At last we stood at our mother’s knee. 
    Do you think, Sir, if you try,
    You can paint the look of a lie? 
    If you can, pray have the grace
    To put it solely in the face
  Of the urchin that is likest me: 
      I think’t was solely mine, indeed: 
    But that’s no matter,—­paint it so;
     The eyes of our mother—­(take good heed)—­
  Looking not on the nest-full of eggs,
  Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,
  But straight through our faces down to our lies,
  And, oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise! 
    I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though
    A sharp blade struck through it. 
                                     You, Sir, know,
  That you on the canvas are to repeat
  Things that are fairest, things most sweet,—­
  Woods and cornfields and mulberry-tree,—­
  The mother,—­the lads, with their bird, at her knee: 
    But, oh, that look of reproachful woe! 
  High as the heavens your name I’ll shout,
  If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.

THE SOUTH BREAKER.

IN TWO PARTS

PART II.

Blue-fish were about done with, when one day Dan brought in some mackerel from Boon Island:  they hadn’t been in the harbor for some time, though now there was a probability of their return.  So they were going out when the tide served—­the two boys—­at midnight for mackerel, and Dan had heard me wish for the experience so often, a long while ago, that he said, Why shouldn’t they take the girls? and Faith snatched at the idea, and with that Mr. Gabriel agreed to fetch me at the hour, and so we parted.  I was kind of sorry, but there was no help for it.

When we started, it was in that clear crystal dark that looks as if you could see through it forever till you reached infinite things, and we seemed to be in a great hollow sphere, and the stars were like living beings who had the night to themselves.  Always, when I’m up late, I feel as if it were something unlawful, as if affairs were in progress which I had no right to witness, a kind of grand freemasonry.  I’ve felt it nights when I’ve been watching with mother, and there has come up across the heavens the great caravan of constellations, and a star that I’d pulled away the curtain on the east side to see came by-and-by and looked in at the south window; but I never felt it as I did this night.  The tide was near the full, and so we went slipping down the dark water by the starlight; and as we saw them shining above us, and then looked down and saw them sparkling up from below,—­the stars,—­it really seemed as if Dan’s oars must be two long wings, as if we swam on them through a motionless air.  By-and-by we were in the island creek, and far ahead, in a streak of wind that didn’t reach us, we could see a pointed sail skimming along between