Aunt Sibylla was soon followed by the other lantern-bearers, who
dispersed homeward, along the four roads diverging from the school-house,
and, the night being starless, the children of the darkness followed
meekly in their wake.
The longest route lay before those who took the River Road leading to
the Indian Encampment. Bachelor Lot was the hindmost in this receding
column. Bachelor Lot, though too withered and brown of visage to afford
immediate enlightenment as to his species, was held to be of
unquestionable white descent. Yet he kept house, alone, at the Indian
Encampment.
Then there was the Stony Hill Road, up which a few pilgrims toiled; and
the Cross Lot Road to the beach--thither went the Barlows. Last of all,
there was the Lane, and it was somewhat in the rear of the lane
procession that I musingly wended my way, led by the beams of Grandma
Keeler's slowly swaying lantern.
I was the Wallencamp school-teacher. I had come to "this rock-bound
coast," imagining myself impelled by much the same necessity as that
which fired the bosoms of the earlier pilgrims. Not that I had been
restricted in respect to religious privileges, but I sought for a true
independence of life and aim; and furthermore, it should be said, I had
come to Wallencamp on a mission.
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