Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/132

114 same ones that he had picked up once before upon the rocks by the willow-trees.

“No one there for twenty years?” he repeated to himself. His fingers, slipping over the cool metal and the leather covering, assured him that the glasses were not even dusty.

He had to sit down upon the grass, in order to reflect upon this problem long and earnestly.

“There has been some one there lately,” he thought, “but there can’t be any one now;  there can't. Nothing alive could possibly keep so quiet; why, I could have heard even  a mouse breathe.”

He was thoroughly convinced that his intent listening could not have played him false and that he must have been mistaken about  seeing a light. His reassured thoughts, therefore, went back once more to Sally and  Captain Saulsby. Suppose it was so near morning that the tide would be down again;  suppose he ran across the causeway for help  and got back within half-an-hour, long before  Sally could get uneasy. That surely was the best thing to do. The truth was that the old sailor’s condition had filled him with real  terror. The creaking upstairs, the field-glasses, the suspicion of a light, all these might