Slocum's barn. She has found the cool grays and the still waters; but on
Dorothy's children rests the "Shadow of the Sword."




THE STORY OF THE ALCAZAR.


It was told by Captain John to a boy from the mainland who was spending the
summer on the Island, as they sat together one August evening at sunset, on
a broken bowsprit which had once been a part of the Alcazar.

It was dead low water in Southwest Harbor, a land-locked inlet that nearly
cut the Island in two, and was the gateway through which the fishing-craft
from the village at the harbor head found their way out into the great
Penobscot Bay. There were many days during the stern winter and bleak
spring months when the gate was blocked with ice or veiled in fog, but
nature relented a little toward the Island folk in the fall and sent them
sunny days for their late, scant harvesting, and steady winds for the
mackerel-fishing, to give them a little hope before the winter set in sharp
with the equinoctial. Now, at low tide, the bright gateway shone wide open,
as if to let out the waters that rise and fall ten feet in the inlet.
You could look far out, beyond the lighthouse on Creenlaw's Neck and the
islands that throng the mouth of the harbor, to the red spot of flame the
sunset had kindled below the rack of smoke-gray clouds. The color burned in
a dull gleam upon the water, broken by the dark shapes of shadowy islands;
the sail-boats at anchor in the muddy, glistening flats leaned over
disconsolately on their sides, in despair of ever again feeling the thrill
of the returning waters beneath their keels; and the gray, weather-beaten