They stood before the door and waited -- Captain Jim with his ripe , full experience , Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but empty middle life , Gilbert and Anne with their precious memories and exquisite hopes , Leslie with her record of starved years and her hopeless future . The clock on the little shelf above the fireplace struck twelve . `` Welcome , New Year , '' said Captain Jim , bowing low as the last stroke died away . `` I wish you all the best year of your lives , mates . I reckon that whatever the New Year brings us will be the best the Great Captain has for us -- and somehow or other we 'll all make port in a good harbor . '' CHAPTER 17 A FOUR WINDS WINTER Winter set in vigorously after New Year 's . Big , white drifts heaped themselves about the little house , and palms of frost covered its windows . The harbor ice grew harder and thicker , until the Four Winds people began their usual winter travelling over it . The safe ways were `` bushed '' by a benevolent Government , and night and day the gay tinkle of the sleigh-bells sounded on it . On moonlit nights Anne heard them in her house of dreams like fairy chimes . The gulf froze over , and the Four Winds light flashed no more . During the months when navigation was closed Captain Jim 's office was a sinecure . `` The First Mate and I will have nothing to do till spring except keep warm and amuse ourselves . The last lighthouse keeper used always to move up to the Glen in winter ; but I 'd rather stay at the Point . The First Mate might get poisoned or chewed up by dogs at the Glen . It 's a mite lonely , to be sure , with neither the light nor the water for company , but if our friends come to see us often we 'll weather it through . '' Captain Jim had an ice boat , and many a wild , glorious spin Gilbert and Anne and Leslie had over the glib harbor ice with him . Anne and Leslie took long snowshoe tramps together , too , over the fields , or across the harbor after storms , or through the woods beyond the Glen . They were very good comrades in their rambles and their fireside communings . Each had something to give the other -- each felt life the richer for friendly exchange of thought and friendly silence ; each looked across the white fields between their homes with a pleasant consciousness of a friend beyond .
But , in spite of all this , Anne felt that there was always a barrier between XXXXX and herself -- a constraint that never wholly vanished .
Elliott Jim Leslie lighthouse months night poisoned sinecure tinkle year