“Miss Sullivan has a strange fancy,” said she, “to wander about alone in wild places. Did you notice how almost handsome she was to-day?” “Yes,” put in the _fortis Gyas_ Cutus; “she looked like a cheerful Banshee, inspired at the thought of a storm.” “Mary Sullivan was nobly handsome once,” said Mrs. Wilkes, “and will be soon again, I hope, now that she is rich and done with all family troubles.” “Is she very rich?” asked Cloanthus Fortisque, friend of Gyas. “I’m sorry I’m so much afraid of her. She may be sweet as ice-cream, but she is colder. A feller couldn’t sail in with much chance.” Miss Julia pouted a little at this ingenuous remark of Fortisque and devoted herself to Gyas Cutus for the rest of the journey. * * * * * It was lonely at Dempster’s when the gay party was gone. The house looked singularly small and mean. Mrs. Dempster was baking wondrous bread; bread for which all the visitors had gone away bulkier. Miss Miranda Dempster was up to her elbows in strawberries. She was a magnificent lioness of a woman, with a tawny mane of redundant locks. The kitchen was close and the hot, heavy atmosphere affected Miss Sullivan’s views as to the quality of her hostess’s bread. She walked out upon the little meadow, a bit of tender culture between the forest and the rude and rocky shore. Old Dempster and Daniel, his son, were hurrying their hay into the ox-cart. The oxen seemed to stand unnecessarily knockkneed and feeble in the blasting heat. Yet the sun was obscured and there came puffs of breeze from seaward. But these were puffs explosive, sultry, volcanic, depressing. As Miss Sullivan approached, Dempster was tossing up an enormous mass of hay to Daniel. A puff of wind caught it and one half “diffused to empty air,” making air no longer empty but misty with hay-seed, and aromatic with mild fragrance. Dempster shook himself and stood leaning on his pitchfork. He was a grand old yeoman, worthy to be the father of heroes. The Island, though not a solitary one, had been to him a Juan Fernandez. He was a contriver of all contrivances, a builder of all that may be built. He farmed, he milled, he fished, he navigated in shapely vessels of his own shaping; his roof-tree was a tree of his own woods, felled and cleft by himself. He had split his own shingles as easily as other men mend a toothpick; with these he had tented his roof-tree over. Miss Sullivan and he were great friends, and now, as she drew near, he looked at her with kindly eyes. “See, Miss Sullivan,” said he, “them oxen has stopped chewin’ the cud--another sure sign of a storm. The wind is sou’west. It’ll be short, but hot an’ heavy--a kind er horriken.” “If the storm is severe, what will all these fishing-vessels do?” she asked. “I have counted nearly a hundred this afternoon.”