Captain January tottered to his old chair and sat down in it. “The child is right, Lady and Gentleman!” he said. “I lied! I lied to my God, and to the little child who loved me. May God and the child forgive me!” And he hid his face in his hands, and silence fell for a moment.
Then Mr. Morton, who had walked hastily to the window, and was doing something with his handkerchief, beckoned to his wife. “Isabel,” he said, in a low tone, “I will not be a party to this. It's an atrocious and vindictive outrage. I—I—you are not the woman I took you for, if you say another word to that old angel. Let him have the child, and send him one or two of your own into the bar—” but Isabel Morton, laughing through her tears, laid her hand over her husband's lips for a moment. Then going to the old man's chair, she knelt down by it, and took his two hands in hers.
“Captain January!” she said, tenderly. “Dear, dear Captain January! the lie is forgiven: I am very, very sure it is forgiven in heaven, as it will be forgiven in the child's loving heart. And may God never pardon me, if ever word or look of mine come again between you and the child whom God gave you!”
The gray evening was closing in around the lighthouse tower. The guests were gone, and Captain January sat alone beside the fire in his old armchair. The window was still open, for the air was soft and mild. The old man's hands were clasped upon his knee; his heart was lifted as high as heaven, in silent prayer and praise.
Suddenly, at the window, there was a gleam of yellow, a flitting shape, a look, a pause; then a great glad cry, and Star flitted like a ray of moonlight through the window, and fell on Captain January's breast.
“Daddy,” she said, breaking the long, happy silence, “dear Daddy, I am sorry I burned your horrid old cap!”
CHAPTER VI. — THE SIGNAL
Quietly passed the days, the weeks, the months, in the lonely tower on the rock fronting the Atlantic surge. Winter came, and folded it in a white mantle, and decked it with frost-jewels. Like a pillar of ice, the tower shone in the keen brilliance of the northern sun; but within was always summer, the summer of perfect peace and contentment. To the child Star, winter was always a season of great delight; for Captain January had little to occupy him out-of-doors, and could devote much of his time to her. So there were long, delightful “jack-knife times,” as Star called them, when the Captain sat fashioning all sorts of wonderful trifles with his magic knife, the child sitting at his elbow and watching him with happy eyes. There were “story times,” instituted years before, as soon as Star had learned to sew on patchwork; for as for sewing without a story to listen to, “that,” said Star, “is against my nature, Daddy. And you don't want me to do things that are against my nature, do you?” So whenever the squares of gay calico came out, and the golden head bent to and fro over them, like a paradise bird hovering over a bed of gaudy flowers, the story came out, too, between puffs of the pipe, while the fire crackled a cheery accompaniment, sputtering defiance to the wind that whistled outside. Some tale of the southern seas, and the wild tropic islands, of coral reefs and pearl-fisheries, sharks and devil-fish; or else a whaling story, fresh and breezy as the north, full of icebergs, and seal-hunts over the cracking floes, polar bears, and all the wild delights of whale-fishing.
Then, on fine days (and oh, but the days are fine, in these glorious northern winters!) there was much joy to be had out-of-doors. For there was a spot in the little meadow,—once of gold-flecked emerald, now of spotless pearl,—a spot where the ground “tilted,” to use Star's expression, suddenly down to a tiny hollow, where a fairy spring bubbled out of the rock into a fairy lake. In summer, Star rather despised this lake, which was, truth to tell, only twenty feet long and ten feet wide. It was very nice for Imogen to drink from and to stand in on hot days, and it did many lovely things in the way of reflecting blue skies and fleecy clouds and delicate traceries of leaf and bough; but as water, it seemed a very trifling thing to a child who had the whole sweep of the Atlantic to fill her eyes, and who had the breakers for her playfellows and gossips.