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them, hidden by the trees. They all followed the path as it fell down between the sharp halves of a cracked boulder, came into pine woods again, and finally rounded into a sudden clearing.
    Lizzie's grandfather waited for the frock coats to come up. "This here," he said, "this here's our deed."
    In the clearing, sixty graves lay quiet and still, restful. Wood crosses with printed names too faded to read stood at their heads. Some had piles of pink-grained stones gathered from around the island placed carefully at the foot of each cross. Some had sprigs of violets, some fresh evergreen boughs. The pines quivered around them, and the moss softening the stones in the piles was so green that Lizzie wondered whether even the frock coats want to kneel down and smell it. It was all as neat and welcoming as if Nature herself had swept and tidied up her best room, figuring on guests coming to call.
    Reverend Griffm stopped by a grave with a whitewashed cross."This here's Thaddeus,"he said."Next to his mother. And that there, that's her daddy." He held his hands out. "Their bones—our bones—they're all part of this island. We can't leave."

    The tallest frock coat sniffed. "This will have to be cleared away."
    Reverend Griffin turned for the first time to one of the other frock coats. "Sir, your collar says you're a preacher."
    Reverend Buckminster nodded. "I'm the new minister at First Congregational."
    "Then you know," said Reverend Griffin, "that when God gives you a place to live, you don't leave it even if all the armies of the Philistines come down among you. You don't leave it till God calls you someplace else."
    Lizzie waited, and golly Moses, she saw that the new minister understood.
    But...
    "No," said Reverend Buckminster, looking at the other frock coats. "No. I'm sorry for your trouble, but First Congregational will help out as much as it can to see you folks settled somewhere. The Ladies' Sewing Circle has already begun to knit mittens, and scarves as well, I believe. Perhaps just mittens. We plan on a collection next Sunday."
    "You be out by fall," said Sheriff Elwell.
    Just then the flock of gulls appeared again overhead, calling and calling, as if searching for lost souls. The frock coats turned back toward their dory, and the sheriff walked behind them with Reverend Griffin and Lizzie. "You'll know what to tell them," said Sheriff Elwell, "the rest of the folks on the island. You'll have better words than I would."
    "I'll tell them that times move on."
    The sheriff nodded.
    "That maybe God's calling on us to move on."

    Another nod. "You'll find a place. You people always do."
    "Just one more thing, Sheriff." The sheriff stopped and waited. "What'll happen when times move on again and it's your turn?"
    For a moment, the sheriff seemed to understand. His eyes looked down. Then the moment passed, and full and sudden he laughed louder than the calling gulls. "Times will never move on that much," he said.
    When they reached the shore, the frock coats boarded and the sheriff pushed the dory out until the water reached his knees, clambered in—carefully, so as not to splash the frock coats—and began rowing back up the New Meadows. "You'll know what to tell them," he called back. "By fall."
    Lizzie held close against her grandfather as the people of Malaga Island came out from the pine woods, gathering around their preacher on the shore to hear what had been said. Before they turned, Lizzie felt her grandfather ebb as though his soul were passing out of him, the way the last waves of a falling tide pass into still air and are gone.
    She took a deep breath, and she wasn't just breathing in the air. She breathed in the waves, the sea grass, the pines, the pale lichens on the granite, the sweet shimmering of the pebbles dragged back and forth in the surf, the fish hawk diving to the waves, the dolphin jumping out of them.
    She would not ebb.
    Then she turned with her grandfather to tell the gathering people of Malaga that