handsome, as you can see; but the first furniture that
went into it was plain enough. This little house was
rich in love, though. The women sent in quilts and
tablecloths and towels, and one man made a chest for
her, and another a table and so on. Even blind old
Aunt Margaret Boyd wove a little basket for her out of
the sweet-scented sand-hill grass. The schoolmaster's
wife used it for years to keep her handkerchiefs in.

"Well, at last everything was ready--even to the logs
in the big fireplace ready for lighting. 'Twasn't
exactly THIS fireplace, though 'twas in the same place.
Miss Elizabeth had this put in when she made the house
over fifteen years ago. It was a big, old-fashioned
fireplace where you could have roasted an ox. Many's
the time I've sat here and spun yarns, same's I'm doing
tonight."

Again there was a silence, while Captain Jim kept a
passing tryst with visitants Anne and Gilbert could not
see--the folks who had sat with him around that
fireplace in the vanished years, with mirth and bridal
joy shining in eyes long since closed forever under
churchyard sod or heaving leagues of sea. Here on
olden nights children had tossed laughter lightly to
and fro. Here on winter evenings friends had
gathered. Dance and music and jest had been here.
Here youths and maidens had dreamed. For Captain Jim
the little house was tenanted with shapes entreating
remembrance.