The sun dropped low in the west, and presently Chub Leroy, who built the city of Alexandria ten years before, came slowly along in the shadow of the maples, and St. Agnes Macree was with him. She was old Caspar Macree's granddaughter, and he was a charcoal-burner on the Cattle Ridge long ago. They were surprised to see the Elders' Seat, and stopped a moment. St. Agnes looked up at him and smiled softly, and Chub's eyes kept saying, “Sweetheart, sweetheart,” all the time. Then they went on.
“I remember—” said Captain David, and stopped short.
“Eh! So do I,” said the minister.
“You do! Well, Job, do you remember? Ain't it the remarkablest thing!”
The miller's heavy face was changed with a slow, embarrassed smile. And all these three sat a long time very still, while the sunlight slanted among the morning-glories and the pigeons slept on the roof.
There came a day in September when the minister and the miller were alone again on the Elders' Seat, but Captain David lay in his bed near the window. He slept a great deal, and babbled in his half dreams: sometimes about ships and cordage, anchorage in harbors and whaling in the south seas; and at times about some one named “Kitty.” I never heard who Kitty was. He said something or other “wasn't right.” He took the trouble and the end of things all in good part, and bore no grudge to any one for it; it seemed only natural, like coming to anchor at last.
“When a man gets legs like mine,” he said, “it's time he took another way of getting round. Something like a fish'd be my notion. Parson, a man gets the other side of somewhere, he can jump round lively-like, same as he was a boy, eh?”
The minister murmured something about “our Heavenly Father,” and Captain David said softly: “I guess he don't call us nothing but boys. He says, 'Shucks! it ain't natural for 'em to behave.' Don't ye think, parson? Him, he might see an old man like me and tell him, 'Glad to see ye, sonny'; same as Harrier in Doty's Slip. The boys come in after a year out, or maybe three years, and old man Harrier, he says, 'Glad to see ye, sonny'; and the boys gets terrible drunk. He kept a junk-shop, Harrier.”
The minister tried to answer, but could not make it out.
“I saw a ship go down sudden-like. It was in '44. It was inside Cape Cod. Something blowed her up inside. Me, I've took my time, I have. What ye grumbling about, parson?”