"If, for 'divine Providence,' you will substitute 'lucky accident,' I will agree to it as heartily as either you or she. If you persist in dragging in Providence, I must really beg leave to inquire where Providence was when the ship struck."
The silence which reigned in the room was like the space cleared for a sparring-match. The old combative instinct of the primitive man arises in the most civilized, and makes him delight in a fight. Brady looked amused; Winifred a little apprehensive; Mr. Anstice preserved [Pg 143] a dignified neutrality; and Miss Standish fumbled with her cameo brooch, and smoothed the folds of her skirt, as if to make sure that all was in order before entering upon a possibly ruffling contest.
"I suppose—" she began; but old Marsden, who sat on the other side of the fire, and who was no respecter of persons, broke in: "I've heerd a deal about how you all felt, and what you all thought; but what I'd like to know is what really happened. The men at the inn wont talk without their captain gives them leave; and Dr. Cricket has got him and his sister shut up in their rooms, to git over the shawk. Now perhaps the Doctor can tell us how it wuz thet thet air ship went aground on a sandy coast, in a ca'm night like the last."
"Captain Costello says it was the light in the tavern-window which he mistook for the Bug Light off the point; but how could that have been, when it was past two o'clock, and I'll answer for it that no one at Nepaug was ever found awake after nine?"
Dr. Cricket questioned with the inflection of a man who neither expects nor desires an answer. Indeed, he had only paused for breath, when Flint, from his easy chair on the other side of the fireplace, broke in:—
"So I am to blame for the whole thing."
"You!"
"You don't say so!"
"Was the light yours?"