Storm Tide (57 page)

The
White Lady
rounded Eastern Harbor Point and flew across the harbor as if she knew her way, Matthew Fennell's boat close behind. She was home again; they were all home again. It was as if the Island reached out its arms to gather them against its breast, all its children.

The Island was safe now. Nothing could hurt it. It was a fortress which no siege could take, no wars disturb. Stevie had gone, as Island men had always gone to war, and others would go before it was finished. But they would come back to their rocks and their harbor, and the boats secure at their moorings. There would always be someone, even when Joanna and Nils had been dead for a hundred years.

The sun touched the weather-beaten fish houses, and threw a rose light across the rocks, brightened the dead marsh grass to bronze. The Island smiled.

Elisabeth Ogilvie lives for the better part of each year on Gay's Island, Maine. There she enjoys long walks among the rocks and woods of the island, reveling in air and space and sky. The remainder of the year is spent across Pleasant Point Gut, at her nearby mainland home, where plumbing, a telephone, and other amenities await. Her interests include the Nature Conservancy, Foster Parents Plan, reading (“a necessity of life!”), and music of just about any kind.

Miss Ogilvie's latest book is a historical romance, the second of a planned trilogy. Despite some thirty-six books for children and adults produced over the past forty years, though, the author is still caught up in the spell woven by Bennett's Island and its inhabitants and is presently at work on a fifth installment (the fourth
, An Answer in the Tide,
was published in 1978) in the continuing story of Joanna Bennett
.