CHAPTER IV
There was a long silence, broken at last by Mary saying, "Perhaps what some folk say of Moll is true,—that it is an evil gift she has. And yet she has a sweet face and gentle manner."
"I wonder if 't is truth, what they say of old Dimond, her father," said Dorothy, her chin supported in one soft palm, while her eyes looked off over the water, motionless almost as the seaweed growing on the scarred rocks along the shore, left bare by the low tide.
"What is that?" Mary asked.
"Why, that whenever there was a dark, stormy night, with a gale threatening the ships at sea, he would go up on Burial Hill, and beat about amongst the grass, to save the crews from shipwreck."
Mary laughed. "What an idea!" she exclaimed. "How could beating the ground about the dead benefit or protect the living, who are surely in the keeping of Him who makes the tempests?"
"I don't know," was Dorothy's simple answer. "Only that is what I've heard, ever since I was a child. And such talk always took my fancy."
"Well, old Dimond doesn't look now as if he could have strength to beat the ground, or anything else. Poor old man, he is very feeble, and I should say 't is a happy thing for him that Moll can come down from Lynn now and then, to attend him."
"Yes," Dorothy assented. Then, with a lively change of tone and manner, "'T was odd, Mary, for her to say that when you left her door you were to see your true-love riding to meet you on horseback."
Mary started, and without answering, turned her head away, while the blood rushed to her lovely face.