LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1532, 15 January 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ON SAND ISLAND. [KBOM THE “ATLANTIC MONTHLY.”] Concluded, There were four young swallows in the nest on the ledge over the window near the door. It went hard with Nan to dislodge them. With little Dick’s help she carefully removed the nest, built of swamp mud and bits of last year’s sedge from the land shore, and with the parent birds ilspping in her face with dives and darts that threatened everything in the way of vengeance, she placed it securely on a projection in the porch at the door. Nan watched the sea as she worked. It grew dear to her with its old endearing ways of rise and fall and change of hue. At noon, which she know by the sun, little Dick came in and ate his dinner with her from the basket of provisions that they had brought, In the afternoon, when the room was cleaned, they went back to the cottage together. The next day Dick Dixon went to the town with Nan to get the provisions she needed for her little venture. He laughed at her about her summer cottage by the sea, as they went, but Nan eat by, unmoved and content. She sent off, that afternoon, a letter to the poor, hardworking woman in the mill at Lr , inviting her to spend a month on Sand Island, and asking her to report her absence to tho superintendent at the mill, also to bring with her Nan’s trunk. The day following this trip to the town on the coast, Nan and Little Dick moved into the cottage, and Comfort went with them. A week later came the woman from the mill. Her thankfulness had so much heart break in it that Nan cried with pity at finding that there was one soul that had less joy than she had. The first week her guest could do little but look at the ocean and lament that she had lived so long and never seen it until so late. The second week, both women began to look for employment ; their lives had been too busy to sit long in idleness. The third week they were busy at jail odd hours stitching shoes, which Dick Dixon obtained for thorn, little Dick, with true fisherman’s instinct and luck, caught fish at each day’s rise of the tide, from the ledge of rocks, The two cottages grew very neighborly, their inmates interchanging visits nearly every day. On the sands John’s boat still lay ; it was beyond repair and would lie there until time or seas should destroy it. Nan shyly visited it when she could do so unobserved. She clung to it simply because it had been near to John since she had. ‘My month is over,’ said Nan’s companion, one day ; “my month is over tomorrow.’ Nan started visibly. ‘ Don’t you like it here ?’ she asked. * Like it! I would live here for ever if I could,’ she said ; but I must go back to my work.’ ‘ Wait with me until the fall winds begin to blow. I’ll go then,’ said Nan, feeling that every day on Sand Island was so much gained—for what, or by what, she did not stop to ask, ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘we can earn enough to live, even here.’ And so it was then and there decided that the two women should stay on until autumn. Pleasure parties, much to Nan's annoyance, began to land on the island, and peer curiously into her little cabin as they sauntered by. Nan’s story was popular in the village, and strangers were eager to see the woman who bad stayed through cold and semi-starvation waiting for a piece of patched sailcloth to wash up. The summer was stealing by. Nan made a little notch with every day on the window ledge, a tiny stroke with a pin, to toll how fast the days were growing into the last weeks and the final mouth of her stay. !ihe stiched shoes faster than ever now, feeling a pride that John’s money had not yet been touched to supply her needs. She would like to keep it intact as long as possible, Once in the week Dick Dixon went to the post office in the town on the coast; usually that once was on Saturday, in the afternoon. The little errands that were given him to do occupied several hours, so that when he returned the sun was nearly always past its setting. Sometimes on his return he rowed around to Nan’s cabin. Sometimes she waited at his cottage to take home the parcels he fetched for her. The last Saturday in August came. Nan and the woman had an unusual number of shoes to return. Little Dick took the parcel acrosa to his father before dinner on that day. They had worked at them during the morning to the neglect of household duties. As soon as the parcel was ready Nan began her Saturday’s baking, intending to finish it and go across to the cottage in time to fetch back the bundles of new work with little Dick. It was too late to make bread and have it rise in time to bake, and Nan made biscuit. Oddly enough she had not made biscuit sinne the day John was expected home. As she kneaded the flour before the open window, she said to the woman who sat in the door paring apples for pies, ‘ The fishing-boats are coming in early today.’ She saw the Menhaden, followed by her seine boats, sailing towards the harbor, and the lighters, fish-laden to the sea’s edge, going before a fair wind to the mill. Dick Dixon at that moment started f or tho mainland, wishing as ho rowed on that the Menhaden would throw him a line and tow him in ; but the sloop sailed past and was at the harbor’s mouth before he had rowed out half the distance. Before he was at the pier he saw a group of men on it gesticulating in an excited manner, and at the moment his boat touched the dock a long, loud hurrah went up from a score of fishermen. He laughed. ‘ They’ve had a good catch to-day,’ he thought, as he made his boat fast to the dock and climbed up to learn the news. The instant his head appeared above the timbers another shout rang out. The men were wringing some one by the hand, and laughing like boys over a snow man. ‘ Hello I’he called. ‘-What’s up? Got a mermaid ashore ?’ ‘ There’s Dixon 1 See if he knows him,’ said the Menhaden’s captain; but there was no chance for the tost to be put. The roan was at .Dick Dixon’s side, ‘ How is she, Dick ?’ were the. first words that were spoken. ‘ Well and hearty, my lad,’ said Dick Dixon, and then he made feint of clinging a mom l nt to John Ware’s baud before dropping down on a timber of tho dock. ‘ Who’d ha’ thought anything would have struck me so V he thought, but no one paid attention to Dick Dixon. ‘AH aboard !’ shouted some one. ‘ For what ? shouted Lick, in return, ‘ We’re going to take him over/' said ono of the men.

‘Not without mo in the boat/ he said, clinging to a young lad of the crow and following on. The seine boat had already a do'-oa men in it. .John Ware was pleased with his reception ; it gave him ,Kv to meet so hearty a welcome to his old life, but be would have preferred his own little dingy and a pair of oars to t -ke burned over to Sand Island. The men, eager and curious to feara his story, phed him with m uv; questions, when ho longed to keep still. They learned that which Nan had dreamed. The Silver Thistle capsized and wo .t down. John Ware sprang clear of the sinking boat and battled for life, reaching the small boat, from whence, greatly exhausts'!, he was nicked up by one of th.o, boats of the very ship Nan had seen that day sailing down (lie horizon. In the hope of meeting gome inward-bound sail, by which he you'd return, he w T ent with thy oifip, on her voyage to the far East. When, mouths later, it reached its port, he

sought out another ship in which he could return as a seaman. That ship met with storms that disabled it so that time was lost in repairs at a foreign port. ‘ln fact,’ said John. ‘ I'vo had a pretty tough time of it from first to last. I’d rather catch bony h-h in sight of a home shore all the year round.’ To save further questioning, he insisted on taking a turn at the oars, but a dozen hands prevented. Then they fell to wnnderinghow Mrs Ware would take the sudden news, and they talked over, man-fashion, the best way of telling her what had happened. ‘ You’d better leave that to the women,’spoke Dick Dixon. ‘They’ll manage that. ’ Nan, on the island, went on with the baking for Sunday. The biscuits were out and the pies wore in the oven, whan in came little Dick with eyes distended to the utmost. ‘ Oh, Mrs Ware!’ he cried. ‘ Something’s happened, I know! There’s lots of men coming over the island, and father’s along with ’em, and ma too, ’thrut anything on her head.’ Nan’s first thought was, * What could happen to me ?’ Her second thought made the blood Hash like heat lightning in her face. ‘ There, now! See the heads coming up over the sand !’ crbd the boy, running to the corner of the house. Both women had gone out and were at the corner. The group of men had hesitated, and were standing still. Mrs Dixon was coming heavily through the sand, with one hand pressed over her heart and the other holding the corner of her apron over her head Nan ran lightly to meet her. * What has happened? Is anything the matter?’ she asked. ‘No! No! Nothing’s the matter,’ she gasped; then, the two meeting, she let go the apron and her her heart at the same instant, and clasped Nan in her fat, motherly arms, and kissed her. Nan never knew whether the words, ‘ He’s come !’ or the kiss came first. ‘ Who’s come ?’ The coolness of the woman throw Mrs Dixon off her guard, ‘ ¥ our husband’s come!’ she said, ‘ Keep those men away!’ said Nan ; for Mrs Dixon had given the signal for approach. Nan felt that her feet were sinking deeper and deeper into the sand. Then John seemed to come and take hold of her before she went down out of sight Sarah J, Pritchard.