Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/89

 recalled her to the fact that the day was spending; and she suddenly remembered that her grandmother might be uneasy at her prolonged and unexplained absence, and, resuming her oars, she rowed steadily and rapidly back to shore.

As Alice rounded the little headland of Salem Neck, she noticed a small canoe, rowed by two persons, which was hovering afar off on the outer verge of the harbor, and apparently making for the same point as herself.

The little skiff was yet too far distant for even Alice's bright eyes to discern who were its occupants; nor did she give the matter more than a passing thought, for boats and canoes were then the more common mode of transportation—almost every householder owned one, and her own little craft had already been hailed by half a dozen of her towns-people in the course of her afternoon's trip. So, wholly occupied with her own busy thoughts and pleasant fancies, she rowed on, making her way straight to the little landing-place, wholly unobservant that the other boat, propelled by its two rowers,