'I will teach her,' said Waring, passing over the question (which was
a puzzling one), for the new idea, the strange interest he felt in the
task before him, the fair pure mind where his hand, and his alone,
would be the first to write the story of good and evil.

'That I should become attached to the child was natural,' continued
old Fog; 'but God gave it to me to love her with so great a love that
my days have flown; for her to sail out over the stormy water, for her
to hunt through the icy woods, for her to dare a thousand deaths, to
labor, to save, to suffer,--these have been my pleasures through all
the years. When I came home, there she was to meet me, her sweet voice
calling me father, the only father she could ever know. When my poor
old sister died, I took her away in my boat by night and buried her in
deep water; and so I did with the boy we had here for a year or two,
saved from a wreck. My darling knows nothing of death; I could not
tell her.'

'And those wrecks,' said Waring; 'how do you make them balance with
your scheme of expiation?'

The old man sat silent a moment; then he brought his hand down
violently on the table by his side. 'I will not have them brought up
in that way, I tell you I will not! Have I not explained that I was
desperate?' he said in an excited voice. 'What are one or two
miserable crews to the delicate life of my beautiful child? And the
men had their chances, too, in spite of my lure. Does not every storm
threaten them with deathly force? Wait until you are tempted, before
you judge me, boy. But shall I tell you the whole? Listen, then.
Those wrecks were the greatest sacrifices, the most bitter tasks of my
hard life, the nearest approach I have yet made to the expiation. Do