Page:The New Penelope.djvu/160



"Let us go," she said, sitting up. "You will not desert me, I know; and why should I keep you here all night, in anxiety and peril? Once at home, you can rest and nurse yourself."

"So be it; an' God help us!"

"Amen!"

Chillis opened the door and looked out, placing a light first in the window. Then coming back for a basin, he waded out, bailed his boat, and, unfastening the chain, hauled it alongside the doorway. Mrs. Smiley had hastily put some provisions into a tin bucket, with a cover, and some things for Willie into another, and stood holding them, ready to be stowed away.

"You will have to take the tiller," said Chillis, placing the buckets safely in the boat.

"I meant to take an oar," said she.

"If you know how to steer, it will be better for me to pull alone. Now, let us have the boy, right in the bottom here, with plenty o' blankets under and over him; the same for yourself. The lanterns—so. Now, jump in!"

"The fire is dead on the hearth," she said, looking back through the empty house, and across the gap of water showing through the broken wall. "What a horrible scene! God sent you, Mr. Chillis, to help me live through it."

"I believe he did. Are you quite ready?"

"Quite; only tell me what I must do. I wish I could help you."

"You do?" he answered; and then he bent himself to the work before him, with a sense of its responsibility which exalted it into a deed of the purest chivalry.

PART II.

The widow Smiley did not live on Clatsop Plains. Ever since the great storm at Christmas, when her house was carried off its foundations by the high tide, she had refused to go back to it. When the neighbors heard of her husband'