glistening water. The wild creatures seem to have grown tamer since
there are no strollers to keep them aloof. This morning, as we passed
his pool, the stately heron let us come within twenty yards of him before
he got leisurely upon the wing. The village seems even quieter; the
people at their doors betray, to our fancy, a certain lassitude as if,
like merrymakers on the morrow of a revel, they felt somewhat sleepy and
sorry, now that the stirring social year is over, and the little fishing
town has returned to its "old solitary nothingness."

Yes, the silence has come down again; but it is a silence full of voices.
For, as it often happens that, when things without are stillest, men hear
most audibly the tumult of their own brains, so is it now with us. Action
is ended, and memory begins to work. Into the vacuum which the silence
makes, the stream of our little history pours in a long backwater. Our
thoughts go back to the beginning of it, the hour when, as we were
sailing prosperously under press of canvas, the blast struck us suddenly
out of a sunny sky. We live again the slow months of enforced vacation,
and the brief spell of apparent security, broken by the second stroke. We
recall the slow and painful sickening of hope, amid the frustration of
attempted remedies; the watchings and communings by late firesides; the
morning questionings and bulletins; the deepening of fears, until the
moment when the sharp pressure of calamity became the liberating touch,
and made a hazardous adventure seem a welcome alternative. Not less
distinctly we remember the zest with which the wretched waiting for evil
tidings was exchanged for hopeful activity; the rush of preparations; the
anxiety which watched their passage through the ordeal of practice; the
growing sense of security; the mellowing down of novelty and privation
into routine and ease; the contrast, all the while, between the outward
peace of the colony, and the secret difficulties of finance and
commissariat; the long intermittent crisis which gave the administrative