The harbor master was content to believe that he had erred on the side of the flesh, and that the sea, a jealous mistress, had swept him into the hearing of the gods, who were laughing at him.
As for the child of Cad Sills, people who did not know her often said that her eyes were speaking eyes. Well if it were so, since this voice in the eyes was all the voice she had. She could neither speak nor hear from birth. It was as if kind nature had sealed her ears against those seductive whisperings which—so the gossips said—had been the ruination of her mother.
As she grew older, they said behind their hands that blood would tell, in spite of all. Then, when they saw the girl skipping along the shore with kelp in her hands they said, mistrustfully, that she was "marked" for the sea, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
"She hears well enough, when the sea speaks," Zinie Shadd averred. He had caught her listening in a shell with an intent expression.
"She will turn out to be a chip of the old block," said Zinie Shadd's wife, "or I shall never live to see the back of my neck."
Jethro Rackby heard nothing of such prophecy. He lived at home. Here in his estimation was a being without guile, in whose innocence he might rejoice. His forethought was great and pathetic. He took care that she should learn to caress him with her finger tips alone. He remembered the fatal touch of Cad Sills's kiss at Pull-an'-be-Damned, which had as good as drawn the soul out of his body in a silver thread and tied it in a knot.
Once, too, he had dreamed of waking cold in the middle of the night and finding just a spark on the ashes of his hearth. This he nursed to flame; the flame sprang up waist-high, hot and yellow. Fearful, he beat it down to a spark again. But then again he was cold. He puffed at this spark, shivering; the flame grew, and this time, with all he could do, it shot up into the rafters of his house and devoured it.—
So it was that the passion of Cad Sills lived with him still.
He taught the child her letters with blue shells, and later to take the motion of his lips for words. She waylaid him everywhere—on the rocks, on the sands, in the depths of the hemlock grove, on tiny antlers of gray caribou moss, with straggling little messages and admonishings of love. Her apron pocket was never without its quota of these tiny shells of brightest peacock blue. They trailed everywhere. He ground them under heel at the threshold of his house. From long association they came to stand for so many inquisitive little voices in themselves, beseeching, questioning, defying.
But for his part, he grew to have a curious belief, even when her head was well above his shoulder, that the strong arch of her bosom must ring out with wild sweet song one day, like that which he had heard on the November hillside, when Caddie Sills had run past him at the Preaching Tree. This voice of Day's was like the voice sleeping in the great bronze horn hanging in a rack, which his father had used to call the hands to dinner. A little wind meant no sound, but a great effort, summoning all the breath in the body, made the brazen throat ring out like a viking's horn, wild and sweet.