."

"I was very unhappy that evening. I had had a hard
day. Dick had been very--very hard to manage that day.
Generally he is quite good-natured and easily
controlled, you know, Anne. But some days he is very
different. I was so heartsick--I ran away to the shore
as soon as he went to sleep. It was my only refuge. I
sat there thinking of how my poor father had ended his
life, and wondering if I wouldn't be driven to it some
day. Oh, my heart was full of black thoughts! And
then you came dancing along the cove like a glad,
light-hearted child. I--I hated you more then than
I've ever done since. And yet I craved your
friendship. The one feeling swayed me one moment; the
other feeling the next. When I got home that night I
cried for shame of what you must think of me. But it's
always been just the same when I came over here.
Sometimes I'd be happy and enjoy my visit. And at
other times that hideous feeling would mar it all.
There were times when everything about you and your
house hurt me. You had so many dear little things I
couldn't have. Do you know--it's ridiculous-- but I
had an especial spite at those china dogs of yours.
There were times when I wanted to catch up Gog and
Magog and bang their pert black noses together! Oh,
you smile, Anne--but it was never funny to me. I would
come here and see you and Gilbert with your books and
your flowers, and your household goods, and your little
family jokes--and your love for each other showing in
every look and word, even when you didn't know it--and
I would go home to--you know what I went home to! Oh,
Anne, I don't believe I'm jealous and envious by
nature. When I was a girl I lacked many things my
schoolmates had, but I never cared--I never disliked
them for it. But I seem to have grown so hateful--"

"Leslie, dearest, stop blaming yourself. You are NOT
hateful or jealous or envious. The life you have to
live has warped you a little, perhaps-but it would have
ruined a nature less fine and noble than yours. I'm
letting you tell me all this because I believe it's
better for you to talk it out and rid your soul of it.
But don't blame yourself any more."

"Well, I won't. I just wanted you to know me as I am.
That time you told me of your darling hope for the
spring was the worst of all, Anne. I shall never
forgive myself for the way I behaved then. I repented
it with tears. And I DID put many a tender and loving
thought of you into the little dress I made. But I
might have known that anything I made could only be a
shroud in the end."

"Now, Leslie, that IS bitter and morbid--put such
thoughts away.

I was so glad when you brought the little dress; and
since I had to lose little Joyce I like to think that
the dress she wore was the one you made for her when
you let yourself love me."

"Anne, do you know, I believe I shall always love you
after this. I don't think I'll ever feel that dreadful
way about you again. Talking it all out seems to have
done away with it, somehow. It's very strange --and I
thought it so real and bitter. It's like opening the
door of a dark room to show some hideous creature
you've believed to be there--and when the light streams
in your monster turns out to have been just a shadow,
vanishing when the light comes. It will never come
between us again."

"No, we are real friends now, Leslie, and I am very
glad."

"I hope you won't misunderstand me if I say something
else. Anne, I was grieved to the core of my heart when
you lost your baby; and if I could have saved her for
you by cutting off one of my hands I would have done
it. But your sorrow has brought us closer together.
Your perfect happiness isn't a barrier any longer. Oh,
don't misunderstand, dearest--I'm NOT glad that your
happiness isn't perfect any longer--I can say that
sincerely; but since it isn't, there isn't such a gulf
between us."

"I DO understand that, too, Leslie. Now, we'll just
shut up the past and forget what was unpleasant in it.
It's all going to be different. We're both of the race
of Joseph now. I think you've been wonderful
--wonderful. And, Leslie, I can't help believing that
life has something good and beautiful for you yet."

Leslie shook her head.

"No," she said dully. "There isn't any hope. Dick
will never be better--and even if his memory were to
come back--oh, Anne, it would be worse, even worse,
than it is now. This is something you can't
understand, you happy bride. Anne, did Miss Cornelia
ever tell you how I came to marry Dick?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad--I wanted you to know--but I couldn't bring
myself to talk of it if you hadn't known. Anne, it
seems to me that ever since I was twelve years old life
has been bitter. Before that I had a happy childhood.
We were very poor--but we didn't mind. Father was so
splendid--so clever and loving and sympathetic. We
were chums as far back as I can remember. And mother
was so sweet. She was very, very beautiful. I look
like her, but I am not so beautiful as she was."

"Miss Cornelia says you are far more beautiful."

"She is mistaken--or prejudiced. I think my figure IS
better-- mother was slight and bent by hard work--but
she had the face of an angel. I used just to look up
at her in worship. We all worshipped her,--father and
Kenneth and I."

Anne remembered that Miss Cornelia had given her a very
different impression of Leslie's mother. But had not
love the truer vision? Still, it WAS selfish of Rose
West to make her daughter marry Dick Moore.

"Kenneth was my brother," went on Leslie. "Oh, I
can't tell you how I loved him. And he was cruelly
killed. Do you know how?"

"Yes."

"Anne, I saw his little face as the wheel went over
him. He fell on his back. Anne--Anne--I can see it
now. I shall always see it. Anne, all I ask of heaven
is that that recollection shall be blotted out of my
memory. O my God!"

"Leslie, don't speak of it. I know the story--don't go
into details that only harrow your soul up
unavailingly. It WILL be blotted out."

After a moment's struggle, Leslie regained a measure of
self- control.

"Then father's health got worse and he grew
despondent--his mind became unbalanced--you've heard
all that, too?"

"Yes."

"After that I had just mother to live for. But I was
very ambitious. I meant to teach and earn my way
through college. I meant to climb to the very top--oh,
I won't talk of that either. It's no use. You know
what happened. I couldn't see my dear little
heart-broken mother, who had been such a slave all her
life, turned out of her home. Of course, I could have
earned enough for us to live on. But mother COULDN'T
leave her home. She had come there as a bride--and she
had loved father so--and all her memories were there.
Even yet, Anne, when I think that I made her last year
happy I'm not sorry for what I did. As for Dick--I
didn't hate him when I married him--I just felt for him
the indifferent, friendly feeling I had for most of my
schoolmates. I knew he drank some--but I had never
heard the story of the girl down at the fishing cove.
If I had, I COULDN'T have married him, even for
mother's sake. Afterwards--I DID hate him--but mother
never knew. She died--and then I was alone. I was
only seventeen and I was alone. Dick had gone off in
the Four Sisters. I hoped he wouldn't be home very
much more. The sea had always been in his blood. I
had no other hope. Well, Captain Jim brought him home,
as you know--and that's all there is to say. You know
me now, Anne--the worst of me--the barriers are all
down. And you still want to be my friend?"

Anne looked up through the birches, at the white
paper-lantern of a half moon drifting downwards to the
gulf of sunset. Her face was very sweet.

"I am your friend and you are mine, for always," she
said. "Such a friend as I never had before. I have
had many dear and beloved friends--but there is a
something in you, Leslie, that I never found in anyone
else. You have more to offer me in that rich nature of
yours, and I have more to give you than I had in my
careless girlhood. We are both women--and friends
forever."

They clasped hands and smiled at each other through the
tears that filled the gray eyes and the blue.

CHAPTER 22

MISS CORNELIA ARRANGES MATTERS

Gilbert insisted that Susan should be kept on at the
little house for the summer. Anne protested at first.

"Life here with just the two of us is so sweet,
Gilbert. It spoils it a little to have anyone else.
Susan is a dear soul, but she is an outsider. It won't
hurt me to do the work here."

"You must take your doctor's advice," said Gilbert.
"There's an old proverb to the effect that shoemakers'
wives go barefoot and doctors' wives die young. I
don't mean that it shall be true in my household. You
will keep Susan until the old spring comes back into
your step, and those little hollows on your cheeks fill
out."

"You just take it easy, Mrs. Doctor, dear," said
Susan, coming abruptly in. "Have a good time and do
not worry about the pantry. Susan is at the helm.
There is no use in keeping a dog and doing your own
barking. I am going to take your breakfast up to you
every morning."

"Indeed you are not," laughed Anne. "I agree with
Miss Cornelia that it's a scandal for a woman who isn't
sick to eat her breakfast in bed, and almost justifies
the men in any enormities."

"Oh, Cornelia!" said Susan, with ineffable contempt.
"I think you have better sense, Mrs. Doctor, dear, than
to heed what Cornelia Bryant says. I cannot see why
she must be always running down the men, even if she is
an old maid. _I_ am an old maid, but you never hear ME
abusing the men. I like 'em. I would have married one
if I could. Is it not funny nobody ever asked me to
marry him, Mrs. Doctor, dear? I am no beauty, but I am
as good-looking as most of the married women you see.
But I never had a beau. What do you suppose is the
reason?"

"It may be predestination," suggested Anne, with
unearthly solemnity.

Susan nodded.

"That is what I have often thought, Mrs. Doctor, dear,
and a great comfort it is. I do not mind nobody
wanting me if the Almighty decreed it so for His own
wise purposes. But sometimes doubt creeps in, Mrs.
Doctor, dear, and I wonder if maybe the Old Scratch has
not more to do with it than anyone else. I cannot feel
resigned THEN. But maybe," added Susan, brightening
up, "I will have a chance to get married yet. I often
and often think of the old verse my aunt used to
repeat:

There never was a goose so gray but sometime soon or
late Some honest gander came her way and took her for
his mate!

A woman cannot ever be sure of not being married till
she is buried, Mrs. Doctor, dear, and meanwhile I will
make a batch of cherry pies. I notice the doctor
favors 'em, and I DO like cooking for a man who
appreciates his victuals."

Miss Cornelia dropped in that afternoon, puffing a
little.

"I don't mind the world or the devil much, but the
flesh DOES rather bother me," she admitted. "You
always look as cool as a cucumber, Anne, dearie. Do I
smell cherry pie? If I do, ask me to stay to tea.
Haven't tasted a cherry pie this summer. My cherries
have all been stolen by those scamps of Gilman boys
from the Glen."

"Now, now, Cornelia," remonstrated Captain Jim, who
had been reading a sea novel in a corner of the living
room, "you shouldn't say that about those two poor,
motherless Gilman boys, unless you've got certain
proof. Jest because their father ain't none too honest
isn't any reason for calling them thieves. It's more
likely it's been the robins took your cherries.
They're turrible thick this year."

"Robins!" said Miss Cornelia disdainfully. "Humph!
Two- legged robins, believe ME!"

"Well, most of the Four Winds robins ARE constructed on
that principle," said Captain Jim gravely.

Miss Cornelia stared at him for a moment. Then she
leaned back in her rocker and laughed long and
ungrudgingly.

"Well, you HAVE got one on me at last, Jim Boyd, I'll
admit. Just look how pleased he is, Anne, dearie,
grinning like a Chessy-cat. As for the robins' legs if
robins have great, big, bare, sunburned legs, with
ragged trousers hanging on 'em, such as I saw up in my
cherry tree one morning at sunrise last week, I'll beg
the Gilman boys' pardon. By the time I got down they
were gone. I couldn't understand how they had
disappeared so quick, but Captain Jim has enlightened
me. They flew away, of course."

Captain Jim laughed and went away, regretfully
declining an invitation to stay to supper and partake
of cherry pie.

"I'm on my way to see Leslie and ask her if she'll take
a boarder," Miss Cornelia resumed. "I'd a letter
yesterday from a Mrs. Daly in Toronto, who boarded a
spell with me two years ago. She wanted me to take a
friend of hers for the summer. His name is Owen Ford,
and he's a newspaper man, and it seems he's a grandson
of the schoolmaster who built this house. John
Selwyn's oldest daughter married an Ontario man named
Ford, and this is her son. He wants to see the old
place his grandparents lived in. He had a bad spell of
typhoid in the spring and hasn't got rightly over it,
so his doctor has ordered him to the sea. He doesn't
want to go to the hotel--he just wants a quiet home
place. I can't take him, for I have to be away in
August. I've been appointed a delegate to the W.F.M.S.
convention in Kingsport and I'm going. I don't know
whether Leslie'll want to be bothered with him, either,
but there's no one else. If she can't take him he'll
have to go over the harbor."

"When you've seen her come back and help us eat our
cherry pies," said Anne. "Bring Leslie and Dick, too,
if they can come. And so you're going to Kingsport?
What a nice time you will have. I must give you a
letter to a friend of mine there--Mrs. Jonas Blake."

"I've prevailed on Mrs. Thomas Holt to go with me,"
said Miss Cornelia complacently. "It's time she had a
little holiday, believe ME. She has just about worked
herself to death. Tom Holt can crochet beautifully,
but he can't make a living for his family. He never
seems to be able to get up early enough to do any work,
but I notice he can always get up early to go fishing.
Isn't that like a man?"

Anne smiled. She had learned to discount largely Miss
Cornelia's opinions of the Four Winds men. Otherwise
she must have believed them the most hopeless
assortment of reprobates and ne'er-do-wells in the
world, with veritable slaves and martyrs for wives.
This particular Tom Holt, for example, she knew to be a
kind husband, a much loved father, and an excellent
neighbor. If he were rather inclined to be lazy,
liking better the fishing he had been born for than the
farming he had not, and if he had a harmless
eccentricity for doing fancy work, nobody save Miss
Cornelia seemed to hold it against him. His wife was
a "hustler," who gloried in hustling; his family got a
comfortable living off the farm; and his strapping sons
and daughters, inheriting their mother's energy, were
all in a fair way to do well in the world. There was
not a happier household in Glen St. Mary than the
Holts'.

Miss Cornelia returned satisfied from the house up the
brook.

"Leslie's going to take him," she announced. "She
jumped at the chance. She wants to make a little money
to shingle the roof of her house this fall, and she
didn't know how she was going to manage it. I expect
Captain Jim'll be more than interested when he hears
that a grandson of the Selwyns' is coming here. Leslie
said to tell you she hankered after cherry pie, but she
couldn't come to tea because she has to go and hunt up
her turkeys. They've strayed away. But she said, if
there was a piece left, for you to put it in the pantry
and she'd run over in the cat's light, when prowling's
in order, to get it. You don't know, Anne, dearie,
what good it did my heart to hear Leslie send you a
message like that, laughing like she used to long ago.

There's a great change come over her lately. She
laughs and jokes like a girl, and from her talk I
gather she's here real often."

"Every day--or else I'm over there," said Anne. "I
don't know what I'd do without Leslie, especially just
now when Gilbert is so busy. He's hardly ever home
except for a few hours in the wee sma's. He's really
working himself to death. So many of the over-harbor
people send for him now."

"They might better be content with their own doctor,"
said Miss Cornelia. "Though to be sure I can't blame
them, for he's a Methodist. Ever since Dr. Blythe
brought Mrs. Allonby round folks think he can raise the
dead. I believe Dr. Dave is a mite jealous--just like
a man. He thinks Dr. Blythe has too many new-fangled
notions! `Well,' I says to him, `it was a new-fangled
notion saved Rhoda Allonby. If YOU'D been attending
her she'd have died, and had a tombstone saying it had
pleased God to take her away.'  Oh, I DO like to speak
my mind to Dr. Dave! He's bossed the Glen for years,
and he thinks he's forgotten more than other people
ever knew. Speaking of doctors, I wish Dr. Blythe'd
run over and see to that boil on Dick Moore's neck.
It's getting past Leslie's skill. I'm sure I don't
know what Dick Moore wants to start in having boils
for--as if he wasn't enough trouble without that!"

"Do you know, Dick has taken quite a fancy to me,"
said Anne. "He follows me round like a dog, and smiles
like a pleased child when I notice him."

"Does it make you creepy?"

"Not at all. I rather like poor Dick Moore. He seems
so pitiful and appealing, somehow."

"You wouldn't think him very appealing if you'd see him
on his cantankerous days, believe ME. But I'm glad you
don't mind him-- it's all the nicer for Leslie. She'll
have more to do when her boarder comes. I hope he'll
be a decent creature. You'll probably like him--he's a
writer."

"I wonder why people so commonly suppose that if two
individuals are both writers they must therefore be
hugely congenial," said Anne, rather scornfully.
"Nobody would expect two blacksmiths to be violently
attracted toward each other merely because they were
both blacksmiths."

Nevertheless, she looked forward to the advent of Owen
Ford with a pleasant sense of expectation. If he were
young and likeable he might prove a very pleasant
addition to society in Four Winds. The latch-string of
the little house was always out for the race of Joseph.

CHAPTER 23

OWEN FORD COMES

One evening Miss Cornelia telephoned down to Anne.

"The writer man has just arrived here. I'm going to
drive him down to your place, and you can show him the
way over to Leslie's. It's shorter than driving round
by the other road, and I'm in a mortal hurry. The
Reese baby has gone and fallen into a pail of hot water
at the Glen, and got nearly scalded to death and they
want me right off--to put a new skin on the child, I
presume. Mrs. Reese is always so careless, and then
expects other people to mend her mistakes. You won't
mind, will you, dearie? His trunk can go down
tomorrow."

"Very well," said Anne. "What is he like, Miss
Cornelia?"

"You'll see what he's like outside when I take him
down. As for what he's like inside only the Lord who
made him knows THAT. I'm not going to say another
word, for every receiver in the Glen is down."

"Miss Cornelia evidently can't find much fault with Mr.
Ford's looks, or she would find it in spite of the
receivers," said Anne. "I conclude therefore, Susan,
that Mr. Ford is rather handsome than otherwise."

"Well, Mrs. Doctor, dear, I DO enjoy seeing a
well-looking man," said Susan candidly. "Had I not
better get up a snack for him? There is a strawberry
pie that would melt in your mouth."

"No, Leslie is expecting him and has his supper ready.
Besides, I want that strawberry pie for my own poor
man. He won't be home till late, so leave the pie and
a glass of milk out for him, Susan."

"That I will, Mrs. Doctor, dear. Susan is at the helm.
After all, it is better to give pie to your own men
than to strangers, who may be only seeking to devour,
and the doctor himself is as well-looking a man as you
often come across."

When Owen Ford came Anne secretly admitted, as Miss
Cornelia towed him in, that he was very "well-looking"
indeed. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick,
brown hair, finely-cut nose and chin, large and
brilliant dark-gray eyes.

"And did you notice his ears and his teeth, Mrs.
Doctor, dear?" queried Susan later on. "He has got
the nicest-shaped ears I ever saw on a man's head. I
am choice about ears. When I was young I was scared
that I might have to marry a man with ears like flaps.
But I need not have worried, for never a chance did I
have with any kind of ears."

Anne had not noticed Owen Ford's ears, but she did see
his teeth, as his lips parted over them in a frank and
friendly smile. Unsmiling, his face was rather sad and
absent in expression, not unlike the melancholy,
inscrutable hero of Anne's own early dreams; but mirth
and humor and charm lighted it up when he smiled.
Certainly, on the outside, as Miss Cornelia said, Owen
Ford was a very presentable fellow.

"You cannot realise how delighted I am to be here, Mrs.
Blythe," he said, looking around him with eager,
interested eyes. "I have an odd feeling of coming
home. My mother was born and spent her childhood
here, you know. She used to talk a great deal to me of
her old home. I know the geography of it as well as of
the one I lived in, and, of course, she told me the
story of the building of the house, and of my
grandfather's agonised watch for the Royal William. I
had thought that so old a house must have vanished
years ago, or I should have come to see it before
this."

"Old houses don't vanish easily on this enchanted
coast," smiled Anne. "This is a `land where all
things always seem the same'-- nearly always, at least.
John Selwyn's house hasn't even been much changed, and
outside the rose-bushes your grandfather planted for
his bride are blooming this very minute."

"How the thought links me with them! With your leave I
must explore the whole place soon."

"Our latch-string will always be out for you,"
promised Anne. "And do you know that the old sea
captain who keeps the Four Winds light knew John Selwyn
and his bride well in his boyhood? He told me their
story the night I came here--the third bride of the old
house."

"Can it be possible? This IS a discovery. I must hunt
him up."

"It won't be difficult; we are all cronies of Captain
Jim. He will be as eager to see you as you could be to
see him. Your grandmother shines like a star in his
memory. But I think Mrs. Moore is expecting you. I'll
show you our `cross-lots' road."

Anne walked with him to the house up the brook, over a
field that was as white as snow with daisies. A
boat-load of people were singing far across the harbor.
The sound drifted over the water like faint, unearthly
music wind-blown across a starlit sea. The big light
flashed and beaconed. Owen Ford looked around him with
satisfaction.

"And so this is Four Winds," he said. "I wasn't
prepared to find it quite so beautiful, in spite of all
mother's praises. What colors-- what scenery--what
charm! I shall get as strong as a horse in no time.
And if inspiration comes from beauty, I should
certainly be able to begin my great Canadian novel
here."

"You haven't begun it yet?" asked Anne.

"Alack-a-day, no. I've never been able to get the
right central idea for it. It lurks beyond me--it
allures--and beckons--and recedes-- I almost grasp it
and it is gone. Perhaps amid this peace and
loveliness, I shall be able to capture it. Miss Bryant
tells me that you write."

"Oh, I do little things for children. I haven't done
much since I was married. And--I have no designs on a
great Canadian novel," laughed Anne. "That is quite
beyond me."

Owen Ford laughed too.

"I dare say it is beyond me as well. All the same I
mean to have a try at it some day, if I can ever get
time. A newspaper man doesn't have much chance for
that sort of thing. I've done a good deal of short
story writing for the magazines, but I've never had the
leisure that seems to be necessary for the writing of a
book. With three months of liberty I ought to make a
start, though--if I could only get the necessary motif
for it--the SOUL of the book."

An idea whisked through Anne's brain with a suddenness
that made her jump. But she did not utter it, for they
had reached the Moore house. As they entered the yard
Leslie came out on the veranda from the side door,
peering through the gloom for some sign of her expected
guest. She stood just where the warm yellow light
flooded her from the open door. She wore a plain dress
of cheap, cream-tinted cotton voile, with the usual
girdle of crimson. Leslie was never without her touch
of crimson. She had told Anne that she never felt
satisfied without a gleam of red somewhere about her,
if it were only a flower. To Anne, it always seemed to
symbolise Leslie's glowing, pent-up personality,
denied all expression save in that flaming glint.
Leslie's dress was cut a little away at the neck and
had short sleeves. Her arms gleamed like ivory-tinted
marble. Every exquisite curve of her form was
outlined in soft darkness against the light. Her hair
shone in it like flame. Beyond her was a purple sky,
flowering with stars over the harbor.

Anne heard her companion give a gasp. Even in the dusk
she could see the amazement and admiration on his face.

"Who is that beautiful creature?" he asked.

"That is Mrs. Moore," said Anne. "She is very lovely,
isn't she?"

"I--I never saw anything like her," he answered,
rather dazedly. "I wasn't prepared--I didn't
expect--good heavens, one DOESN'T expect a goddess for
a landlady ! Why, if she were clothed in a gown of
sea-purple, with a rope of amethysts in her hair, she
would be a veritable sea-queen. And she takes in
boarders!"

"Even goddesses must live," said Anne. "And Leslie
isn't a goddess. She's just a very beautiful woman, as
human as the rest of us. Did Miss Bryant tell you
about Mr. Moore?"

"Yes,--he's mentally deficient, or something of the
sort, isn't he? But she said nothing about Mrs. Moore,
and I supposed she'd be the usual hustling country
housewife who takes in boarders to earn an honest
penny."

"Well, that's just what Leslie is doing," said Anne
crisply. "And it isn't altogether pleasant for her,
either. I hope you won't mind Dick. If you do, please
don't let Leslie see it. It would hurt her horribly.
He's just a big baby, and sometimes a rather annoying
one."

"Oh, I won't mind him. I don't suppose I'll be much in
the house anyhow, except for meals. But what a shame
it all is! Her life must be a hard one."

"It is. But she doesn't like to be pitied."

Leslie had gone back into the house and now met them at
the front door. She greeted Owen Ford with cold
civility, and told him in a business-like tone that his
room and his supper were ready for him. Dick, with a
pleased grin, shambled upstairs with the valise, and
Owen Ford was installed as an inmate of the old house
among the willows.

CHAPTER 24

THE LIFE-BOOK OF CAPTAIN JIM

"I have a little brown cocoon of an idea that may
possibly expand into a magnificent moth of
fulfilment," Anne told Gilbert when she reached home.
He had returned earlier than she had expected, and was
enjoying Susan's cherry pie. Susan herself hovered in
the background, like a rather grim but beneficent
guardian spirit, and found as much pleasure in watching
Gilbert eat pie as he did in eating it.

"What is your idea?" he asked.

"I sha'n't tell you just yet--not till I see if I can
bring the thing about."

"What sort of a chap is Ford?"

"Oh, very nice, and quite good-looking."

"Such beautiful ears, doctor, dear," interjected Susan
with a relish.

"He is about thirty or thirty-five, I think, and he
meditates writing a novel. His voice is pleasant and
his smile delightful, and he knows how to dress. He
looks as if life hadn't been altogether easy for him,
somehow."

Owen Ford came over the next evening with a note to
Anne from Leslie; they spent the sunset time in the
garden and then went for a moonlit sail on the harbor,
in the little boat Gilbert had set up for summer
outings. They liked Owen immensely and had that
feeling of having known him for many years which
distinguishes the freemasonry of the house of Joseph.
"He is as nice as his ears, Mrs. Doctor, dear," said
Susan, when he had gone. He had told Susan that he had
never tasted anything like her strawberry shortcake and
Susan's susceptible heart was his forever.

"He has got a way with him."  she reflected, as she
cleared up the relics of the supper. "It is real queer
he is not married, for a man like that could have
anybody for the asking. Well, maybe he is like me, and
has not met the right one yet."

Susan really grew quite romantic in her musings as she
washed the supper dishes.

Two nights later Anne took Owen Ford down to Four Winds
Point to introduce him to Captain Jim. The clover
fields along the harbor shore were whitening in the
western wind, and Captain Jim had one of his finest
sunsets on exhibition. He himself had just returned
from a trip over the harbor.

"I had to go over and tell Henry Pollack he was dying.
Everybody else was afraid to tell him. They expected
he'd take on turrible, for he's been dreadful
determined to live, and been making no end of plans for
the fall. His wife thought he oughter be told and that
I'd be the best one to break it to him that he couldn't
get better. Henry and me are old cronies--we sailed in
the Gray Gull for years together. Well, I went over
and sat down by Henry's bed and I says to him, says I,
jest right out plain and simple, for if a thing's got
to be told it may as well be told first as last, says
I, `Mate, I reckon you've got your sailing orders this
time,' I was sorter quaking inside, for it's an awful
thing to have to tell a man who hain't any idea he's
dying that he is. But lo and behold, Mistress Blythe,
Henry looks up at me, with those bright old black eyes
of his in his wizened face and says, says he, `Tell me
something I don't know, Jim Boyd, if you want to give
me information. I've known THAT for a week.'  I was
too astonished to speak, and Henry, he chuckled. `To
see you coming in here,' says he, `with your face as
solemn as a tombstone and sitting down there with your
hands clasped over your stomach, and passing me out a
blue-mouldy old item of news like that! It'd make a
cat laugh, Jim Boyd,' says he. `Who told you?' says I,
stupid like. `Nobody,' says he. `A week ago Tuesday
night I was lying here awake--and I jest knew. I'd
suspicioned it before, but then I KNEW. I've been
keeping up for the wife's sake. And I'd LIKE to have
got that barn built, for Eben'll never get it right.
But anyhow, now that you've eased your mind, Jim, put
on a smile and tell me something interesting,' Well,
there it was. They'd been so scared to tell him and he
knew it all the time. Strange how nature looks out for
us, ain't it, and lets us know what we should know when
the time comes? Did I never tell you the yarn about
Henry getting the fish hook in his nose, Mistress
Blythe?"

"No."

"Well, him and me had a laugh over it today. It
happened nigh unto thirty years ago. Him and me and
several more was out mackerel fishing one day. It was
a great day--never saw such a school of mackerel in
the gulf--and in the general excitement Henry got quite
wild and contrived to stick a fish hook clean through
one side of his nose. Well, there he was; there was
barb on one end and a big piece of lead on the other,
so it couldn't be pulled out. We wanted to take him
ashore at once, but Henry was game; he said he'd be
jiggered if he'd leave a school like that for anything
short of lockjaw; then he kept fishing away, hauling in
hand over fist and groaning between times. Fin'lly the
school passed and we come in with a load; I got a file
and begun to try to file through that hook. I tried to
be as easy as I could, but you should have heard
Henry--no, you shouldn't either. It was well no ladies
were around. Henry wasn't a swearing man, but he'd
heard some few matters of that sort along shore in his
time, and he fished 'em all out of his recollection and
hurled 'em at me. Fin'lly he declared he couldn't
stand it and I had no bowels of compassion. So we
hitched up and I drove him to a doctor in
Charlottetown, thirty-five miles--there weren't none
nearer in them days--with that blessed hook still
hanging from his nose. When we got there old Dr. Crabb
jest took a file and filed that hook jest the same as
I'd tried to do, only he weren't a mite particular
about doing it easy!"

Captain Jim's visit to his old friend had revived many
recollections and he was now in the full tide of
reminiscences.

"Henry was asking me today if I remembered the time old
Father Chiniquy blessed Alexander MacAllister's boat.
Another odd yarn--and true as gospel. I was in the
boat myself. We went out, him and me, in Alexander
MacAllister's boat one morning at sunrise. Besides,
there was a French boy in the boat--Catholic of course.
You know old Father Chiniquy had turned Protestant, so
the Catholics hadn't much use for him. Well, we sat
out in the gulf in the broiling sun till noon, and not
a bite did we get. When we went ashore old Father
Chiniquy had to go, so he said in that polite way of
his, `I'm very sorry I cannot go out with you dis
afternoon, Mr. MacAllister, but I leave you my
blessing. You will catch a t'ousand dis afternoon.
`Well, we did not catch a thousand, but we caught
exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine--the biggest catch
for a small boat on the whole north shore that summer.
Curious, wasn't it? Alexander MacAllister, he says to
Andrew Peters, `Well, and what do you think of Father
Chiniquy now?'  `Vell,' growled Andrew, `I t'ink de old
devil has got a blessing left yet.'  Laws, how Henry
did laugh over that today!"

"Do you know who Mr. Ford is, Captain Jim?" asked
Anne, seeing that Captain Jim's fountain of
reminiscence had run out for the present. "I want you
to guess."

Captain Jim shook his head.

"I never was any hand at guessing, Mistress Blythe, and
yet somehow when I come in I thought, `Where have I
seen them eyes before?'--for I HAVE seen 'em."

"Think of a September morning many years ago," said
Anne, softly. "Think of a ship sailing up the
harbor--a ship long waited for and despaired of. Think
of the day the Royal William came in and the first
look you had at the schoolmaster's bride."

Captain Jim sprang up.

"They're Persis Selwyn's eyes," he almost shouted.
"You can't be her son--you must be her--"

"Grandson; yes, I am Alice Selwyn's son."

Captain Jim swooped down on Owen Ford and shook his
hand over again.

"Alice Selwyn's son! Lord, but you're welcome! Many's
the time I've wondered where the descendants of the
schoolmaster were living. I knew there was none on the
Island. Alice--Alice--the first baby ever born in that
little house. No baby ever brought more joy! I've
dandled her a hundred times. It was from my knee she
took her first steps alone. Can't I see her mother's
face watching her--and it was near sixty years ago. Is
she living yet?"

"No, she died when I was only a boy."

"Oh, it doesn't seem right that I should be living to
hear that," sighed Captain Jim. "But I'm heart-glad
to see you. It's brought back my youth for a little
while. You don't know yet what a boon THAT is.
Mistress Blythe here has the trick--she does it quite
often for me."

Captain Jim was still more excited when he discovered
that Owen Ford was what he called a "real writing
man."  He gazed at him as at a superior being.
Captain Jim knew that Anne wrote, but he had never
taken that fact very seriously. Captain Jim thought
women were delightful creatures, who ought to have the
vote, and everything else they wanted, bless their
hearts; but he did not believe they could write.

"Jest look at A Mad Love," he would protest. "A woman
wrote that and jest look at it--one hundred and three
chapters when it could all have been told in ten. A
writing woman never knows when to stop; that's the
trouble. The p'int of good writing is to know when to
stop."

"Mr. Ford wants to hear some of your stories, Captain
Jim" said Anne. "Tell him the one about the captain
who went crazy and imagined he was the Flying
Dutchman."

This was Captain Jim's best story. It was a compound
of horror and humor, and though Anne had heard it
several times she laughed as heartily and shivered as
fearsomely over it as Mr. Ford did. Other tales
followed, for Captain Jim had an audience after his own
heart. He told how his vessel had been run down by a
steamer; how he had been boarded by Malay pirates; how
his ship had caught fire; how he helped a political
prisoner escape from a South African republic; how he
had been wrecked one fall on the Magdalens and stranded
there for the winter; how a tiger had broken loose on
board ship; how his crew had mutinied and marooned him
on a barren island--these and many other tales, tragic
or humorous or grotesque, did Captain Jim relate. The
mystery of the sea, the fascination of far lands, the
lure of adventure, the laughter of the world--his
hearers felt and realised them all. Owen Ford
listened, with his head on his hand, and the First
Mate purring on his knee, his brilliant eyes fastened
on Captain Jim's rugged, eloquent face.

"Won't you let Mr. Ford see your life-book, Captain
Jim?" asked Anne, when Captain Jim finally declared
that yarn-spinning must end for the time.

"Oh, he don't want to be bothered with THAT,"
protested Captain Jim, who was secretly dying to show
it.

"I should like nothing better than to see it, Captain
Boyd," said Owen. "If it is half as wonderful as your
tales it will be worth seeing."

With pretended reluctance Captain Jim dug his life-book
out of his old chest and handed it to Owen.

"I reckon you won't care to wrastle long with my old
hand o' write. I never had much schooling," he
observed carelessly. "Just wrote that there to amuse
my nephew Joe. He's always wanting stories. Comes
here yesterday and says to me, reproachful-like, as I
was lifting a twenty-pound codfish out of my boat,
`Uncle Jim, ain't a codfish a dumb animal?'  I'd been
a-telling him, you see, that he must be real kind to
dumb animals, and never hurt 'em in any way. I got out
of the scrape by saying a codfish was dumb enough but
it wasn't an animal, but Joe didn't look satisfied, and
I wasn't satisfied myself. You've got to be mighty
careful what you tell them little critters. THEY can
see through you."

While talking, Captain Jim watched Owen Ford from the
corner of his eye as the latter examined the life-book;
and presently observing that his guest was lost in its
pages, he turned smilingly to his cupboard and
proceeded to make a pot of tea. Owen Ford separated
himself from the life-book, with as much reluctance as
a miser wrenches himself from his gold, long enough to
drink his tea, and then returned to it hungrily.

"Oh, you can take that thing home with you if you want
to," said Captain Jim, as if the "thing" were not his
most treasured possession. "I must go down and pull my
boat up a bit on the skids. There's a wind coming.
Did you notice the sky tonight?

    Mackerel skies and mares' tails     Make tall ships
carry short sails."

Owen Ford accepted the offer of the life-book gladly.
On their way home Anne told him the story of lost
Margaret.

"That old captain is a wonderful old fellow," he said.
"What a life he has led! Why, the man had more
adventures in one week of his life than most of us have
in a lifetime. Do you really think his tales are all
true?"

"I certainly do. I am sure Captain Jim could not tell
a lie; and besides, all the people about here say that
everything happened as he relates it. There used to be
plenty of his old shipmates alive to corroborate him.
He's one of the last of the old type of P.E. Island
sea-captains. They are almost extinct now."

CHAPTER 25

THE WRITING OF THE BOOK

Owen Ford came over to the little house the next
morning in a state of great excitement. "Mrs. Blythe,
this is a wonderful book--absolutely wonderful. If I
could take it and use the material for a book I feel
certain I could make the novel of the year out of it.
Do you suppose Captain Jim would let me do it?"

"Let you! I'm sure he would be delighted," cried
Anne. "I admit that it was what was in my head when I
took you down last night. Captain Jim has always been
wishing he could get somebody to write his life-book
properly for him."

"Will you go down to the Point with me this evening,
Mrs. Blythe? I'll ask him about that life-book myself,
but I want you to tell him that you told me the story
of lost Margaret and ask him if he will let me use it
as a thread of romance with which to weave the stories
of the life-book into a harmonious whole."

Captain Jim was more excited than ever when Owen Ford
told him of his plan. At last his cherished dream was
to be realized and his "life-book" given to the world.
He was also pleased that the story of lost Margaret
should be woven into it.

"It will keep her name from being forgotten," he said
wistfully.

"That's why I want it put in."

"We'll collaborate," cried Owen delightedly. "You
will give the soul and I the body. Oh, we'll write a
famous book between us, Captain Jim. And we'll get
right to work."

"And to think my book is to be writ by the
schoolmaster's grandson!" exclaimed Captain Jim.
"Lad, your grandfather was my dearest friend. I
thought there was nobody like him. I see now why I had
to wait so long. It couldn't be writ till the right
man come. You BELONG here--you've got the soul of this
old north shore in you-- you're the only one who COULD
write it."

It was arranged that the tiny room off the living room
at the lighthouse should be given over to Owen for a
workshop. It was necessary that Captain Jim should be
near him as he wrote, for consultation upon many
matters of sea-faring and gulf lore of which Owen was
quite ignorant.

He began work on the book the very next morning, and
flung himself into it heart and soul. As for Captain
Jim, he was a happy man that summer. He looked upon
the little room where Owen worked as a sacred shrine.
Owen talked everything over with Captain Jim, but he
would not let him see the manuscript.

"You must wait until it is published," he said. "Then
you'll get it all at once in its best shape."

He delved into the treasures of the life-book and used
them freely. He dreamed and brooded over lost Margaret
until she became a vivid reality to him and lived in
his pages. As the book progressed it took possession
of him and he worked at it with feverish eagerness. He
let Anne and Leslie read the manuscript and criticise
it; and the concluding chapter of the book, which the
critics, later on, were pleased to call idyllic, was
modelled upon a suggestion of Leslie's.

Anne fairly hugged herself with delight over the
success of her idea.

"I knew when I looked at Owen Ford that he was the very
man for it," she told Gilbert. "Both humor and
passion were in his face, and that, together with the
art of expression, was just what was necessary for the
writing of such a book. As Mrs. Rachel would say, he
was predestined for the part."

Owen Ford wrote in the mornings. The afternoons were
generally spent in some merry outing with the Blythes.
Leslie often went, too, for Captain Jim took charge of
Dick frequently, in order to set her free. They went
boating on the harbor and up the three pretty rivers
that flowed into it; they had clambakes on the bar and
mussel-bakes on the rocks; they picked strawberries on
the sand-dunes; they went out cod-fishing with Captain
Jim; they shot plover in the shore fields and wild
ducks in the cove--at least, the men did. In the
evenings they rambled in the low-lying, daisied, shore
fields under a golden moon, or they sat in the living
room at the little house where often the coolness of
the sea breeze justified a driftwood fire, and talked
of the thousand and one things which happy, eager,
clever young people can find to talk about.

Ever since the day on which she had made her confession
to Anne Leslie had been a changed creature. There was
no trace of her old coldness and reserve, no shadow of
her old bitterness. The girlhood of which she had been
cheated seemed to come back to her with the ripeness of
womanhood; she expanded like a flower of flame and
perfume; no laugh was readier than hers, no wit
quicker, in the twilight circles of that enchanted
summer. When she could not be with them all felt that
some exquisite savor was lacking in their intercourse.
Her beauty was illumined by the awakened soul within,
as some rosy lamp might shine through a flawless vase
of alabaster. There were hours when Anne's eyes seemed
to ache with the splendor of her. As for Owen Ford,
the "Margaret" of his book, although she had the soft
brown hair and elfin face of the real girl who had
vanished so long ago, "pillowed where lost Atlantis
sleeps," had the personality of Leslie Moore, as it
was revealed to him in those halcyon days at Four Winds
Harbor.

All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer--one
of those summers which come seldom into any life, but
leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their
going--one of those summers which, in a fortunate
combination of delightful weather, delightful friends
and delightful doings, come as near to perfection as
anything can come in this world.

"Too good to last," Anne told herself with a little
sigh, on the September day when a certain nip in the
wind and a certain shade of intense blue on the gulf
water said that autumn was hard by.

That evening Owen Ford told them that he had finished
his book and that his vacation must come to an end.

"I have a good deal to do to it yet--revising and
pruning and so forth," he said, "but in the main it's
done. I wrote the last sentence this morning. If I
can find a publisher for it it will probably be out
next summer or fall."

Owen had not much doubt that he would find a publisher.
He knew that he had written a great book--a book that
would score a wonderful success--a book that would
LIVE. He knew that it would bring him both fame and
fortune; but when he had written the last line of it he
had bowed his head on the manuscript and so sat for a
long time. And his thoughts were not of the good work
he had done.

CHAPTER 26

OWEN FORD'S CONFESSION

"I'm so sorry Gilbert is away," said Anne. "He had to
go--Allan Lyons at the Glen has met with a serious
accident. He will not likely be home till very late.
But he told me to tell you he'd be up and over early
enough in the morning to see you before you left. It's
too provoking. Susan and I had planned such a nice
little jamboree for your last night here."

She was sitting beside the garden brook on the little
rustic seat Gilbert had built. Owen Ford stood before
her, leaning against the bronze column of a yellow
birch. He was very pale and his face bore the marks of
the preceding sleepless night. Anne, glancing up at
him, wondered if, after all, his summer had brought him
the strength it should. Had he worked too hard over
his book? She remembered that for a week he had not
been looking well.

"I'm rather glad the doctor is away," said Owen
slowly. "I wanted to see you alone, Mrs. Blythe.
There is something I must tell somebody, or I think it
will drive me mad. I've been trying for a week to look
it in the face--and I can't. I know I can trust
you--and, besides, you will understand. A woman with
eyes like yours always understands. You are one of the
folks people instinctively tell things to. Mrs.
Blythe, I love Leslie. LOVE her! That seems too weak
a word!"

His voice suddenly broke with the suppressed passion of
his utterance. He turned his head away and hid his
face on his arm. His whole form shook. Anne sat
looking at him, pale and aghast. She had never
thought of this! And yet--how was it she had never
thought of it? It now seemed a natural and inevitable
thing. She wondered at her own blindness.
But--but--things like this did not happen in Four
Winds. Elsewhere in the world human passions might set
at defiance human conventions and laws--but not HERE,
surely. Leslie had kept summer boarders off and on for
ten years, and nothing like this had happened. But
perhaps they had not been like Owen Ford; and the
vivid, LIVING Leslie of this summer was not the cold,
sullen girl of other years. Oh, SOMEBODY should have
thought of this! Why hadn't Miss Cornelia thought of
it? Miss Cornelia was always ready enough to sound the
alarm where men were concerned. Anne felt an
unreasonable resentment against Miss Cornelia. Then
she gave a little inward groan. No matter who was to
blame the mischief was done. And Leslie--what of
Leslie? It was for Leslie Anne felt most concerned.

"Does Leslie know this, Mr. Ford?" she asked quietly.

"No--no,--unless she has guessed it. You surely don't
think I'd be cad and scoundrel enough to tell her, Mrs.
Blythe. I couldn't help loving her--that's all--and my
misery is greater than I can bear."

"Does SHE care?" asked Anne. The moment the question
crossed her lips she felt that she should not have
asked it. Owen Ford answered it with overeager
protest.

"No--no, of course not. But I could make her care if
she were free--I know I could."

"She does care--and he knows it," thought Anne. Aloud
she said, sympathetically but decidedly:

"But she is not free, Mr. Ford. And the only thing you
can do is to go away in silence and leave her to her
own life."

"I know--I know," groaned Owen. He sat down on the
grassy bank and stared moodily into the amber water
beneath him. "I know there's nothing to do--nothing
but to say conventionally, `Good- bye, Mrs. Moore.
Thank you for all your kindness to me this summer,'
just as I would have said it to the sonsy, bustling,
keen-eyed housewife I expected her to be when I came.
Then I'll pay my board money like any honest boarder
and go! Oh, it's very simple. No doubt--no
perplexity--a straight road to the end of the world!

And I'll walk it--you needn't fear that I won't, Mrs.
Blythe. But it would be easier to walk over red-hot
ploughshares."

Anne flinched with the pain of his voice. And there
was so little she could say that would be adequate to
the situation. Blame was out of the question--advice
was not needed--sympathy was mocked by the man's stark
agony. She could only feel with him in a maze of
compassion and regret. Her heart ached for Leslie!
Had not that poor girl suffered enough without this?

"It wouldn't be so hard to go and leave her if she were
only happy," resumed Owen passionately. "But to think
of her living death--to realise what it is to which I
do leave her! THAT is the worst of all. I would give
my life to make her happy--and I can do nothing even to
help her--nothing. She is bound forever to that poor
wretch--with nothing to look forward to but growing old
in a succession of empty, meaningless, barren years.
It drives me mad to think of it. But I must go through
my life, never seeing her, but always knowing what she
is enduring. It's hideous--hideous!"

"It is very hard," said Anne sorrowfully. "We--her
friends here--all know how hard it is for her."

"And she is so richly fitted for life," said Owen
rebelliously.

"Her beauty is the least of her dower--and she is the
most beautiful woman I've ever known. That laugh of
hers! I've angled all summer to evoke that laugh, just
for the delight of hearing it. And her eyes-- they are
as deep and blue as the gulf out there. I never saw
such blueness--and gold! Did you ever see her hair
down, Mrs. Blythe?"

"No."

"I did--once. I had gone down to the Point to go
fishing with Captain Jim but it was too rough to go
out, so I came back. She had taken the opportunity of
what she expected to be an afternoon alone to wash her
hair, and she was standing on the veranda in the
sunshine to dry it. It fell all about her to her feet
in a fountain of living gold. When she saw me she
hurried in, and the wind caught her hair and swirled it
all around her--Danae in her cloud. Somehow, just then
the knowledge that I loved her came home to me--and
realised that I had loved her from the moment I first
saw her standing against the darkness in that glow of
light. And she must live on here--petting and soothing
Dick, pinching and saving for a mere existence, while I
spend my life longing vainly for her, and debarred, by
that very fact, from even giving her the little help a
friend might. I walked the shore last night, almost
till dawn, and thrashed it all out over and over again.
And yet, in spite of everything, I can't find it in my
heart to be sorry that I came to Four Winds. It seems
to me that, bad as everything is, it would be still
worse never to have known Leslie. It's burning,
searing pain to love her and leave her--but not to have
loved her is unthinkable. I suppose all this sounds
very crazy--all these terrible emotions always do sound
foolish when we put them into our inadequate words.
They are not meant to be spoken--only felt and endured.
I shouldn't have spoken--but it has helped-- some. At
least, it has given me strength to go away respectably
tomorrow morning, without making a scene. You'll write
me now and then, won't you, Mrs. Blythe, and give me
what news there is to give of her?"

"Yes," said Anne. "Oh, I'm so sorry you are
going--we'll miss you so--we've all been such friends!
If it were not for this you could come back other
summers. Perhaps, even yet--by-and-by--when you've
forgotten, perhaps--"

"I shall never forget--and I shall never come back to
Four Winds," said Owen briefly.

Silence and twilight fell over the garden. Far away
the sea was lapping gently and monotonously on the bar.
The wind of evening in the poplars sounded like some
sad, weird, old rune--some broken dream of old
memories. A slender shapely young aspen rose up before
them against the fine maize and emerald and paling rose
of the western sky, which brought out every leaf and
twig in dark, tremulous, elfin loveliness.

"Isn't that beautiful?" said Owen, pointing to it with
the air of a man who puts a certain conversation behind
him.