Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“ But the poor will arise and strike! The monsters of greed and selfishness who grind us down, and starve our bodies and our souls, will be dragged down from their high places! Nay, rather will they be sent higher—scattered, dismembered, uncrowned!"
He laughed wildly, bitterly, and shook the girl in the violence of his agitation. His eyes were terrible to behold.
"And I am one of the chosen instruments of their undoing!" he exclaimed. "I have the brain and the heart for the task. Little do they guess the fate that is even now being shaped for them here in Bully Bay!"
Molly was afraid. ”

“ She had fishermen and their families and their fortune aboard—a dozen men and lads, five women, some children, and a season's take of fish.
They were strangers to the folk of Bully Bay, but at the first distressful cry from the breaking schooner, every able-bodied human in the harbour turned out to the rescue. John McGrath locked his door behind him and hastened to the scene of the disaster. Tim Finch heard the cry and answered it. The little harbour emptied itself of all its inhabitants save the old, the very young, the sick, and Nicholas Barrow. ”

“ By this time it was the belief of every man, woman, and child in Bully Bay that Tim Finch was insane, with the exception of Molly Nolan and of Nicholas Barrow, perhaps. They believed the story of the sunstroke. Tim continued to keep away from Molly, but he made no effort to leave the harbour. He did not fish now, but wandered about the coast and abroad on the barrens, more idle than his shipmate. On fine nights he lay out in the woods of spruce above the bay, or among the rocks down by the tide. ”

“ Four men, not two, had saved themselves from the wreck of the Flora. Two had gone temporarily insane on the little island, with fear and the unrelenting torture of the sun, and Nicholas Barrow had been poisoned by something he had eaten. Tim alone was left whole of mind and body. The insane men had hidden the water. They had refused it to Tim and the sick man. Then they had suggested the killing of the sick man, so as to save provisions. More than that, they had attempted the murder twice before Tim had killed them both in a fair fight. ”

“ Some of us live and grow strong on starvation, but most of us die. But the sun is rising—the world is awaking—the starved and the down-trodden are beginning to wonder, to question, to turn their hungry eyes toward the gilded sources of their misery! ”

“ She was moping in the cabin. The men were away at the fishing, and her mother was down at the drying stages, turning over the split fish in the wind and sunshine. Molly had been excused from work that day, for the misery of her heart was affecting her bodily health.
She heard a step on the stone before the door, and turned in time to see the door open and Tim Finch enter the room—Tim Finch, her lover, who had gone down with the Flora, in April, in some surf-smoked corner of a distant sea. She did not see the other man at Tim's shoulder, for a black curtain fell before her eyes. ”

“ John McGrath went away, taking the blessings of Bully Bay with him, and was never again seen on that coast.
To this day old Mother Finch, who used to be Molly Nolan, is firmly of the opinion that John McGrath made gold out of stones and earth, and that he lost the trick of it when the Devil, in the person of Nicholas Barrow, exploded his cabin and his gear with a blast of hell fire. But she is puzzled to know why Nicholas Barrow permitted his own destruction. ”

“ Molly's brain accepted this, but her heart refused it. Her heart told her that something more terrible than sunstroke was ailing Tim Finch—something more terrible, but not incurable. Her heart distrusted Nicholas Barrow.
Nicholas divided his time and attention between Molly Nolan and John McGrath. He courted Molly openly and McGrath covertly. He listened keenly to all that was said in the little harbour about the strange young Irishman and his stranger works and ways. He believed all that he heard about the manufacture of gold and silver. ”

“ Nicholas Barrow expressed himself as being of the same opinion, and told Molly of a day on that sandy, sun-beaten patch of sand and rock when Tim had raved like a maniac for hours.
"It was the sun hit him," said Nick, "an' he ain't bin the same since. He gits queer every now an' agin. The sun got clean into his brain, I reckon. I've knowed other men who was sunstruck like that, an' they never got better of it. That's why I come to Bully Bay with him—to see him safe home. Some die an' some go ravin' mad. ”

“ They had seen him wandering among the rocks and over the barrens, as if in search of something. Peter Walsh had rebuilt his chimney for him. Heavy blankets were fastened across his windows day and night, but not so securely but that fingers of violent red light had been discerned about the window casings as late as two o'clock in the morning. And the new chimney had been seen to throw out sparks and flames many times, always after midnight.
"But he be's free wid the stuff he makes," said one of the boys. ”

“ John's an' Harbour Grace heared talk of it, or the Governor, the police would be sent round to take 'im away to prison—aye, that they would! It be's dead agin the law for anyone, save the King an' the Governor, to make money, an' the rich marchants to git it an' have the spendin' of it."
Molly's flicker of interest in the mysterious stranger was not strong enough to lighten anything of her weight of grief. Shortly after the first meeting with McGrath, she awoke one morning before dawn, sick and restless with her misery. She slipped from her blankets, dressed, and left the stuffy cabin. ”