University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
A PRETTY SCENE AND ITS BREAKING-UP.

THIS Whitmonday Hill, in Peterport, of which
mention was made in the last chapter, is, on its
travelled face, steep enough for a practised beast
(if there were such in Peterport) to slide down, and on the
water side, stands up three hundred feet and more of almost
sheer precipice—gravel, and rock, and patches of
dry grass. On that side, at the bottom, it has an edging
of rounded detached rocks, with here and there among
them a bit of gravel that has fallen down and lodged.
This edging stretches along as debatable ground between
the hill and the sea, to Daughter's Dock, (the little cove
where a “Seventh Daughter” lives,) and, when the water
is high, is plashed and played with by the waves, as on this
summer's afternoon on which we bring the reader to it.

With a fine breeze in from the eastward, and the bright
sun shining from half way down the sky, the waters came
in glad crowds, up the harbor, and ran races along the
cliffs. Here and there a little in-coming sail was rising
and falling smoothly and silently, as the loaded punt
floated before the wind.

The scene, to a sympathetic eye, was a pretty one of
home life; but the prettiest part of it was on the wateredge
of Whitmonday Hill. At the upper end of it

(speaking harbor-wise, and meaning towards the inner part
of the harbor) stood a little stage—a rude house for heading
and splitting and salting fish—whose open doorway
showed an inviting shade, of which the moral effect
was heightened by the sylvan nature of the house itself,
made up as it was of boughs of fir, though withered and
red. A fisherman and his wife had just taken in the
catch of fish from a punt at the stage's ladder, and a
pretty girl, of some seventeen years, was towing the unloaded
boat along beside the hill, by a rope laid over her
shoulder, while a little thing of four or five years old, on
board, was tugging with an oar at the stern, to keep the
boat's head off shore.

The older girl was one whose beauty is not of any
classic kind, and yet is beauty, being of a young life,
healthy and strong, but quiet and deep, to which features
and form give thorough expression and obedience. She
had a swelling, springy shape, dark, glancing eyes,
cheeks glowing with quick blood, (the figure and glance
and glowing cheek all at their best with exercise,) while
masses of jetty hair were lifted and let fall by the wind
from below the cap, which she wore like all girls in her
country. Her dress was different from the common only
in the tastefulness that belongs to such a person, and had
now a grace more than ever, as it waved and fluttered in
the wind and partook of the life of the wearer. She
wore a frock of dark blue, caught up a little in front, and
showing a white woollen petticoat; a kerchief of pretty
colors was tied very becomingly over her bosom, and a
bright red ribbon along the front of her cap lay among
her black hair. Her shoes and stockings were rolled up
in her apron, while her blue-veined feet—not large nor
small, but smooth and well-shaped—clung to the uneven

surfaces of the rocks, and strained upon them, as she
walked against the wind and sprang from one rock to
another; and they dipped now and then in the water, as
the little waves splashed up. Over all, both face and
figure, was a grace of innocent, modest maidenhood.

Nothing could be prettier or more picturesque than
this little group. The elder girl, who dragged the boat,
skirted the edge of the water with the lightness of one
of those little beach birds, that, with a shadow and a reflection
in the moist sand running along beside it, alternately
follows and retreats from the retreating and
advancing waves; and the little navigator, towards whom
her sister continually turned, had her plump little legs, in
their wrinkled yarn stockings, and her well-shod feet set
apart to keep her balance, while her head was tightly
covered in a white cap, and a kerchief with a silk fringe
went round her neck and down the back of her serge
gown, so that one could not but smile at her and her
work. At intervals she prattled, and for longer intervals
she worked with all earnest gravity in silence.

There was another beauty about these girls to those
who knew them, as will appear in its time.

Splash! went the water against the bow, spattering
every thing, and among other things, the little white-capped
head and silk kerchief and serge gown of the
sculler at the stern. Anon a wave came up from beneath
the keel, and, thrusting a sudden shoulder under
the blade of her oar, would lift it up out of the scull-hole
in spite of her, and be off. Then she would grasp her
weapon womanfully, and get it under her arm, and lay it
laboriously into its place again. In England one may
see the father's horse going to stable with a young child
on its back and another walking beside. Here they were

taking the punt to a snug place, where she was to be
hauled up for the night.
cried the maiden in a mellow, musical voice, (evidently
for the little one, for she herself had her own thoughts,
no doubt;) and as the great deep sea illustrated the song,
practically, the latter repeated, laughing, (with a somewhat
staid and moderate merriment,) and in the broken
speech of a child, working very hard,
and she was very near losing her oar again.

As they came on in this way, the elder sister helping
and sharing the child's laborious frolic, and at the moment
looking back, a dark, winged thing flew across the path.

“Oh! my s'awl, Lucy!” exclaimed the little one in a
hopeless voice, but tugging, nevertheless, at her oar,
while she looked up sadly to where the black kerchief
with the silk fringe which she claimed as a shawl had
been whirled by the wind, and had caught and fastened
upon the prickly leaves of a juniper bush, that alone of
all trees occupied the steep.

“My pooty s'awl you gave me!” she cried again,
working harder than ever at the oar.

“I'm sorry, Janie,” said her sister; “we'll get it again,
I think;” but as they looked up, the hill was a sheer steep,
and the gravel very loose.

Poor little Janie, with her distracted thoughts, and
without the draught of the rope, which Lucy held slackened

as she lingered over the mishap, could not keep the
boat off, and it came ashore. The elder sister came up
to comfort her.

“Janie, shall I shove you out again?” she asked, “or
shall I jump in and scull you round?”

Before the little girl could answer, the scene which
they had had so much to themselves was broken in upon.

“Look out, man!” was shouted in a sharp, quick tone
from above.

“Why, James!” exclaimed Lucy, looking up the
loose-gravelled precipice. There stood, at the moment,
far up, a young man poised upon it, while an older one
leaned over the upper edge. The loose gravel came rattling
down to the pathway of rocks over which the maiden
had been walking.

“Jump wide, if you must!” the man at the top called
out again, in the clear, quick way of men accustomed to
shipboard work.

In an instant the elder sister shoved the boat forth
toward the clear water, and sprang into it, leaving Janie's
oar, which had floated away; got the other into the scull-hole,
and worked the punt out from the shore.

The waves came playing, up to the rocks that edged
the precipice's foot, waiting for the young man who had
no way to go but downward; and who, though we have
been long, had not been able to stand still an instant.

Down he came, like an avalanche; the cheaty gravel
giving way from his feet; all the on-lookers breathless,
above and below; the cold waves frolicking on the surface
of the deep sea;—but the young man did not give
himself up to the usual fortune of heroines or heroes.

With a strong will he conquered what could almost be
called a fall, (so steep was the precipice down which he

came,) and controlled it as if he had been winged. He
went down aslant, the gravel rattling down at every
slight touch of his foot on the face of the steep, and ere
one could tell how, he was three hundred yards away, at
the edge of the water on the little beach beyond the great
hill. Before he reached the rocks at the further end he
had checked himself, and not even the shallow waters on
the sand had so much as touched his feet.

“Well done!” said the man—a fisherman very shabbily
dressed—who was still standing at the top against the
sky. He saw the danger at an end, and then, turning,
went away. Now, therefore, the scene without the danger
had only beauty in it. The waves ran away from
the wind, sparkling in the sunlight; a little sail was flitting
over the farther water; and the maiden, whose
glancing eye had followed the young man's giddy run,
had a new color in her cheek. She had waited among
the crowd of mischievous waves at a few fathoms' length
from the shore, and now that it was clear that he needed
no help, she turned again her little vessel toward the
land. Midway to the rocks floated a straw hat, half-sunk,
which the wind had snatched from the young man's head
as he came down, and thrown there.

“Min'ter's dog!” cried little Janie, attracted now by the
approach of the great black fellow panting over the wavetops,
his long black hair floating wide. The young man
who had just taken the wondrous flight had now seated
himself, flushed and panting, on one of the rocks. As
the dog neared the hat, Lucy was too quick for him, and
drew it, dripping, into the boat.

“I'll leave the oar for him,” she said; and the brave
brute, having turned up a kindly face to her, made for the
floating oar, and, seizing it by the hand-part, bore up

with it against both wind and tide toward the little beach.
That was the place, also, of the punt's destination, toward
which it was now urged gracefully by the maiden who
stood sideways in it, as men stand at sculling, and looked
forward with bright eye and lips apart and flowing hair.

A company of neighbors had gathered hastily at the
beach, four or five in number, and near them stood the
Minister; and in all faces were excitement and curiosity.
Before her boat touched the sand, Lucy seated herself
upon a thwart and modestly put on her shoes. The performer
of the late feat still sat apart, getting his breath
again.

“I don't see the man that staid at the top of the hill,”
said the Minister.

“'Twas Willum Ladford, sir; 'e 've gone away, seemunly.
'Ee know 'e's very quite, and keeps to 'isself,
mostly,” answered one of the women who were eagerly
waiting for the explanation of the strange things that
they had just seen.

“Did 'e push un off, do 'ee think, Prude?” inquired
one of the most eager.

“Oh, no! what would 'e push un for? Will Ladford's
too sober for pl'y, an 'e's too paceable for mischief.”

The short colloquy was deserted hurriedly, as the boat
came sliding up the beach, and its fair sailor leaped
blushing from its gunwale to the sand. Lucy, first curtseying
to the Minister, was bearing the trophy rescued
from the water, to its owner, when little Janie was instantly
beset by two or three of the most enthusiastic
inquirers after truth, who questioned her, half aside, and
half with a view to being overheard.

“Where did Mr. Urston come from, Janie?”—“What
was 'e doun there, fust goun off?”—“What made un go

down?” were the assaults of three several female minds
at the subject. Little Janie was bewildered.

“He couldn't keep his footing,” said Lucy, hearing
and answering, although she had no more information
than the questioners might have had;—a circumstance
that perhaps did not occur to her.

“The road's wide enough to walk on, athout atumblin
over, is n' 'e?” said one of the questioners, in a kind of
side-speculation, with a good-natured laugh and pleasant
voice.

“But I don't think he tumbled over the top,” ventured
Lucy, again, who saw the absurdity of his not being able
to keep his footing on a highway whose width reached
the stately dimension of ten (at least, eight) feet, statute
measure, and kindly wished to protect his reputation from
a charge of such preposterous clumsiness.

The questioner had been longer in the world than our
young maiden; and she advanced with her next question,
in this way:—

“Oh! 'e was n' walkin on the road, was 'e? but pleasurin'
down the side;” and she looked up the great outline
of the hill, as loose and gravelly as a freshly-made glacis,
but steeper than a Dutch roof. The allusion threw the
company of women (who followed, at the same time, the
direction of her eyes) into a sudden laugh; Lucy, also,
laughed innocently, and looked abashed; and the Minister,
who had not yet resumed his walk, smiled with them.

This last effect of her wit was not unobserved by the
speaker, who turned again to her charge, with new spirit,
addressing the neighbor-women:—

“What do 'ee think 'e sid,[1] to make un be in such a
tarrible hurry to git down? Do 'ee think, mubbe, it was

a fish 'e sid? Could n' 'ave abin he know'd e'er a body
was a walkun down on the rocks?”

But like the mouse who gnawed the toils in which the
lion was inclosed, an unexpected deliverer came to Lucy's
aid, just as, in pretty confusion, and blushing, she had
turned to busy herself about her little sister, away from
the embarrassment of this unexpected and hitherto undetected
attack. Urston was just coming toward her from
his resting-place upon the rock; but it was little Janie
that brought the rescue.

“I think,” said she, very gravely and sententiously,
“'e wanted to get my s'awl.”

“You funny little maid!” cried her elder sister, laughing.

“And 'e falled down;” continued the little explorer of
causes, to make her statement of the case complete.

“Janie's handkerchief blew up against the little tree
on the hillside, and held fast,” explained Lucy to the
women, who had interrupted their raillery, and with their
eyes sought further explanation;—“and so she thinks he
was trying to get it,” she continued, turning on him, as
he came up, a look the brighter and prettier for her confusion,
and with a tone as if she were near thinking that
Janie's was the true explanation.

Urston did not look like a fisherman, though he wore
the blue jacket and trowsers; and his eye had evidently
been familiar with other things besides the way of the
wind on the water, and the “lay” of the rocky land. At
the moment, he still showed in his face the excitement of
his late adventure, and breathed hard from the struggle
by which he had conquered.

“Thank you,” said he, looking as well as speaking,
while he took his hat from the fair hand that bore it.
“It wasn't my fault if I didn't get a good ducking, myself.”

“Why, you came down with a swoop, like a sea-gull!”
said the Minister, who was not far off; “how you ever
managed to give yourself that turn in to the beach, I don't
know.—Your crown ought to be made of something better
than straw, for a feat like that.”

“I suppose it's something, when you've made a blunder,
to get the better of it,” said the young man, modestly.

“That's the way the best part of us is brought out,
often,” answered the Parson, drawing a moral, as men of
his cloth will; “but if you always manage to tumble
down as strongly and safely as you did just now, you can
take good care of yourself in the world.”

The maiden's bashful eye and cheek and mouth brightened
and quickened, with a sweet unconsciousness, at
this compliment; but there were other interested persons,
who did not forget themselves.

“Did 'ee get my s'awl?” inquired little Janie, as the
Minister walked away, to the road.

The young man smiled, and, putting his hand into his
jacket-pocket, drew forth and spread before their eyes
the missing treasure, and then returned it to its owner.
She took it with joy (and, no doubt, thankfulness);
but her countenance fell, as she remarked that “it was all
full of prickles!”

Some one of the women made (in an undertone,
which could be heard at some distance) her comment,
thus:—

“It's my thought ef Janie had n' 'ad a sister, 'e wouldn'
ha' doned it.”

At or about the utterance of this speech, Lucy withdrew,
with Janie, along the path which she had been
traversing a short time before.

At the same instant, the dog, having brought his charge

safe to land and carried it up high and dry upon the
beach, and left it there, came back to perform his toilet
where he could have the society and receive the congratulations
of his friends. He took his position near the
last speaker, and, with special precision, spattered her all
over, from head to foot. Those in her neighborhood did
not quite escape; and the gathering dispersed, with good-natured
and rather noisy precipitation.

Epictetus, for his part, went off, also, in search of the
Minister, his master.

While Urston busied himself with the boat, two women,
walking away more deliberately than the rest, said, one
to another:

“Ef 'e wants to go a-courtun e'er a maid in Peterport,
'e might jes so well look a' to'ther side o' the house, to my
thinkin'.”

“Ay, as come after Skipper Georgie's da'ghter,” said
her neighbor.

Young Urston's case was this: his father, born and
bred a gentleman, (as was said, and as seemed entirely
likely,) had, as others like him have done, come, young,
to Newfoundland, and become a planter. He had married
a pretty woman, half-sister of Skipper George's wife,
but owing to difference of religion, (the Urstons being
Roman Catholics,) the two families had had little intercourse.

The boy grew with finer instincts and quicker faculties
than common; taking, it seemed, from both parents; for
the mother, also, was not only a fair Irishwoman, but one
of feeling and spirit. She died early; and, while she was
dying, commended the fostering of her child to an attached
servant; and the two parents devoted him, if he lived, to
the priesthood.

So, at the age of twelve or thirteen years, Father
O'Toole had taken him into his own house, made him at
first an altar-boy, taught him as well as he could, and
loved him abundantly. He had no difficulty in keeping
the boy's mind up to his demands; but after some time,
(it must be owned,) it would have required an effort
which Father Terence would not make, to keep it down
to his limits; for the boy was a very active fellow, in
mind and body; and when he had gone through all his
spiritual and religious exercises, and when he had wrought
out all the work that his director could put before him, must,
of course, do something. By way of vent, the good father
connived at his reading any solid-looking books which he
could borrow from friendly gentlemen in Bay-Harbor
(and the youth did not fancy any thing lighter than history);
Father Terence, also, did not trouble himself
about his pupil's slipping off, in a blue jacket, to go out
upon the water:—an indulgence understood to be an occasional
relaxation for the mind.

His own father refreshed the learning of other years,
for his son's sake, and taught him as he had opportunity.
At seventeen years of age, the young candidate was to
have gone to France and Rome, to finish his preparation;
but he was now a year and a half beyond that age; for,
just as he came to it, a new priest, whose learning and
abilities were very highly spoken of, replaced the assistant
in the Mission at Bay-Harbor, and, getting a good
many things into his hands, got this young man away
from Father Terence, gave some weeks to weaning the
pupil from his old master, some months to attaching him
to himself, got a direction from the Bishop that James
should stay with him as long as he staid in Bay-Harbor,
(which was expected to be in all two years,) and gave

the young pupil quite new notions of study and learning.
Young Urston was a generous scholar, who took his
heart with him into his work. But by and by there
came a change.

The priest's severity of discipline increased; the youth's
attachment to his director wasted. There was to be no
slipping off the long coat for the short, no escaping to
the water, no visiting at home, no putting off or hurrying
of duties, religious or scholastic; the confessional, which
Father Terence had at first negligently used with his
pupil, and disused, soon, was insisted on, and penances
exacted strictly.

Suddenly, Father Nicholas went up to St. John's; his
absence was prolonged, from month to month, for many
months (the old assistant coming back); Father Terence,
who had felt hurt, did not attempt to resume any
oversight over the stolen youth, though the kind-hearted
man restored the old relations of love;—and, at last,
young Urston withdrew altogether, took to fishing, (reading
when he could,) and declared his purpose of staying
where he was.

This resolution most bitterly grieved his nurse, who
had shown her disappointment in word and deed, until
the father reduced her, gradually, to an unwilling self-restraint.
She expected Father Nicholas to bring all
right, again; and, as Father Nicholas was understood to
master every thing and person that he had to do with,
her confidence seemed well-founded; but the time fixed
for the candidate's going abroad was just at hand: the
priest had been in Bay-Harbor, again, for three months,
had had several interviews with the recusant, but no
change appeared.