CHAPTER II. MR. ELIOT BUCKSTONE. The view from Poppleton Point was very fine. A marine painter sat making a sketch where the spray from the sea which beat upon the rocks below spattered his patent leather boots. He was wholly absorbed in his work, and one with a taste for the grand and beautiful, engaged in such a task, might well be pardoned for knowing nothing else. The Point was the eastern boundary of the northern coast line of the estuary into which Bell River disembogued. At an average distance of half a mile from the shore lay two islands, which had been named from their shape The Great Bell and The Little Bell. Just above the latter, on the north side of the river, was Port Poppleton, a village of four thousand inhabitants, who were principally engaged in the coasting and fishing business. Above its mouth Bell River made two turns, which gave it the form of the letter S. The country was hilly and rocky, and the stream had been forced into a tortuous way in its path to the sea. Two miles north of the Port was another village, within the corporate limits of the town, which went by the name of Poppleton Mills. The place was a live New England town, with some farming, some fishing, some coasting, some ship-building, a great deal of trade with Boston and Portland by land and by sea, but the principal interest was the cotton factories. The mouth of Bell River was surrounded by rocks, and the region to the southward was rather noted for its fine scenery. The gunning and fishing in the vicinity were first class. Not only were the finest cod, haddock, perch, and tautog caught in the sea off the Port, but the finest pickerel and pouts were taken in the river above the Mills, and the finest trout in the brooks which flowed into it. It was therefore a paradise for sportsmen and summer idlers, and two very comfortable hotels in the lower village were usually well filled with visitors for four months in the year. Port Poppleton was rapidly acquiring a reputation as a watering-place, on a small scale. Mr. Eliot Buckstone, marine painter from the city of New York, sat on a rock at the extremity of Poppleton Point. He had taken a room at the Bell River House for a fortnight, and was just now at the height of earthly felicity in the enjoyment of the luxuries of the place, not the least of which, to his artistic soul, was the view from the Point. He watched the green waves, as they rolled up from the sea, and broke themselves in flaky spray upon the rocks of the Great Bell. This was the scene he was sketching. He had already outlined the rocks, with the curling billows shattering themselves upon them, and the dilapidated farm-house and barn which occupied the highest part of the island. “Help! help!” Eliot Buckstone dropped his sketch-book and pencil, and sprang to his feet, for the tones were those of a woman. “Help! Help!”