the house to last the day. There was a pinch of tea in the canister.
Jack had drunk the wine from the wreck and taken away with him all that
had been left of the tinned meats which the skipper had brought over the
day before. The woman observed these things and gave some thoughts to
them. She glanced up at the blinding white tumult against the drifted
window, reflecting that her husband had taken the best food in the
house--enough to last him for two days, at least--and had left behind
him, for herself and three children, eight cakes of hard bread and a
pinch of tea. Her faded eyes glowed and her lips hardened.

Black Dennis Nolan brooded all day by the stove with his big hands
clasped idly between his knees. The grandmother sat near him, in a
tattered armchair, smoking her pipe and mumbling wise saws and broken
stories of the past.

"I bes a storm-child," she mumbled. "Aye, sure, wasn't I born a night in
winter wid jist sich a flurry as this one howlin' over Chance
Along--aye, an' wid a caul over me face. So I has the power o' seein'
the fairies." And then, "me man were bigger nor ye, Denny. Skipper Tim,
he were. Built the first fore-an'-after on this coast, he did." And
later--"There bain't no luck in diamonds. The divil bes in 'em."

Young Cormick sat on the other side of the stove, busily carving a block
of wood with a clasp-knife.




CHAPTER V