"What is that gun?" said Rollo; "and where was it? Let us look for the smoke."
So Rollo and Lucia, leaning over the parapet, began to look all about among the boats and vessels of the lake, and along the opposite shore, in the direction from which the sound of the report had seemed to come, and very soon their eyes rested upon a volume of blue smoke which was ascending from the bows of a little vessel that had just come in, and was floating off gracefully into the air.
"It is that vessel that has just got in," said Rollo.
"Rollo," said Mrs. Holiday, "look at the mountain."
Rollo turned his eye for a moment towards the mountain. All the lower part of it was of a cold and deathlike whiteness, while the tip of the summit was glowing as if it had been on fire. He was, however, too much interested in the smoke of the gun to look long at the mountain.
"Hark!" said he to Lucia; "let us see if they will not fire again."
They did not fire again; and just as Rollo began to give up expecting that they would, his attention, as well as that of Lucia, was attracted to a little child who was playing with a small hammer in the gravel not far from where they were standing. The mother of the child was sitting on a bench near by, knitting. The hammer was small, and the claw of it was straight and flat. The child was using it for a hoe, to dig a hole in the gravel.
"Now," said Rollo, "if I could find a shingle any where about here, I would make that child a shovel to dig with."
Rollo looked about, but there was nothing like a shingle to be seen.