“Why don't you tell me?” he said; “is it Henry, or--is it the boy?” But no one spoke. “You don't need to tell me nothing,” he said, in the same strange tone of paralysis and fear, “I knowed it when Bassett first come in. I knowed it when the rest come in and closed in round me and did n't say nothing.” He sat still a moment. Then he rose abruptly and turned to the landward door. He stumbled over a stool which was in his way, and would have fallen but that one of the men sprang forward and held him. He plunged hastily out of the door. Just outside, in the shade of a small wild cherry-tree, was a bucket of clams which he had dug; across the bucket was an old hoe worn down to nothing. He stopped and mechanically took up the pail and hoe. Bassett stood by the door and looked after him as he went along the foot-path toward his home. There was a scantling fence close by. He went over it in his old habitual fashion: first he set over the bucket of clams and the hoe; then one leg went over and then the other; he sat for an instant on the top slat and then slid down. He took up his burden and went his way over the fields. In a moment he was lost to sight behind a bit of rising ground. Then he reappeared, making his way over the fields at his own heavy gait, until he was lost to sight behind a clump of trees close to his own door. They did not find Henry and the boy that night. It was not until the next day that the bodies were washed ashore. One of the searchers, walking along the beach in the early dawn, found them both. He came upon Henry first; he was lying on the sand upon his face. A little farther on, gently swayed by the rising tide, lay Joe and his dog. Joe lay on his side, precisely as if asleep; the dog was in his arms. The boy lies in the burying-ground on the hill, near the stone and the weeping-willow which mourn the youth who met his untimely death in 1830, in the launching of the brig. There is a rose-bush at the grave, and few bright days pass in summer that there is not a bunch of homely flowers laid at its foot. It is the spot to which all Mrs. Parsons's thoughts now tend, and her perpetual pilgrimage. It is too far for her to walk both there and back; but often a neighbor is going that way, with a lug-wagon or an open cart or his family carriage,--it makes no difference which,--and it is easy to get a ride. It is a good-humored village. Everybody stands ready to do a favor, and nobody hesitates to ask one. Often on a bright afternoon Mrs. Parsons will watch from her front window the “teams” that pass, going to the bay. When she sees one which is likely to go in the right direction on its return from the bay,--everybody knows in which direction she will wish to go,--she will run hastily to the door, and hail it. “Whoa! Sh-h! Whoa! How d'do, Mis' Parsons?”