"It's a year this very night since I came to you, Uncle Richard! Don't you remember? What a long, long time!"
Trafford said, "Yes, I remember. Through all the days since then God has been teaching me, and he has led me on to this; and, oh! my boy, the sea may never divide us again, for, though through its dark floods we go down to death, beyond there is light and God and heaven!" And in his voice there was peace unutterable.
If this Story of a Year, and what it taught, is not already too long, you may know that a schoolhouse was built at Culm, and that Henry Fields proved a good and faithful teacher; that a stanch, new "White Gull" was built, and one of Skipper Ben's sea-loving sons was its captain; that the Culm children and their parents slowly improved in more ways than one under the constant, unfailing care and effort of Trafford and his nephew; that the Rock was not always Noll Trafford's home, but exchanged for a pleasanter one in Hastings, though the old stone house was often brightened by his presence, and never got to be entirely gloomy and deserted again.
