“I will cross to those rocks half way down the Crescent, and sit down a while and watch the waves break over the rocks,” he said. “Splendid place there.”
It was a tempting outlook upon the somersets thrown by those acrobats of the ocean, the waves, when they reached the rocky line of the shore, and there made tumble after tumble. Walter sat a long time watching and thinking:
“Then I have run against Baggs,” he said, “and I didn’t anticipate that. Wasn’t he mad! I never thought that smooth–talking man could rave like one of these waves. I am sorry for Uncle Boardman’s sake, for I imagine—poor man—he has enough to worry him, and my fuss with Baggs may make him some trouble. But I don’t see what else I could have done. That fellow—I wonder where I have seen him—had been drinking already, and a glass or two more might have just finished him. I could not do that; no, not even set down the bottle for him. And the law was against it; and I could not in any way help break the law. Baggs could not ask it of me, for I didn’t go there for any such purpose. No, sir! I think I did the right thing, and I’ll stick to it, and stand by it.”
In his earnestness, Walter rose, stamped on the ledges with his feet, as if to give emphasis to his opinion, and looked off on the wide ocean of blue, whose play was as restless as that of his thoughts. And as he looked, somehow it seemed to him as if he had the sympathy of that wide reach of nature he was watching. The sky seemed to bend down to him in an approval which the gently blowing wind whispered, and that great ocean had a voice, sounding in the thousands of waves pressing toward him, and saying in the roar of the surf, “You are right.” This secret sympathy between law in nature and its keeper in the sphere of principle, is one of the rewards of right–doing. And above all, in his heart, Walter had the sense of satisfaction whose source he knew to be God. He did not know what might be the personal consequences of his difficulty with Baggs, but he felt that he was right; and he could plant his feet on that assurance solid as the ledges under him. He remained a long time watching the waves, till he was startled to see what a protracted shadow his form threw on the black ledges.
“Sun is getting low,” he said. “I must be going.”
He turned, and moved away a short distance, when he turned again, and looked back upon the rocks he had left.
“That is strange,” he said.
He noticed that this particular ledge, called the “Center Rock” by the fishermen, had a divided summit. The outline of the eastern half of this summit was curiously like that of a chair; as if placed there in anticipation of an arrival by sea. No one, though, came out of the great, empty waste of water, now rapidly blackening in the twilight.
“Sort of funny,” he exclaimed, and hurried away.