The Press., 1914-01-07
HER PROPOSAL A Story of Fisher
 Folk
By E. A. MITCHEL

The coast of Maine is dotted with
 villages, snugly located in the little cOves which dent the islands, forming
 continuous archipelago from Port land to the bay of Fundy. The men
 in these villages fish all the year round, except for short season in midsum-
 mer, when they use the motorboats for
 taking out sailing parties on various excursions, for which they receive | good pay.
 In one of these villages lived two
 fishermen whose ownership and man. agement of boat gave them the title
 of captain. They were Captain Steve
 Williams and Captain Enoch Brown.
 Williams was older than Brown, but they were stanch friends. Both of them knew so we'll the rocks and shoals of the coast in which they were
 used to fish that they could sail around them or between them in the darkest night.
 They set their nets just before dark
 ness fell upon the ocean and took them
 in soon after dawn. It was a hard life. this being exposed to the winds | and waves when others were asleep and sleeping while others were awake, | but so long as they were young they did not mind it-that is, when the | weather was fair. When it was
 stormy they did not go out to fish, but
 many a night a change would come and, being out they were obliged to endure the exposure till they could h.a1 started.
 Captain Steve Williams was mar
 ried. and many a time when storms arose while he was out in his boat his wife would lie awake dreading with every shriek of the wind that it might be blowing her husband on some sunk en rock. She would clasp her little daughter, Edith, tightly to her breast and mutter prayer for the man ply ing his perilous vocation.
 Captain Brown had no wife to pray for him. He had passed the heyday of youth and had not married. though he could have won almost any of the girls of the village. He was a well built man with a clear steel gray eye an eye that bespoke courage and hon. esty. But the winds and the spray had begun to blow furrOws in his cheeks, and a few gray hairs were beginning to appear in his sandy hair.
 -~ When Edith Williams was a little child she was sensible of there being great trouble in the family. A man came to the house and took her father away with him, her mother clinging to her husband, weeping. Edith did not see her father for some time; then he came home. and the trouble seemed to be over. It occurred when she was at an age in which children forget, but she never forgot the scene of her fla ther's being taken away. And there was another scene she remembered, her father holding one of Captain Browns hands while her mother held the other. and they were talking to him with great earnestness.
 But both these scenes, though not forgotten, grew dim in her memory as she grew away from them. Perhaps they were dwarfed by others that were present with her. Her father, who was never the same man after the misfortune that had come to him, be gan to dread going out at night on the black ocean to gain livelihood for those dependent upon him. And his wife dreaded to have him go as much as he dreaded going.
 .dith wished that the fish would go into the nets during the day as well as during the night. She wished that her father could devote himself to some other calling. And yet when now and then he would make d great haul and dispose of it for a large sum it would not seem so dreadful after all- at least he would not so consider it himself.
 And so the battle for life with the winds and the waves went on. The two captains weathered every tempest. every fog. iE which they were caught. At last q little germ so small that it COU!d be seen only with microscope got into Captain Williams system and effected what the angry breakers roll ing over some half hidden rock were quietly in his bed
 He had wrung from the sea enough to pay for the home in which he lived. besi les fund for an income by which, living economically. his wife and daughter might keep the wolf from the door. But his wife could not live without him. There was now nothing to worry her, but when the wind howl ed at night, from force of habit, she ;,,Iy oP boat out on the dark, heaving ocean. the solitary man in it feeling his way ike d blind person. While she was sinking away. at the slightest sound she would start, inquiring if it were not the melancholy foghorn or a gun from sinking ship, and at the last she was sure she heard the thin clang of a distant bell buoy.
 Edith was now alone. There were friends and acquaintances in plenty, but they were like persons in another boat. liable to drift away at any mo- ment One. and only one, seemed left of those she had been accustomed to regard a part of the household, Cap tain Brown.
 \ few days after the death of her mother Edith was sitting in the living room of her home. She had taken up some sewing more for occupation than anything else, and in her loneliness tears were dropping on her work. Hearing a sound, she looked up and saw Captain Brown. He had entered as he had been used to enter, without knocking. She smiled at him faintly through her tears. He was all that was left of the three who had compos- ed her little world. He sat down be- fore her and looked at her pityingly with his gray eyes.
 Edith he said. "I've come to say something to you. Your father and