“A wedding!” said I, still full of excitement. “Yes; I expect if the tide serves and the line storm don’t overtake him they’ll come in and appear out on Sunday. I shouldn’t have concerned me about the bunnit for a month yet, nobody would notice, but havin’ an occasion like this I shall show consider’ble. ’Twill be an ordeal for William!” “For _William_!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean, Mrs. Todd?” She gave a comfortable little laugh. “Well, the Lord’s seen reason at last an’ removed Mis’ Cap’n Hight up to the farm, an’ I don’t know but the weddin’s goin’ to be this week. Esther’s had a great deal of business disposin’ of her flock, but she’s done extra well—the folks that owns the next place goin’ up country are well off. ’Tis elegant land north side o’ that bleak ridge, an’ one o’ the boys has been Esther’s righthand man of late. She instructed him in all matters, and after she markets the early lambs he’s goin’ to take the farm on halves, an’ she’s give the refusal to him to buy her out within two years. She’s reserved the buryin’-lot, an’ the right o’ way in, an’—” I couldn’t stop for details. I demanded reassurance of the central fact. “William going to be married?” I repeated; whereat Mrs. Todd gave me a searching look that was not without scorn. “Old Mis’ Hight’s funeral was a week ago Wednesday, and ’twas very well attended,” she assured me after a moment’s pause. “Poor thing!” said I, with a sudden vision of her helplessness and angry battle against the fate of illness; “it was very hard for her.” “I thought it was hard for Esther!” said Mrs. Todd without sentiment. III. I had an odd feeling of strangeness: I missed the garden, and the little rooms, to which I had added a few things of my own the summer before, seemed oddly unfamiliar. It was like the hermit crab in a cold new shell,—and with the windows shut against the raw May air, and a strange silence and grayness of the sea all that first night and day of my visit, I felt as if I had after all lost my hold of that quiet life. Mrs. Todd made the apt suggestion that city persons were prone to run themselves to death, and advised me to stay and get properly rested now that I had taken the trouble to come. She did not know how long I had been homesick for the conditions of life at the Landing the autumn before—it was natural enough to feel a little unsupported by compelling incidents on my return.