[From the household ledger of Maeve McCausland, the Ward, Port Hume. Selected entries. Accounts pages mixed with diary pages; only the diary entries reproduced here.]

Nov. 9, 1912. They came to the door at half four this morning. Mr. Byrnes of the Harbor Police & a man from the Company I did not know the name of. The ship is gone. My Ewan is gone. Tom was asleep. I went to his room & could not wake him to say it. I will say it in the morning.

Nov. 10. Tom sixteen years and four weeks old. I said it at breakfast. He did not cry. He did not eat. He went out. He came back in the afternoon & put his arms around me & held me a long time. He has grown in a day. May God comfort him.

Nov. 19. A Company man named Mr. Reddick came. Very fine suit. He gave me Two Hundred Forty Dollars & a paper. The paper says no more. I signed it. I shouldn't have signed it. I wanted him out of my house.

Dec. 2. Mrs. Malinowski on Whitwell St. Polish woman. She came to me. She is writing to the Court. She says Mr. Reddick gave her ninety dollars & her Stanisław was a deckhand. She says the Company book says different amounts for different men. I told her I signed a paper. She said her paper said no more also & she is going to Court anyway. She has more courage than I have.

Dec. 19. Tom took work at the Clarion. Fifty cents a day to run proofs. Miss Harriss the editor is a sharp woman & kind. She asked after his schooling. She said she would see he keeps at his letters. He comes home with ink on his cuffs & tells me what he saw at the police court & down at the Quays. He is sixteen. He walks like his father when he was tired.

Jan. 8, 1913. I signed Mrs. M's petition. I do not think it will come to anything. She is the stronger woman.

Jan. 16. The Coroner's verdict is "misadventure." I was in the gallery. I said nothing. Mrs. M. was put out. She was shouting in her own language. I did not know what she said. The Coroner said the jury would not consider outcry from the gallery. I thought: Ewan never shouted either. A quiet man is not heard in any country.

Apr. 4. Miss Pellman of the Beacon came to the door. She asked me questions about what I had heard of the Captain in Ewan's telling. I told her Ewan never spoke about the Captain. That was true as far as it goes. Ewan had said once that he would sooner serve under a man who could not read than a man who could not keep from the bottle. He did not say of whom. I did not tell Miss Pellman. She gave me her card.

May 23. Today a chest was delivered. A man with a boat had brought it across from the Canadian shore. He would not take money. He said he had carried it in the boat all the way. The chest is Ewan's. The leather of it I know. The papers inside are his watch book. I cannot read what he wrote. He had his own way of it. I have put the book in a tin in the pantry with the flour. I do not know what to do with it. I do not know who I can trust to read it. Mr. Dannemeyer of the Beacon came by in February & asked me had I seen my husband's shorthand. I told him no. I had not then. I do not know if I would tell him now. He does not write about the ship any more, they say. Perhaps he has been told not to.

June 2. Miss Malinowski brought me her petition papers. Fifty-eight names, fourteen of them crossed out now. She will not give up. I kissed her. I did not cry. I was empty of it for today.

[Entries continue sporadically. No further reference to the recovered book.]