A pleasant domain it was, and in all its arrangements eloquent of the old captain. There life had been very kind to him, and there his darkest moments of bereavement had been fought through, survived. Thither, more than five-and-forty years ago, he had brought the young wife whose love had turned his heart from evil ways and set his feet upon the better path from which, nearly half a century, they had not strayed.
In the upper front room his only son, Edward, had been born; and from the door, close at hand, he had followed the coffins that had taken away from him the three beings about whom, successively, the tendrils of his affection had clung.
First, the hand of death had closed upon his wife; but, profound as that loss had been, it had left to him his son. In this same house, that son had grown to manhood, and had himself taken a wife; and so for a few years there had been happiness again.
But not for long. The birth of Hal, the old man’s grandson, had cost the life of Hal’s mother, a daughter-in-law whom Captain Briggs had loved like his own flesh and blood; and, two years after, tragedy had once more entered Snug Haven. Edward Briggs, on his first voyage as master of a ship—a granite-schooner, between Rockport and Boston—had fallen victim of a breaking derrick-rope. The granite lintel that had crushed the body of the old captain’s son had fallen also upon the captain’s heart. Long after the grass had grown upon that third grave in the Briggs burial lot, up there on the hill overlooking the shining harbor, the old man had lived as in a dream.
Then, gradually, the fingers of little Hal, fumbling at the latchets of the old man’s heart, had in some miraculous way of their own that only childish fingers possess, opened that crushed and broken doorway; and Hal had entered in, and once more life had smiled upon the captain.
After even the last leaves of autumn have fallen, sometimes wonderful days still for a little while warm the dying world and make men glad. Thus, with the captain. He had seemed to lose everything; and yet, after all, Indian summer still had waited for him. In the declining years, Hal had become his sunshine and his warmth, once more to expand his soul, once more to bid him love. And he had loved, completely, blindly, concentrating upon the boy, the last remaining hope of his family, an affection so intense that more than once the child, hurt by the fierce grip of the old man’s arms, had cried aloud in pain and fright. Whereat the captain, swiftly penitent, had kissed and fondled him, sung brave sea chanteys to him, taught him wondrous miracles of splicing and weaving, or had fashioned boats and little guns, and so had brought young Hal to worship him as a child will when a man comes to his plane and is another, larger child with him.