A
man cannot see the forces at work upon his inmost self. He did not know
that Josephine's soul had taken his by the hand and lifted it up--that
his love for her had risen from earth to heaven when he feared the
slightest wrong-doing for her more than all other misfortune.
CHAPTER IX.
"GOD'S PUPPETS, BEST AND WORST."
All that long day a hot sun beat down upon the sea and upon the ice in
the bay; and the tide, with its gentle motion of flow and ebb, made
visibly more stir among the cakes of floating ice, by which it was seen
that they were smaller and lighter than before. The sun-rays were doing
their work, not so much by direct touch upon the ice itself as by
raising the temperature of all the flowing sea, and thus, when the sun
went down and the night of frost set in, the melting of the ice did not
cease.
Morning came, and revealed a long blue channel across the bay from its
entrance to Harbour Island. The steamer from Souris had made this
channel by knocking aside the light ice with her prow. She was built to
travel in ice. She lay now, with funnel still smoking, in the harbour, a
quarter of a mile from the small quay. The Gaspe schooner still lay
without the bay, but there was a movement of unfurling sails among her
masts, by which it was evident that her skipper hoped by the faint but
favourable breeze that was blowing to bring her down the same blue
highway.
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