When, in my father’s house, that night, the Christmas revel was over—when, last of all, in noisy glee, we had cleared the broad kitchen floor for Sir Roger De Coverly, which we danced with the help of the maids’ two swains and Skipper Tommy Lovejoy and Jacky, who had come out from the Lodge for the occasion (all being done to the tune of “Money Musk,” mercilessly wrung from an ancient accordion by Timmie Lovejoy)—when, after that, we had all gathered before the great blaze in the best room, we told no tales, such as we had planned to tell, but soon fell to staring at the fire, each dreaming his own dreams.

It may be that my thoughts changed with the dying blaze—passing from merry fancies to gray visions, trooping out of the recent weeks, of cold and hunger and squalid death in the places from which we had returned.

“Davy!” said my sister.

I started.

“What in the world,” she asked, “is you thinkin’ so dolefully of?”

“I been thinkin’,” I answered, sighing, “o’ the folk down narth.”

“Of the man at Runner’s Woe?” the doctor asked.

“No, zur. He on’y done murder. ’Twas not o’ he. ’Twas o’ something sadder than that.”

“Then ’tis too sad to tell,” he said.

“No,” I insisted. “’Twould do well-fed folk good t’ hear it.”

“What was it?” my sister asked.

“I was thinkin’——”

Ah, but ’twas too sad!

“O’ what?”

“O’ the child at Comfort Harbour, Bessie, that starved in his mother’s arms.”

Timmie Lovejoy threw more billets on the fire. They flamed and spluttered and filled the room with cheerful light.

“Davy,” said the doctor, “we can never cure the wretchedness of this coast.”

“No, zur?”

“But we can try to mitigate it.”

“We’ll try,” said I. “You an’ me.”

“You and I.”

“And I,” my sister said.

Lying between the sturdy little twins, that night—where by right of caste I lay, for it was the warmest place in the bed—I abandoned, once and for all, my old hope of sailing a schooner, with the decks awash.

“Timmie!” I whispered.

He was sound asleep. I gave him an impatient nudge in the ribs.

“Ay, Davy?” he asked.

“You may have my hundred-tonner,” said I.

“What hundred-tonner?”

“The big fore-an’-after, Timmie, I’m t’ have when I’m growed. You may skipper she. You’ll not wreck her, Timmie, will you?”

He was asleep.

“Hut!” I thought, angrily. “I’ll have Jacky skipper that craft, if Timmie don’t look out.”

At any rate, she was not to be for me.