The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-08-07
Healer From Parkway Cove
BY NORMAN DUNCAN
Copyright by Mcclure Phillips Company

BY NORMAN DUNCAN
Copyright, by Mcclure, Phillips & Companv

Cove from Green Bay at the end of Il
search of that gray, Jagged coast for
better fishing, Ishmael Roth determin-
= TO so away, though he had been born
there.
They's too many folk t. Poverty
Cove now, Skipper john" he called
TO John East one calmy dawn, when
! they were hauling the salmon nets off
F'rothy Head. 'Sure I've nothin'
agin Jared Luff, but with him come
here they's handy t. twenty-seven
s families t the Cove. IT'S too many
for me, by. l feels crowded like. I'll
be goan' away. I'm thinkin'-far
away, down t. the Labrador, where
tits quieter."
Skipper John paused, with the drip
ping net in his hand. He looked over
the sea to the blue-black waste of rock
and staunted spruce whittier the mist
was drifting-to that break in the
bluff where the cottages were huddled
as though shrinking from the desola-
ton round about. Then he said, with
a wise and solemn wag of his head:
'''Tis a bit crowded, by. Maybe,
now you has the right of it An a
man must follow his bent"
So, when the salmon run was over,
1shmael Roth put all that he had in
a punt-his net and tackle and Bible
aid flour and pork and seed potatoes
and the like-and set out to discover
a new harbor where he might estab-
lish himself in quiet.
Il hates t. leave it, Skipper John.
he said, as he pushed off from the
stage. Sure, I does! l hates Won
derful t. leave un all. But tits gettin'
fair crowded, an L got t. goa where
it's quiet. Iss, by, l got t goa.
He called the new harbor Far
Away Cove. There he lived all alone
until he was old, and he was content,
for all of sea and wilderness that the
horizon encompassed was his for ell
bow room.
1.-The Lard led me to this place
he told himself, by and by! "'Tis like
now, He'll have some wark for me I
do. I'll listen-Tn listen for HIS
voice!"
In the dawn and in the dusk, when
the gray wind as 1t coursed over the
sea, stirred up waves to fret ms
punt. he listened to the hiss or the
waters. lest the Voice should sound
therein. In the mist, when the punt
was hanging off shore and the sea
was beating the yelled rocks, ne
sought the Word in the deep thud and
crash of the breakers. In the night,
when the northeast gale swept from
the seas bleak hidden places-when
it pelted the windows with sleet and
ran like mad into the wilderness-he
listened for the Voice of the Lord,
surely expecting it. By and by, when
his long hair had turned white and
strange light was in his eyes, he heard
the Voice of the Lord, as he has SAID.
commanding him to some great tnlng.
Sure" thought Ishmael, at Far
Away Cove, "the Lard He've called me
at last. He've give me wark t do.
So Ishmael prepared himself for the
work; this he did by diligently porlng
over an old book which had come
down to him from his grandfather.
who. as 1 believe, had taken it from
a wreck of those old days. 1t was
1.-THE English Physician Enlarged.
With three hundred & fifty-nine
Medicines. Being an Aftroloso
Phyfical Difcourse Of the Vulgar
Herbs of this Nation: Containing
compleat Method of Phyfick, where
by a man may preferve his Body in
Health, or Cure himfelf. being SICK.
for Three Pence Charge"
"Sure, the Lard He cast away the
vessel" Ishmael argued, IAN the
Lard sent my grandfather { the
wreck: the Lard took my grandfather
when his time had come, nor neglect
ed t give the book into the hands of
tits all the dom of the Lord, whose
voice I've heerd in the waves o the
sea an in the wind that comes from
beyond"
Ishmael pored over the book by
day. and at night it fashioned strange
dreams for him-viyid dreams.
dreams of the cure of diseases.
81 am a healer by Dreams he
thought The consciousness of his
,;r-I IIipo thrilled him. % am q
healer by dreams" he thought. "The
Lard He've commanded me t goa
down the coast healin' all people"
Whereby you may know that the
things of the wilderness and of the
sullen sea, which are past understand
ing, had undone old Ishmael Roth.
Now. while the healer from Far
away Cove came down the coast,
working strange cures, Ezra Wester-
~, of Ragged Harbor, waited patient
ly for a singular manifestation OF the
Lords favor and great power to neal.
He was a punt-fisherman was Ezra
a young, big-boned man, gigantically
framed fearless in Top and gusty
wind and used to meeting the sea in
all the strength and bitterness OF its
raging But he was consumptive;
a spring gale, which swept over the
mis- Nlln d1 uSI uColSh uPcii e'iN
Ragged Harbor fleet, had cast him
away on an ice-foe-a sleety wind,
with frost following-and he was now
a lean, gasping wreck.
"Sure, l wants t. get WE'LL he said
to Solomon Stride. 81 does that L
thinks thinks | will get we'll. But
| wants you t. know, Solomon, by,
that / isn't altered t die. If the
Lard takes me, I'll be fair willin'
goa. I'll do noa grievin, b'y-none'
at all, by; none at all. But
"Ah. but said Solomon. sure,
twill turn out all right. Twill be
a.
eff it's Ezra went on. closing his
scrawny fist, eff tbs oanly son. Solo
mon, I'll get well. / knows it.
"Ay" said Solomon, "they's great
virtue in the touch o the seventh son
of a seventh son. IT'S like twill cure
you"
Just t. touch the vicente finger o.
the babe" Ezra said. eagerly, IAN
twill cure you, they tells me, them
that knows-'twill cure you!'
They'll be news from Fortune Har-
Dor soon, I'm thinllin'.'
LAY, sure Twill be noa moare
than a day or two now"
1.-THE Lard'll send she son, I'm
thinkin'," said Solomon, hopefully.