"You did this? How can I believe it? What had you to do with? And why was I not consulted, if this was your work?"
"Oh, Uncle Richard!" said Noll, quickly, "don't be vexed with me. You gave me permission to help these Culm people. Don't you remember?"
Trafford made no reply, and again looked at the line of comfortable, well-repaired houses. There were deeper thoughts and emotions in his heart at that moment than Noll could know or guess.
The long silence was so uncomfortable that the boy was fain to break it, with, "I've one more thing to show you, Uncle Richard. It's not much,—only just a beginning,—but I'd like you to see and know about it."
Trafford followed, without a word, and Noll led the way to the little schoolroom, with its two benches and three-legged stool and pile of well-thumbed primers and spelling-books.
"It's not much," said Noll, apologetically, "but it's a beginning, and they all know their letters, and some can spell a little."
Trafford evinced no surprise, much to Noll's wonder, and merely asked, "Where do you find the time?"
"After recitations," replied the nephew; and that was all that was said about the matter.
Trafford went out and sat down on the little wharf, and Noll lingered in the door-way of his schoolroom, thinking that he had never seen Uncle Richard act more strangely. Was he offended at what he had done and was doing for the Culm people? he wondered. He looked out and saw that his uncle had turned his face away, and was looking off upon the sea with the same dreamy, thoughtful look which he had noticed in his eyes of late. Noll would have given a great deal could he have known his thoughts at that moment. To human eyes this grave and thoughtful man, who sat on the wharf, was not a whit less the stern and gloomy creature that he had been an hour before. Yet, all hidden from others' gaze, and almost from his own consciousness, a sudden sense of regret and of a great short-coming in himself had welled up through the crust of his hardened heart. His heart had been deeply stirred, and now it smote him. His thoughts took some such shape as this,—even while he was looking with such apparent calmness upon the changing, shadowy lights of the sea:—
"This boy has done more in this short summer for his fellow-men and for his God than I have done in my whole forty years of life! Oh, what a life mine has been!—all a wreck, a failure, a miserable waste! And he? Why, in this short summer-time, and on this barren Rock, he has made his very life a blessing to every one upon it. I suppose those dirty, ignorant fishermen bless the day that brought him here. And I? O Heaven! what a failure, what a failure! I've done the world no good,—it's no better for my having lived in it,—it would miss me no more than one of these useless pebbles which I cast into the sea. And this boy—my boy—always at work to make others rejoice that he was born into the world!"