When, after a day's wait that seemed a week to Winn, the _Rockhaven_ made landing, he leaped aboard to grasp Captain Roby's hand almost as he would a father's. But a half gale was blowing outside, the captain nervously anxious to unload, and start back; and only a word of greeting did Winn receive until the steamer was well under way toward Rockhaven. Then, feeling privileged, he entered the little pilot house. "Well, Captain Roby," he said, "how are you and how's the island?" "Oh, it's thar yit," answered that bronze-faced skipper, shifting the wheel a point and heading seaward, "an' likely to stay thar. It seems sorter nat'rel to see ye, Mr. Hardy," he added cheerfully, "an' I'm right glad to git the chance. We've been wonderin' what become o' ye an' how the quarryin' business was comin' out. Ye ain't thinkin' o' startin' it up agin, air ye?" "Possibly," answered Winn, "in fact, that is a part of my errand here, and to make you all a visit. The old company failed, as, I presume, you know, and I've bought the quarry myself now." "I'm mighty glad on't," replied the captain cordially, "an' so'll all on us be. We've sorter took to ye, Mr. Hardy." "And how is my old friend, Jess?" asked Winn, unable to withhold that query longer, "and Mrs. Hutton and her daughter and Mrs. Moore?" "Wal, Jess an' the Widder Hutton took a notion to git hitched long 'fore Christmas," answered the captain slowly, "an' they're gone to the city 'n' taken Mona with 'em. We gin 'em a great send-off, and I run ashore jist a purpose for 'em. It's curus ye haint seen Jess up thar. I'd a-s'posed ye would." Winn's heart sank. "When do you go back, captain?" he said finally, trying to hide his bitter disappointment. "I supposed you made daily trips as usual." "Only Tuesdays and Fridays," he answered; "thar ain't much need o' runnin' oftener." And this was Friday! And Winn, the now ardent Romeo, had three full days and four nights to spend on Rockhaven, and Juliet was not there! There are many of the fair sex who will say that it served him right. And what a picture of cheerless desolation was this sea-girt island when Winn neared it! A half gale was blowing, the waves leaping high against the snow-topped cliffs, and as the _Rockhaven_, rolling, pitching, and half coated with frozen spray, turned into the little harbor and neared her dock, only one man, shivering in oil skins, was there to meet her. "I wish ye'd put up with me," said Captain Roby to Winn, when the steamer's plank was shoved out. "We'd be more'n glad to hev ye, an'll make ye welcome."