Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. rT WELVE years had passed away since the storm of 1785. There had been few changes in Sandy Cove, except that boys had grown to manhood, and those who were girls were now mothers of families; but among the adult population there had been little alteration, with the exception of a few deaths among the older people. The cottage stood upon the cliff as neatly whitewashed as before; the myrtles in the little garden had grown larger, but otherwise there was no change; and Polly Grey, almost as charming as ever, but rather saddened in expression, sat before her cottage door knitting a woolen comforter, and anxiously watching the sea. It was about an hour before sunset in the same month of August when twelve years ago the Indiaman had been driven on the shore. There was a silence about the cottage and an absence of many little trifles that showed that Polly Grey had no children at home; indeed, there was a superstition in the village that old Mother Lee had once cursed her, and some pretended a recollection of certain words that she had uttered when, in a fit of rage, she spat upon the ground, and said,' Yer'll get no other, Polly Grey, except what's cast up from the sea.' Certain it was, that Polly had never had a child since the death of her first and her adoption of the little castaway. The small land locked bay was quite empty not a boat floated upon the clear blue water, but a few skiffs lay upon the beach where nets were spread out to dry, and the smartlugger, the Polly of olden times, was nowhere to be seen. In the silence of the moment, Polly was startled by the rattle of pebbles on the steep zigzag path. This was almost immediately followed by the appearance of a fine, bronzed looking man about forty years of age in the uniform of a revenue officer, wit...
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