"I shall enjoy it very much," she answered simply, "and I have a favor I want to ask of you, which is, to let me make a sketch of you just where you sat the time your boat drifted away." When he retired it was long after he heard the clock downstairs strike the midnight hour before he failed to note the ocean's voice beneath his window, and in his dreams he saw Telly's face smiling in the firelight. CHAPTER XXXV THE "WIDDER" LEACH "I'm goin' to give ye a taste o' mackerel fishin'," said Uncle Terry the next morning after breakfast. "We'll go over to the fish house an' ye can put on some oilers an' save yer good clothes." On the way they met the well-remembered old lady Albert had first noticed at the prayer-meeting. She recognized him, and offering a rather soiled hand (for she had been spreading fish on the racks), exclaimed: "In the Lord's name I thank ye, Mr. Page, for rememberin' a poor old creetur like me and sendin' that dress. I make sure the Lord's teched yer heart, an' if ye ain't a believer yet, ye will be." "I am glad my little remembrance pleased you," answered Albert pleasantly, "it was only a trifle, and you need not feel obligated for it." He kept on after Uncle Terry, not wishing to waste any time; but she followed to add more thanks, ending with, "God bless ye, sir; an' may He warm the heart o' one good girl, fer ye desarve it." It struck him as a little curious that this eccentric old lady should have so well read his feelings towards Telly, but it pleased him just the same. When he had donned a suit of oilers, and Uncle Terry was pulling out of the little cove, Albert said, "That old lady is the most pious person I ever met, and with her it seems entirely sincere. No one could doubt she means every word she says." "Wal, it's about all the consolation she gits out o' life, an' 'twixt you an' me she takes more'n all the rest o' the believers here," answered Uncle Terry, "an' at times I 'most envy her fer it. She don't airn more'n 'nough to keep soul an' body together, an' winters some on us allus helps her. She has nobody in the world that's near her, lives alone in a little shanty, an' is over seventy, and yet she thanks the Lord three times a day for his many blessin's an's sure he'd never let her come to want. She's lived that way fer goin' on thirty year, an' no one ever heard her complain. Both her husband an' son went down in a coaster one winter's night, on Monhegan Shoals, an' tho' nachly she took on 'bout it a spell, she believed it was the Lord's will, an' meant to be a blessin'." "She is a monomaniac on the subject, I should imagine," observed Albert.