[Illustration] ISLA HERON BY LAURA E. RICHARDS AUTHOR OF “CAPTAIN JANUARY,” “MELODY,” “MARIE,” “NAUTILUS,” “QUEEN HILDEGARDE,” ETC. =Illustrated= BY FRANK T. MERRILL _Fifth Thousand_ BOSTON ESTES AND LAURIAT PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1896_, BY ESTES AND LAURIAT _All rights reserved_ =Colonial Press:= C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. Electrotyped by Geo. C. Scott & Sons TO MY HUSBAND AFTER TWENTY-FIVE HAPPY YEARS 1871-1896 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE PREACHER 13 II. THE HERONS 20 III. SPRING AND THE CHILDREN 26 IV. THE SCARLET SORREL 35 V. “LONE, LONE, THOU HAST LEFT ME HERE” 40 VI. THE NEW TEACHING 48 VII. LITTLE JACOB 57 VIII. LOCHABER NO MORE! 64 IX. THE NEW SCHOLARS 71 X. JOE’S TREASURY 79 XI. DISCOVERY 85 XII. THE WILD ROCKS AGAIN 97 XIII. THE LAST 102 ISLA HERON. CHAPTER I. THE PREACHER. THE morning service was over, and the congregation gone home. The preacher was to dine with Captain Maynard, but there was an hour and more to dinner-time, and she had begged permission to stroll about for half an hour, promising to find her way to the comfortable white cottage, perched on a point of rock overlooking the little bay. Now she was standing on the lower rocks, looking about her; a trim, quiet figure in a black gown, with a close straw bonnet set on her smooth brown hair. She “didn’t handsome much,” the people decided, but she had a taking way with her, and preached good, sound Advent doctrine. They were glad she had come, and would be sorry when the schooner should take her on her way the next day, to preach at other places along the coast. The young woman seemed to be looking for some one, for she shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed earnestly up and down the line of rocks. So absorbed was she, that she almost stumbled over a figure sitting on the rocks, which now rose and confronted her. A strange figure enough; so rough and gray and battered that it was hardly to be wondered at that she had not distinguished it from the rock itself. The face it turned upon her was red and brown in patches, as if the skin were moth-eaten; the mouth was huge and misshapen; only the blue eyes, bright and kindly, redeemed, in some degree, the hideousness of the other features. “Mornin’, preacher!” said this strange being. “You preached good this mornin’. Joe heard you; you might not have seen him, for he stood in the doorway, but Joe heard you, and it done him good.”