"You must have had a big haul, father, to make such a rent!"

"Waal, 'twas partly thet, but more the ice. Ye see, it's jest breakin'
up now, and it's monstrous jagged-like; 'twas thet did it, I reckon. Kin
ye fix it, Sairay?"

"Yes, father."

She was soon seated, the dirty mass across her knee, and the large bone
shuttle in her hand flying rapidly in and out. But while her young
stepmother went and came, talking a good deal, and the baby pulled and
scrambled about her knees, her thoughts were far away, in the large
schoolroom at Weskisset.

For one short, happy year she had been an inmate of the seminary there,
and in her thoughts this year was the Round Top of her life! All events
dated from before or since her "school-time." All paths with her led to
Weskisset, as with the ancients all roads led to Rome: it was her
Athens, her Mecca, almost her Jerusalem.

Sara's own mother, though born inland, had come as schoolmistress, some
twenty years since, to the little fishing-village of Killamet (now
Sara's home), where she was wooed and won by the handsome, honest,
daring young fisherman, Reuben Olmstead.

Sara was their first child, and upon her the young mother lavished
untold tenderness. When, at the birth of the twins, nearly seven years
later,--two infants having died between,--she yielded up her own gentle
life, her last words had been,--