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Rh ing their thumbs against the pane to make peep-holes in the frost that already had gathered white again. Outside, the snowfields and the stringy, shivering larch by the door were plain in the low-slanting light; then the ice and black open water of the bay, the island and its fir trees, and beyond, rising to the pale winter sky, the hills of the American shore, with broad fields of snow cut by fences that looked like black strings tied full of knots. In the middle of the bay was what they both had feared to see,—a gray old three-masted schooner, the Merry Andrew, lying at anchor.

"There she is," said Marden. "And see, she's swung on her anchor-chains, and pointing bowsprit up-river. The tide's going already, mother."

"They 'll be "—faltered his mother, "they 'll be—before long— Is your bag ready?"

"In the corner, all ready," he replied, pointing toward the door, where there lay a long canvas bag such as sailors carry, lumpy, dingy, bolster-like, and pursed at the top with a web of cords.