Walter added a few more words in which he tried to approach an ever present, ever willing Saviour, beseeching that Chauncy might be helped right there to give himself entirely up to God; braiding into his words, the touching, solemn collect: “Assist us mercifully, O Lord, in these our supplications and prayers.”
“That was another good drink,” Chauncy said.
“I did not mean to stay so long, Aldrich. Why, the tide is almost in,” said Walter, glancing out of the window. “The Crescent is pretty well covered.”
“Pretty well covered! What’s that verse? It is about God’s forgiveness. I read it in the Psalter last Sunday; ‘And covered all their sins.’ That is the way it is with God’s mercy.”
And Walter thought of the tide coming in everywhere, and everywhere covering and hiding the black rocks, the long, sandy bars, the unsightly flats of mud, burying all under its bright, shining, softly singing current.
Chauncy appreciated Walter’s meaning; and when the latter left, Chauncy with a smile in his face was looking afar and watching the tide coming in.
When Walter left Miss Green’s, he turned away from the sea and walked rapidly in the direction of his uncle’s. A sleigh with jingling bells went by him. The driver of the team was well protected against the cold, and the style as well as the extent of the protection—the rich buffalo robe snugly tucked about his person, the handsome cap of fur that could not wholly conceal his gray hair, the warm, heavy, riding gloves of fur—showed that the driver of the team did not have a mean and scanty share of this world’s goods. The bright, sharp, intelligent eyes under the rich cap of fur gave evidence that the owner of the team was smart enough and shrewd enough to hold whatever he had gained and also add to it.
“Do you know that man?” Walter said to Jabez Wherren, who, twisted up by the cold, was moving slowly, shiveringly, over the road.
“That man! He’s Squire Tuck, your uncle’s lawyer. He lives in Groveton.”
“Knows suthin! For what he knows, I wouldn’t swap all the clams ’tween here and Novy Scoshy,” replied Jabez, who was a famous clam digger, and all his estimates of value were determined by one famous standard, a clam.
“Then,” thought Walter, “Squire Tuck is on his way to that meeting at uncle’s that Chauncy spoke about. That is my guess.”