Oh, and passive, too passive by far, a long time before that evening in the cabin of the sloop. Drifting, letting things happen instead of taking a hand in forcing them to happen. Maybe a child is compelled to that. But childhood ended--when? Did not Reuben at fifteen discover a purpose? He will have turned sixteen a few days ago, and I not there; and doubtless he believes I am dead. Faith surely imagines I am dead, she who said with her lips at my ear that she would wait for me a thousand years. There must have been something I could do.... Dry logic of arithmetic asserted itself and Ben noted it. I don't _know_ how one youth steals a ketch from seven grown men. But.... By the contemptuous assent of Daniel Shawn himself, I still possess the knife my father gave me. He gave me also a word: _readiness...._ The stars weakened; some of them were gone. The sky, no sea of blackness now, became a paleness and then a glory. Shadows acquired weight and relief, substance and sharpness in the transfiguration of daylight--the rail under Ben's hand no pallid blur but familiar with every spot and imperfection of the polished wood. The headland out yonder at the southern arm of the cove, a looming dullness not long ago, became the gray hand of a giant, then green, then manifest jungle, a fragment of solid earth, and the lonely red flare of the sun burst free in silence over the rim of the world. Clouds hung high in the west; none lingered over there on the morning side to obscure the birth, and at the moment of completion a light sweet wind tranquilly arrived, a northeasterly breeze, cooling Ben's face, roving across the island, waking in the bare cordage a music of morning and perhaps of spring. _There must be something I can do...._ "Mr. Hibbs, was Reuben uncertain what time he would come home?" "Yes--late, I think, Charity. There was something--a cutting for the stone to be precise, and the patient living somewhere near Cambridge. You know he goes with Mr. Welland on nearly all the visits now. On this occasion, I understand, he's to aid with the surgery, holding instruments I suppose, or whatever--the which maketh me ill only to contemplate it, but when I saw Ru this morning he was cool as you please, and quite unmoved, and cracked a joke or two that I'm sure Mr. Kenny was able to hear and enjoy. I dare say the doctor is right, that to visit the sick in all their trials will provide a learning not to be won from the best of books. Yet I wish it did not mean that he must neglect his other studies." "Perhaps he'll come back to them one day." "Ay--'tis absurd of me, but I feel in a manner cheated. There was so much more I had hoped to teach him--nay, I dare say any teacher is a fool, seeing only his small island of knowledge, forgetting how wide is the world beyond it. Can you stay the night, my dear?" "Yes. Kate's most kind, allowing me to share her bed. I fear I'm a plague to her, I'm that restless, but she says not."