I do not know how Barbara Stafford spent her time, or what led her so much into the open air. She sat hours together on the sea-shore, looking wistfully over the swelling blue of the waters, waiting and musing like one who had no world out of her own thoughts. She seldom went to the forest, but sometimes walked slowly out to the outskirting trees, and came back again breathing fast as if something had frightened her away. Sometimes Elizabeth, weary of the solitude forced upon her, would join Barbara in the sitting-room down-stairs, for the young girl seemed constantly torn by opposing influences. In the absence of her father's guest, jealousy, suspicion, and bursts of dislike, embittered every thought; but some strange force seemed constantly bringing the two in company. Then Elizabeth was like a little child, so gentle, and regretting so much the bitter feelings of her solitude, that her whole character was disturbed with contradictions. CHAPTER XXX. STRANGE SHADOWS. One evening, after Barbara Stafford had found shelter beneath the roof of Samuel Parris, Jason Brown and his wife sat upon the lonely hearth, just after the tow-wicked candle was lighted, and the evening knitting-work brought out. Jason was sitting near the round stand, scooping out a rude butter-ladle with his jackknife, from a thick piece of pine, which he had brought in from the wood-house. The hired man occupied a closer place by the dim light; for he was employed in the more difficult operation of mending a broken harness. "Look a-here, Jase," said the hired man, looking up from his task, while he jerked two waxed ends through the leather, and tightened them at arm's length. "What du yer mean ter decide on about them tarnal heavy boxes in the barn? The hay is eenamost gone, and by-an-by there won't be enough left to kiver 'em with. Besides--what is in 'em? I should kinder like to know that, my bisness or not." "What du you know or care about that?" answered Jason, lifting his butter-ladle to the light, and eying its growing symmetry with great satisfaction. "Don't know nothin' and don't care a darn," was the reply, given in perfect self-complacency; "only the all-fired things will be tarnally in the way when we come to thrash." "But they can be moved then." "Moved! why you might as well try to lift a tombstun. I reckon I've tried it." Goody Brown kept on with her work, without joining in this conversation, and for some minutes the click and rattle of her needles kept time with the splinters cast off by her husband's jackknife. Then the hired man spoke again. "How long afore you'll be going to sea agin, Jase?" "That's rayther unsartin. There'll be a good deal of jiner work to do on the vessel afore she puts out agin. That storm tore her eenamost tu pieces." Goody Brown looked up from her knitting with the ghost of a smile hovering over her lips. "Then you'll have so much longer to stay tu hum," she said.