and whispers that the two mourned over a once wayward and now absent
member of the family. It leaked out that this was a son younger than Mr.
Walton, and he had married a beautiful foreign lady whom the clergyman
loved also, but had relinquished to the younger brother. This younger son
was off somewhere on the sea, it was whispered; but he had a child ashore.
On stormy days, it was noticed that the white-haired mother would watch
the steeple, which consisted of a series of diminutive houses rising one
above the other, as if ambitious to fly, but finally relinquishing the
task into the hands or wings rather of a gilded weather-cock. The mother
would watch the pigeons flying into their hiding-places in the steeple,
seeking a refuge from the wild storm, and then her eyes would be lifted
higher to the weather-vane, as if seeking for news about the sea-wind.
Still higher went her thoughts--to God.

"She's thinking of _him_, that son," said the observant neighbors, who
never knowingly gave up a chance to see something. To Aunt Stanshy this
bit of mystery only made Mr. Walton all the more interesting.

Mr. Walton thought the next day he would fish for scholars in the Grimes
neighborhood, where Tony lived. Billy and Rick, or "the governor," as the
club boys more generally called him now, lived in a long, low-roofed
building that had two green doors. One door led into the home where lived
Simes Badger when off duty at the light house. His wife took care of Tony.
In the other part of the house lived Billy and the "governor" with Jotham
and Ann Grimes. Billy was the child of Jotham and Ann. The "governor's"
parents lived in Dakota, but kept him at the East for the sake of an
education in its better schools. It was after dark when Mr. Walton chanced
to reach the long, low-roofed house, and "rap-rap" went his vigorous
knuckles against green door number one.