Uncle Zachie clasped it, and then, suddenly, she bent and kissed his hand.
“You must not do that,” said he, hastily.
She looked piteously into his eyes, and said, in a whisper that he alone could hear—“I am so lonely.”
When she was gone the old man returned to the ingle nook and resumed his pipe. He did not speak, but every now and then he put one finger furtively to his cheek, wiped off something, and drew very vigorous whiffs of tobacco.
Nor was Oliver inclined to speak; he gazed dreamily into the fire, with contracted brows, and hands that were clenched.
A quarter of an hour thus passed. Then Oliver looked up at his father, and said: “There is worse wrecking than that of ships. Can nothing be done for this poor little craft, drifting in fog—aimless!—and going on to the rocks?”
Uncle Zachie again wiped his cheek, and in his thoughtlessness wiped it with the bowl of his pipe and burnt himself. He shook his head.
“Now tell me what you meant when you said she was but half married,” said Oliver.
Then his father related to him the circumstances of Judith’s forced engagement, and of the incomplete marriage of the day before.
“By my soul!” exclaimed Oliver. “He must—he shall not treat her as he did our vessel.”