In these days, you may be sure, the boy's thoughts were often across the vast gray sea in front of his window, even when he was bending over his problems or translations; not that he regretted his decision to share Uncle Richard's life with him, nor that he had any thoughts of fleeing away, but those flitting sails on the far horizon were messengers which alway bore on their white wings thoughts of hope and love and patience to those over the sea.
It was not the natural sphere of a boy,—this monotonous, unvarying round of days, with no companions of his age or tastes; and, as week after week passed, and Noll was still blithe and apparently contented, Trafford wondered and conjectured, and could not surmise a reason for it; though, had he observed closely, it would not have been a great mystery. For Noll there was the unfailing comfort of the little Bible which lay beside the huge old bed up-stairs, and which gave the double comfort of its own blessedness and the remembrance of its preciousness to her who turned its pages to the last; and there were ever the pitying ears of Jesus ready to hear the story of discouragement and loneliness, when the burden of slow, weary days seemed too heavy to bear.
Into Trafford's life had come more brightness and content than he had known since that dark day when his wife left him and vanished in the darkness which, to his eyes, filled and hovered over the grave. It did not, as yet, seem like a real and lasting joy; he trembled lest some day it should prove but a dream, a vision, and so vanish. He often laid aside his book and looked up, half expecting to find the room as silent and lonely as when, of old, he was the only inhabitant of the great library; but there, at the opposite window, sat the pleasant figure of the boy, busy with his books, and as real and tangible as heart could wish. It was a perpetual delight, though he hid all knowledge of it from Noll, to feel that the boy was present, to see him curled up in a great chair by the fire, watching the flames or the depths of rosy coal, of a twilight, and to feel that he was his,—a precious gift to love and cherish. So the man's heart began to go out toward the boy,—tremblingly, warningly at first, then, as he found him true and worthy, with all its might and all the fervor of which it was capable.
CHAPTER IX.
Dirk's Trouble
oll closed his books one afternoon after recitations, saying, "I'll put on my overcoat, Uncle Richard, and take a run up the shore,—just for exercise. The waves are monstrous, and how they thunder! I haven't seen them so large since I came to Culm."
"Look out for the tide," continued his Uncle; "keep away from that narrow strip of sand up the shore, for the waves will cover it in an hour."