A little boy had been sitting for many hours beneath the shelter of an old boat drawn up upon the shore. He was protected from the driving showers, and seemed quite contented with his position, for it was long since he had moved. He sat very still, nursing his knees with his clasped hands and resting his chin upon them, whilst he gazed unweariedly out over the tossing sea.
His coarse clothing and sun-browned face and hands proclaimed him a fisherman’s son. He looked about ten or twelve years old, and had a gentle, thoughtful, although not an intellectual cast of countenance. He did not appear very robust, despite his indifference to raindrops and chilly sea-breezes, and his placid inactivity betrayed a nature more prone to contemplation than to the toils of the life to which he was evidently born.
The sun began to set behind the sandhills, whose shadows slowly lengthened, whilst the thin, coarse grass which grew sparsely upon them turned golden in the radiance of departing day. The hoarse cries of the seabirds grew more frequent as they flew hither and thither, as if in search of their night’s quarters; and the little boy, rousing himself at last from his reverie, rose slowly from his sitting posture, stretched his cramped limbs, and began slowly making his way in a diagonal direction across the sandhills.
He had not proceeded far, before a wreath of pale blue smoke curling up from a little hollow indicated the presence of some dwelling-place; and a few more steps brought him to the door of a tiny cabin such as fisher-folk often inhabit.
The door stood seawards, and was as usual wide open, and upon the threshold sat the boy’s mother, busily engaged in mending a broken net.
She looked up as the child approached, and smiled. She had a round, motherly face, and her person, as well as the interior of her diminutive abode, was far more clean and neat than is usual with the dwellings of people of her class.
“Well, David,” she said, “where hast thou been all the day, honey?”
“Oh, down by the sea, mother,” he answered; and then, glancing quickly up into her face, he asked, “Be he woke up yet?”
The woman shook her head.