Its shape was the delicate shape of strength
native to such a foot, and each toe left its print distinct and even in
the dust. With his eye for queer details, he remembered that print and
associated with it the yellow-rutted road, the rusty alders in the
meadow beyond, and the pale spire of the church thrust into a November
sky.
He called this to mind when on the night of the dance information came
to his ear that she had sold her pearls to lift the lien on Cap'n Sam
Dreed's ship, with her own hands tearing down the libel from the mast
and grinding it under her heel.
No man whom she had once passed and silently interrogated could quite
forget her, not even Jethro Rackby. The harbor master swayed on his
oars, collected himself, and looked forward across the dimpled floor of
his harbor, which in its quietude was like a lump of massy silver or
rich ore, displaying here and there a spur of light, a surface sparkle.
The serenity of his own soul was in part a reflection of this nightly
calm, when the spruce on the bank could not be known from its fellow in
the water by a man standing on his head. Moreover, to maintain this
calm was the plain duty of the harbor master. For five years he had held
that office by an annual vote of the town meeting. With his title went
authority to say where were the harbor lines, to order the removal of
hulks, to provide for keeping open a channel through winter ice--in a
word, to keep the peace.
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