"Oh, Ben, I was remembering how it was when they brought him home to us. Is it possible that was only three weeks ago now? And thinking of the burial, and how all the things we did--all the words spoken, ours, the minister's, our friends'--how all that was so far from--him. Am I a terrible bad heathen, that I should have felt--well, angry at it? But mark you, Ben, I did _not_ show it, I did _not_ have one of my--my Times. Did I? Did I show it, Ben?" "Certainly not. You was a most quiet sweet mouse and opened your mouth for naught but Amen and Thine-is-the-power." "Faith and Mama in tears all day, and the neighbors resenting my dry eyes, be sure of it, and good Mr. Hoskison so--marry, so important! As if motions of the hands and holy words spoken could make any difference to one who's died and gone away. But you don't think I'm a terrible bad heathen?" "You are not, but if Ben and I labor with you long enough, love, perhaps we can make you one. I have hopes." "Oh, you!" "No, Charity, never mind the pup, you're no heathen, or if you are, then I too. I've no patience with--let's call it mummery. I saw your father die. He was a captain of men, and he died well. No words spoken over his body can add anything to that. Such words are for the living, if they wish them. No one spoke them for Daniel Shawn, and though it may be that I killed him, I loved him too." _And having said so much, and understood it while you said it, you will never lean on me again, the which I accept because it is right._ Reuben shied another pebble beyond the running line of the water's edge, aiming for a circle of hurrying foam, hitting it with a neat plop in the center. Good exercise for a steady hand. What he had said to Ben concerning storm and calm was banal, he reflected, but truth has a way of hiding in the blur of the commonplace and must be hunted there from time to time: no good rushing upstairs or outdoors in search of a paper that lies on the table under your nose. We do pass continually from storm to calm--every one of us, even Madam Prudence Jenks. So meet them both, in the atmosphere of doubt where honesty is--whether in fog over quicksand, or on firm-appearing ground like this under a sunny sky of June. Reuben tossed another pebble, seeing Charity smile at him ruminatively, a gust of the sea breeze lifting a lock of soft hair from her broad forehead; then her homely, snub-nosed, square-jawed face turned back to Ben and was beautiful. "I was thinking too, I wish I might have been with you both when Mr. Kenny died. You've told me little of that, indeed nothing much about your homecoming."