Page:A Nameless Nobleman.djvu/69

Rh head; or, growing more furious than contemptuous, shake the whole sturdy frame until it rocks upon its foundations, yet meekly holds its own at last, as the Wat Tylers generally do.

It is with one of these houses that we have to do,—a low but comfortably large farmhouse, set down in the sand with a sort of apologetic uncertainty, as if it hesitated to turn its back, either upon the faint wheel-track denoting a highway, or upon the sea sullenly sliding up a shallow beach about a hundred rods away. The wheel-track meant agriculture and commerce, the sea stood for fisheries and driftwood; and the question evidently vexing the mind of the undecided house was, whether Humphrey Wilder, its master and owner, was a farmer or fisherman, and so had most need to conciliate land or sea. The house never found out, nor shall we; so let it pass. As for the man, see him as he stands beside the stout gray horse harnessed to the farm-wagon, wherein he has already bestowed sundry bales and boxes suggestive of provender for man and beast, and an abundance of wraps, fit for an arctic exploration at the least. Perhaps Wilder wishes it were arctic, rather than as hot as he is like to find the end of his journey: for he is bound with Deborah, his wife, to the quarterly meeting of Friends at New Bedford; and Deborah, like her who dwelt beneath her palm-tree near Ramah, was a prophetess, and ruled in Israel, yet never had been able to so rule the quiet spirit of her husband as to induce him to join the society wherein she was a powerful and favorite speaker ind guide. This was a