"Well," giggled Mr. Whitman. "I don't know whether I should say in front of young ladies--but I guess I mean he went to live with the natives and follow their ways."

"You mean with the savages?" asked one of the shop girls.

"I don't know whether they were savages or not," said Mr. Whitman, "but the rumors were that he had gone to live among them, and some even said that he had taken a woman from among them."

"Oh my!" said Adele.

My sense of propriety at that moment made me want to get up and leave the room; I would have expected Mr. Whitman to have a greater sense of decorum, but I also perversely found myself wanting to know what happened to the poor Sabrina.

"The brothers kept all these rumors from their sister," Mr. Whitman said, "but I imagine some of the sailors told their own wives and fiancees, and you know how women talk, and so I'm sure if these rumors never actually reached Sabrina's ears, she sensed the rest of the town knew Enoch had done something disgraceful, and her heart broke over it.

"The years passed, and Sabrina's parents died. Her brothers married and started families of their own, and they prospered enough to build their own homes while Sabrina continued to live alone in her parents' house. Her brothers begged her to come live with them, but she refused. She could no longer find joy in human companionship. Her house was near the ocean, and so she had a widow's walk built upon the roof, and they say in the evenings at dusk, she could be seen pacing about there; sometimes she would walk the entire night while the rest of the town slept, for she craved no human company save that of her Enoch, and he was absent. Those children who dared creep near the house at night to catch a glimpse of the mysterious solitary woman, said they heard her weeping and begging God to bring back her lover. That is when the story began to grow truly strange.