“Uncle Barney,” she said with a suspicion of a sob in her voice, “I’d rather be goin’ there for the first time with you than with anyone else in all the world, perhaps because my grand-dad loved you just as he would had you been his brother.”
“I know, I know,” the kind-hearted Irishman assured her. Then to hide his own emotion he hurried on to say: “Bundle up warm, Rilly gal, for though ’tis sunny, the air is powerful nippin’. I reckon you’d better be tellin’ your folks as how you may be late comin’ back to sort o’ get ’em out of the notion o’ worryin’. Tell ’em yer ol’ Uncle Barney’ll land you in the home port safe an’ sound along about sunset.”
Although Muriel was surprised to hear that they might remain so long on Windy Island, she made no comment but skipped into the house to put on her wraps and tell Miss Gordon of the planned voyage. Uncle Barney had not said that he wished only Muriel to accompany him, but the girl was sure that the captain had something that he wished to say to her alone. Perhaps her grand-dad had asked him to sometime tell her about the marriage of her girl-mother. How she hoped this might be so. But of her thoughts Muriel said nothing as they tramped together out on the snow-covered wharf near which the captain’s dory was anchored.
It was not until they were sailing in the smoother waters on the sheltered side of the island that Ezra Bassett’s old friend told the girl he had so loved why he had brought her that day to visit the ruined lighthouse.
“Uncle Barney,” the girl looked across at him hopefully, eagerly, “won’t you be telling me all that you know about my girl-mother and my father.”
“Well, colleen dearie, thar ain’t much to tell. Your pa, it ’peared like to us as saw him, was a poor artist fellow as came one summer to this here coast to make pictures. Yer ma, darlin’, was jest like yo’ are now; the two of yo’ couldn’t be told apart. That artist fellow met up wi’ her in the store, Mrs. Sol tol’ me, an’ nothin’ would do arter that but he must make a paintin’ of that other Rilla a-settin’ up on the rocks. He was mighty takin’ in his ways, I’ll say that for him, an’ upstandin’, too. I’d a-sworn from the little I saw of him that he’d be a square dealer, but like be I was wrong, for when your grand-dad got wind of him courtin’ his gal, fer that’s what it had come to by the end of the summer, ol’ Ezra tol’ him to clear out. Yo’re ma pleaded pitiful-like, but yo’ know that look yer grand-dad used to get when he was sot, an’ sot hard. That’s the way he looked then. Wall, the next day that artist fellow was gone, but so, too, was the gal ol’ Ezra Bassett had set sech a store by.” The kindly Irishman dreaded telling the rest of the story as it reflected no credit to the honor of the lighthouse-keeper and he was glad indeed to find that the dock had been reached. Nor did the girl question him.
Even Captain Barney did not know how hard it was for Muriel to climb the snow-covered flight of steps that led to the only home her girlhood had ever known, and then, when the top was reached, to see that home lying one rock heaped upon another, the whole jagged mass covered with a sparkling white blanket.
“The little iron box that you were telling me about, Uncle Barney,” Rilla began as she smiled bravely up at her companion, “since it was kept near the lamp, don’t you think that in falling they would lie near each other?”
The old man nodded. “I reckon so,” he replied, “an’ yet thar’s no tellin’. A reg’lar tornado ’twas a-racin’ along the coast that day, and what with the lightnin’ hitting the tower and the wind twistin’ it, things that fell might o’ got purty much scattered about, seems like.”
Going to the old shed at the foot of the steps, the captain procured shovels and a broom and together they began to remove the snow from the rocks that were nearest.