He turned around with his back to the blaze, while a faint mist of evaporation began to creep out all over him, and occasionally to dart out in slender streams and float up the wide chimney.
"There's no danger now, an' mebbe there won't be any. But the tide will not turn much afore midnight, an' it's higher now than it generally is when it is full."
"What's that?" cried Willie, the boy, his senses sharpened by the mention of danger.
"It's the wind rattlin' my boat-chains," returned Chillis, smiling at the little fellow's startled looks.
"Your boat-chain!" echoed his mother, not less startled. "Was it your boat that you were fastening to the hitching-post? I thought it was your horse. Is the water up so high, then, already?"—her cheeks paling as she spoke.
"I dragged it up a little way," returned Chillis, slowly, and turning his face back to the fire. He was listening attentively, and thought he caught the sound of lapping water.
"Have you just come from Astoria?" asked Mrs. Smiley, approaching, and standing at one corner of the hearth. The fire-light shone full upon her now, and revealed a clear white face; large, dark-gray eyes, full of sadness and perplexity; a beautifully shaped head, coiled round and round with heavy twists of golden hair, that glittered in its high lights like burnished metal; and a figure at once full and lithe in its proportions, clad in a neat-fitting dress of some soft, dark material, set off with a tiny white collar and bright ribbon. It was easy to see why she was the "White Rose" to the rough old mountain man. She was looking up at him with an eager, questioning gaze, that meant, O, ever so much more than her words.
"Not quite direct. I stopped down at the landin', an' I lost a little time gittin' capsized in the bay. I left about three o'clock."
"Might not Eben have left a little later," the gray eyes added, "and have been capsized, too?"
"He wouldn't try to cross half an hour later—I'll wager my head on that. He can't get away from town to-night; an', what is worse, I don't think he can cross for two or three days. We've got our Christmas storm on hand, an' a worse one than we've had for twenty years, or I'm mistaken."