of stranger equipment for the hunting of earthly treasure. And the
great iron key hung untouched from the beam, while the spiders
outvied one another in wreathing it with their webs, knowing it to be
the only spot in Lantrig where they were safe from my mother's broom.
It is with these spiders that my recollections begin, for of my
father, before he sailed away, remembrance is dim and scanty, being
confined to the picture of a tall fair man, with huge shoulders and
wonderful grey eyes, that changed in a moment from the stern look he
must have inherited from Amos to an extraordinary depth of love and
sympathy. Also I have some faint memories of a pig, named Eleazar
(for no well-explained reason), which fell over the cliff one night
and awoke the household with its cries. But this I mention only
because it happened, as I learn, before my father's going, and not
for any connection with my story. We must have lived a very quiet
life at Lantrig, even as lives go on our Western coast. I remember
my mother now as she went softly about the house contriving and
scheming to make the two ends of our small possessions meet. She was
a woman who always walked softly, and, indeed, talked so, with a low
musical voice such as I shall never hear again, nor can ever hope to.
But I remember her best in church, as she knelt and prayed for her
absent husband, and also in the meeting-house, which she sometimes
attended, more to please Aunt Elizabeth than for any good it did her.
For the religion there was too sombre for her quiet sorrow; and often
I have seen a look of awful terror possess her eyes when the young
minister gave out the hymn and the fervid congregation wailed forth--

"In midst of life we are in death.
Oh! stretch Thine arm to save.
Amid the storm's tumultuous breath
And roaring of the wave."