writing, certainly, that was plain enough; but of what kind? what about? Mrs. Callender never could discover. Once, in the hope of having wherewithal to glorify him in the eye of Kiteroa, and, if possible, render him a little respectable in Roger’s, she ventured to inquire whether he wrote for the papers? “For the papers!” He repeated the words after her with a scorn, gentle, yet absolute, which, however incomprehensible, proved, at any rate, that he did not!
Whatever his mysterious task, however, he worked hard at it. His consumption of kerosene was enormous—although, as Mrs. Callender said, she never should be the one to grudge him that, seeing that except for tobacco, which he found himself in, kerosene was about the only thing he did consume; and the sight of his cheerfully streaming window must have heartened many a midnight helmsman off that unlit coast. The old wharé, that had once presided through the darkness over dreamless slumbers, now kept vigil many a night with this old scholar. Once, in fact, during the summer, Mrs. Callender and the sunrise together surprised him in the middle of a sentence—which Mrs. Callender stole a look at, by the way, over his shoulder; but, so far from its enlightening her as to the real meaning of all this midnight toil, not one word of it could she so much as decipher. It was all written in some incomprehensible character.
One night, during the winter that followed, she was suddenly awakened—by some kind of cry, she thought, but could not be sure. For a minute or two she lay listening; then, an irresistible impulse drove her to the old kitchen. She found the
