AND now, this Sunday morning, Isla stood on the rocks, and looked at the young preacher, as she came toward her.

“Good morning!” said the preacher, feeling curiously embarrassed under the quiet, straightforward gaze of the island girl. “I saw you at the service this morning; but I missed you when it was over, and your friend here guided me to you.” She turned to look at Joe, but he had disappeared.

“Yes,” said Isla Heron, “I was there. I was coming to look for you, too. I wanted to ask you if something you said was true.”

The preacher smiled. “I hope I said nothing that was untrue,” she said.

Isla looked up with a startled glance. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Things that are not true here, anyhow. I don’t know how it may be over on the main. But—what I wanted to ask you—you read something from the Bible,—‘The tongue of the dumb shall sing.’ What did you mean by that?”

The preacher repeated, slowly, that she might have time to think a little.

“‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.’ Yes, that is a beautiful passage; you will find it in Isaiah, the thirty-fifth chapter.”

“But is it true?” Isla persisted. “Did they do it then, or can they do it now?”

“I do not understand you,” the preacher said, gently. “It is a prophecy of the flourishing of Christ’s kingdom.”

“Will he make dumb people speak? that is all I want to know,” said Isla. “My little brother is dumb, and I would do anything in the world to make him speak. If that is true, tell me how it is done.”

The preacher looked at her very tenderly.

“Let us sit down here, my dear,” she said; “and tell me about your little brother.”

They sat down on a warm brown stone, and Isla told the story of her little Jacob; of her father’s death two years before, and of her mother’s fading away through the year, and following him before another spring came.

“So now there are just the two of us,” she said. “Just me and my little Jacob. And if I could make him hear and speak, I would be willing to die myself.”

“He can never hear!” the preacher said. “These are not the days of miracles, and we have no assurance that we may look for them, though signs and wonders are all about us. But truly a wonder has been wrought in these very days; and it may be that the child can be taught to speak, and to read by the lips what others say to him.”

She told Isla, in a few words, of the new teaching of the deaf, and the girl listened with her whole soul.

“Where is it done?” she asked. “Tell me the name of the place!”

The preacher named Bellton as the nearest city where such teaching could be had. “Have you friends there?” she asked.

Isla’s startled eyes gave her answer. “Bellton!” she said. “That was a place Giles showed me on the sand, where the people lived in prisons, and liked it, and turned white for want of sun. I should have to go there, should I, and take my little Jacob? Could a person live there, do you think, who was not used to it?”

“I was there for two or three years,” said the preacher. “I lived well enough, Isla. Have you never been away from your island?”

The girl shook her head.

“No! why should I go? I never would go, except to help my little Jacob. It would kill me to live under a roof, and breathe hot air, and have no wind blowing, and no sea.”

“Where do you live?” asked the preacher. “You cannot spend the year out-of-doors, in this cold place.”

“Come and see!” said Isla Heron.

She led the preacher over the gray rocks, over the high downs, till they came to the little green meadow, set like a jewel in a great ring of stones.

Here was the cabin, looking from the outside not unlike the rock against which it leaned. Inside, it was gay with shells and bright berries, and everything was neat and clean, as Mary Heron had taught her children to keep it. Jacob was sitting by the table, carving a boat, and at Isla’s coming he rose, clapping his hands, and ran to throw his arms round her neck; but drew back in alarm at sight of the stranger. The girl spoke to him with eyes and hands, and led him forward, still hanging back, but smiling now, and ready to make friends. He was nearly ten years old, but so small and delicate that he looked much younger. His face was all sunshine, but there was no line of thought in it yet; he had never had to think for himself. Isla had done all his thinking, and he had lived like a bird so far, taking everything at her hands, rejoicing in the sunshine, and the sea, and the shells and flowers. He knew nothing beyond his own end of the island. Isla was a great traveller in his eyes, because she sometimes went to the village, and was gone for hours. This never made him sad, because he did not know what sadness was; but he had a pride in his sister’s journeyings, and looked eagerly in her face when she came back, seeking new light there, since she was so wise always, and probably learned new wisdom every time she went away.

The preacher caressed the child, and sat for a few moments in the little sitting-room, her mind full of new thoughts.

“You live here entirely alone?” she asked, presently; “you two children? Are you happy, Isla? Is it not terribly lonely?”

Isla looked up wondering.

“How should it be lonely?” she said. “It is home. It is the only place where we could live. Some people wanted us to come and live in the village, after mother died. We’d sooner have died, too, both of us. Wouldn’t we, Jacob?”

“Is there no one belonging to you? it seems too—”

“Too dreadful,” the preacher would have said, but something seemed to hold back the words. Perhaps it was the perfect quiet in the two faces.

“Of course I miss Giles, all the time,” Isla went on, presently. “But he was so tired, poor dear, that he could not stay any longer.”

“And your mother?” said the preacher, with some reproach in her tone. “Do you not miss your mother?”

“Jacob did!” said Isla. “Or he would have, at first, if I had let him. But mother,—oh, you could not have kept her. She hated it so, after Giles was gone, she had to go, too. No, we are much better off without mother; she could not bear me after Giles went, and hardly she could bear Jacob; and she tried so hard to die, I was glad when she could. She was dumb, too, you know, and now she isn’t, I suppose.”

This was strange talk. The preacher felt that she should reprove and exhort, but still the girl’s face silenced her.

“Tell me, Isla,” she said, after a silence, “what did you mean, when you said, a little while ago, that I had said some things that were not true. You did not mean that, I am sure.”

Isla reflected.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, surely I meant it. You spoke of Him,”—she nodded upward with her curious reverent gesture,—“you said He was our Father; I liked that. Giles knew a little, but he did not know that much, then. Now I suppose he does. But then you said that if we did things,—I don’t remember what things,—that He would be angry with us always, and never love us any more, and that we should be punished all the time, forever. And that could not be true, because it is nonsense.”

The preacher was startled, and spoke sharply.

“You are not speaking in a proper manner!” she said. “What right have you to speak so to me?”

“You asked me!” said Isla. “What did you want me to say?”

They were both silent for a time.

“Why do you think this?” said the preacher then. “What can you know about these things, living here with no teaching and no light save that of your own heart, which is sinful?”

Isla laughed.

“I had a father!” she said. “Do you suppose that Great One needed Giles to tell Him how to treat His children?”

“What can I know?” she repeated. “I know what the sea tells me all day, all my life; and what the clouds tell me, and the birds; but most of all I know what my little Jacob tells me. Look at him! Is he sinful? If you say that, then I see that you do not know. But my sea knows, and it tells me, all day long. All day long!” the girl repeated; and her eyes grew soft and dreamy as she gazed out over the blue, white-tossing water. The preacher would have answered, for she was shocked and pained at this unseemly talk; but suddenly some words came to her mind, and silenced her.

“Deep answereth unto deep—”

“I must go!” she said, rising. “I should like to see you again, Isla, and talk with you; your—your thoughts are strange to me, but I feel that your heart is good. I must go now back to the village.” She kissed the little boy, who cooed and smiled in return, and turned to find her way back to the village; but Isla was at her side.

“Let me take you by a shorter way,” she said. “It is slow climbing over our rocks when folks are not used to them. I will take you through the Dead Valley, and you will get there quicker. But you will not tell people?” she said, stopping for a moment, and looking up into her companion’s face with searching eyes. “It is our own place, Jacob’s and mine; we don’t want other folks to know about it.”

The preacher promised.

“Shut your eyes, then!” cried the girl, her face lightening with pleasure. “Give me your hand, and I will lead you into our Dead Valley. Now! now open your eyes, and look!”

The preacher obeyed, and gave a cry of surprise, so strange a place was this that met her eyes. A valley of rocks; yes! but not rocks like those she had seen elsewhere, not like any rocks that she had seen in her life. A place of desolation, full of the bones of forgotten ages. The girl, watching her companion’s face, laughed aloud for pleasure.

“Do you see?” she cried. “Do you see why it is the Dead Valley? Look at them all, the great beasts, lying asleep! Giles told me all about them, when we first found this place; we came together, Giles and I. He said, ‘They are mammoths, like elephants, only bigger;’ and he had seen the bones of one, somewhere, in some place where they keep such things, so he knew their names and all. And see! They used to play here, and go down to the water to bathe, and just live as they liked. And one day,—we played they had done some dreadful thing, but we never knew just what,—they were all turned into gray stones, and here they have been ever since. There! that is one of the biggest; and he fell down on his side, you see, and just curled his great huge legs under him, and went to sleep so comfortable! And this one,—oh, I love this old fellow. He was kneeling, don’t you see, preacher? and he could not get up when the time came, so he went to sleep just that way. And down there by the beach, that one had gone down to drink and take his bath, and he tumbled in, and there he lies. Over the other side of him, that is where Jacob and I go to bathe ourselves. The rockweed grows all over his shoulders, and keeps him warm. And we run over his back, and sit on his great round head, and climb into a hollow place that we call his mouth; but he never stirs, just sleeps and sleeps; and there he will stay, Giles said, till the last call comes. What is the matter, preacher?”

The preacher had started with a little cry of dismay. Two or three aged trees, ragged and twisted and bent, still clung to the rocks in this grim place, and kept some sort of iron-bound life in their veins. There were many others lying beside them, which had given up the fight years,—centuries ago. Only their bones were left, gleaming pallid and slender among the sleeping mammoths; and soon these old soldiers, too, would lay down their arms and join the sleepers. But still there showed some faint tinge of green in their rusty tops; and, as the preacher looked at them, wondering, a great black bird rose from the ragged branches, and almost brushed past them in his flight.

Isla laughed again, and waved her hand with a friendly gesture.

“Those are our ravens,” she said. “They are friends of ours, Jacob’s and mine. Other folks are afraid of them, but we know them, and they like us. This way, preacher! Step up on this elephant’s shoulder; he will not hurt you. There! now it will be smoother; and tell me more about the place where they teach dumb people to speak.”