"Now there is another matter, also of great importance. In order to stimulate your interest in the success of this enterprise, we shall make you a present of five hundred shares of this stock provided you can raise the money to purchase, at one dollar per share, another block of five hundred, or, what would answer as well, induce your aunt to do so."
It was the glittering bait, intended by the wily Weston to catch and hold his dupe, Winn Hardy.
"I have some money laid away," answered Winn, his sense of caution obscured by this alluring offer, "and with a little help from my aunt, I feel sure I can manage it; at least, I will try."
"We do not need this investment of five hundred dollars on your part, Mr. Hardy," continued Weston, in a grandiloquent tone; "as you must be aware, it is but a drop in the bucket, and we only wish it to induce your more hearty coöperation in pushing this enterprise to a successful ending. If we make money, as we are sure to do, you will also share in it. It is needless for me to tell you that this is the golden opportunity of your life, and if you take hold with a will, and not only manage this quarry with good business discretion, but, what is of more importance, sell all the stock you can, you will reap a small fortune. This enterprise is sure to be a money-maker and we expect inside of a year to see Rockhaven go to ten, twenty, or possibly thirty dollars per share."
And Winn Hardy, though sophisticated in a minor degree, believed it, and true to his nature, leaped at once into the clouds, where sudden riches and all that follows seemed within his grasp. Not only did he easily persuade his excellent, though credulous, aunt, to lend him the money he needed, but when he left for his new field of labor, he had so impressed her with his newly acquired delusion that she made haste to call upon Weston & Hill and invest a few thousand herself.
How disastrous that venture proved and how much woe and sorrow followed need not be specified at present. True to her feminine nature, she told no one, not even Winn, of her investment; and until the meteoric career of Rockhaven had become ancient history on the street, only the books of those shrewd schemers and her own safe deposit box knew her secret.
CHAPTER IV
WHERE THE SEA-GULLS COME
Like a pair of Titanic spectacles joined with a bridge of granite, the two halves of Rockhaven faced the Atlantic billows, as grim and defiant as when Leif Ericson's crew of fearless Norsemen sailed into its beautiful harbor. With a coast line of bold cliffs, indented by occasional fissures and crested with stunted spruce, the interior, sloping toward the centre, hears only the whisper of the ocean winds.
Rockhaven has a history, and it is one filled with the pathos of poverty, from that day, long ago, when Captain Carver first sailed into its land-locked harbor to split, salt, and dry his sloop load of cod on the sunny slope of a granite ledge, until now, when two straggling villages of tiny houses, interspersed with racks for drying cod, a few untidy fishing smacks tied up at its small wharves, and a little steamboat that daily journeys back and forth to the main land, thirty miles distant, entitles it to be called inhabited. In that history also is incorporated many ghastly tales of shipwreck on its forbidding and wave-beaten shores, of long winters when its ledges and ravines were buried beneath a pall of snow, its little fleet of fishermen storm-stayed in the harbor, and food and fuel scarce. It also has its romantic tales of love and waiting to end in despair, when some fisher boy sailed away and never came back; and one that had a tragic ending, when a fond and foolish maiden ended years of waiting by hanging herself in the old tide mill.
And, too, it has had its religious revival, when a wave of Bible reading and conversion swept over its poorly fed people, to be followed by a split in its one Baptist church on the merits and truths of close communion or its opposite, to end in the formation of another.
It also had its moods, fair and charming when the warm south wind barely ripples the blue sea about, the wild roses smile between its granite ledges, and the sea-gulls sail leisurely over them; or else gloomy and solemn when it lies hid under a pall of fog while the ocean surges boom and bellow along its rock-ribbed shore.
On the inner and right-hand shore of the secure harbor, a small fishing village fringes both sides of a long street, and at the head of the harbor, one mile away, stands another hamlet. The first and larger village is called Rockhaven, the other Northaven. Each has its little church and schoolhouse, also used for town meetings, its one or two general stores, and a post-office. Those in Rockhaven, where fishing is the sole industry, are permeated with that salty odor of cured fish, combined with tar, coffee, and kerosene; and scattered over the interior are a score of modest farmhouses.
At one end of the harbor, and where the village of Northaven stands, a natural gateway of rock almost cuts off a portion of the harbor, and here was an old tide mill, built of unhewn stone, but now unused, its roof fallen in, its gates rotted away, and the abutments that once held it in place now used to support a bridge.
On one of the headlands just north of Rockhaven village, and known as Norse Hill, stands a peculiar structure, a circular stone tower open at the top and with an entrance on the inner or landward side. Tradition says this was built by the Norsemen as a place of worship. Beyond this hill, at the highest point of the island, is a deep fissure in the coast, ending in a small open cave above tidewater and facing the south. This is known as the Devil's Oven. On either side of this gorge, and extending back from it, is a thicket of stunted spruce. The bottom and sides of this inlet, semicircular in shape, are coated thick with rockweed and bare at low tide. On the side of the harbor opposite Rockhaven, and facing it, is a small granite quarry owned and occasionally operated by one of the natives, a quaint old bachelor named Jesse Hutton. In summer, and until late in the fall, each morning a small fleet of fishing craft spread their wings and sail away, to return each night. On the wharves and between most of the small brown houses back of them, are fish racks of various sizes, interspersed with tiny sheds built beside rocks, old battered boats, piles of rotting nets, broken lobster pots, and a medley of wrack of all sorts and kinds, beaten and bleached by the salty sea.
In summer, too, a white-winged yacht, trim and trig, with her brass rails, tiny cannon, and duck-clad crew, occasionally sails into the harbor and anchors, to send her complement of fashionable pleasure-seekers ashore. Here they ramble along the one main street, with its plank walk, peeping curiously into the open doors and windows of the shops, at the simply clad women and barefooted children who eye them with awe. Each are as wide apart from the other as the poles in their dress, manners, and ways of living, and each as much a curiosity to the other.
Of the social life of the island there is little to be said, for it is as simple as the garb of its plain people, who never grow rich and are seldom very poor. Each of the two