CHAPTER IV.

THE VISIT


A gray day! soft gray sky, like the breast of a dove; sheeny gray
sea, with gleams of steel running across; trailing skirts of mist
shutting off the mainland, leaving Light Island alone with the ocean;
the white tower gleaming spectral among the folding mists; the dark
pine-tree pointing a sombre finger to heaven; the wet, black rocks,
from which the tide had gone down, huddling together in fantastic
groups as if to hide their nakedness.

On the little beach two men were slowly pacing up and down, up and
down, one silent, the other talking earnestly. Old men, both, with
white, reverend hair: one slender and small, the other a son of Anak,
big and brawny,--Captain January and the minister.

It was the minister who had been speaking. But now he had done, and
they took a few turns in silence before the Captain spoke in reply.

"Minister," he said,--and his voice was strangely altered from the
gruff, hearty tone which had greeted his guest fifteen minutes before.
"Minister, I ain't a man that's used to hearin' much talk, and it
confuses my mind a bit. There's things inside my head that seems to
go round and round, sometimes, and put me out. Now, if it isn't askin'
too much, I'll git you to go over them p'ints again. Slow, like! slow,
Minister, bearin' in mind that I'm a slow man, and not used to it.
This--this lady, she come to your house yisterday, as ever was?"