Sends its glimmer across the dark,
And the heavy breathing of the sea
Is the only sound that comes to me.
Longfellow.
AT dawn I leaned over and blew out the kitchen-lamp.
All night we had sat there shivering, with the wick burning down on the table between us, not daring to go upstairs again nor even to move. There had not been another sound, unless it was the well-nigh inaudible drip of the beach-plum jelly where it hung in a cheese-cloth bag above a yellow bowl.
Mrs. Dove was asleep now, her poor tired head upon her bare arms on the table. In the growing light I saw a shawl upon a hook, which all night had looked to me like a person hanging there, and I took it down and laid it around her shoulders. Outside the fog still shrouded the bay, so that nothing was visible. The faint outlines of houses along the shore grew momentarily more solid. The lights of early risers began to appear in the windows. Star Harbor had slept right through the tragedy of the House of the Five Pines as it had been sleeping for almost fifty years.
Determined to be ready to leave as soon as my husband returned, I went back up the kitchen companionway to Mattie’s room to dress. The bed-clothes were tossed wildly over the foot, where Mrs. Dove had thrown them when she had dived for the candle and made her hurried exit, but the rest of the room was as I had left it. I pulled the bureau away from the little door and tried it. It was still nailed tight. When I came down again Mrs. Dove was bending over the fire in the range.
“Get me a few kindlings, will you, dearie?” were the first words she said.
Without answering, I got them. Then she looked up and saw I had my hat on.