“Wa’n’t it fine?” he whispered.  “Talk about your miracles!  Godfreys mighty!  Say, Mr. Ellery, don’t you ever tell a soul how it really was, will you?”

“No, of course not.”

“No, I know you won’t.  You won’t tell on me and I won’t tell on you.  That’s a trade, hey?”

The minister stopped in the middle of his step.

“What?” he said, turning.

Mr. Pepper merely smiled, winked, and shut the door.  John Ellery reflected much during his homeward walk.

The summer in Trumet drowsed on, as Trumet summers did in those days, when there were no boarders from the city, no automobiles or telephones or “antique” collectors.  In June the Sunday school had its annual picnic.  On the morning of the Fourth of July some desperate spirits among the younger set climbed in at the church window and rang the bell, in spite of the warning threats of the selectmen, who had gone on record as prepared to prosecute all disturbers of the peace to the “full extent of the law.”  One of the leading citizens, his name was Daniels, awoke to find the sleigh, which had been stored in his carriage house, hoisted to the roof of his barn, and a section of his front fence tastefully draped about it like a garland.  The widow Rogers noticed groups of people looking up at her house and laughing.  Coming out to see what they were laughing at, she was provoked beyond measure to find a sign over the front door, announcing “Man Wanted Imediate.  Inquire Within.”  The door of the Come-Outer chapel was nailed fast and Captain Zeb Mayo’s old white horse wandered loose along the main road ringed with painted black stripes like a zebra.  Captain Zeb was an angry man, for he venerated that horse.

The storm caused by these outbreaks subsided and Trumet settled into its jog trot.  The stages rattled through daily, the packet came and went every little while, occasionally a captain returned home from a long voyage, and another left for one equally long.  Old Mrs. Prince, up at the west end of the town, was very anxious concerning her son, whose ship was overdue at Calcutta and had not been heard from.  The minister went often to see her and tried to console, but what consolation is there when one’s only child and sole support is nobody knows where, drowned and dead perhaps, perhaps a castaway on a desert island, or adrift with a desperate crew in an open boat?  And Mrs. Prince would say, over and over again: 

“Yes, yes, Mr. Ellery.  Thank you.  I’m sure you mean to encourage me, but oh, you don’t know the things that happen to seafarin’ men.  I do.  I went to sea with my husband for fourteen year.  He died on a voyage and they buried him over the vessel’s side.  I can’t even go to his grave.  The sea got him, and now if it’s taken my Eddie—­”

The young clergyman came away from these calls feeling very young, indeed, and woefully inadequate.  What did he know of the great sorrows of life?